Elder Cook Conference

So yeah the Elder Cook conference was soooooo cool! and amazing. so like i dont even know where to begin, maybe the getting there part. so our train was at 6:40 am caught it, got to the gares at 8:18 and had to take the metro to be at the RER in st lazare at 8:44 for the last RER that would get us there in time. We ran off the train and down into the metro's and it was really crazy. some of our zone didnt catch the metro because we were packed in no space for anyone. but they caught the next metro in 3 minutes. we got to the RER at 8:40, like seriously was a miracle we made it. we ran the whole entrie way, it was very tiring. but we made it, then we had to walk from the station to the versailles chapelle. so like 10 min walk. all missionaries were supposed to be seated by 9:30 and elder cook would come at 9:45, we got there at 9:35 and the perks of being late was being in the front row!!!!!!!! so elder cook got there and shook every single missionaries had so that was super cool. 

Okay the actual conference, he talked alot about how preach my gospel was made and it was just super cool. he talked about how missionaries are assigned to their mission. He said that when they're assigned they  get the impression that they need:

1. to go to a specific mission president

2. go to a specific group of people (for example the french people, or german)

3. need to go to a specific place be cause they need those experiences for their life after the mission 

but yeah so it was really amazing, the best part was that i was in the front row so like him and his wife and the other people that spoke looked me in the eyes a bunch of times. At the very end Elder Cook started testifying of Christ, and while doing it he looked me in the eyes and wow, it was so powerful. i don't even know how to describe it! He truly is an apostle of God people! it's amazing the relationship he has with Christ and God, like seriously, the spirit was so strong. and then right after testifying of Christ, he then blessed the whole mission for a good 5 minutes. yeah, we were all bawling so hard. like seriously, it was the greatest feeling ever to have an apostle bless your mission, physically and spiritually. Like i know i've said this a lot, but i can not begin to describe how amazing it was. 

Okay, now that i've spent the entire time writing about that, there's not much else to write about this week, it was a bland week. We didnt see Mimi at all this week because she's been "too busy to see us" and she didnt come to church. i'm starting to get really worried for her. she wants to be baptized, but she's not putting forth the effort. please pray for her, i hope she still is ready to be baptized on the 7th.

on another note, we're supposedly getting ipads at the beginning of next year (so january?), we're keeping our fingers crossed. it'd be soooo  nice!

No fun way to celebrate thanksgiving :( but its okay, for district meeting on wednesday, we're making a thanks giving meal :) but that's the best we get. so yeah.

Also after the cook conference we had a formation on the Christmas campaign for the church. it's called He Is The Gift!!!! there's a video, but it wasnt working so we didnt get to see it. the website is christmas. mormon.org and it will be available for preview tomorrow, but wont launch until the 28th. also the church bought out all the advertisement for youtube for the whole day of december 7th! how cool is that! also there's going to be presentations in some select visiter centers around the world. and we have a lot of billboards bought out for the month of december in time square. so cool! as a mission we get to go caroling as part of our contacting! and Neil L Anderson is donating us a book that he wrote that is a true story that happened here in france(i think when he was mission president here) that he wrote. it's called "room in the in". but everyone should go on the website and share it on facebook and everything because it's a super cool campaign. I just love the spirit of christmas. okay this letters getting too long. 

(this extra paragraph was in an email to Diana)

I'm doing fine.I know i said i wanted to stay in Angers for christmas, but i'm actually ready to leave soon, i've been here so long and i cant wait to experience another ville. my companion plays softball and is all about stats and stuff so she takes stats of all the sisters in our mission (what transfer they're in, how long they've in their ville, if they could train next transfer, if they could be stl next transfer, how many stl's are leaving) its pretty intense. but we counted and there's 12 villes that i could go to next transfer.... so we have no clue what could happen for me next transfer. but we still have two more weeks so its fine. so yeah, i'm fine on clothes- i've already got a lot from past missionaries leaving behind their stuff. so i don't need anymore.  also transfers are dec. 10th. so yeah I think that's it. what's in the package and i can't wait for the ensign!

Love you all have a good week! groses bises!

~Sœur Farmer

1. exchanges with soeur barton! 

