Mighty As a Lyon: BONJOUR TOUT LE MONDE!

Alright family! Another week has gone by! That is pretty crazy! I can't believe it. In three days, I will have been on my mission for three months!

BAPTÊME DE YOYO

So some pretty awesome things have happened this week! Our paroisse (ward) had a baptism this week! It was the other equips baptism but it was so awesome to see! A lot of the ward came and two of our amis came as well! The spirit was very strong. As we were waiting for Yoyo to come back in after she was baptised we had members bear their testimonies.

YoYo

After Yoyo came in, I had a talk to give on the Holy Ghost. Honestly, I was a nervous wreck before hand. Which is totally unlike me when it comes to public speaking. Anyway, there were probably about 30 people in the congregation. But my talk went well! To start, I asked the congregation to pray so that the Holy Ghost could help them understand the things I was going to say. It was a little hard for me though because I am so used to just typing up some bullet points and going off of that but I can't in french...YET! But, people seemed to understand.

Solangie - he talked about her last e-mail

LE LANGUE

The language is really starting to take off. If someone is speaking in my direction I understand probably about 75-80 percent of what is said. Africans are the hardest for me to understand, which figures because that is who we teach the most.

People that aren't French (Africans, Spaniards, Romanian, etc) think that I am French when I speak to them and with the French they usually think I am a really slow French person and then they ask where I am from.

Apparently this transfer is when the language begins to really start to click for most missionaries (as far as comphrension and such). Let's hope so!

CONFÉRENCE DES BLEUS

This week was Blues' Conference! Blue's conference is where they take all the missionaries that have been out for one transfer and bring them back into Lyon for training. It was so much fun because you get to see all of your MTC buddies, hear some crazy stories, talk about how hard the language is.. etc.

President Roney spoke to us about how we are capable of performing miracles. All we need to do is prepare and trust in the Lord and miracles will happen.

LES AUTRE CHOSES

So Elder Schneider and I taught a Muslim in his apartment with his friend. As we were teaching we asked if we could start with a prayer and he said no because he would have to wash himself before...anyway. But they said they would pray at the end! As we are teaching another friend came in... and we are talking more about the Book of Mormon and what not and ANOTHER friend comes in. So, Elder Schneider and I are teaching four Muslims and the lesson is going no where. They were super nice but they wanted to Bible bash...Anyway! They brought the Koran out and everything and Elder Schneider touched it without washing his hands which is apparently a big NO NO but they forgave him. They asked if they could pray for us and we said yes! So they all washed themselves and starting praying! It was really interesting but we didnt understand any of it because it was in Arabique. We prayed after them and then traded a Book of Mormon for the Koran! bahaha. A very interesting experience!

I contacted a woman who after finding out I was Mormon blessed me and said she would continue to pray for me. Very kind of her… bahaha

Along the same lines I contacted another woman and told her I was a "missionary for Jesus Christ" she said she wasn't interested and a man passing by yelled back "THEY ARE WORSE THAN THE PLAGUE!" With things like that I just laugh because honestly, they have no idea what we stand for or who we are.

I trapped a black man in an elevator, with a mattress. We were helping this less active man move and last thing to put in the elevator was this huge mattress. We spent about a good ten minutes forcing it into the elevator. We were so happy to get it in that we didn't realize we had to get it out. haha. Anyway, the mattress is diagonal in the elevator and the black man is in the corner. We spent thirty minutes pulling and pushing as much as we could... to no avail. Luckily some Muslims were nice enough to help us and fifteen minutes later we finally rescued him. While we were pulling I just starting laughing hysterically at how ridicules the whole situation was. I told him that he was in "spirit prison." and the missionaries where here to get him out.

OUI!

That is it for this week! For all of you wondering about transfers and such... each transfer is six weeks. So I will be in Lyon for at least another five weeks. Apparently in this mission you don't stay in one place for very long.