Merry Christmas!

- Jasmi

Clermont-Ferrand

Transfer 1, week 1

 Bonjour!

First week in France is almost gone!! I don’t understand almost anything what people say to me but we’re getting there. My trainer Soeur Kofoed is really nice, super American which is a little overwhelming sometimes but she keeps good care of me and is experienced. This is her last transfer. Already I have learned so much from her and she is a good example of obedience. I’ve figured that obedience is really important for missionaries. If we want to succeed in the field and get miracles we have to be obedient.

Our city is called Clermont-Ferrand, about two hour train journey away from Lyon. But because there’s never been Sisters our apartment isn’t ready yet so we’ve been staying in Lyon. Although we went there for a weekend and I instantly fell in love with it and the ward!!! The ward isn’t that big but the people are so nice there. There’s also one Finnish lady who married a Frenchman in the 60’s and since has joined the church. She is very lovely! The other missionaries in Clermont; Elders and senior couple are incredible also and very musical. On Saturday evening was the ward Christmas party where we missionaries performed ‘Have I Done Any Good’. It went really well and the ward fell in love with us immediately. I have a really good feeling about Clermont and I’m sure I’m going to watch miracles happen here!

I didn’t get to send an email last week for my last week in the MTC so now a bit from that! It snowed a lot in Utah which made everything prettier and I felt like I was in Finland, it was lovely!! I have to admit that I rather be a missionary here where it’s warmer because we have to be outside all day. We got a chance to be new missionary hosts on Wednesday which meant we got to help new missionaries coming to MTC. It was fun!! They looked so helpless and cute. I realized how far I’ve come. Except now I’m in France and I’m a baby… Here they call greens blues. We tried to enjoy the last week and the moments together with the district and the zone. It was bittersweet but I felt like I was ready to leave and start the ‘real’ work.

Soeur H

I’m only halfway blue !!

Week  6

Bonjour !

We started the week with pretty cool miracles. We saw at least three people we had contacted earlier and never heard of them anymore.  I’ll tell about one of them, there is this cool girl from England, she’s just the sweetest thing ever! The first time we saw her we invited her to an activity at the church and she said she would come but she never did. I was a bit bummed about it because I wanted to know more about her. Didn’t think I’d ever see her. Me and my companion prayed about it and asked our Heavenly Father to let us meet her again. Weeks passed by and we kinda forgot about her. And on Monday as we were walking home I saw this funky girl walking on the other side of the street. Looked just like her!! I asked my comp if she agreed and next thing we know we are running like crazy after the girl, just caught her before she went inside her building. Miracle! This time we got her number and invited her to an Christmas activity. 

I’m only halfway blue !! (blue is what they call new missionaries and normally it would be greenie but in France they call us blue) Just one more transfer and I’m not a newbie anymore.  C’est a dire that  a new transfer just began today. I am staying in Nice and I got a new companion, Soeur Bailey. Soeur Howden ( my previous companion got called to Chalon, it’s cold up there hah) But for me it’s going to be Christmas in Nice. It doesn’t feel like Christmas though without snow and absolute insane coldness, but I kinda like it this way too. Not a fan of cold… 

 The 6^th of December was the independence day of Finland, I made little flags and hung them up on the wall. And I got my companion to sing the Finlandia hymn in finnish with me, she did a great job haha! Points for trying. 

We go running every morning, one day we decided to take a different route than usually. After a while we ran by a house, and ohh my word what a house, straight from creepyland. They have huge teddybears laid out on the lawn, sitting on chairs. And they have these stuffed toy animals hanging from trees and just all over the place. I need to take a picture, it’s so strange. 

The greatest miracle of the week happened on Sunday. We have been teaching this mother with three young daughters for a couple of weeks and invited them many times to attend church but they never came. Don’t really know why but I think the mother feels like she’s not perfect enough to come to church. But after we taught with a member present the member took action and invited them, and they came!! Even the teenage girls.  I know that attending church will help them progress and feel the love  that Heavenly Father has for them more in their lives. Greatness. 

Motivation quote for the week: I’ll go where  you want me to go dear Lord.

Bisous, Soeur N

Did You Think to Pray?

Bonjour!

To start the week off as awesome as ever I catched a cold and had my nose being the worst mucus waterfall in the world. So awkward having to blow my nose every 5 seconds in meetings or lessons. Oh well, it's good now.