2. I tried PB&J on a baguette, best thing ever!

3. took a selfie of us all squished in the metro

4. tried to porte a house, whoops theres no house, just a gate with a doorbell :/

Tiring Week

okay i dont really know what to write about this week. i'm so tired! transfer day was crazy, the tram wasnt working so we had to take a bus to the gares, luckily there's one that goes straight to the gares, but it only comes once an hour. it came a minute after we got to the stop (tender mercy). then we said goodbye to emma and a member lucile at the gares and then caught our train. we got off the train in paris and to the metro to les halles we then accidentally exited and couldnt find the place where all the missionaries meet so then we finally went to the entrance we did know and got to what we call the plan de salut (plan of salvation) mural thing. and soeur rasmussen wasnt there.... apparently she had been escorted to the gares... so we barely missed each other. so i had elders escort me to the gare, and i got there with 20 minutes before our train left. so yeah that was a very tiring day of running all over the place and carrying luggage. 

so yeah i really dont know what to write about, its been an okay week...

Mimi's baptism got pushed back again :( she didnt have time for us this week... which is really annoying, so we couldnt finish lesson five with her and she didnt get her baptismal interview. one really good thing that came with the transfer is that our district leader is now in angers, not cholet. before the district leader had to take a train to interview our amis, but now the DL is in angers. so it was really nice because we didnt feel bad canceling on him for mimi's interview  because its not like he had taken a train... but yeah, very disappointing pushing mimi's date back. we had to move it to dec 7th because there's stake conference on nov 30th. and we do baptisms on sunday and then they get confirmed the next week. so if she got baptized next week she'd have to wait two weeks before she was confirmed. but she hasnt been to church in a while, so its all for the best.

I guess one thing i didnt tell you last week is that elder cook (the apostle) is coming to our mission on thursday. so yeah that'll be super cool. except i just read the email and its super organized and like we cant talk to anyone really, there's even assigned seats haha. oh well, i'll be writing you about that next week.

sorry for being lame this week, nothing big happened. i like my new companion, she's cool, dont really know what else to say. oh actually this is something interesting from this week, no one can understand Soeur Rasmussen... she's been on her mission for 10 months and when she says something the person will say they didnt understand and then turn to me and i have to repeat what she said for her. its a little ridiculous, she has way more vocab than i do but no one has been able to understand her. she said this happened in each ville she's been in so now i'm scared to move villes. i like it when people understand me, just saying. But yeah my french has grown a lot in the past week, i think i was just kind of being dependent on Soeur P and letting her talk cause you know she's really good at speaking french. but yeah that's about it.

hope you all have a great week! love you!

1. Soeur Rasmussen and I 

2. soeur p wanted to ride the lions her last day in angers,

3. Last photo together as companions :(

Transfer 3 Quoi?‏

okay so theres alot to write about. first of all the transfer. Soeur Pettingill is going to Brussells Belgium as STL!!!! I'm staying in Angers with my new companion Soeur Rasmussen, how do i always have companions with long last names? She's going into her 7th transfer and I actually will leave my mission with all the elders she came in with. so that'll be cool to find out who they are. the night we got the repetoire she called us and it was a little awkward because we were just like "hi, we're going to be companions..." and did the whole, where are you from stuff. but yeah we'll probably only be together for 4 weeks because she hasnt trained yet and Angers is a training ville. So i'll have to leave right before Christmas :( but i'll write more about my new collegue next week when i actually know her. 

So mimi.... saddest story ever. I don't know if I've already explained her situation. She has four kids that don't live with her because the government took them away a year ago, and she's been trying to get them back ever since. so friday morning we're trying to get a hold of her and finally she calls us back. And she told us that she finally got a rendez-vous to go in front of the judge for the following week so we were super excited. However, she said that before she goes in front of the judge, she has to spend a weekend away alone in an apartment with her kids and a social assistant. So mimi then told us that she cant be baptized this weekend. She was freaking out, she was like "i really really want to be baptized but i have no choice they say i have to go away for the weekend but i cant because i have to be baptized and so i don't know what to do". She did everything she could to change it. She asked them if they could change it to a different weekend or if she could just do it friday night till sunday morning. but it had to be friday night to monday morning... she had absolutely no choice, its so sad. but its okay, she's getting baptized next sunday. so its okay, and now it gives us more time to finish the lessons and not be rushed. but it was just so sad. It's amazing what happens to keep people from baptism. Its my first one, so i dont really know. but soeur p said that never has she seen the devil fight so hard against one of her amis to the point where they have no choice. its amazing. anyway so we havent heard from mimi all weekend, but we hope her weekend went well, because we really want her to get her children back. 

okay just one last thing i did this week, it was Emma's birthday and Fei Fei's birthday, so we went to Saumur (a small town outside of Angers, but still in our area) where Fei Fei lives and we celebrated their birthday. It was so fun. Saumur is beautiful!!! it was super fun, i loved it. 

okay nothing else really big... oh wait no. 7 elders are coming in and 14 sisters. never has that happened there's always more elders than sisters or its even. but anyway 7 sisters that i came in with are training (so glad im not) and 1 sister who came in last transfer is training in her 2nd transfer.... its just crazy. and Elder Rollins from my district is training (only one from my group) so yeah. that's weird. 

