5/9/2016 0 Comments Baaa-Di-Donk!Lately I have been looking for opportunities to use my favorite French expression that sounds something like... Oh-Baaa-Di-Donk!
I'm not even really sure what it means but it makes me laugh every time! It's one of those "filler" expressions that you can use pretty much whenever you want. But, it usually follows a moment of shock or surprise when someone doesn't really know what else to say... (like when I tell people I have 11 siblings)... Haha Baaa-Di-Donk! Luckily, this week brought many opportunities to practice my new French jargon. Number one: Transfer Calls. Every 6 weeks (transfer) we receive an email from the mission office that contains a little pdf file titled "Le répertoire". This pdf contains our fate for the following transfer. We usually receive Le répertoire around noon so we all gather at the church around 11am to wait. Anticipation is pretty intense as we have no knowledge of where we might be relocating or with whom we might be serving. But, there are exceptions... If you get a call between 9am and 12pm... It is a "special call", meaning a direct call from the mission president about accepting a leadership position. Well, Saturday was Repertoire day and Soeur Burgoyne and I were trying really hard to stay focused in our morning studies. I put the phone by Soeur Burgoyne because I didn't want to have to stare at it. I couldn't help but stare at it anyways from across the room because I was so nervous that it might ring. I didn't know what I was going to do if it rang. We almost made it through the all of our morning studies before the phone rang... My heart dropped so fast. False alarm. It was just a member calling to confirm a rendezvous. PHEW. Hahaha. About two hours later I started feeling pretty safe. I wiped the sweat from my brow, looked at Soeur Burgoyne and said... "Well, I think we made it, we're safe!"...She rolled her eyes at me and said, "Soeur, We still have like 2 more hours!"...then, at that exact moment...the phone rings. She answered and then looked at me with a look that I can't describe but am getting to be familiar with (the same look my trainer gave me when I got called to train). Sure enough, President! I will be leaving Angers this Wednesday to serve as an STL (sister training leader) on the opposite end of the map in a Ville called Lille! (How's that for a rhyme?;) My response... Baaa-Di-Donk!! ;) I don't know much about Lille yet except that I hear it is a gorgeous and enormous ville by the border of Belgium :) There are two wards in Lille so more specifically, the area I will be serving in is called "Villeneuve D'asq" but Lille is a lot easier to pronounce :). My new companion will be Soeur Clements and I have heard only incredible things about her so I am very excited to have the opportunity to serve with her ! I feel a little bit weird leaving my "Blue-ville" but I am so excited to see what new adventures lay ahead! We got invited to another barbecue the other day. I also got food poisoning again. Hahaha. Ba-Di-Donk, I guess I need to just stop eating meat for a while hahaha. Though it was totally worth it because we found an awesome new ami! Oh yeah, also got spit on for the first time yesterday hahaha. Now we know what it's like to be elders here apparently. Luckily he missed my face, that would have been gross. But, we can't complain because Christ was spit on countless times for us. I'm happy to take a few for him in return :). Funny of the week: Members feed us like we have been stranded at sea and haven't had anything to eat in months. The other day we were visiting an really old lady in our ward and she put SIX huge boiled potatoes on my plate with a big chunk of meat. I thought I was going to die. She only gave my companion like 3!! So, as soon as she left the room I grabbed a potato and threw it at my companion and said, "Soeur!! Take one for the team!" ... We take turns "taking one for the team" so only one of us feels like crap after instead of both of us, haha. But, she didn't want to take her turn... So, she catches the potato and literally throws it back into the pot right before the old lady comes back into the room hahahaha. It was hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing and the member thought my laugh was really funny even though she didn't know why I was laughing (luckily) hahaha. This is not the first time this has happened... A few weeks ago we were eating at a members house and she put a basket of like 9 different types of bread in front of us and she wanted me to try ALL of them. They weren't small either! But I was SO stuffed! She kept putting them on my plate and then she would walk out of the room and I would sneak it back into the basket hahaha. The only problem with that, she thought I REALLY liked the bread so then she would give me even more! Haha, oh dear.... Luckily she never noticed that the basket of bread never went down in size. Miracle of the week: We have the opportunity to skype home twice a year. Once on Christmas and once on Mother's Day. Soeur Burgoyne and I always wearing black but we decided to wear really bright summer colors for our moms because it was Mother's Day :) ...(this is important for later I promise)...Malheureusement (Unfortunately), we found out that it was Stake Conference in Rennes this weekend so they were going to be cutting the wifi at the church and then on top of that, ALL the members where going to be gone so we had no where to Skype. Our only option was to skype home from McDonald's. The catch is, you have to first buy something to use their wifi, then, the wifi doesn't even work! We couldn't even get enough wifi to tell our families the situation and we were crushed... We decided to walk outside and make a few more calls to members and Amis but no one was available. After several calls and no luck we realized we weren't going to be able to skype home to our families this week... Then, out of nowhere, we hear a man say "Soeurs!! You are the first missionaries I've seen anywhere! I was beginning to be a little concerned!" What!? A member!? Baaa-Di-Donk!! This is the first member I have met on the street since I have been here in France so it was really random. Apparently, this member had been traveling for two weeks with his wife and son who had recently returned from this mission (Elder Davis). We told him our sticky situation and he said "I have the solution, follow me". We followed him to his hotel, which happened to be just across the street, where we met his family and used their hotspot wifi to skype home to our families. They had arrived at the hotel no more than a half hour before and were only planning on staying the night. Brother Davis had originally just gone downstairs to ask about restaurants. But, between my fluorescent orange and Soeur Burgoyne's yellow, he was able to spot us from across the street in his hotel! He was so happy to finally see missionaries that he decide to cross the street and come say hi to us, catching us right in our moment of despair! Miracles really do happen... Even in France :) It was such a beautiful reminder of how much Our Father in Heaven loves us. A skype call home may seem small and insignificant. But, it was important to him because he knew how important it was to us. I don't have much time this morning because I have a lot of packing to do but I wanted to send home a quick email to let you all know that I'm still loving it out here and that the Lord is taking very good care of us :) Love, Sister 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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