Monsieur Monique

Happy Monday, everyone!

This past week I hit the 100 days mark of my mission! And in three weeks, when this transfer is over, I`ll be 1/4 of the way done already! How???

This week was great. :) We went on exchanges which was really fun and also had a zone training meeting. Something our mission president really focused on was how the understanding of true doctrine changes behaviour. It was really interesting - when someone doesn`t want to keep a committment or follow a commandment, it`s because they haven`t understood something fundamental about the Gospel. So, our approach should change from, for example, "You don`t want to quit smoking? Let`s discuss the word of wisdom." to "You don`t want to quit smoking? Let`s re-explain the nature of God (or the Plan of Salvation or the Atonement or the Restoration) because you must have missed something." So, for those of you at home, if there`s a commandment you`re struggling with, there`s something to think about.

Also, we had more crazy miracles!! There`s one investigator that we have who was actually a former investigator who referred herself back to us a few weeks ago by emailing her member friend and asking for the missionaries back. When we first met with her though, she seemed pretty iffy and didn`t really want to commit to anything. She just wanted to talk about God. BUT last time we saw her she held up the Book of Mormon and said, "I know that it`s true." and said she`d pray about a baptismal date and let us know on Sunday. !!!! We are SO excited!! She actually forgot to ask someone for a ride to church so she didn`t come yesterday, but hopefully we`ll have that conversation with her soon! :D

One day we were chatting with the residents of an old folks home (where we visit a less-active) when two women got a little upset with each other and one of them said, "Excuse-moi, Monsieur, mais..." (I forget the rest of the sentence) but the point is, it turns out that she thought the other woman was a man this whole time. I`m not sure how long they`ve both lived there, but.... it`s been a while. The other lady was quite upset. All those years of drama games where we have to learn to suppress laughter paid off.

Have a wonderful week, everyone! :)

Soeur Shaver

There`s this prank where you fill a container with water and hold it up to the ceiling, then get someone to apply pressure using a broom handle so that it stays on its own - then you let go and they`re stuck there, knowing that if they move, they`ll get water dumped on their head, but they can`t do anything about it because it`s too far for them to reach. Mwahahaha.

This is the greatest work!

Hey! 

Sorry this email is a little long. It`s hard to keep it short when the Lord has blessed us so much!

So this week has been GREAT! I got to see some of my relatives, the Zumbachs, this weekend because they were in town for a wedding (SO good to see them! I love them so much!), we had a crazy miracle in sacrament meeting, AND, perhaps the BEST part of this week, we invited a family to be baptized and they said YES!!! It was a little scary but so rewarding to look someone in the eyes and ask, "Allez-vous suivre l`exemple de Jésus-Christ et être baptisé par quelqu`un qui détient làuthorité de la prêtrise de Dieu?" and then have them respond positively. They have a ways to go before they`re actually ready, but I am so excited for them, and for the ward if it works out! They have 5 children, so it would be a huge blessing to the church here in Québec! 

 With the Zumbachs!                 Me and my cousins!               Avec ma Tante Cheryl!

That whole lesson was a miracle, actually. It started out kind of awkward, but as we started reading the Book of Mormon together, the Spirit took over and guided the whole thing. By the time we actually made the invitation, it just made so much sense. It was perfect. :) 

And then there are the times in missionary work where we knock on a door and get a surprise 10-minute lecture on Islam. Oopalay. 

But then there was the miracle in sacrament meeting! The week before we had decided to ask a few members to share missionary experiences in testimony meeting, to kind of get the ball rolling and get the members excited about missionary work. Last week our mission president spoke in stake conference about members and missionaries working together, so we thought this would be a good opportunity. There was one member in particular who had come to a lesson with us that we wanted to ask but we were just never able to get ahold of her - and then she got up in testimony meeting and bore her testimony about the EXACT thing we were hoping she would! She was clearly following the Spirit. And there were so many testimonies about missionary work! (Including one from Uncle Alain. He`s the best.) The Church is so true!

