Family! Friends!
Apologies in advanced for the scrambled email. My fingers are moving as fast as possible to get this email done in the small amount of time that I have today. Since entering into the mission field I have become very familiar with a common member misconception: "missionary" also stands for.... professional piano player, singer, music director, chef, athlete, AND...Zumba instructor?!? Hahahaha. Yup... Betcha didn't see that one coming! Or maybe you did, but I sure didn't! The Relief Society had been talking up this Zumba event since long before I arrived in Paris. So, we thought it would be a great idea to invite all of our Amis! Awkwardly, everyone showed up to find that they had prepared everything, EXCEPT a Zumba teacher... But hey, it's okay! Because missionaries can do everything! ;) right? Not sure if what I taught them would even be classified as dance, but we sure had fun! With an interesting mélange of country line dancing, hip hop routines, EFY dances, the cha cha, and free styling, we were able to whip out some pretty sick moves ;)! OH YEAH! LUCILE GOT BAPTIZED AND CONFIRMED THIS WEEK!!! It all started at 6:30 am, anxiously preparing for the big day. It was a classic French morning, in the words of Soeur Weckesser, "Miserable to the French but to two missionaries wearing matching outfits strutting down the streets of Paris, it was the most beautiful morning!" Church was great! Saying goodbye to the members was bittersweet for Soeur Weckesser (who will be leaving me to spend her last 6 weeks in LUXEMBOURG) but the anticipation of the baptism was keeping us both pretty occupied! After church ended all chaos broke loose. Members were scrambling everywhere trying to say goodbye and exchange emails. Finally we broke free and left in a hurry seeing as we only had about 40 minutes to get to another chapel (our chapel doesn't have a baptismal font), get Lucile and her husband in baptismal clothes, and set up the decorations. Oh boy... After making it about 1/2 mile away from the church we all stopped dead in our tracks... "WHERE IS LUCILE!?"...Hahahaha we had absolutely no idea where she was! 30 minutes before her Baptism was about to take place, our cute little senile baptizee went missing... (Face palm). Emergency member splits were assigned and everyone set out to find Lucile, haha! The idea of Lucile wandering completely lost around Paris was enough to make anyone sick. Luckily, less than 20 min later, she was found sitting quietly and patiently in a chair just outside the bishop’s office... Hahaha our mission leader found her and said, "what the?! Lucile! What are you doing?! You have a baptism in 30 minutes!!!" Apparently the cute little gal thought she needed to have an interview with the bishop. Lol. Soeur Weckesser took Brother Akoutey (Lucile's husband) to the other chapel to find him clothes and start preparing him for the baptism while I escorted Lucile to the chapel. A bit of info about Brother Akoutey...He baptized his daughter 2 years ago and he had to do it 5 times because she was never fully submerged. So he was pretty tense about the baptism. So we decided to talk to him on the metro to calm him down a bit. Then we were filled with horror when he says, "Of course, I'm ready! This time I plan on holding her under for 5 seconds." The thought of Brother Akoutey drowning his wife on the day of her baptism was too much to bear. "NO NO NO NO!! 1 second is PLENTY!!" (Insert sweating emoji). Thanks to much help from above, everything was ready in time! Even Lucile was all nicely dressed and we led her into the chapel holding her hand (so she wouldn't fall down) she looked like an angel all dressed in white! She even sounded like one as she let out a HUGE belch just as she was about to enter into the chapel... Hahaha! We did not see that one coming. Oh man, we love her so much. Time for the actual baptism... Brother Akoutey managed to get into the font without falling, then Lucile, phew! They spent about 5 minutes trying to help Brother Akoutey position Lucile. Lucile ended up being the one holding Brother Akoutey to baptize him.... Haha, Nice try Lucile! Then after the position had been perfected by multiple priesthood holders, he was ready to say the prayer. The poor guy was probably so nervous. He had forgotten how to start the prayer, so they wrote it down for him, then out of nowhere, Lucile starts to say the baptismal prayer! Haha! We all held our breath with Lucile as she plugged her nose and was lowered into the water. Meanwhile it sounded almost like there was a fan group watching because everyone began yelling unanimously, ohh, ohh OHH! as we realized just how serious he was about the 5 second thing after all...so in the midst of all the panicking and, "it's all good! It's good it's good!!!!!"...Lucile was just under water, eyes shut, nose plugged and as happy as could be! The priesthood holders on either side of the font reached over and down to help him pull Lucile out of the water. At this point we ran into the change rooms so we could greet her at the font with a towel. Just as we got to the steps, she was looking up at the mirror hanging overhead and simply looked at herself, completely unaware of the commotion around her. She was smiling so big and looked as if she were staring directly at an angel. We helped her out of the font and we asked her how it was (This is why we love Lucile so much) She said, "It was, perfect!!!" She then giggled and entered into the changing room, haha! Then Brother Akoutey said, " I told you I had promised to hold her under for 5 seconds!" He is a man of his word! We were so relieved that it all went well! The baptism was so awesome! Definitely the most entertaining and unpredictable baptism I have ever attended! Well I am running out of emailing time so I am going to have to push some of this week’s excitement over to next week’s email... But I just wanted to share one last miracle before finishing up :)... This Sunday we were sitting in church when I had a strong prompting to run outside... Super strange because it was right in the middle of sacrament meeting. But, I jumped up and ran out anyways! I found myself momentarily confused and alone before spotting a family of four who had accidentally wandered their way into the church courtyard. I spontaneously invited them to come check out the church and they looked at me like I was a complete weirdo and then thought for a few minutes and said... "Hm. Okay. Maybe a couple minutes." They ended up staying for the entire meeting and they loved it! So now we are teaching a new family of four!!! :) This week we had SIX investigators at church! Miracles happen... Even in France! Love you all!! Xoxo- Soeur Wyson
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Tracie WysonI feel very honored to have had the opportunity to serve as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the France, Paris Mission. Archives
April 2017
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