12/7/2015 1 Comment Miracles happen! Even in FRANCE!Coucou Everyone!!
First off, JOYEUX ANNIVERSAIRE to my beautiful mother!! Mom, I love you so much!!! I wish so much that I could give you a huge hug and tell you how special you are and how grateful I am for you. You are an angel and a perfect example of what it means to have charity, the pure love of Christ. <3 My French is PARFAIT...when is comes to shopping...haha! Last week we were shopping for preparation day and I found these adorable and totally Parisian boots that are real leather and I just have to have them! So I turned to the owner and I just started asking for sizes and colors and talking with no problem! hahaha, my trainer couldn't believe it! I just looked at her and said, in French, "I can shop";)! I am really looking forward to the day when I can speak French the way I can speak shopping! Later that day we were shopping and I found an adorable black dress but we ran out of time so I couldn't buy it, unless I wanted to take a few extra minutes to wait at the register...Well, I wanted to be exactly obedient, so I said my farewells and left my dress on the rack. The next day, I was doing some Christmas cleaning and I found the EXACT dress in the "Soeur box" and it was my size!! Woot woot!! Tender mercies. Exact obedience really does bring blessings!! ;) The last thing I bought was my pink pillow scarf. It is super chic here to have these massive blanket scarfs. Well, you bet I bought one! The only problem is, it is basically narcolepsy in a scarf haha! It is sooo warm and comfy, you could fall asleep anywhere! Not to mention, it supports your head perfectly. I will definitely be bringing a few of these babies home with me! (This was a big shopping P-day because it's Christmas haha) That night we had "Mangervu" at a members house...(Mon-zhay-voo)...which is a cross between a "rendez-vous"(meeting) and "manger" (to eat)... They are from New Caledonia and holy smokes, I felt like I was living in the movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"... "Eat missionaries! Eat!" Luckily I was able to make a few fries last the full 3 hours of dinner so that they didn't make me eat more. I managed to cut those 3 fries into about 30 pieces and "struggle" to pick each one up to kill time. My companion made the mistake of finishing the mountain that was on her plate too fast and they refilled it all over again, just as high! 3 times!! It was enormous! You couldn't help but feel a little bad for her haha! But it was pretty hilarious. She was so sick that night. At least she was sick on really good food! But they did make her eat a ton of meat and she wasn't too stoked about that since she is a vegetarian, haha. Food find of the week was this hot chocolate that is made in a little artisan chocolate shop in Centre Ville, they make it themselves right there in the shop, from scratch! Well, I am sure it was at least 10,000 calories, and it was worth every single one of them!! It was like drinking from a chocolate fountain! We were literally just drinking straight melted French chocolate...wow, it was heaven!...Would you believe me if I told you I still haven't gained any weight? haha! I am still going strong! On Wednesday I went on exchanges with my sister training leader and so I got to stay a couple days in a different city that is along the coast of France called, "Nantes" and it was so fun! I learned SO much and so many different ways to make missionary work even more fun than it already is! Soeur Back is awesome, we are crossing our fingers that we are put together as companions before she dies (goes home). My companion and I were looking back at our week and the weeks of the other missionaries and we decided that it is time to start seeing miracles in the France, Paris mission! So, we set some goals for the Christmas season and one of them includes having a slogan for each day for something that we want to accomplish! Vendredi (Friday) was "InVite em' Vendredi!" meaning we were going to invite everyone we knew and met to church with us the coming Sunday. We invited SO many people! It was such a miracle! But the biggest miracle was Friday morning. We prayed so hard for miracles and we decided that we were going to get ready extra fast so that we could do our studies and get out of our apartment a little earlier than usual so we could get out and start having those miracles! Well, on the way out, I stopped and I looked at my desk. I noticed that I had left my English Book of Mormon sitting out. I went back to put it away and then I felt prompted to take it with me instead. Without thinking much of it, I grabbed it and slipped it into my bag. We were on our way to the tram when we saw Lorrainne. A cute English speaking African lady walking down the street. My companion stopped her and I felt prompted to share a little Christmas video with her. I whipped out my IPad and opened "He is the Gift". When it finished, she took her glasses off and she way crying! She was so touched that we had remembered the true meaning of Christmas and she begged us to continue to share it with everyone! She LOVES the gospel! She has been worshipping every Sunday with her friends just in her house because she feels that the other religions have "lost the truth" and that they are "confused". She then went on to ask us all the perfect questions!! Including, "can I have your number? Will you please, please call me? I really want you to come teach my whole family! Will you please, please do that? I will get them all together for you!"