Tuesday, March 13, 2012

I Almost Ate a Dog


Hi!

Well, I always love reading your emails and your letters, thank you so much!

Honestly, this week has been really hard.  And, there is nothing I would rather do than hop on a plane and come back to Holladay right now.  (but obviously i am not going to do that!)  I know that means that it's probably some of the most important experiences of my mission.

The hardest day was on Wednesday.  We had one progressing ami who was actually keeping commitments and we were really excited about who we found porting at the beginning of the transfer.  We had invited Soeur Destribrois to come and teach with us on Wednesday and had planned a third lesson about what we thought would hopefully go really well.  Then, we were eating lunch, about to leave to go teach the lesson and we got a text from our ami saying she actually couldn't meet today because she had to work.  Then she sent a follow-up text saying that she thinks she's done taking the lessons altogether and we could come and pick up "your books" at her dad's house that night.  So. That was sad.  It was raining and cold outside, we asked someone for directions of how to get to the bus stop and immediately before we can even say anything we get a "ça m'intéresse pas" and I'm like "People!  WE are not even trying to contact you right now just be nice!!" and then we finally got on the right bus, got off the bus, it's raining and it's cold and we were lost and I was just sitting there with this huge map opened up trying to figure out where the heck we were and I was half crying half laughing at the situation.  It was a hard day.

The rest of the week was fine, the Alves Family invited us over for lunch at their house on Saturday.  They told us we were going to be eating dog.  I totally believed them because I have already eaten quite a few weird things so far.  We got to their house and they showed us a picture of a puppy and told us that's what we would be eating and they actually had to buy the dog at some Chinese store in Paris because it's kind of illegal.  Anyways, I believed them all the way until the first bite.  Ended up being beef.  It was funny.  We had camera ready and everything!

I was reading in 1 Cor. 13 today and I really like verse 2.  It talks about how you can have everything: faith, hope, you can even be "speaking with the tongue of angels"  but, if you don't have charity, you can't do anything.  I definitely believe that is true.  It's tough.  Last week after Wednesday I was just feeling like, please don't make me go porting or contacting one more day and I was feeling homesick.  But, I know Heavenly Father is trying to teach me something important right now.  Elder Russell said something last week that made me laugh.  He said, "yeah, you know I heard two theories before I went on my mission.  The first is that they call the best missionaries to this mission.  You know, because we are just so good.  The second is that they send the people to this mission who need to be humbled the most.  And I'm pretty sure that it's the second."   I would definitely agree.  It is the most humbling experience to really go out day after day after day and to really not have seen any investigators really start changing their lives or progressing.  It just makes me realize more and more every day that no matter how good you become at teaching, at connecting to people, at French or anything, the most important thing is just realizing that you really can't do anything on your own.  The only way that you can possibly do anything is to literally be an instrument in God's hands and to be and do and say what He wants you to say.  And honestly, I don't think I have figured it out yet.  But I'm trying!

I hope you all have a great week!
Love you!
Soeur Chard 




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