Tatjana, Moi, Jasalie 

I think that`s all I have to say. Have a great week, everyone!

Soeur Shaver

Finally eating poutine!!!   

 My mission countdown calendar so far!

 (My mom is crazy)

   

Chuck. (Pronounced chook. I guess it's a Belgian thing?)

Dear friends and family.

For some reason unbeknownst to me, my companion has decided to teach herself German. This is Day Three of listening to Church videos in German on repeat in our spare time. Please send sourcrout. Um, I mean help. Please send help.

This transfer is off to an interesting start! Our district has two new Elders; one from Utah and one from Vegas. Neither of them was serving in French in their last area, so I`m sure they`re having a wonderful time right now picking up Quebecois. Actually, another one of our Elders is Belgian, and he was telling us the other day that by the time he gets home, he`ll know at least three or four languages; English, Spanish, French, and Quebecois. 

We had stake conference yesterday! Sister Davis and I were asked to do an English translation. That meant that we sat at the back of the room and took turns speaking into a headset so that others could hear us through headphones. It wasn`t as bad as we thought it would be! But it was definitely a different experience - we had to listen, interpret, translate, and speak all at once, because if we stopped listening while we were speaking then we wouldn`t hear the next sentence and there were big holes in what we were saying. There were only about 10 people who needed the English translation though, so it wasn`t TOO much pressure. :) We were also in the choir though, so we had to run all the way up to the stand and back a couple of times to sing. Good times. 

We`ve also seen a TON of miracles lately. We had the BEST lessons with new investigators yesterday with members present! I seriously don`t know what we would have done without those members! They`re the best! 

On a completely different note, we have a less-active who likes to practice putting eyelash extensions on us. So, that`s fun.

And here`s a picture of our new planners we made for each other :) 

Mine is the one on the right, and I made the one on the left.

Have a great week, everyone! :)

Soeur Shaver

La vieille ville, baptism, transfers, and Tagalog!

Hi, everyone!

So this week, my mission president told me I sound like the Pharisees. Sigh. 

But anyways, a few fun things happened this past week. Last P-day we had time to go take a look around Old Québec, which was really cool. It looks European. Since it was also a long weekend, there were tons of people out too.

In front of the Notre Dame de Bellevue and the Plains of Abraham

Also, there was a convert baptism last weekend! An 18-year-old from France that the elders have been teaching got baptized on Saturday, and we missionaries did a musical number...which we put together literally 10 minutes before the baptism.... It went well though! He was so happy. :)

We each had songs to practice for the baptism 

but we had to stay in sight and sound....so we made it work :)

I had my first transfer call!!! Of course, I`m only halfway through training, so we knew that nothing would happen to us. And since half our district was new this transfer, we weren`t expecting any big changes. Only two Elders from my district are leaving - our district leader is going to Montreal Chinese-speaking, and one of the elders (the zone leaders) in my ward is going to an area farther south, still French-speaking. How exciting!! But....it made me realize that I should probably be working harder to keep up my Spanish, just in case one day I get assigned to a Spanish area with no warning like that.... oh, and guess what! I`ve been learning a little Tagalog along the way! One time we accidentally had a lesson in Tagalog, and I`m pretty sure I had the gift of interpretation of tongues that day because I actually picked up a few words (that sound Spanish) and understood some of the main ideas (also because the member we brought with us threw in the occasional English or French word). Hilariously, `how are you?` in Tagalog is `Komusta ka?`which sounds a LOT like `Como esta?` Go figure.

Well that`s it for this week! I hope you all have a wonderful day! Mahal kita! :)

Soeur Shaver

One more thing! We take turns with the elders teaching an English class, and sometimes the Quebecois say really funny things. This week my favourite was: `It`s that time of year where you don`t know how to wear clothes.` Classic.

    random castle on a street corner (???)                                                   

and more old Québec

Jokes, Montréal, and MISSIONARY WORK :)

Greetings!

