dear everyone,
holy cow this has been such an awesome week!
this week was pretty amazing. as i said before, sister garcia and i have really been trying to work hard to turn this area around, and we are starting to see the little flowers from our seeds. it`s so uplifting to see! this wednesday we had a really cool miracle. we had a relief society activity at our relief society president`s house wednesday morning. afterwards we decided to go to the chapel to finish our studies because it was close to her house and we needed to finish them. we left the activity a bit early, but we just really felt like we needed to leave then. so we left and went to the chapel and we hadn`t even been there for 2 minutes when the doorbell rang (the chapel has a doorbell. i think it`s weird too but whatever!) and there was this cute little old man named claude there. he asked if this was the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and we said yes, and then he asked if he could get a book of mormon because he was interested in reading it! what an amazing miracle! so of course we gave him books of mormon (his sister wanted one too) and contact information.
another miracle we saw was with our new investigators, janeane and pascal. they are from the congo and we met them because we had a referral to visit their son, who wasn`t interested and they were! the wife in particular is very sweet and she even had read the book of mormon when we came back later that week! they fed us fufu and african food and pascal, the husband, was just loving us being there and joking the whole time, but he also loved our message and agreed with a lot of it. it was awesome!
this thursday we had MLC (mission leadership council) so we went to montreal. i love mlc, it is such a blessing to be with the other zone leaders and sister training leaders, ap`s, and president and sister phillips. the phillips are the best! i`m so grateful i get to work with them more. we talked about consecration and being unified. we also talked about miracles. i know miracles still exist. i see them every day. our God is truly a God of miracles and they never cease. we sometimes need to realize that tender mercies are still miracles, but they are there! and if we love our Heavenly Father and we trust Him and have faith in Him, we will see miracles.
friday i had an exchange with sister agapinon. she`s so cute and always is a positive person to be around. she is from california and we had a pretty good day except that it was cold and raining and we were on the bus! gross!!!! i pray i don`t get put in a bus area ahhhhh hahaha. i probably just jinxed myself and am going to be on busses for the rest of my mission.
ps if i ever have spelling mistakes i`m sorry. french keyboards and french spelling mess me up and there is only french spell check okay.
saturday and sunday we had stake conference. we (us and the zone leaders) also had correlation with our stake president, president phillips, and our stake high councilman over missionary work. we are so blessed. our stake here in ottawa has incredible leaders and they want to know what we think and they want to change things. it was so cool to have a meeting with them. and then later that night, we had a special dinner for missionaries and the people we teach. the spirit was SO STRONG as people asked questions and shared testimonies. there is nothing better than this work. we are helping people be with their families forever and to come to a knowledge of their loving Heavenly Father and helping them realize they have a Savior, a brother, who died for them and would have done it just for them!
the sunday session of stake conference was my favorite. in particular, the stake young women`s president spoke. the theme of our conference was "learning to make and keep sacred covenants". she started out her talk by asking all the primary children to stand up. she then said she was going to hum a song and when they recognized the song to start singing it. she started to hum "i love to see the temple" and all the children sang the song. holy poop the spirit was so strong it was amazing! she then talked about her sweet little daughter, and how for the first 3 years of her life she was always so mad and crying. and then she realized something. she realized that her daughter (who is 6 now and the sweetest and most caring little girl) had just left the best place. she had just left her Heavenly Parents. of course she is going to be sad and mad! our spirits are very old because we were with God before we were on this earth. and our bodies are a new experience that we don`t really know how to deal with. in the scriptures it tells us that we would be subject to all sorts of temptations and trials that come with being in a mortal body. and because of this, our bodies fight with our spirits. our bodies are tempted and tried and we need to constantly work on putting off that natural man.
and she pointed out how so many of us feel very lonely and alone because our spirits are so strong and powerful. she promised that as soon as we let our spirits control our bodies, we will not feel alone anymore. when we let go of the worldly things, the natural man. we will not only be following Jesus Christ more, but we will not feel lonely any more because we will truly understand the scripture in John 14:18, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."
i know this is true because i`ve seen it in my life. when we put off the natural man (who is an enemy to God) and try to become a saint through the Atonement of Jesus Christ (mosiah 3:19) and allow God`s will to govern our will, we will be happy and when we have trials, we will know to where we can turn for peace, strength, and hope, and we will never feel alone.
i love you all!
love,
soeur paine
pps.. to explain my subject line, there was a group of men in our ward who went to dinner before the adult session of conference from our ward, including our ward mission leader and other leaders we work with. most of them speak french and english. they come in laughing to the stake center because one of the brothers, was so confused. here`s the story: they were talking about egyptians and how they would use papyrus to write on. well "papyrus" sounds a lot like "papiers russes" which means russian papers in french. so he was so concerned and wanting to know what the egyptians were doing with russian papers. funny french joke.
pictures (i know my hair is heinous, remember: tired, wet, cold, bus okay there is only so much we can do)
sister agapinon and i with pascal and janeane (don`t let his grumpy face fool you, he was doing it on purpose)
sister agapinon and i on our exchange
sister garcia and i at our rs activity (i know i`ve let my hair go!)
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