April 14, 2014 - Miracles!

Remember you can email Courtney at:

courtney.ridd@myldsmail.net

Or you can write her at: 

Les Missionaires

Soeur Ridd

31 Rue de la Roë

Angers, 49 49100

France

Wow! This is the first week of my second transfer here in France! The time is flying by! This week was just full of miracles and tender mercies of the Lord. It was truly a great week to help me get ready for Pacque (Easter)!

So, Monday my horrible viral eye infection came back. It was pretty bad this time! I could hardly walk outside because of how much the sunlight hurt it! So we went back to the pharmacist and he gave me these eye drops and stuff to help but I was so nervous and sad  because he said it would take 5 to 10 days to start to heal. Also, the next day we were going to be having a special Conference des Soeurs in Paris with all the sister missionaries in our mission for the first time. I wanted to be able to go SO bad! So I called our District Leader and Monday night he came and gave me a blessing that I would be healed and Tuesday morning I woke up and my eye was perfectly fine! My testimony has grown so much on my mission but ESPECIALLY in the mercy that the Lord has for us and the power of our faith. It probably doesn't seem like that big of deal, but for me it was! Our AP (Assisitant to the President) told us this week "There are two ways to live your life: 1. nothing is a miracle or 2. everything is a miracle". So this week I really tried to look at everything as a miracle and it changed everything!

Seriously, just being in France and seeing so many beautiful things is a miracle!

So the Conference des Soeurs was so amazing! I got to meet some amazing sister missionaries and really feel the strong spirit that we have! It was a great time. President and Soeur Poznanskie spoke to us about the influence that we can have on our missions (especially on the Elders) and really just made us feel so good about ourselves - they are amazing! And I was so happy because I got to be reunited with my MTC compn

The second part of our day in Paris for the conference was full of workshops! We learned about skincare and made some Christ centered gifts to give to our amis. In one we got go "shopping" for fun little accessories that members from aruond France had donated! It was so fun! and Soeur Poznanskie is so cute - she always wants to make sure we look good!

That night the sisters from Cholet who are in our district spent the night and it was one of their birthdays so she bought macarons in Paris and we all ate them - OH MY GOSH SO GOOD. Haha but so expensive... they were like 2 euros each. But definitely worth it! :)

The next day we had our weekly district meeting in Cholet!

It was pretty sad though because it was our last one being all together so we had to take a picture together as a district! The numbers we're holding up are how many transfers we've been here in France... yup, Elder Teh and I are babies.. :) haha

While at our district meeting we made a goal for every companionship to contact and port (go door to door) with 150 people by the next Tuesday. That is A LOT of people to try and get in! But we all stuck to it and we were given the challenge to do Easter contacting and relate everything back to what we talked about to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's been such a neat experience to really bear testimony of it THAT many times. And it's been fun to go to all these different parks and do contacting because the weather has been so nice :)

Toto, I don't think we are in Arizona any more!

Okay, so another miracle from this week - in France it's really hard to talk about religion with people because they are all Catholic or don't believe in anything and "don't feel like wasting their time on discussing it." So imagine getting 150 NOs! It's been rough. BUT on Friday, we were in this beautiful park and we see a pregnant mom pushing a stroller and immediately we "go in for the kill" and it was SO amazing. She was so ready for the gospel!! We explained why we were here and started talking about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and her eyes just lit up! And the next thing we know she's asking when we can come to her house!! It was such an amazing experience we almost started crying right there. We really have not been having a lot of success at all and the work has been so slow but we've had a few miracles like this happen to us this week. I know that the Lord is preparing His children to receive the gospel and is placing them in our paths for us to sharie it with them, we just have to be patient and diligent!

I have loved these couple weeks leading up to Pacque. I LOVE sharing my simple French testimony about the blessings that we have because of our Savior. I hope you all have a wonderful week leading up to Easter and can really feel the love the Savior has for everyone of us on that special day. I know that he died and rose again the third day so that we too can live forever with our families.

I invite you all to watch this wonderful video! I love you all!! Thanks for all your love and support! Bon Pacque!

Avec amour, 

Soeur Ridd