On Tuesday we had a musical night with the ward. Four Elders in our mission travels around and comes to perform in the wards. All the missionaries performed a song together, there in eight missionaries in the Nice ward so it was cool. My companion performed with one of the musical Elders and they sang Have You Done Any Good Today? Super good!

We've only had a few lessons with investigators and visited inactive members. We have this one interesting investigator who is greek/romanian and speaks only greek, romanian, russian and a little french, italian and english. Soo there is a slight language barrier but he really wants to learn more about our message. He came to church one Sunday and afterwords I asked him if he understood much because everything was in french. He said he understood little n his head but everythingin his heart. i was very impressed. On friday we went to Monaco , my companion has her cousins living there and Soeur Howden'd dad gave her uncle an assignmet to get her arm checked by a proper doctor. Haha, still the same outcome. But this trip gave me a chance to talk to Soeur Howden's uncle a bit about having faith, whilst waiting in the waitingroom. Monaco was gorgeous and so sunny! We got lost at one point and found ourselves in an underground roundabout. No idea how we ended up there but we got out pretty quickly!

Our mailman decited to go on a strike so we didn't get letters for a week of so. He needs the gospel obviosly. Would lighten up his day. 

OK so french is not the easiest languagein the world so making mistakes is inevitable. One time in the tram I saw a girl with a cool cardigan and I said "J'aime votre chemin" which means "I love your way", oops I got the word 'chemin' and 'chemise' mixed up. Well I guess the girl understood what I meant. Last week when I was on exhange in Montpellier we went to the McDonald's and I felt super confident in ordering in french. Finally it's my turn to order and I say "Je voulu trois cheeseburger", at that moment I didn't realise I'd said "I wanted three cheeseburgers". Where did the past tense come from?! Anyway the guy who took my order understood, and I got my three cheeseburgers!

Motivation quote of the week: Did you think to pray? from the hymn Did You Think to Pray? Don't know why but this song was stuck in my head and reminded me often to pray.

Bisous, Soeur N

25 Nov. 2013

 25 Nov. 2013

Bonjour!

This week was crazy in many ways. We had zone conference and got to hear some really uplifting thoughts by our mission President and his daughter who recently came home from her mission. Our challenge was to be the Lord's favourite missionary. Like that's not already the case! JK... it was a good challenge. Working on it.

So my companion broke her arm last week after faceplanting on the ground like a pro... We spent a lot of time at health care centers. She finally got a sling after wearing scarves like a true fashionista. True champion!!

On Thursday we went on exchanges (switch companion for a day) to Montpellier. Funny thing was that we actually missed our train by maybe 30 seconds!! So we had to take a later one. We finally arrived to Montpellier and it was freezing cold compared to Nice. The exchange was great, I learned a lot about being a missionary.

We came back to Nice on Saturday and went straight to a lesson. Great lesson! I hope our investigator felt the need of acting. I'm feeling like something grat is going to happen. Can't wait to see what the Lord has in mind.

Motivation quote this week was: Will you not seek for my lost ones? from the hymn Dear to the heart of the Shephard.

Bisous, Soeur N

p.s. Two weeks left of my first transfer. WHAT THE WORD

On the same day we went to Monaco

Bonjour!

The week just passed by so quickly and here I am thinking what in the world did I even do during the week. We had a lot of lessons that we taught to people who are interested in our message. It is such an honour to meet these people and get to know them and their lives. What  they believe in and how they see the world, the meaning of life and the importance of the gospel!

On thursday morning we went jogging and my companion fell flat down on the asfalt because she did not see the chain on the ground. She injured her arm and can't use it. Which has given me a great opportunity to help her. On the same day we went to Monaco. Because Monaco has a law against proselytingwe had to take our tags off, which felt a bit weird. We visited Soeur Howden's cousins. Such a lovely family!

Sundays are the craziest days. We had three of our investigators to come to church. My companion almost went nuts trying to take care of everything. I was just like chill. Everything is fine. We had a good sacrament meeting, hah even though I don't understand much. It's all in french. I'm suprised how much I've learned in three weeks though.

Life is good. We got to experience a sick storm one night. Thunder and lightning all over the place. Was cool though. Oh and a flock of birds flew over us today and one had a great aim and hit my shoulder with poop. My companion laughed so hard and haha next thing she knows, she has bird poop on her hand. HAH!

A bientôt! Bisous, Soeur N