Venez, Tous Fideles! (Come All Ye Faithful)

Bonjour tout le Monde! (roughly translated-hello everyone)

It has been another wonderful week here in Dijon! Everyday I learn so much, and I am realizing more and more just how very blessed I am and how wonderful this opportunity is!

We had a really busy week, lots of Rendezvous! It was that way last week too....its kind of weird not to be contacting very much! WE had our ward Christmas party, and everyone watched It’s A Wonderful Life in French, hahaha, pretty great. We had a FEAST of delicious French food, and everyone in the ward is so kind and giving....they teach me so much by their example. Its not easy to be a member of the Church in France, its not easy anywhere, but they are so strong because of it.

I forgot the name of the cheese of the week but here is another fun fact about France that is grocery related...there are hardly any plastic grocery bags here it seems, everyone has those trader-joe-like ones. But! thats not all, there are these little things that look basically like a laundry bag tied to a little metal frame with wheels on the bottom. EVERYONE has these little contraptions and it is seriously hilarious! There will be this super chic French couple walking down the rue, and what do they have trailing behind them? The gocery contraption. I even saw an older lady take one off a curb the other day...reminds me of the rolly backpack days. In all seriousness, its really smart...I wish I had that to carry all my books in instead of carrying them on my shoulder all day sometimes. Oh yeah, and I officially have come to the point that Leigh Anna foretold where you wear things you promised you never would all for the sake of comfort and practicality, haha, it is so great to be a missionary.

Lets talk about some of the AMAZING people we are teaching :)

I liked how in Daddys letter he mentioned some of the things that other missionaries are experiencing, as far as people\s concepts of religion and so forth. Many of the younger generations are 'non-croyant'(non-believing) but have never really tried to believe in God, some of the older French people are Catholic, and most of them think we are from a sect, and there are a lot of immigrants who are believing, many are Muslim and many are Christian. But, don’t get me wrong, there are French natives who believe too, I think you would be surprised by how many people stop and talk with us and how kind people are in general. Ok enough about that.

Abraham  - a refugee from Nigeria, who if I had to describe in one word would be grateful. He loves God, and tells us that practically every other sentence. I wish I could tell you his whole story, but suffice it to say that he is an inspiration. The Muslims are persecuting the Christians where he is from, and he is the only survivor from his family from a recent tragedy. He miraculously made it to France, and is still going through a lot as far as paper work and things are concerned. A part member Nigerian family met him at the gare (train station), and he told them that he wanted to come to church and that is how we got in contact with him. He loves Christ, and wants to know Him better so He can defend His Christianity. It is a beautiful experience to talk with him. We have scheduled for him to be baptized the 1st, and really hope we can help him prepare for that day. I hear many people talk about how they cannot believe in religion because of all of the wars in the world that have are tied to religion. Here is a man who watched his family die, who risked everything for what he believes, and has seen the effects of this first hand - and I have never heard one ill-willed or selfish word from his mouth, he has every right to be a victim, but he is a victor, because he understands that although we have trouble in the world, we need not fear, Christ has overcome the world. (John 16:33) I am so humbled to know him and to help him build on his beautiful faith in the Savior.

Sonia - a beautiful girl, nineteen, who we met contacting our first week here. Her parents are Muslim, but she discovered within herself that she wants to follow Christ. She is from France, a little town that is a couple of hours away by train I think, and is just here to go to school (there is a college here in Dijon) She is inspiring. She committed to be baptized the first lesson we taught her, and she has a desire for truth and a simple faith that is evident in her eyes. She and Soeur Madsen and I are becoming great friends, and again, I just feel so blessed to know her. We have set a date for her to be baptized the first as well, and we hope that will work out great :)

Jerome - Yes, I am teaching a man who has the same name as my car. DESTINY! haha, but really, Jerome is great. He is French, grew up going to Catholic school I believe, but converted to Islam a few months ago. He is searching for peace in his life, and we have had some great lessons with him. I am excited to see how things go.

We are still teaching the Albanian family and hope to get more materials in their language soon. We taught a cute Buddhist family last night, from Shri-Lanka, hardly speak any French but are so cute and want to come to church with us....they know basically nothing about Christianity, but have been going to a protestant or Catholic church here I believe, we are hoping to find some materials in their language too.

Well, that is a very small sampling of the people we are teaching and experiences we are having. I want to say that I know I have been called here by God and that He is aware of me and each of us personally. When President Gordon B. Hinckley was on his mission, his dad's advice to him was "forget yourself and go to work" and I can testify to you that is the way to success - lose yourself in the service of others, always. Repent daily. Pray on your knees, and thank God for this beautiful world. I am learning more and more how personally we can have a relationship with Him. I am thankful that this Christmas Season I can show my love for Christ by wearing His name above my heart, and inviting others to come and see for themselves if He really is who He Himself said He was, the Son of God, our Savior and Redeemer the Light and the Life. Think of Him when you see Christmas lights this season.

