March 24, 2014 Another Gray Hair!

You can email Courtney at courtney.ridd@myldsmail.net or write her here:

Les Missionaires

Sœur Ridd

31 rue de la Roë

Angers, 49 49100

France

Wow! I've been out for more than two months! I can't believe it... It really has flown by! I've loved every minute of it!

So this week, we started off with salads on pday instead of Kebab... a much better choice haha. But these salads were SO good - fresh cheese, homemade vinaigrette.. so good! And it is a fun place - they come in these huge bowls!

Okay - there was also a pretty big crisis that happened this week. Sœur Denning and I were standing at the bus stop and she just looks at me weird and then pulls a hair out of the top of my head. I was so confused and then she showed it to me - IT WAS ANOTHER GRAY HAIR! I think I'm going to be completely gray when I get home... momma mia.

So we have an investigator who lives way out in the boonies in the beautiful country side of Angers so we went and visited her out there but we had to walk for like half an hour from the bus stop to her house and so we did some contacting on the way...

It really is so beautiful out there and we had some good times on our hour of walking down the deserted highway!

It was a really great lesson with our ami! Her name is Leanelle and we showed her the Restoration video and the Spirit was so strong that we committed her to a baptismal date! It was great!

Since we were out there in the country all day and walked a lot we decided we needed a good drink (Sœur Denning and I get along really well that way!) And so of course I had to get an Orangina! It is so good. I am starting to get your taste now Mom!

One night this week during our one hour of free time we decided to have a mini spa night! We did masks as you can see from the picture! Good times...

This week we also did companionship exchanges with our Sister Training Leaders and so I went to Nantes with Sœur Hafen. That was a really good experience! She taught me so much in just the 24 hours that I was there. She reminded me that even though we are called as missionaries, it doesn't mean we have to give up being ourselves. We have been called to this specific mission because of the talents that Heavenly Father has blessed us with. She was so great! Here is a picture of me with her!

Then after we had exchanges we had our Zone Conference all day on Friday! That was so fun because I was reunited with Sœur Williams from the MTC! It was so fun to have a little bit of our old district back together again for the day!

It was a great conference. We had a lot of great talks and lessons. One of the biggest things I got from it was that even though language can be a barrier sometimes, it's okay because the gospel is simple! It's just the Doctrine of Christ. Someone shared this quote from Albert Einstein "If you can't explain something simply, you don't know it well enough". That gave me so much hope! The whole conference was in French obviously so it was little rough at first, but really all we have to do to learn about the gospel is listen to the Spirit. So, as missionaries, all we have to do is teach simply and let the Holy Ghost teach the rest. 

I also got to be a part of an amazing special musical number. One of the lines from the song that we sang was "every breath we take is sacred for it is God's gift to us". That's something I really want to remember in my daily life - the gift of life itself is so amazing and I need to be grateful for it every day. 

I also got a package from Nana! Thanks so much Nana! How did you know I love nuts and dried mango? I loved them! It made me so happy to see that in our mailbox!

On Saturday night we went to a classical music concert with one of the our new converts of the ward, Lenaig and it was so amazing! It was held in this huge Catholic Cathedral. The music was so pretty! It was fun to be able to bond with her like that. The members here really are so strong - they have to be because of how small the church is here. They are all such good examples to me. 

Well, that's all for this week! Thanks to everyone for your love and support! I love you all! Keep on keepin on and remember to be grateful for ever day that we have been blessed with here on this beautiful earth!

Avec amour, 

Courtney