Soeur Gardner's Caribbean Adventures

Bonjour mes amis!! I hope you're all doing well and that you have a spooky Halloween! :) This week honestly dragged a bit for me but we still had some awesome moments! Annie is still doing great! We had to push her baptismal date back a little just so we could be sure she's really prepared, but we're super excited for her to be baptized in November!  Other exciting things... -On Wednesday we worked with an adorable member who recently moved here from Brazil, Aline! She speaks very little French so it was funny communicating with her, but we made lunch and ate together then taught lessons all that afternoon! She is SO sweet and we had a blast with her. :) -On Friday TWO MEMBERS MARRIED EACH OTHER!!! And we got to go to their wedding! It was such a beautiful thing to see. I looove weddings in general, but seeing two people you love so much marry each other is just a special feeling. They're preparing to be sealed someday in the temple and I'm so happ...

Hello everybody! This has been an AMAZING week so I'll just get right down to it!! -First, on Tuesday, we had Zone Conference (through skype!) We had to squeeze eight missionaries into the tiny ward clerk's office, so it was a party! It was an amazing conference-- Elder Gonzalez, who is in the Area 70, was there with his wife, and they gave us some really valuable consel. They gave us the motivation to keep working hard!! We've been talking a lot as a mission lately about building stakes in the Caribbean (or at least the Barbados Bridgetown Mission, since there are stakes on other islands outside the mission). We're doing as much as we can to make that happen! My biggest dream is to one day have a temple here-- I think one day it really will come true :) Being here has made me realize how much I took the temple for granted in Michigan. The people here have to travel by plane to either Santa Domingo, the Dominican Republic, or Brazil to be sealed to their fami...

Howdy everyone!! I hope you're all doing well and enjoying Fall! It's just getting hotter here but we've already got Christmas music playing in the car-- getting into the Holiday spirit!! :) This week was a little weird, as it was kind of hard to adjust back to life here in Guyane after spending the last weekend being pampered at Sister's Conference. But we're getting back into the swing of things :) On Thursday we spent almost all day sitting in the OFII office (not sure what it stands for but it's basically so I can legally stay here in the French departments for 18 months). It was really boring, but we got to play a little with a cute little girl and pass some phone calls, so I think we spent that time as well as we could have haha :) That's when Soeur Morrell did her first phone call completely on her own!! I was SO proud of her, like seeing your baby walk for the first time! Haha okay I'm sure the latter would probably be more exciting, but stil...

HELLO everyone!!! I am so happy right now because I just got back from an amazing weekend with all 25 of the sisters serving here in the Barbados Bridgetown Mission!! It feels a bit like a dream now but it really pumped me up for the work here in Guyane! I know that there are incredible miracles that are about to start hitting this mission like crazy!! Soo let me back up slightly and talk about the beginning of the week (Monday til Friday). Well I guess there's not really a whole lot to share, but it was still a great week. I think the most exciting thing is some of the progress one of our friends has been making recently! She is the sister of a member and we've been teaching her for maybe a month or so (she's the one who said her knees were healed after that earthquake we had a bit ago). But she's been making so much progress and has just recently began the process of quitting coffee! I know that's a hard habit to quit but she is dedicated to doing it. I have l...

Bonjour mes amis!!! I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the Fall weather! Things are just getting hotter here in FG and I'm admittedly missing Fall a little. I love summer, but I also really like seeing the seasons change-- but on the bright side, I get lots of sunshine every day-- no lack of Vitamin D haha! ;) Anyway, this week I learned a LOT about the importance of prayer and of humility. We spent the beginning of the week doing lots of contacting, but almost nobody we talked to was very interested. I felt like we weren't really in the right place at the right time and it was hard to feel like we were following the Spirit. So I started praying really hard to be more receptive to promptings and studied tons of scriptures about humility and patience. I asked God every day for miracles and tried to change my attitude, to really BELIEVE that we will meet somebody that day who is searching for light in their life. And on Saturday, our prayers were answered!! We were...