...ummmm OF COURSE WE WILL! Then I felt a very strong prompting to give her my English Book of Mormon that I had brought with me. I pulled it out and told her that I had something very special that I wanted her to have. I testified of the Book of Mormon and then handed it to her. She took it, grabbed both my hands and started to cry, then she said, "This is the best Christmas gift I have ever gotten." Then she gave me an enormous hug! We left her with a prayer and she was SO happy! Though I had to hold my breath to keep from giggling every time she yelled, "AMEN!" during my companions prayer, haha. :) More miracles!! Each day, along with our slogans, my companion and I have started doing other things to improve ourselves and our efforts. One of them being gratitude prayers for every single miracle we are blessed with. Whether it be big or small! It has been so wonderful because what we have seen is that as we learn to recognize the Lord’s hand in our lives, and show sincere gratitude for everything that he does for us, he is blessing us with more and more each day! The miracles are FLOODING in! A few of them that I want to share with you today :)... literally just a few because there are SO many! We contacted a woman named Ludwine on the street and we were going to give her a tour of the church but she didn't show up to our RDV so we called her and she felt so bad that she had forgotten so she said she would just come to church with us this Sunday instead! We were not about to complain about that!! The other day we had a RDV with a lady named Louise but when we got to her house, she wasn't home. We were so bummed, especially because she lives so far away and we didn't even get to see her :( But, I felt impressed to leave a note on her door and as we were writing the note, she showed up! It was a miracle because if we wouldn't have listened to that prompting to stay and write the note, we would have missed her! Turns out, she was really sick so we weren't able to stay long but we were able to leave her with a prayer to bless her to feel better and also give her a Book of Mormon! She was really, really grateful! It was such a blessing that we were able to be there to help her :) We taught SIX lessons that day and found two new amis (investigators)!! Also, on the way home we passed a homeless woman and I felt prompted to stop and talk to her. I stopped my companion and walked up the the woman, I told her that I was sorry I didn't have any money to give her but that something I could give her is a prayer to bless her and to help her know she has a Heavenly Father her loves her dearly. We prayed with her and she was so touched that we would take the time to pray with her. It was a beautiful experience <3 The next day we taught a young African girl (mid 20s) for the first time and she shows up and looks at us and says, "So where’s my Book?" (referring to the Book of Mormon). Well we only had French books on us and she really wanted one in English because that is her native language. So she walked all the way back to our apartment with us so that we could get one for her! She was so excited about it! When I gave it to her she flipped through it and pretty much taught us everything that we were planning on teaching her, it was so awesome! Then she said, "Ok, I am going to go home and read this book, then I am going to call you and tell you what I think! Then you can come over and we will discuss it! Is that good?"...OH MY GOODNESS, YES IT IS GOOD! Last night we ported all night long trying to sing Christmas carols for people with no success. No one would let us sing for them! Who doesn't love Christmas songs?! Apparently everyone in Angers ;P We thought maybe it would be better to take the tram back toward our apartment and just finish up contacting for the night over there. But, we prayed and felt impressed to stay in the area that we were in. Right after we closed our prayer we found a new ami!! We ported the house of a sweet african lady named, Carol. She let us sing some Christmas songs to her and she asked if we could come back and teach her family on Friday at 11! She said that she has little kids and they don't really understand the bible so we are going to bring the children scriptures that have the pictures in them for her little ones :) Ahhh!! How cool is that?! We had so many miracles this week it was AMAZING! I can't wait to see the miracles that this next week bring! When we turned in our numbers for the week, we immediately got calls from both the Zone Leaders and the STLs because they thought we must have accidentally typed the wrong numbers because they were SO high! They couldn't believe it!! The Lord has blessed us so much and we are so so grateful to be able to be instruments in his hands to help with this beautiful work! Miracles happen everyone!!...Even in FRANCE! Pray for miracles, work for miracles, and expect miracles! I love you so much and I am praying for you all!<3 Love, Soeur Tracie Wyson
1 Comment
12/17/2015 07:36:42 pm
Hey traicie i just wanted to say i miss yoy and love you!! Have a great merry christmas i love you!!
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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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