Soeur Ethington | Week 8

This week has been so awesome and I can't wait to tell you all about it!

Actually, this week started off on a pretty bad note... On Monday night, I accidentally dyed my hair black. Yes, black. Sœur Seely and I were at the store on Monday and we saw some hair dye and thought it would be fun to dye my hair brown. I'd dyed it brown before my mission but it's faded a lot, so we figured why not? So we bought this brown hair dye and dyed my hair what we THOUGHT would be brown... It was black. The box LIED. It actually doesn't look that bad though, and it's okay because it's semi-permanent and will fade after 28 washes. Needless to say, I've been washing my hair EVERY DAY this week. 

Tuesday and Wednesday, we had conférence des bleus. This was a conference where all the bleus (AKA greenies) had training conferences and a huge dinner at the mission home. I got to see all my friends from the MTC, which was such a huge blessing. I was super lucky at dinner and got seated next to two of my favorite people, Elder LaFrance and Elder David, and we did a lot of catching up. They kept making fun of me because I couldn't stop smiling... I was just happy to be with everyone again! We all went to the temple on Wednesday too, and it was really cool to see everyone there. Hopefully I'll see them again soon!

Because of bleu conference, Sœur Seely and I were pretty booked-out for this past week. We only had one hour to go finding, but with our faith, we ended up finding TWO NEW AMIS! Their names are Rodny and Solène. This is pretty cool because SOLÈNE IS MY MIDDLE NAME! How crazy cool is that?! It's meant to be, I swear. It's kind of funny because when we first walked up to her, Sœur Seely introduced us as disciples of Jesus Christ. Solène was immediately intrigued, telling us how badly she wanted to talk with us and hear our message. She told us "I've met tons of people who pretend to know the truth about God... Jehovah's Witnesses, Baptist missionaries, Mormons... But I haven't met any Disciples of Jesus Christ!" We both stood there, each with a Book of Mormon in hand, and awkwardly maneuvered around what she'd just said. I'm pretty sure she still doesn't know we're Mormon, but she said she wants to meet with us and discuss what we practice. It was a hilarious and awkward experience, but we're stoked. 

As many of you know, my mother is French, and so is her entire side of the family. I spoke French when I was really little but stopped speaking once I was probably 6 years old. Within a few years, I'd lost basically all my ability to speak French. Despite this sad fact, my sweet French grandparents have always called me on my birthday and on Christmas. It's always been a bit of an awkward experience with me stumbling over words, stammering out half-formed sentences, and not exactly understanding what they're talking about. Last night, while I was getting ready for a call with my district leader, we got a call from an unknown number. We answered it and I realized it was my French grandmother! My grandparents work at the Paris temple once a month, so they were calling to see when I'll be able to meet up with them. I'm happy and proud to say that I was able to have a full-on, 10-minute conversation with my grandmother in French. What a blessing! I'm so grateful that I've been called to France so that I can grow closer to my family here. It's seriously such a blessing. 

On Saturday, I had my first rendez-vous (lesson) with an ami! Her name is Amana and she is awesome. We taught her the first lesson and it was a dream. She enthusiastically accepted everything we told her and even remembered the story of the First Vision because someone told it to her 10 years ago! She was so excited to hear our message and told us BEFORE WE EVEN ASKED that she would read the Book of Mormon and go to church the next day. What!? So we saw her at church the next day and taught the second lesson to her and one of our other amis, Celestine. The spirit was so strong as we taught and testified of the Plan of Salvation, and at the end of the lesson, we committed BOTH OF THEM TO BAPTISM! Woohoooo! I don't think I've ever been that happy. I wanted to jump up and scream with joy.

This leads me to my next point. Ever since I got my call, people have told me, "oh, France, that's a hard mission" or, "you probably won't get any baptisms, so just remember that the number 1 convert is YOU" and lots of variations of that. I am here to tell you that those people are wrong. Because of what many people told me before I left and while at the MTC, I came to the mission field feeling pretty disheartened and hopeless. I had no faith that I would ever find anyone who wanted to hear the Gospel. And because of that lack of faith, we didn't. For a while, Sœur Seely and I had no luck with finding people. But then, we started praying for faith in every prayer we said. As we did, we found more and more people who wanted the Gospel in their lives. And now look where we are. We just found two amazing women who have committed to be baptized, and I've only been here 3 weeks. What a blessing faith is! I promise you all that faith is the KEY to success. As it says in Alma 32:27, "...if ye will awake and arouse your faculties,... and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until you believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words." Having faith is hard, but I promise that if you begin to exercise it, even a particle of it, it will be enough and miracles will occur. 

À bientôt, 

Soeur Ethington 

Soœur Seely and I. As you can see, the black hair dye is fading. Bless.

Our GPS took us on the Champs Élysées the other day. We had to drive through a pretty sketchy roundabout. Driving in France is terrifying... At least the view is pretty.

We took this last night with some of our Elder friends. Elder Farnsworth (middle, red tie) and Elder Vincenze (floral tie) bring multiple amis to the temple every week, so we joke that they're going to create the first VC Elder équipe. 

Monday, before my hair turned black. It was raining but it felt incredible. 

Me with Sœur Fears at the temple for bleu conference!