I love you immensely, and can’t express enough how thankful I am for your support, it fortifies me and helps me remember the wonderful people who helped me become who I am today. Thank you for your example!

have a happy week! Love, Soeur Waldron

The Love of God leads me on!

Joyeux Noel, tout le Monde!

Can you believe it is Christmas time so soon? Oh I love it. Well it has been a most blessed Jour de Preparation and an ever so neat week, How shall I possibly write all of the wonderful things that have happened?

I feel like I have been going through mission adolescence the past couple of weeks. You go to the Missionary Training Center and youre like a little mission baby, and just when you start to think youve got it all figured out, you get sent out into the field. Then, you start all over again. I feel like in my mission childhood here in Dijon, I had that natural curiousity and excitement of a child....then I started growing up and realizing, wow, this is actually really hard! That is when mission adoslecence kicks inm and you feel like that awkward seventh grader who is super happy one second, discouraged the next, and just trying to find out how to fit in. Thankfully, this is normal, and that is why we have trainers. Sister Madsen has seriously taught me so much, and I am so thankful for her example and for her desire to help me become the best missionary I can be. We have been working really hard, and I feel like I am starting to become a little missionary adult! The Lord is blessing me and allowing me to improve in so many ways, and I just feel infinitely thankful to be a part of this work!

Things are going well with our investigators, and I just feel so blessed to have witnessed so many miracles! Will you please continue to keep them in your prayers?

Miracle of miracles today was that we were about to get on the bus and contacted this family, who looked at us in a confused manner,...come to find out they are from Cosovo (the same country the albanian speaking refugees we met are from) and they were there with their translator who speaks both French and Albanian! And he is going to come to our next rendezvous with us and help us translate! WOOOO! Heavenly Father does know how to direct His workm doesnt He?

I titled the email with my favorite showbiz fireside song. I think I understand that line more than ever now....when we really allow every action to be guided by the Love we have in our hearts for God, that is when we are truly happy.

Something beautiful I learned this week...when Christ was welcomed at the Triumphal Entry, the people waved palm branches, which is a symbol of "the victory of the faithful over the eniemies of the Soul" I started also to ponder about the ever popular Christmas song at the waldron home "let Him in!" and thought of Daddy and how he would sing it, and wondered if at this Christmas time, we could all choose to be not like that inn keeper in bethlehem, with no room in the inn, but that we may welcome the Savior into our hearts, as they did at His triumphal entry. It is my prayer that each of us may exercise our faith in the Savior, that His pure love may fill our hearts, that we may ‘give place no more for the enemy of our souls.’ (part of the scripture found in 2 Nephi 4:28 in the Book of Mormon)

Well, this gospel is true. The Savior was born, what a glorious day! And He died that we might live. He gave His life to His Father who sent Him, and showed us all the way to true happiness is charity, His pure love.

Have a peaceful and beautiful Christmas! Smile, even if that is the only gift you can give.

All my love,

Soeur Sarah Waldron

PS I want you all to know that it snowed, and it is lovely! freezing, but lovely! Secondly, I am now a true missionary because what did I buy for boots....the one....the only....dr martins high tops! BOO YA! some of you are cringingm some of you think its awesome, and I just think hey, Im only going to be a missionary once....might as well go all out! :) love you so

Christmas presents will be coming late, obviously I just want to prolong the season!

kisskissm hughug and lots and BEAUCOUP DE BISES!

Letter #5

Today I’m trying a different email technique...I am going to respond to you and mom and then you can combine them however you want for the mass email, or maybe I’ll have time to do both! we will see :) The good news is that I can change the keyboard to an American one....so as long as I don’t look down at my fingers I can type a lot faster this way! We get a little bit of time after emails to look at lds.org and so forth...so thanks for the tip on the Christmas Devotional! I think we will be watching it with our paroisse at some point, but I am not sure when, and it will be in French I am sure. The Christmas season is beginning here in Dijon, too. There are lots of lights in the city, and they are transforming one of the town squares into a little winter wonderland! It doesn't really snow here (at least not yet) but it might. We have had some rainy days, and last week I bought a few warm things I needed at HandM, but the boots I got aren’t very waterproof so I might have to spend some Euros and get some nicer ones....I hope that’s ok! I didn’t  bring much to layer with for winter...but I haven’t been too cold yet! A lot of things aboutDijon remind me of home....the weather is somewhat similar, a bit colder, but sometimes it is foggy, and we only have space heaters to warm our apartment so we like to close off the kitchen and make it an incubator. Fun fact: toilets have like no water in them here, but the shower has BEAUCOUP de water pressure. Haha, oh the adventures. Our apartment is kind of ghetto, but mostly just quaint, and we have nice big windows with white drapes.

