1/18/2016 0 Comments Attaquer la Journée!Une autre semaine! Hou la la!
Busy busy busy! Wow! Our week was BOOKED! We didn't have a moment to spare! We were holding our skirts and sprinting between appointments to catch buses for the next, it was awesome! Working hard is the key to enjoying missionary work. When you work hard, you witness miracles and you have success! Even in France :)We have seen some really unbelievable miracles here in the past week between the two companionships in this little city of Angers. It all started with our Zone conference in Paris! We had zone conference on Wednesday and we were blessed to hear from Elder Kearon, the area authority of the church for Europe. Elder Kearon beams with the light of the spirit! He gave a phenomenal lecture with the slogan, "Attack the Day!" He said that the first hours of the morning determine exactly how the rest of our day will go, so we need to attack them with energy and enthusiasm! I love that! So, as a companionship, we made that our goal for this week and we attacked every single day! We worked out so hard that our bodies were jello, then we had amazing studies, we even had time to deep clean the apartment! In fact, we cleaned the apartment so well that the couples took a picture of us in our apartment to show the missionaries how to "really clean" ;) woot woot! Though, we can't take any credit for it...it is all thanks to our angel mothers who taught us how to deep clean the real way! Thanks mom :) I told you about Jacqueline's lovely miracle last week and I am VERY pleased to have my first "follow-up" miracle for you! Jacqueline lives more than an hour outside of town and we haven't been able to find a way out there besides a very expensive bus that we can't afford. Then, we came up with a brilliant idea...modern technology! We had a lesson via Skype! It was our first Skype lesson so we were pretty stoked to see how it went. It was so great! She had already studied all the lessons we had planned to teach and she made a cute little calendar for herself titled, "Jacqueline's Baptismal Preparation Chart", how cool is that!?! Then she said, "I stopped smoking and drinking after reading about the Word of Wisdom!... So when can I get baptized?"...I have to admit, I don't know if I have ever felt so happy in my whole life! It was the coolest miracle ever! The Lord really is preparing his children everywhere to receive his gospel, we just need to find them :) Jacqueline met the missionaries 6 years ago and even though she wasn't ready then, those missionaries planted a seed! Now, 6 years later, she is preparing for baptism and has a powerful testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ :). Friday we spent the day out of town working on a member’s farm! The Elders chopped wood while Soeur Curtis and I shoveled fresh cow poop all over their garden haha! It was hilarious! Who would have ever thought that shoveling poop in the middle of a snow storm could be so fun! ;) haha. It was just raining at first then out of no where it just starting snowing and hailing like no other! It was one of those moments where you are not really sure how you feel about the situation and so all you can really do is just laugh haha :). While we were shoveling I felt like the girl from, "The Prince and Me" when the royal family goes to break ground on a project and they all shovel the tiniest bits and then the small town farm girl comes up and just steps on the shovel, scoops up, and tosses this massive mound of dirt hahaha! Representing my home town well out here in France, shout out to all my fellow Cowgirls ;)! (Sarah Kemp, Waegerle Fam)! The Raveneaus definitely didn't see that coming when I showed up in my name brand "service jeans" haha! My shoes were so caked in cow poo by the time I was done, you couldn't even see my shoes. I think they have reached the end of their life; I am definitely going to have to toss them haha. Everyone just kept saying "Oh la vache!" Which means, "Oh the cow!" Haha :) The good news is, it is "Les Soldes" in France right now, which is like the Black Friday that goes on for an entire month! Everything in ALL the stores is 80% off right now! That's my kind of holiday!! Another souvenir I got from that day, aside from the manure shoes, was a hand full of massive ouchy blisters Haha. I guess I need to work harder so my hands aren't so tender! ;) The Elders had a SWEET miracle this Sunday too! They had an ami come to church and at the end of the meeting he asked if he could meet with the bishop. None of us knew why he wanted to talk to him, so all four of us waited VERY anxiously outside the door for a good long while Hahaha! Then he finally came out and he said to the Elders that he was so touched by the spirit that was in the meeting that he wanted to drop everything bad he was doing and has done immediately and come unto Christ! The elders were in shock because they were so overjoyed! They only met him once on the street last week and now they are working with him to help him prepare for his baptism! How cool is that!? Way to attack the day Elders! :) That same Sunday, we had a Family night lesson with a little girl named Manuella, she is 13 years old and we have been teaching her since I got here. Her dad is a member but the rest of her family are not members. At the time, she just was not progressing at all. She wouldn't keep any engagements and she didn't really seem like she wanted to be there when we taught, even though she said she did. So, my companion and I sat down a couple weeks ago and decided to pray specifically for her so that we would know what we needed to do to help Manuella have more of a desire to learn the truth for herself so that she could progress. That night, I had a dream that I was sitting with my niece, who is about the same age as Manuella, and I was teaching her the missionary lessons. I was teaching her through activities and games rather than sit down lessons and we were having so much fun together!... I woke up around 4 am with an "Ah Ha!" moment haha. Don't worry, I didn't wake my companion up at 4 am, but I shared it with her the very moment she woke up 2 and a half hours later :). This week we spent several days with Manuella, teaching through service projects, games, treats, play dates, and everything that we could think of to make it more fun! She is on FIRE! She is progressing so quickly and so wonderfully! Yesterday we were making a dessert together and she told us that she wanted to get baptized, and she was going to fast tomorrow to know when she should get baptized! How awesome is that!? She is only 13! It reminds me of a scripture I love that talks about the way the Lord teaches us... 2 Nephi 31:3 "For my soul delighteth in plainness; for after this manner doth the Lord God work among the children of men. For the Lord God giveth light unto the understanding; for he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding." Flashback! My companion just reminded me of a really funny story that happened my second week in France and I just have to share it haha. I don't think I have yet...if I have, I hope you find it even funnier the second time! ;) It was only the start of my second week in France and my companion and I were out contacting, which I really didn't like at the time because I couldn't speak the language yet so I never knew what to say haha. Anyways, Soeur Curtis had contacted the last 12 or so people to show me how to do it, then she says..."okay, your turn! Go contact her!"... It caught me totally off guard and I was SO nervous! So I stopped her and said, "Bonjour! Je m'appelle Sœur Curtis!"... I couldn't go on after that hahaaha! I was trying so hard not to just bust up laughing and Soeur Curtis tried to take over, introducing herself also as Soeur Curtis, while holding a straight face, the lady must have totally thought we were punking her hahah! She walked away and we laughed for about 15 minutes. Now THAT’S companionship unity ;). That's it for this week my lovelies! Sorry it was a shorter email today...There is a crazy snow storm right now and we need to get our grocery shopping done and get home before we freeze to death haha! We look like Anna on “Frozen” walking around in the storm in her iced over skirt hahaha, It's pretty awesome! People look at us like we are crazy haha! I heard a rumor here that every time we get snowed/rained on during our missions that our husbands get hotter...so family, let me know if you notice any dramatic changes in the appearance of any young men back home and we'll know why ;)! Haha! Love you all! Love, Soeur Tracie 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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