Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Joyeux Noël!!!!!!!!!!

So where to begin this week. it was another so so week. I honestly don't remember any of the stuff we did this week except for thursday which was the conference. so i guess i'll write about that haha

So thursday we had conference in versailles with president teixeira it was with half the mission. I actually was part of the program. President chose two people (a sister and an elder) to read one tiny section from the missionary handbook in front of everyone. and apparently i was the sister chosen by president. so like yeah... that was cool i guess. afterward we were going to go try to see the eiffel tower but didnt have time. but its okay cause while we were taking the metro back from versailles obviously we had a very clear view of the eiffel tower just right there and all lit up beautiful at night!

 Anyway at the the conference they kind of cassé'd us for not working hard enough. but it was also inspiring haha. President Teixeira told a story about his son's mission. how he looked up the statistics for his son's mission and they were not good. so he made his son promise to teach 21 lessons his first week (3 a day) and his son taught 22 lessons!!!!! he also that him and his companion just decided to invite everyone to church while contacting. and randomly like on sunday 12 people showed up! so soeur r and I decided to do exactly that. luckily our ward had printed pass_along cards for our christmas progam on sunday. so we made a goal to get rid of all of them... and we did! sadly none of the people showed up. But we're definitely going to start inviting people to church in our normal contacting each day. I like it. 

Also i'm super excited for christmas not only because i get to skype home, but also we were invited for christmas to a members and the wife's english, husband's french (but served a mission in england). so basically we were told that it would be  a very englishy american christmas! and we're spending christmas eve with the bishop family who is scottish. so like don't have to speak french and can just chill! so yeah it doesn't feel like christmas is in 3 days, christmas is weird on the mission. 

sunday we taught the youth sunday school. and we bribed them with american cookies :) it worked, we even got them to sing the first verse of like 8 different christmas songs!!!! haha best lesson with them so far. 

Well I think that'



s it. I hope everyone has an amazing christmas. sorry i don't have many photos this week, but a lot more next week I promise! miss you all tons! bonne semaine et joyeux noël!

~Soeur Farmer

1. contacting in the parc just across the river from the castle has become our new favorit activity!

2. J, this ones for you, swan lakes playing in Angers! too bad i'll be long gone by then


Monday, December 15, 2014

Christmas Miracles

Okay so this week was super good! Tons of miracles!

Miracle #1 Tuesday we were supposed to have a rdv with a new chinese amis with a member, but our amis changed it to wednesday. which happened to be one of the days that another member could teach with us, because she works all the time. so we asked the other member if it was okay to teach with the other one instead. She said yeah, but then we invited her to go do some passby's with us that day anyway. So she came with us and every person we wanted to visit was there!!!! and nice on top of just being there! so like we got 4 member presents in one day.... which i never thought would happen. brilliant idea to just bring a member even when you don't have a rdv. 

Miracle #2: a less active that has been really hesitant to come to church came to the ward christmas activity!!! she was gonna leave after the talent show before dinner and we convinced her to stay. then she was gonna leave right after eating a little bit, but then we convinced her to stay for dessert. and she ended up staying the whole time! and she met a lot of members, cause she's been less active since she was a teenager, and she's now like in her 40's. so she doesnt really remember anyone.

Miracle #3: we're at church on sunday, sad that mimi didnt show up when she said she would. and sacrament ends and suddenly a member walks up and says, do you want to meet my friends. first of all, i have no clue who this member is, i've seen him like one other time. So I say yeah, so his friend comes up and is like "hi my name is natalie i'm his friend, i loved church, can you come over sometime this week?" okay so it wasnt exactly those words, but it was pretty much like that. so we set up a rdv, and then she was like, come meet my sister. sadly her sister doesn't speak that much french and is only visiting for a week... but then we gave them a church tour. we showed her the baptismal font and she just loved it. she said it was so beautiful and cool and she asked when the next baptism was so that she could see it and in my head i said to myself "yours" ha ha. but like seriously she's so prepared. and then we showed her the genealogy room and she loved it! and she set up a rdv with the lady who is in charge of that. but like pretty much we were just handed an amis without doing anything. 

and finally Miracle #4 so last night us sisters and elders decided to go caroling at the gare, cause you know there's a piano in every gare. so we went and there happened to be a member there, from chole,t who then played piano for us. and then was just like a member missionary for us. it was awesome. But the miracle was this man came up and thanked us a lot and then left before we could talk to him more. but then he came back and was totally interested and invited us all over to his house for christmas eve dinner. we got his number and the elders are going to start teaching him. too bad, we're already taken christmas eve :/

Okay so those were the miracles this week. Saturday was our ward christmas party. so like we went porting before the party and it was terrible. raining and everyone was rejecting us, no one wanted us to sing for them, just really bad. but then we had the activity. For the talent show I played a flute solo of Gesu Bambino and then afterwards the missionaries did a "funny" talent. Sorry I forgot to have someone video tape it on my camera, but a member did video tape it, I just have to get it from them, so like next week? So it was a competition between the equipes. we had to find a candy cane a midst ice cream and whipped cream. but the trick was that our companion was our arms. so they stood behind us, so they could't see really anything but they were feeding us... yeah so I was the companion eating,... but WE WON! The soeurs beat the elders, talk about bragging rights for the rest of the transfer! But yeah so that was fun.