1. half of the saumur castle because the other half was under construction....

2.them with there birthday cake!

3.sorry its so dark. but heres my district. we didnt have enough ones. so elder orton is holding the one for himself and for elder platts 15

4. just us waiting for a member to pick us up in front of the castle....

Playing Tourist

This week was actually one of the longer weeks, which i have no idea why because it was just a normal week. 

So much to talk about...

 I'll start with Halloween. It was a very sad day... it was our weekly planning so we were inside most the day. we celebrated Halloween by taking a break and going down to the boulangerie below us and buying the most american thing we could from there. Our options were donuts, cookies (which are different here, i dont know how, but they're not as good), brownie ( which isnt like a brownie at all) crumble or chocolate cake ( which is more like a brownie than the actual brownie). I got the chocolate cake, soeur p got the crumble. then we went back upstairs to the apartment and turned off all the lights and turned on the electric candle in a plastic jack-o-lantern that soeur p got in a package.... later we sprinted to catch a bus, so that was fun... and lastly the best part of the night. we had a soirée familiale with mimi and a member family. So we didnt eat dinner because in french mormon culture soirée familiale means have dinner and a lesson. yeah apparently these members didnt get the memo. they didnt feed us. and on top of that they taught the lesson instead of us, which is weird, and set us behind on the lessons we need to teach mimi by next sunday... so finally we got home starving at 9 at night. so we made toast, but the problem is that we dont have a toaster (or an oven) so we use the microwave oven  to toast our bread. so we put it in and started planning.... bad idea, we forgot about it. so our Halloween dinner was burnt toast. so that was my day.

Okay castle it was beautiful of course! and i got to sit in the throne :) don't worry i'll send lots of photos.

Tuesday we went to paris for soeur p's legality. we got to the préfecture at 11:45, I went to the bathroom while soeur p was standing in line. When I came out she was done and we left the building at 11:50. so then we had 3 hours before our train ride... so what did we do? EIFFEL TOWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so yeah we went to the eiffel tower nbd! don't worry i'll send tons of photo's. but yeah it was the dream. after being there it officially hit me that i'm in france, dont know why it didnt before. but yeah tuesday was basically a second pday, loved it. also I had this viennoiserie thing i think it was called a nutella brioche. which is basically a roll with nutella in the middle. I'm pretty sure there was more nutella than actual bread... so good! sorry I forgot to take a photo. but yeah paris was awesome!!!!

Mimi is doing well. a little worried about how we're going to be able to fit in all the lessons before her date because she fruged us saturday and sunday, so we're a little behind. but it's still do-able. she's really excited for it, we just are hoping that she understands how important it is.

It's been really good weather up until  yesterday.... super sunny and then today it's been raining non-stop, so basically like home. I love the rain, but not as a missionary. no one is out when its raining and we basically can't talk to people because they don't want to be outside. so we've started to do a lot of porting houses. Last night it was pouring down rain and we had forgotten our umbrella's so we were soaked. so that was also fun. 

Well this is the last week of this transfer and it it very very likely that soeur p will be leaving :( so i'll be getting a new companion. we wont know until saturday so next pday i'll give you the news. i'm just hoping i don not get a call from the ap's saturday morning because that would mean i'm training. which could be likely if its a big group. so yeah things are going to be changing there. 

There's not much else to say. love you all so much! have a great week! miss you! groses bises!

~Sœur Farmer

1. picture with the Eiffel Tower


2. First view of the Eiffel Tower! 

3. you know just kinda freaking out

4.the grand throne.... but not really that grand

5. you know just me

6.standing in front of the entrance to the castle

7. beautiful views from the castle

8. our halloween celebration

9.on Halloween day they put up christmas decorations.... they don't have thanksgiving to be the mark to start celebrating christmas