Sister Victoria Beeny France Lyon Mission: Have I Done Any Good? December 2, 2013

Another incredibly busy week... It is so cold here. I am sorry if I make spelling mistakes. My fingers are numb. So Lundi soir we had our weekly FHE for our amis, right? Well, we invited a family in the branch to come so that our amis could be more integrated!!... The Arnaud family shows up with three huge trays of food... and then NO ONE CAME! Hahaha, seriously it was so funny. The week before we had had like 12 people, so it was odd. We had an awesome night with the Arnaud family. Frere Arnaud served in this mission like 30 years ago, so he shared some sweet stories. We were dying. That is one fo the best parts about missions: mission stories.

Mardi we started another exchange with Grenoble, but this time with Soeur Grunke from Germany! But before we left we had a RDV with Joel and Mimi. We layed down the law and made a schedule for them to get married, because otherwise they wouldn't make any progress. Mimi is like 75 years old. She cries every time we leave and calls us her daughters. CUTIE PIE! We made a cheese cake for Ragand, an awesome Haitian who is here for school. He speaks perfect English, which makes it fun to teach. We made a cheese cake because he had never tried it, and we were HORRIFIED! So we brought the goodness to him... we took the wrong bus and then got lost and were like 30 minutes late. The lesson was hard because it was all chitchat, but I twisted it around and we ended up having a really spiritual lesson. We found him a Haitian creole LdeM... so YAY! We will see how it goes. We also saw Daniel again, the really awesome ELU that doesn't know he is an elu... He gave us green tea and we didn't realize until the end when we had finished... what is it with us and breaking the Word of Wisdom here?

We left for Grenoble and got in kinda late. We headed straight to a potentials house. She is

Portuguese, so we were bringing her a LdeM. She was in the middle of watching a football match with her family, so we could teach her. We invited her to read and testified. I offered to pray for her and her family and then we set the next RDV. NEW AMI!! I am very talented in the art of finding new amis in 10 minutes or less. I also accidently hit a French woman in the face this night... we were having fun and I was being a bit dramatic as we got off the tram... I swung my arm out and just hit her! I felt so bad... no wonder Americans have a bad rep here!

Our day in Grenoble was INCREDIBLE! We had the most amazing miracle with a family in the ward, the Barta family. We didn't have much planned, so we were going Super Porting (You visit a family, share a quick spiritual thought, ours was on miracles, and then you kneel in prayer and have the family pray for you to find people who are ready for the gospel, you leave for an hour, porte, and then you return and share your cool miracles!) It is a very fun experience. The prayer offered by Frere Barta was overpowering with the Spirit. We left with dedication in our hearts... The first building was horrible. Like 2 people were home and they were very rude, because my exchange companion is German, and French people aren't too fond of Germans, haha. BESIDES THE POINT! We prayed for strength. We went to a second building. No one was answering the doors. We prayed again, this time in German. We met more people on the second floor, but they were mean too. We decided the third floor would be last because we were running out of time... NO ONE WAS HOME! So one more floor. We knocked on one last door. A young mother opened up. She was occupied with her children, but was very kind and interested and told us to come back the following week. That was our miracle! We went back to share the miracle with the Bartas. When we told them the name of the family, the mother began to weep. They were family friends. She had been prompted to share the gospel with this family but wasn't sure how to do it. It was an answer to her prayers. How beautiful. We prayed again, but this time it was her 5 year old son that offered it. So cute. MIRACLES EXIST!

We finished off the day with some good old contacting, planting lots of seeds. We found the pretty part of Grenoble on a bridge and I was so shocked that I screamed with joy! I was laughing and then the super ancient French woman looked at me and echoed my scream. She began to laugh and walked away with her bag of bread, haha. Oh the joys of French people!

Mecredi soir was the music program put on by a few special elders in the mission. We sang a group number with them, so we had to go a little early for practice. Then they had me stay a little later because they wanted me to sing a duet with the elder. SO COOL!! I was seriously so excited. I sang Have I Done Any Good... SO MUCH FUN! I forgot how much I miss performing.

We stayed the night in Grenoble again and then headed out to Annecy the next morning for district meeting. SO MUCH TRAVELING!! I got a package from Connie containing two huge bags of beef jerky, haha. There wasn't even a note! I am just assuming that she killed the animal herself and there was no need for further explanation. When we got home to Chambéry, the Arnaud family called us because they had something for us. We went outside and they gave us 3 huge boxes of food... We were in shock. We couldn't express ourselves. All we could say was "Merci. Vous etes trop gentil frere."... We then went to Soeur Hoss's house for thanksgiving dinner! Turkey, potatoes, yams, and the most amazing pumpkin pie I have ever had in my life. She made it with a pumpkin from her garden. WOW!

We had a fun weekend. We taught lots of lessons to our amis Lucien, Karen, Christian, Mireillé, Lina, and Joel. We passed a less active randomly, Frere Dievart... HIS APARTMENT IS COVERED WITH PAINTINGS!! Seriously. Pictures are proof. Hundreds of them. We were so in awe that he gave us some paintings! I don't have a picture of it right now... I will send one next week.

We taught lessons all day Samedi and Dimanche. We had an awesome English class and got three new amis from it!! We taught an incredible lesson to Christian, from Congo. He will be baptized. We know it. He is so curious and willing! Pray for our amis to continue to progress. Pray for me not to freeze. I always forget to tell you... it has been snowing here for like 2 weeks. YIKES!