WE are practicing with the ward choir too and our ward choir director is a convert of thirteen years named Doria, who is kind of a sassy African lady with awesome hair, I love her! She always steals our planners and schedules herself in them. Speaking of Africans, we are teaching a man named Abraham who is from Nigeria. He came to church for the first time two Sundays ago and told the Elders in our ward that he wants to be baptized! So, sister Madsen and I took over teaching him....he has such simple faith, it is a joy. We are hoping that we can get in all our rendezvous with him in time for him to be baptized on Christmas. He lives with his friends Rachel (member) and her husband Chrysantus, and their daughter precious, and we are kind of teaching Chrysantus too and hoping he will progress as well. We were at their house this week and Rachel gave us this African food with peimont pepper in it OH MY it was so so hot! But, ca va, it was still good and I survived....and Soeur Madsen assured me that it was actually quite mild and that someday I will have REAL piemont...haha. It made me think of Spencer and Uncle Kent...they need to have some African food!!

Fast Sunday was great here! I had too much on my mind to think about being hungry....this AMAZING family from some country near Albania that starts with a C came to church with two of their four children. We found them while porting a batiment last week, and they readily agreed for us to come and teach them this week. We got to their apartment, which was tidy and beautiful, they brought us some juice and we got to know each other better. Come to find out they are refugees from their country, where they were persecuted for being Christian and not Muslim, and they had to work really hard to come toFrance...all because they wanted to worship Christ. So, we taught them the first lesson, and even though there was a major language barrier since they don’t speak French that well, the Spirit was so strong. Oh I feel so blessed to be a part of this work! Seriously, la chance! You really never know what is going to happen....one minute you have never met a person, but you take them aside and ask a simple question, like, do you believe in God? And the next thing you know you are in a cafe talking about the plan of salvation, drinking hot chocolate, and testifying of the Book of Mormon, or of how you know their child who died in infancy is saved and how they can live together forever. It’s a beautiful, marvelous work. We see miracles every day. Every single day the Lord pours His blessings abundantly upon it, and I feel so humbled that He would condescend to let me be a part of it.

I am sorry to hear of the Wiley's loss, and also Udell. I also am excited for Kyle and Treana! I FOUND ALL LOST THINGS! Thank you for your prayers :) I think they found an apartment for us inMontpelier! We will get to stay here with Soeur Tinorua and Harlene though for Christmas, and we will move down there next transfer it looks like! I love Dijon, it’s like not too big but not too little either. There is beautiful architecture here and sculptures everywhere and ivy growing on everything, I love it. But, of course, the most beautiful thing is the people. I wish I could tell you about every lesson and every contact! We will have so much to talk about when I get home. But, just know I am working hard, I am increasing my relationship with God each day! And we are teaching many people about the restored gospel, it is a marvelous work!

Have a wonderful week! And remember I love you! And tell Anna I loved her email, I am immensely thankful for her support, and that I will respond to all her fun questions next week :) also tell her that the painting she sent me is hanging in my apartment :)

Oh and as for Christmas, could you send me some pictures of the Savior that I could give people? I’d like another copy of my favorite one by Carl Bloch of Christ Healing the sick at Bethesda, and also his of the boy and Jesus, where the boy is holding the palm leaf.

Oh, and the cheese of the week, etorki.....DELICIOUS!

I love you so much. I am so grateful for your goodness and faith, and I hope you know that I am so thankful to be a part of this family. A la prochaine!

Love, Soeur Sarah

I'm bleu dabba dee dabba dye

Dear Family and Friends,

 

We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We got to talk with Sarah for a few minutes from the airport before she left the country! She sounded great! We also received a few photos. I attached a couple that were taken at the mission home in Geneva.

 

We were so excited to receive this email yesterday! We had quite a laugh while reading it since there are many errors which are due to her typing on a French keyboard where some of the keys are different. I decided to go ahead and just send it as it is instead of correcting the whole thing. There are also some French words here and there! I put in just a few notes in bold colored font.

-Laura Waldron

Remember that song from the nineties? It was stuck in my head for the first couple of days I was here....I am SO BLEU! ("greenie")         A greenie is a new missionary and in France they call them bleuThqnk you mommy and dqddy for the e,qils; I love you and I q, so thqnkful for you1 Qnd I q, excited to heqr about the races! Fun! 
(It looks like the 'a' and 'q' have traded places and the 'm' and comma --this will help you in reading this letter)And how is my wonderful brother doing? I m iss you Spencer! writ me if you get a sec?

