4/11/2016 0 Comments Footloose in the Middle East...Hello From Angers!
I hope you all have had a wonderful week, we sure have!! It started off kinda "eeehhh" if you know what I mean. We weren't seeing hardly any success at all and just about all of our amis temporarily dropped off the face of the planet... The "Vacance" has officially begun (summer vacation). Saturday we were doing weekly planning. It was seeming kind of pointless because none of our plans had changed since we hadn't been able to teach any of our amis. So, we decided it would be good to pray and ask the Lord if he wanted us to plan anyway or go do something else. After our prayer we both felt prompted to call up ALL 140 members in the ward and ask them to bring at least one non-member friend per family to church. With that, also do a ward fast to boost the missionary work here in Angers. We knew it was a huge task and quite a bit to ask on such short notice but we were okay with it because we know God works miracles! The next day we left to church 30 minutes earlier than we normally do so that we could be extra early to greet all of the new amis that were going to be at church! Well... sadly, not a single member even invited a friend to church. We were pretty bummed. The two of us were ready to drop our bags and take a nap... But, we decided to work it off instead :) We knelt down, once again, and spoke to The Lord. We expressed our disappointment after having done the things he asked and not having had a single ami show up to church and asked him to help us find someone who he has prepared to receive his gospel. When we closed the prayer, the phone rang. Claudia! I haven't told you about Claudia because we have never met her before. We found her phone number while we were cleaning out the ancient ami section of our area book a few weeks ago. We called her several times but she never answered. I practically dove on the phone to make sure I got it before she hung up haha. We talked for a while about who we are and why the heck we were calling her haha. She then explained that she had served a TEN-year mission as a Nun in France before she quit and had a family. She also made it very clear that she was very much a practicing catholic and not about to change religions. At this point we weren't sure what to do except ask if we could serve her because we really really wanted to meet her haha. There is no way that was a coincidence that she called when she did! She laughed at the “sweet notion” and told us "maybe in a couple weeks". When she said that, I heard a little kid interrupting her in the background and I felt extremely prompted to ask her about her family. She told me a bit about her kids and then I told her that I came from a family of 12 kids and my companion from 6. Immediately her voice changed and very sweetly she began to ask about my family. After asking a few questions she says very softly..."Actually, you know what? A church that places that much value on the family actually really interests me...Would you mind passing by tomorrow and sharing your message with me?" Our Father in heaven truly does know each and every one of us individually and he has the power to soften the hearts of his children. We went to Claudia's house today and we taught about the answers we can find through the Book of Mormon. Specifically, we focused on some of the questions of the soul. We read through some of these questions in Preach my Gospel with her family and one that really stuck out to her was, "How can I balance my family and my career?" Soeur Burgoyne and I both felt prompted to testify of the blessings that come from holding weekly family home evening and daily scripture study as a family and we offered to teach her how to hold family home evening. They are very excited to have their very first FHE next :) Another cool experience we had with the area book was a sweet Muslim girl named Dina. Same thing... we had called her a billion times and she never answered, then miraculously, she called back! She invited us over to her house even though she had no clue who we were, we were pretty stoked about that hahaha. We headed over and turns out, her entire family is very practicing Muslim and from a Muslim country in the middle East haha. But hey, they invited us! We were at their house for about two hours as they just LOADED up the table in front of us with all kinds of African food hahaha. When we saw all the food, we asked them who else was coming for dinner and they said, "Oh no!! No one! We aren't eating! We made it all special for you! You will eat it all!" Soeur Burgoyne is still pretty new so she thought they were joking... I knew better...hahaha. I tried to laugh it off and tell them that we weren't going to be able to eat it all. I got to a point where my hand couldn't lift anything else to my mouth because I was so full, that's when the little kids started coming up and literally hand feeding it to us HAHA. (Help me Mom! ) It was really good food but holy smokes it was a lot. Definitely gained a few "poids" from that dinner. Lol. After we ate they taught us some cool African dances and the kids wanted to dress us up in their robes. I felt like I was in a completely different mission haha! These people are definitely not French! It was awesome. They are so cultural! They said their people love to dance but that they aren't allowed to dance in public in their country because it is Muslim. So, they moved to France and they dance every day! Sounds like footloose, only a lot more dangerous. So to sum up this week...We ate a lot of food and we saw some really sweet miracles ;) If I had a pound for every miracle we have seen here in Angers!... I would have about as many pounds as I have now after that meal. ;) I wanted to finish with a spiritual thought, as I always do. I am a missionary, after all :) The other day in my personal studies, I was studying about keeping the Sabbath day holy and what we can do to help our amis and the members to better understand what we should be doing on the Sabbath day. I read about Christ healing the blind man and how he taught us that the Sabbath, being a day of rest, does not mean sitting on your couch and "resting" the day away. It is a day set apart for us to rest from the craziness of our every day lives so that we can use that energy to go out and serve instead. As missionaries, Sunday is our busiest day of the week. We don't even get personal studies on Sunday because we are out of the apartment and on our way to church at 8 am. This was so strange to me when I first got here because Sunday had always been such a relaxing day. Though, over my time being here, Sunday has become my very favorite day of the week. Because, it is the only day of the week that will allow me to relive my missionary days even after I go home. I hope that we will come to see the Sabbath as this; one day each week that has been set apart for us to live as missionaries live. I pray that we will seize that opportunity to be missionaries and look for ways we can "invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end." Xoxo- 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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