Wow, it does NOT feel like last P-day was a full week ago - oh wait, that`s because it wasn`t. Which means we don`t have as much to do which means we might have time to do a little sightseeing this afternoon! Yay! 

So, Sister Davis and I have started a string of `You know you`ve been a missionary too long when...` jokes. They`re great. My favourites are when we`re watching the District and my trainer says Amen at the end of their prayers, and when we pass big catholic churches with golden statues on top and my first thought is, `Wait, you`re not Moroni....`

Anyways, so last Thursday I got to go to Montreal! It was for a new missionary/new trainer training meeting, so I also got to meet up with Hermana Perdue(my MTC companion)! We got poutine at La Banquise afterward, and there was one option called the B.O.M. It made me really happy.

Since last week was so crazy, we had to make up for it on the weekend by scheduling as many of the lessons we had missed as possible into two or three days. It worked out pretty well. Right now there`s a HUGE emphasis on working with members - zone conference was about that, and so was pretty much every part of church yesterday. It`s really exciting! :D

I think that`s about it for this week. Have a great week, everyone!

Soeur Shaver

zone, exchanges, Montreal, MIRACLES!!!!

Hello everyone! 

This was a BUSY week! Since I last emailed you all, I have had my first interviews with my mission president (other than when I first arrived), zone conference, exchanges, and a call home(YAY)! And tomorrow we`re on our way to Montreal for another training meeting!

A hymn in French

The past few days have been so amazing, I don`t even know where to start! Maybe zone conference. There are about 30 missionaries in my zone, only 6 of which are sisters. My companion and I were asked to play piano, and I got to play Called to Serve at the end. THAT was incredible. The Spirit was so strong during that zone conference, even our mission president essentially said that that was one of the best zone conferences he`s ever seen, including from his own mission. 

Exchanges were really fun too, and I think we all learned something from it, so that was good. Since our sister training leaders live 3 hours away, they both came to our area and we had to plan two companionships worth of activities with only one car. At the end, we went to this amazing place ice cream/chocolate place and it was basically heaven.

Also, we had this incredible miracle happen yesterday! We got a referral from church headquarters a few weeks ago and when we met her, we gave her the bible she had asked for, and also introduced the Book of Mormon. She seemed really interested and basically invited herself to start reading it and come to church. Then yesterday we called her again (she`s been crazy busy and lives far so we haven`t been able to see her - but soon!) and she told us that she`s been reading a chapter a day!!! All on her own! This is a woman who has been VERY prepared by the Lord to receive the Gospel! :D We are SO excited for her!

A street in Old Quebec where one of our investigators lives.

Well, that`s the main idea. I`ll be back onto a normal schedule next week (I hope!) :) Love you all!

Soeur Shaver

Paintings, cultures, and where is the time going?

Imagine a big abstract painting. If you were to ask hundreds of people to try to decipher it, you would receive hundreds of unique interpretations. The true meaning of the painting, what the artist intended, is not determined by the popularity of any one of the interpretations - the only way to know for sure what the painting means is to ask the Painter.

That`s an analogy that someone shared in fast and testimony meeting yesterday. I love it! Church was actually really cool this week because I got to translate it into English for a member of the ward who recently moved in and doesn`t speak French. She`s from the Philippines. Actually, since I`ve been here, I`ve met people from all over the place; France, Belgium, Haiti, Mexico, Ivory Coast, Colombia.... it is the coolest thing. (Then there`s that awkward moment when you`re in a lesson with a less-active and she starts speaking Haitian Creole to her friend.... or when you ask someone from Africa about the Book of Mormon and they can`t read....) 

One thing I love about being a sister missionary is that people just open right up. Like, within an hour of knowing people I know their whole life story, along with really personal information that I`ll bet half their good friends don`t know. It`s kind of weird. But hey, if it means I can better help them come unto Christ, I`m all for it.

I feel like the weeks are just flying by. My first transfer is already half over! How!? D:

Anyway, I love you all! Until next time!

Soeur Shaver