wow what a week! this week started off with exchanges. i was with sister terou who is from tahiti and serving in fallowfield. we had a really cool experience that day! we had 3 lessons; we had two plan of salvation lessons and a restoration lesson with a potential set up. sister terou had never taught in french because she is brand new and so she wanted to role play (like a practice lesson where i am the missionary and she is the investigator). she asked for me to show an example of how i would teach the 3 kingdoms in the plan of salvation lesson. while we were role-playing the spirit was very strong, and we just kept role playing and ended up inviting the "investigator" to be baptized. we laughed because we got a little carried away because our two plan of salvation lessons were with people we had already invited to be baptized. (little did we know the spirit was preparing us for the unexpected lesson we would have later that day!)
so every single one of our lessons cancelled. we were really bummed and no one would be interested when we tried to talk to them. we had one more lesson planned with someone who was a media referral before dinner. we tried to call and confirm, but she didn`t respond but we were in the area so we went anyway. we rang a few times and no one answered. we tried some neighbors and no one. with no one out and no other doors to try, we started heading back to the car. we were sitting in the car about to drive away when a girl opens the door! it was our media referral! her name is paola and she is from Burundi. we sat down with her and started talking and we felt prompted to teach the Plan of Salvation instead of the Restoration that we normally teach and they loved it! and, just as our role play had prepared us, we invited them to baptism!
this week was also spectacular because elder bennett from the seventy and sister bennett came and visited our mission. i love them! they are so nice and cute and i want to be sister shelley bennett when i grow up. our zone conference started at 8 amthursday with a leadership/prep meeting with elder and sister bennett so that we could let him know some things our zone would like to work on. after that our meeting started at 9:30 and went to 5:30 where elder bennett shared experiences and taught us about whatever the spirit inspired him to teach. it was incredible. i can`t even begin to tell you all of the things i learned about missionary work and what we can do to change this mission specifically, but the spirit was so strong!
thursday night we had stake council and then we were going to drive to montreal with the zone leaders and the assistants for another meeting with the mission leadership, but president and elder bennett decided they wanted more than just the stl`s and the zl`s there, so we had 5 other missionaries from our zone and we all drove to montreal in a big white van. haha!
thursday night we stayed in the mission home which was super weird because the last time i was there was when i came in to the mission! it was fun to spend the night there with the other sisters and then the next day we had another long meeting with elder bennett. he stressed the importance of urgency. the canada montreal mission is not a very high baptizing mission, but he promised we could see baptisms if we were diligent and talked to everyone. now is the time to hasten the work!!
there were two things in particular that i loved. elder bennett told us, "every righteous effort we make, the Lord will bless us in His time. We have to be okay with it. Every time He asks us to do something hard or difficult, He asks us to be blessed."
and the other really cool thing he reminded us of was that President Monson was once mission president of this mission. It was called something different then, but it covered all of Quebec and Ontario, which is our mission! he told us that President Monson talks often about missionaries, but specifically us and our mission. he is very aware of us because we are called to labor in the same vineyard that he was called to labor in.
with all of the direction and guidance that elder bennett gave us, we are already seeing miracles and we will continue to see them in our mission. i am so excited for what is to come!
in other news, sunday was the primary program in our ward and having little kids sing and speak in french is literally the cutest thing you`ve ever seen.
i love you all!
love, soeur paine
pictures:
me am very white and sister terou
zone conference with elder and sister bennett
riding to montreal and i kind of look scared but that was the best picture we had. whatever!
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