Miracles

Hello family!

I loved reading all of your emails and am so glad to hear that everything is going so well!  This week was really such a great week with the best day being yesterday.  For whatever reason Soeur Turney and I had been having a harder time just finding the desire to contact and porte this week.  We still did it, but it was more just because we did it because we knew we that's what we should be doing, but we just weren't really feeling it all week. So we decided we needed to change on Saturday night, we needed to work harder and we needed to be excited about it.  So we came home and we just really prayed that we could be filled with the desire to find people and really love contacting and porting.  We had no rendez-vous scheduled for the next day (Sunday) so we made a goal to talk to 40 people Sunday.

The next morning we got up and headed to the train station to pick up one of our amis who was coming to church (she travels 1 hr and a half to come to church).  We started contacting while we were waiting, nothing, went to church, had lunch then went out contacting.  And it was cool because that afternoon we both really were finding joy in contacting.  That night we went porting.  We had been keeping track of how many people we had talked to throughout the day.  We ended up setting a rendez-vous with a woman for next week.  After she shut the door, we realized she was the 40th person that we had talked to that day.  It was cool.  We kept porting because we had a little more time and the last lady we talked to was such a cool experience.  She has had a lot of hard things happen in her life and opened up and told us some of the things that had happened. We were able to testify of the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement and the spirit was so strong.  It was a really cool night.  And I know that it was an answer to our prayer that Heavenly Father was really helping us yesterday.

We had zone conference and interviews this last week.  It was so good, that is one of my favorite parts of being a missionary is when we are all able to get together.  I had an interview with President and also with Soeur Poznanski and they are absolutely the best.  Soeur Poznanski served as a missionary here in this mission as well and I absolutely love when I get to talk to her because she's so empathetic and at the same time she is so strong.  We talked about my last transfer in Caen and how it was hard because we had worked hard but didn't really see the fruits of our labors.  She talked about how that's one of the important parts of the mission.  When people keep rejecting us, are we still happy and do we still enjoy what we are doing?  If not it's really the opportunity to strengthen our testimony and our love for the gospel.  We talked about how no matter if people reject or accept this message, one thing stays the same: the message we are sharing is the truth and it brings joy.  A mission is so amazing because my testimony is strengthened every day as I see people who have been touched by the gospel in their lives and as I study and share the message of the gospel with other people.  It's amazing.

One of the people we are teaching is from Guadelupe and referred herself to the church.  Her brother just got baptized in Guadelupe last week.  She's still investigating the church but it's so cool to watch as she tries living gospel principles for the first time and she gains a testimony of the principal for herself.  She tried fasting for the first time last week because she had a big test and she ended up passing the test and said she wasn't hungry or thirsty the entire day.  Fasting works, I know that because I have seen it work in my own life as a missionary.

I love you all, I hope all of you have a great week!  Thank you for all of your prayers and your support!

Love,
Soeur Chard