Soeur Gardner's Caribbean Adventures

Bonjooouuurrr!! Happy belated Thanksgiving to everybody and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!  This was a very good week! We had lots of fun things going on! On Wednesday we had a branch coordination meeting with the branch president, the mission leader, and the branch missionaries (who are two of the branch's recent converts, Soeur Raena and Frère Moise; sooo cool!). President Francillette had us read the dedicatory prayer from when Guyane was dedicated for missionary work long long ago in the 1900s (haha it was like the 80s or 90s). But it was so cool to read the promises that Russell M Ballard, the apostle who gave the blessing, gave to this area. It mademe feel so blessed to be a missionary in this unique part of the world. We talked about working with the branch to push the work forward and keep progressing towards stakes, wards, and a temple one day!! Man, the day this mission gets a temple will be one of the happiest days of my life! :) On Thursday we had a f...

Happy almost Thanksgiving everyone!  This week was a pretty exciting week! For disctrict council we watched the church's new Light the World videos and got pumped up to spread the Christmas cheer as missionaries!! I hope you're all getting excited for Christmas as well and are remembering our Savior. This is the perfect time to follow His example and show more love for those around you! Other exciting things: -I turned my driving privileges over to Soeur Morrell this week! I'll miss driving Brucie (the truck) but this will help her learn the area in case I get transferred in a few weeks! -Soeur Morrell also gave a very motivational speech this week to me about submitting to Heavenly Father's will. This phrase has taken on a new meaning for me as a missionary. A lot of things we've been asked by God to do are really hard or just not really what we want as the natural man. But as we humble ourselves, become meek and submissive to His will, EVERYTHING...

Hey all!! This week was a little different than the others I've spent in Guyane so far, as we spent almost the whole week in some of the richer neighborhoods in our area. Our branch president asked us to try to find more educated people with stable jobs, and he especially wants men... which just happens to be about the hardest combination you can think up to try and teach the Gospel to in Guyane haha! But we're listening to his request and having been walking through tons of nice neighborhoods talking to people. Lots of the people in those neighborhoods come from France and are here to work. We joked in our district that now we're scared of white people haha-- something about them has just become intimidating!! So if any of you missionaries that serve or have served in the States or Canada or Europe, I could use some advice! How do you go about sharing the message with people? We've tried sparking interest in family history work, in learning English, and in sharing the ...

Heellooo!!! I hope you're all doing great and that you had a spooky Halloween!! We actually got ONE group of teenage trick or treaters so I was very happy about that!! Otherwise our Halloween was a pretty normal day haha :) However, on Tuesday we did have an AMAZING district counsel that completely changed my attitude towards missionary work. I'll be honest, things were starting to feel a little repetitive and I was losing some of my enthusiasm. But we talked about applying some counsel given to us from Zone Conference a couple weeks back, and as we've been applying it (for ex, using the Book of Mormon as common ground in EVERY contact, exploring people's concerns and helping them find their own solutions, inviting people to repent and be baptized and partake of the goodness of the Gospel). I would say my vision of baptism especially was changed. Inviting people to be baptized was something that scared me for a lot of reasons... I didn't want to feel li...