This week were having our christmas conference with half the mission. so they'll be putting up pictures on the fb page. Ours is thursday not wednesday, so it'll be the second batch of photos put up.

So like i got really homesick this week, must be with the holidays, so it's a good thing we had so many miracles this week to keep me going. But i love you all and miss you so much! 10 more days before I get to skype you all :)

so just gonna tell you again to go onto christmas.mormon.org but also there is another video that's beautiful. it's called "the coat" you can find it at mormonchannel.org/thecoat go watch that one too! 

Okay this email is getting to be too long. Have a great week! Gros bisous!

~Sœur Farmer

1. Singing at the gare

2. Christmas activity

3.Cake competition at the activity

4. another picture of the marché

5.wow they translated his name....

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

I'M GOING TO....

be staying in Angers!!!!!!!!!! so like I don't understand what happened, no one stays in their ville for 4 transfers, let alone staying in their bleue ville! but every single elder and sister from my group stayed in their bleue ville too (except for the two sisters who 2nd transfer trained). So yeah i'm still here in Angers until february so you can start to write me letters again haha.

Okay, super jealous that Bishop Caussé came to our stake conference! like seriously his sister is SOEUR BABIN????  but like it's really not fair! he comes after i'm already here in France. But it's okay, i'll probably bump into him sometime through out my mission. Thanks mom for the story of how the paris temple came to be. sad it won't be done before i leave, but i'll just have to come back! but yeah I heard another story too about how they decided to let it be built, but it was in french, so like I don't really remember it too well and who the actual person was that made it possible because it wasn't told by the actual person, it was told by frank pozanski  (old mission president).

So this week was good. Mimi, i don't know when her baptism is going to be, cause right now she has her kids at her house every weekend which also means she has a social assistant living with her too, so she can't come to church. so we'll see where that goes,if we were in the states she could just get baptized during the week, but i'm in france where half the members live hours an hour away. so baptisms have to be on sundays, other wise no members show up to support them. but that's the update with her.

But other than that i'm just loving the Christmas holidays! everyone's so nice, we get to sing to people, it's just awesome!!! so like yeah I love Christmas i wish it could happen more than once a year.

Also we contacted this lady and right away she said that she doesnt like to talk about religion and said that she believes Jesus is a myth. but then we started talking about Christmas with her and she said that Christmas is a sad time for her because her parents are dead and all her kids are gone out of the house. But then we started testifying to her about Christ and all he did for us and why it's important to remember him during the Christmas holidays and she started smiling!!!!! and her eyes lit up! and then she started opening up and telling us how she used to love going to church with her parents and misses that. it was so cool to see her completely change in front of us. at first she didnt want to give us the time of day, but as we testified of Christ you could see her change and be more happier. it was such an awesome experience.

okay i keep on saying it but if you haven't gone to christmas.mormon.org and watched the video, then GO DO IT! I absolutely love it every time, it's short but very beautiful!

well have an amazing week! I love you all so much and can't wait to skype you in 17 days!!!!!!!! miss you!

~Soeur Farmer

1. I got my Christmas package and put everything under the tree :) now i just have to wait a few more days....

2.the beautiful lights in centre ville

3. our district photo. elder platt is dead... (not literally, he's just done with his mission-so like mission dead)

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!

So i don't even know where to begin with this week. it was a somewhat okay week.

District meeting was fun! we had thanksgiving dinner on thursday, it was pretty lame, but turned out okay. we had chicken, mashed potatoes, stove top stuffing (thanks mom!), rolls, deviled eggs, and banana cream pie. but yeah it was super good. 

We finally saw mimi!!!!!!! and we set up rdv's with her for her baptismal interview and to finish lesson 5. i think she's actually going to be ready for next week! super excited! she was supposed to come to stake conference on sunday in nantes, but didnt wake up in time to leave with the member.... but it's okay because Emma came! i felt so bad though because we got there like 5 minutes before because we took the train in the morning and walked because there weren't enough members to drive us. so emma found some members she new-thankfully! but apparently they didnt get her the headphones to translate the meeting for her... she was sitting next to a member who speaks fluent english, but she didnt want them to have to translate the entire time, so she only got a little of it translated.... So yeah that was a stressful morning.But a cool thing that happened, i was talking to her afterwards, and one of the chinese speaking elders came over and started talking to her, so i left cause i didnt understand any of it. but she talked with both of them for a while and she said it was really cool and nice to be able to speak her "mother tongue", as she calls it.

the other days were okay. I honestly am so ready to leave angers. these past few weeks have been tough, and i can't wait to just start over new.This last week has been especially tough. i'm starting to feel  homesick with the holidays coming around. 

we find out about transfers saturday morning, so i'll tell you next week where i'm going! its so crazy how fast this transfers gone by- 4 weeks. next transfers 8 weeks so we'll see how fast that one goes haha. I'm going to my 2nd ville which means i'm officially not a bleue (apparently you're a bleue until you leave your bleu ville)

also i finally did see the "he is the gift" video, so good!!!!! if you havent watched it, please do. and share it everwhere!

Love you all so much and miss you a ton!!!!! only 24 more days till Christmas and until i get to skype you all! Grosses bises!!!!!!!

~Sœur Farmer



1.our thanksgiving meal... it looks like mush but its actually stove top stuffing, green beans, and steak haché. not to bad... 

2. we made indian headbands for our zone leaders... hahah

3.our apartment has a tree!!!!! we put it up i thanksgiving night :)