How are you all?! I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas Eve and enjoying time with each other. I am missing you but taking in this wonderful experience of being a missionary at Christmas time in FRANCE. Do you realize how cool that is? Sometimes I reflect on how super blessed I am to be serving my Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ and I look at where I am, in France and I am dumb founded. I just live in France, no big deal. Anyway I dont want to brag and make you all jealous. One France we will all come here, it will be just like Home Alone 2, without leaving someone in NYC. That would be cool huh? Speaking of Home Alone I have so much to tell you.
Okay so this week. It was super. We were in Geneva, oh my word how I love that city. I was able to see Myriam and Eduardo. They even gave me a little christmas gift, super sweet. It was a day full of laughs, love, and missionaries. We were so many and my favorite part may have been hanging out with the Tahitian Elders, while waiting for the train, and singing and playing guitar, man they can sing. And then of course seeing Eduardo and Myriam was wonderful too. Eduardo and I had a nice little chat about his testimony and some things that he is having problems with. It breaks my heart, but I know that while I was there I did all I could and I know that he had a testimony when he was baptized, but there is no way that I can do anything about his free agency. So yeah then in Geneva we even had time to go to the swatch store and then buy some swiss chocolate, I had left over francs. President gave us aprons with the mission logo on it and then everyone signed each others. Apparently this is something he did in his mission many years ago here in France and he wanted us to have the same thing. Then he also gave us cds that have the approved music we are allowed to listen too, a little bit more than before, it is pretty much all MOTAB and instrumental. I am so sick of MOTAB already, I will never want to listen to it when I am home. Also we were given a cd pictures that all the missionaries sent in, so thats kind of cool, I still have yet to see what is actually on it. Mom I got your packages, one from the office and then the stocking stuffer one actually arrived today so I will open that tomorrow. After we leave here, we are at the church, we will be going to the Lala Hariniaina's for Christmas eve. The Elders had no where to go so I made Mel invite them. Haha. So we will be there tonight, and guess what. I asked President if we could watch a movie with them because that is their family tradition and he said yes. So we will be watching HOME ALONE! Only my favorite Christmas movie. It will be super funny to watch in French though. I am excited, if you cant tell.
So now that I just got all my Christmas jitters out I have a cool story to tell you.
So this past week was kind of weird. I was feeling not very missionary like. We had two lessons last monday and then nothing on tuesday or wednesday or THURSDAY. It was so slow. Then friday we finally had a lesson with Vaber. I think I have told you about him. He has been an interesting ami. Very different from anyone I have ever taught. Well any way, since Soeur Klingaman got here he has become more humble and more willing to do what we ask. He has even stopped smoking and some other commandment breaking. He is really progressing. At our lesson before we even started he asked how baptism was done in the Mormon church. I was surprised. We had already talked a couple times about this and he has always said that he was already baptized he doesnt need to be again. Well after presenting him the baptismal font and talking about how it worked we sat back down and he asked about if he needed to be baptized a second time. We read several scriptures with him and talked about how a baptism must be done. It was super cool. At the end of our lesson after talking about the 10 commandments and the law of chastity, he asked if he was ready to be baptized mormon. I was shocked. VABER? Asking to be baptized mormon? We told him that unfortunately he was not yet ready but that it would come. Long story short I really saw that very day how the gospel of Jesus Christ changes people. It is so incredible. I love this gospel so much and I am so grateful that I have commandments from my Heavenly Father to guide me to be happy and return to live again with Him someday.
Another blurb. This morning I reread the talk from President Uchtdorf The Merciful obtain Mercy. It is so good. Please read it again. Especially as we are in the Christmas spirit. It is a great time to forgive others and show them our love. Also with New Years coming I have already made a resolution to no longer gossip about people, even if what I am saying is true! Hopefully you are all enjoying yourselves and having a wonderful Christmas! I love you all so much and cannot wait to see you tomorrow, via Skype :)
Love,
Sister Addis
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