Week 59 - Sad Goodbyes but Happy Hellos!




(Note: pictures from this week did not load correctly, so I took this one from the mission facebook page. This is Soeurs Gardner, Morrell, and Watling welcoming Soeur Kitchen to Guadeloupe.)

 :)

This week was pretty much crazy! 
I said goodbye to my companion, Soeur Christianson, which was crazy hard!! She's become one of my best friends and it's a bit sad imagining the rest of my mission without her, but God also provides something new and wonderful, which in this case is my super cute and amazing new companion, Soeur Kitchen!! She's from Riverton, Utah, and these last few days with her have been so fun. She has such a sweet heart and is really motivated to get out there and dive into missionary work! We get along super well and I'm excited for the time we'll get to spend together :DOn Monday night we had a soirée familiale with Albie, another recent convert named Luther, the Eclar family, and a lady from the Abymes branch and it was a weird mixture of French and English, and a crazy mixture of emotions since it was Soeur Christianson's last night.

And Tuesday was just full of us passing by people's houses and saying goodbye until we dropped Soeur Christianson off! The rest of that day and all day Wednesday, I got to hang out with the Soeurs of Abymes until Soeur Kitchen got here Thursday afternoon!

Some of the highlights we've had since Soeur Kitchen got here:

-her first ever banane pesée!! 
-being super sore because of Cool and Fit, our branch's weekly exercise class
-screaming every time we pass an ocean view because Soeur Kitchen reminds me how exciting it is to be on as island and see the ocean!!
-knocking on doors in the pouring rain 
-being super impressed with Soeur Kitchen as she just jumps into speaking-- she can do basically an entire contact on her own already!
-a really really wonderful lesson with our friend Madame Enésa. She shared a dream she had after one of our lessons a couple of weeks ago about her having to choose between two paths-- one straight and narrow that she felt was the right way, and the other was great and spacious but she didn't feel right about it. She connected it to how she's felt since she met us-- she's seen a lot of good come into her life from the Book of Mormon, and I think she feels like this is the right path for her!! So we are super stoked to see how she continues to progress!! :)
-going to the Laynes (the senior couple) and it feeling like Christmas because they gave us a bunch of things for our apartment and they gave me a mini hymnbook in French, that I've been wanting for a long time!! So now I can go around singing French hymns any time I want and not just make up the words haha :)
-Junie's 13 year old daughter, Vanessa, told us on Saturday night that she wants to be baptized!! I'm telling you, there is something crazy special about her. She's so young but REALLY understands the Gospel, and she has a strong desire to understand it so she can share the gospel with her friends!! I will not be surprised at all if in like 50 years she gets called into the General Relief Society Presidency or something.
-I gave a talk in church on Sunday based on L. Tom Perry's talked titled, "Bring Souls Unto Me" from 2009. I'd encourage you to read it, it has a really great message about lost sheep and the role we play in other's lives as shepherds. I was pretty nervous to speak but felt good once I got up there, and afterwards I felt like I do after a good work-out! I had a mini realization moment that it's important to work out and exercise your physical health, but also to do things that push you mentally! And it has a similar endorphins/happy feeling reaction afterwards :) Sometimes I forget that physical and mental health both require that we put in a bit of work and step outside of our comfort zones!
-our friend Yvelt is doing super good and is seeing the Gospel change his life! We taught him the Word of Wisdom yesterday and he understood it really well!

All in all everything is going really well!! Things have been a little stressful, but I know that as we settle in and keep busy everything will adjust and we'll just keep improving!

Gros bisous to you all! I love you and hope you have a great week <3

P.S. Pictures aren't loading, I'll keep trying but it might have to wait until next week.

Soeur Gardner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pre-mission preparations

Image
Soeur Gardner got on a plane a few hours ago, and now it's time to update her blog with all of the pre-mission preparations! February: Call received, started preparations for her visa, studied all we could about the French regions in the Caribbean March: Visa paperwork turned in, went through the Provo City Center temple for endowment April: Finished up the semester at BYU and traveled home for a few weeks May: This is where it got kind of crazy, so we will detail this! The first big event in May is that Morgan's best friend, Jacob, left on his full-time mission to Arizona. We love Jacob and wish him all the best as he serves the people there. Sometime in the middle of May (3 weeks before she was to leave), I heard from a mom in the Facebook group for the Barbados mission that she would need a face-to-face consulate visit in order to obtain a visa for the French regions, otherwise she may end up being a visa waiter. Not that it would be a huge deal to visa wait, but
Read more

Week 36 - Salut!!

Image
Salut!!! ça va?? Hope everyone had a great week as usual! Island life here in Guadeloupe is going pretty dandy! It started off really good with an awesome district council on Tuesday about the Spirit and revelation. It's incredible that each and every one of us, as children of our All-Knowing Heavenly Father, have the right and privelage to receive answers, guidance, and comfort directly from Him? On Tuesday we had almost an entire day of contacting out in the sun, and it was AMAZING!! We talked to a lot of people that were really cool and interested. We made a run to Burger King for dinner and there was a super adorable little girl there that I played hide and seek with while we waited for our food. On Thursday we taught a lesson to a really amazing woman, and her little 6 month old grandbaby was there. Man oh man was it hard to stay focused during that lesson, that baby was cuuuuttee!! It was one of the sweetest things, Soeur Elise, the member we brought with us,
Read more

Week 78 - Heeeeyyy, white people!! WHITE PEOPLE!!! WHIIITTEE!!

Image
Helloooo everybody!!  This was a really happy week because we got to get out of that house and do missionary work!! Sister Pennell got cured, and I was spared from the plague so that meant we got to talk to lots of people and enjoy being missionaries :) We got struck by a power outage this week and had to search for neighborhoods at night time that had lights on so we wouldn't be out in the darkness. We did work in the area book by flashlight and I grew more appreciation for actually having electricity haha. Miracles happen, though, because the power came back on before we had to go to sleep with no A/C  This has been a week of lots of contacting, which is awesome! President Fisher invited us to share the First Vision with 20 people every week, so we had to learn how to tie that into contacting more. It's been a really cool experience actually, and I've come to love sharing it more and more! People respond to it really well, and I think it sparks interest in the
Read more