Soeur Ethington | Week 58

Some highlights:

- After District Council, we went finding with our district in St. Quentin en Yvelines. We talked to lots of people who were not super interested in learning more, so we were starting to lose faith but then... A miracle happened. We stopped a young teenage girl wearing purple headphones and a black t-shirt. We presented her the Book of Mormon and told her it was a book that had changed our lives and that it would change hers too. She cut us off right away, saying she already had the book and knew who we were. What!!? Through a series of rapid-fire Q&A, we figured out that Lynda (that's her name) had actually come to church 2 weeks before... in our ward! 

It all came flooding back to me. At church 2 weeks previous, the Elders told us that they spotted a young girl in the congregation who wasn't a member. As soon as they told me, I knew we needed to talk to her. Right as church was over, I quickly stood up and began to make my way over to her. But member after member stopped us and asked to speak to us, so by the time we got to where she had been, it was too late: she had left. I was so sad and felt like we had missed our chance. I said a prayer in my heart that she would meet the missionaries in the future. And then we RAN INTO HER just 2 weeks later. What a miracle!!! Paris is huge, with thousands of people who live there, yet God placed Lynda right in our path.

AN EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT: We now run the official Facebook page for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for all French speakers! That means we can share the Gospel with thousands of people from France, Canada, Africa, and various islands in the Pacific. 

     

It all started 2 weeks ago when we had a meeting with two of the top media executives for the Church. For 6 hours they trained us on how to post, boost, create media, answer direct messages, and respond to all types of comments. This is such exciting news for us because it means we get to reach such large audiences! This is the future!!! This is super cool because we can find so many amazing people that really want to hear the Gospel super quickly, and then we can either teach them ourselves or send them to missionaries in their areas. I'd really missed doing online teaching (since we stopped back in February due to the Rome VC coming online) so it's such a great feeling to be back online. We still only have 2.5 days in the VC per week, but now we have the extra responsibility to do at least 1 hour of online work per day. So exciting!

Last week, we had a great district council on speaking our mission language. For our practice activity, we gave each member of the district some complicated French words and we had to make a cohesive sentence out of them. Then we gave the French speakers some English words, so poor Elder Vincenzi had to make sentences out of iridocyclitis, patella, gynecologist, and discombobulated... He definitely deserved it though after giving my poor newbie companion the word "anticonstitutionnellement."

Speaking of the best district in the whole world, we spent p day today in the gardens of the Versailles castle! We ate lots of fancy French cheese and baguette and played frisbee/rugbee/soccer and set up a slack line. So much fun. Unfortunately, Elder Cañez ended up spraining his ankle as he dove for a stray frisbee, so we had to cut our day a bit short so we could find him a wheelchair to get him out of the gardens.   

     

This week at the VC, we celebrated the most important event in history: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ! To celebrate, we had veillées every night focused around what happened on that particular day in the week before the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (A side note: at the end of one of the veillées, I was unexpectedly asked to sing a solo of "Gethsemane" in front of about 50 people. I've never done that before but I'm glad I did because there was not a dry eye in the room and people still keep coming up to me and thanking me, which is pretty cool). A lot of the people who came to the veillées were really touched on how we choose to focus on the joyous aspects of Easter. That is something I've always loved too. Easter teaches me that because Christ died for me, I can overcome anything-- and I don't have to do it alone. I love the words of this hymn we sang this week: 

He is risen! He is risen!

Tell it out with joyful voice.

He has burst his three days’ prison;

Let the whole wide earth rejoice!

Death is conquered; man is free.

Christ has won the victory! 

I am so grateful for the victory the Savior won over sin and death. Because of Him, I know I will once again be reunited with my Heavenly Father and my family. Christ the Lord is Risen! Hallelujah! Let’s 

celebrate Easter 2019! What better way than to proclaim the good news of the gospel.

A bientôt,

Soeur Ethington 

SOEUR FEARS SLEPT OVER AT OUR APARTMENT AND I WAS SO HAPPY (still am, honestly)

Me after singing at the veillée

We accidentally put 2 cups of butter instead of 1/2 cup of butter in our cookies. Hahahahahahhahahaha

 I'll never get sick of this view

THE CHEESE WE ATE

Elder Vincenzi on the slack line we set up. He fell off .0047 seconds after I took this photo 

Us playing frisbee 

 Fwends

 After Elder Cañez sprained his ankle during frisbee, the Elders carried him home hahaha

When you don't know how to help someone with a sprained ankle... you take a group picture instead. (Elevatiom is important? Right?) 

This scripture quote is the one I designed during our training! The men doing the training surprised me by making me post it on the official Facebook page. Little did I know that my picture would reach over 125,000 people with 480 comments and 429 shares! Social media is the future for missionary work!!

The district after Zone Conference. (E. Duffin, E. Cañez, E. Koshiol, E. Vincenzi, S. McOmber, S. Curtis, S. Montalvo, me)