Week 54 - Une année en mission!!
Coucou!! Hello everyone!
We might as well just change P-Day to Tuesday at this point haha, we had it changed again this week due to a holiday!
But I hope everyone had a great week. Looks like lots of the seniors back home graduated this weekend, CONGRATULATIONS!!! 
For me this week was really good!! It was a fairly eventful week! :)
On Monday we saw our friend Alex at the grocery store, which was really fun! We got to catch up a little bit and it's always fun getting to see your amis around town :)
On Monday night we had a really good family home evening with the Versailles family! The whole family are members except for one of the older sons, so we talked to him a little about the Gospel and answered some of his questions. He's really cool and interested to learn more about the Gospel and how it's changed his family's life, so we're excited to see how things go moving forward!
On Tuesday we got to teach an AMAZING FAMILY that we met last week!! It's a couple with a son who's about 11 years old. They were very interested to learn about the Book of Mormon and our religion, so we answered a lot of their questions and had a great discussion about the Restoration and how to find peace in our lives. Soeur Christianson and I fell in love with this family and by the end it felt like I was talked to my very own family about the Gospel-- we just feel a special spirit and connection to them. At the end they gave us juice and chocolate bars as well so all in all it was a great time haha :)
Wednesday was super fun because we had a big video conference call with all the sisters in the mission!! We talked together and with President and Sister Fisher about some of the unique challenges of being a sister missionary, how to stay safe and have good, appropriate relationships with others, and the special role we play as sisters in God's work. I really enjoyed it and felt a special spirit as we all talked together. We have some incredible sister missionaries in our mission, and I feel really lucky to be among them 
That night Soeur Hamner flew in to stay with us for a couple days! Her and I had some visa appointments to get done so she flew in for that. It was SO fun being with her-- even if we were waiting in a stuffy prefecture office for awhile, we had a blast catching up on the past couple months since we changed companions.
On Thursday we saw Debra-- a woman that we met a long time ago but finally got back in touch with!! She's SO cute and is really really open to the Gospel! She's excited to read the Book of Mormon and we're excited to see how it changes her life! :)
.... I also hit my one year mark as a missionary on Thursday, which is absolutely insane. I can't believe that I can think back to one year ago now and remember a day of my mission!! I'm so thankful for how my mission has refined and taught me more about myself and more about the Gospel-- this past year has been one of the hardest but most valuable and happiest years of my life. Lots of people talk about how ginormous of a sacrifice a mission is, but when I look at how many blessings I've received from serving, I feel that I'm still incredibly indebted to God for all He's given me in return.
On Friday we had surprise interviews from President Fisher!! He flew in for a couple days for some other church business, but took some time out of his stay to talk to each of us and see how we're doing. It was so wonderful to speak with him and be around him again!
Later that afternoon we also invited two of our friends to be baptized, and they both were very open to it!! One of them even made it to church on Sunday, so we're SUPER excited about that! His name is Pascal-- he's interesting because he believes in an African traditional religion (I wish I remembered the name) and just has a cool perspective of Christianity and other religions. He reads the Book of Mormon quite a bit though, and when we explained the reason for baptism, he was really interested to learn more. So we're looking forward to continue working with him and helping him see the role Jesus Christ can play in his life.
We also tried CocoFreeze for the first time! It's a coconutty ice cream/sorbet/slushy treat that I'm pretty sure originates in Guadeloupe! It's super good and it was fun trying it!
On Saturday we spent quite a bit of our day working with Sister Fisher, which was SO fun!! We saw Albie and had a really great discussion with him-- of course he loved Sister Fisher right away haha. Afterwards she even showed off a little bit and did a plank for us, haha! :)
Then we went to see Junie!! It was really awesome because we got her two older kids to participate in the lesson for the first time!! We talked about the Restoration using plastic cups-- we stack them all together, each one representing an essential element in the church of Jesus Christ-- and then the kids get to pull out the foundation of the tower (apostles, prophets, priesthood, etc) to represent the great apostasy. Then they help put it all back together again as we explain the Restoration through Joseph Smith. It was really great getting them to participate and they loved knocking the tower down haha :)
Sunday was a beautiful Sabbath Day!! Soeur Erasmus (or Kelsey now haha), a sister who went home a couple months ago, came back with her family to visit!! The whole branch went crazy when they saw their huge American family walk in hahaha. Also, President Francillette (the branch president in Guyane) was in town and I got to see him for the first time since I left!! It was really fun catching up a little and we both raved about how wonderful Guyane is :)
We also stopped by Junie's again because it was her son's 3 year old birthday!!! He's possibly one of the cutest and craziest kids I've met in my life (which is saying a lot, because I've met lots of cute kids!). Junie wasn't sure if she'd be able to get him a cake or much for his birthday, so we made a little cake the night before, and his eyes just lit up when we gave it to him. Then we took a couple pictures and we discovered that he LOVES the camera so we took even more pictures-- now our cameras are full of the cutest pictures I've seen in my life 
That afternoon we had a really amazing lesson with an older couple we taught a couple weeks ago. A member, Soeur Eclar, was with us, and she was absolutely wonderful with them. They're really receptive and we honestly see them really progressing towards baptism!! They've started asking questions about the previous religions they've been in and already have come to their own conclusions about things that are 100% in line with what we believe as latter-day Saints. So it was really cool to see how they had been prepared by the Lord! Afterwards they showed us a little bit of their garden and gave us a ton of fruit! :)
We also decided to stop by and see Albie's dad and try to share a message with him, which went super well and it was really special!! He talked about the changes he's seen in Albie since he accepted the Gospel and was baptized, and he is really open to learn more!
Monday was a really fun day!! That morning there was an insane soccer match between our branch and the Abymes branch. It was pretty intense and I was intimidated that we might get destroyed at first, since Abymes had been doing tons of practicing and our branch hadn't prepared at all haha. But we have TONS of youth on our team who naturally play basically like professional soccer players (I think it runs in the Guadeloupean genes), because we won by a long shot haha :) It was a blast hanging out with the members though and watching the game, and doing cheers in Creole!!
Then we had a district council that President and Sister Fisher went to. They brought a very special spirit and I was so thankful they were there to give us some counsel on our friends!
Then yesterday afternoon Soeur Erasmus worked with us for a couple hours!! We saw a few of our friends just for quick little visits and it was REALLY fun!! In one of the lessons there was a really cute little boy who is just a performer-- he was smiling and waving and doing this fancy little model walk for us haha :)
Well that about wraps up the week--- hope you all had a really great week as well! Sending you lots of love!
Soeur Gardner
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