Well, here I am in Dijon, France! Can you believe it? IT is beautiful here...the houses, the streets (except for the dog poop), the courtyardsm every thing is just TROP BEAU (so beautiful)! But you know what the most beautiful thing of all is? The People. NEver have I known with such a surety that every person on this earth is a child of a loving Heavenly Father as I have looked into the eyes of the people here in Dijon, and testified to them in the streets. BEING A MISSIONARY IS THE BEST! 

Ok, so heres a few tidbits about the voyage here. The flights didn't seem too long and I had some great conversations and gave out some pass along cardsm but I couldn't sleep AT ALL! peut etre (maybe) I was able to sleep like an hour...needless to say my first few days were the most tired I have ever felt in my entire lifem everm 

I know you got a little tidbit from the mission home, ps i; glad you looked at it on google earthm isn\t the mission home beautiful? I need to send you some pictures of it. Soeur Madsen (her companion) is the best trainer in the world, she has an incredible testimony and is practically fearless when we go contacting, such a good example to follow. 

A little bit about what our assignment ism So, we are here in Dijon for an undetermined amount of time until we can get an apartment in Montpelier. I know we are here for a specific reasonm and that we will go to the south when we have done what we need to here, and so we are just praying that we may be able to follow the spirit and that the people in Montpelier will let us buy an apartment sometime soon, It would be kind of nice to stay here the whole first transfer and then go. So, we are basically opnining or "whitewashing" both of these villes, which means that we neither of us were in the ville before (there are three other equipes of missionaries here, but its not like we replaced any of them....and there are no sisters in montpelier eitherm so we will be opening that too) so basically, instead of getting here with a bunch of references and an area book full of amis (investigators) we get to start from scratch....WOO! This is a pretty unique experience, and I am thankful that the Lord has trusted us to do it! And like I said before, I am learning how to contact from an EXPERT!

A few good experiences:

The first woman I bore my testimony to on the street....it was our first night here in Dijon, and I was EXHAUSTED but, we were working anyway. hadn\t even unpackedm Anyway, I bore my testimony to her, I barely understood a word she saidm and I struggled through my French, but it was powerful and I totally criedm ha bien sur. Butm that was one of the most powerful moments I've had so far....I know that I am here on God's errand, and that I am doing His work, and that I have been assigned to labor among these specific people. 

We are visiting a less active member named Giselle. She is an older african ladym who is very sad and lonely, and we are helping her to pray and and know the Savior is there for her. We have had a couple of redezvous with her and are excited to help her more.

Two sisters were baptized last week, and their confirmations were on sunday. The Sabbath was a powerful day, I loved church, and have a new gratitude for faithful members who helped my parents raise me in righteousness...THANK YOU! They had a primary program. and I was truly touched as the children testified of missionary work and talked of preparing to become a missionary....how did I grow up so fast?

Something we like to do when we plan is "fixer des rendevous avec Dieu" basicallym since we are starting from ground zero, we decided in our weekly planning session to set aside specific times where we expected to fill with rendezvous with people we found on the streetm or we would set up a specific route to tract and commit that path to the Lord. We have been able to fill many of these rendezvous, and hope that the people will keep the,! The most miraculous on was with a young man named Nicholas. We had just talked to a grumpy old ;an who told us to go and find someone who believes (which, doesn\t really phase us, its ok to be rejected....sometimes its discouraging, but people like Nicholas make it  all worth it) anyway, we found out that he had grown up in really hard circu,stances, but one day just found God, and converted to Christianity on his own. Our brief encounter on the street turned into a two hour long conversation in a cafe! Oh it was so edifying, I wish I had the time to tell you all about it....anyway, we are meeting again with him tomorrow....please keep him in your prayers! Words can not express how wonderful this work is....I am so thankful to be in this beautiful country, with these beautiful people, who speak this beautiful language, which I am sure I will understand someday! :)

real quickly....I now am allowed to email for an hour, which is great, and I can revieve and send emails with any family or friends I would like. Letters are still better since there is no time limit, but I will do my best to respond to whatever emails I can after I do this big one each week, k? 

Ok, time to sign off. sorry for the spelling errors I am still trying to figure out the french keyboard. 

I LOVE FRANCE! I LOVE THE GOSPEL! This work is true. We are children of God and we have a Savior who loves us.

working hard and loving it!

love soeur waldron

ps yes we had thanksgiving with the othermissionaries at church...we even found someturkey! delish

PPS I might or might not have misplaced my passport...I know you are suprised. Will you cobine your prayers with mine to find it? I know it is somewhere :) 

OKLOVEYOUBYE!