I am so delighted to be emailing you again this week! The title of this one corresponds with daddy's. and one of my all time favorite hymns, "More Holiness Give Me."
Can you believe it, I am actually staying in a ville for a third transfer!!!! This is the first time my whole mission that has happened! My beloved Soeur Kohler got on a train this morning to go to Marseilles. Tomorrow I get on a train to go to Lyon and pick up a brand new missionary who I will be training! YAY! I am super excited to train. This is about the time of year that I arrived in the mission field last year. There is a sense of familiarity about the leaves changing and the gray foggy sky. I love this time of year. It just feels right.
So, for today I get to spend some time with the TALENCE SOEURS! We meet in the same building with our wards, and their ward is the ward that Leigh Anna served in while she was here. Lots of people still remember her and I am excited to spend a little time in their secteur, and hope that I will get to do an exchange there :) There were elders there up until two weeks ago when they switched and went to Lormont. funfunfun.
This week was incredible. I know that the prayers of the Lord's servants on behalf of Kevin's family have been heard and answered! I am infinitely and eternally thankful, and this is only the beginning! His mother is normally at their home in Gabon, and got back into town a little while ago. We finally got to meet with her this week! She asked us for a Book of Mormon and all of the brochures and his older sister Marlyne stayed for the discussion with us. (she has the cutest child in the world named matthis) Anyway, it was incredible. At this point we have now met seven of his brothers and sisters, the only two I still don't know are david and servanne. His little brother Alvigne came to church with us on Sunday and got to witness Kevin be ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood and Julien as well (i think Cheng would have recieved it as well but there were lots of tram praoblems on Sunday and he ended up having to walk a ways to church in the rain...he is such a champion). Remember the story about the wonderful little 17 year old girl who miraculously found us?! She is now friends with tons of people at church is is just doing so very well and I got to see her twice this week and that was just the greatest of joys. YES!
Mom and dad I am so impressed at your ability to include the precious details of missionary life in your emails. I will try and do a better job! Here are a few things that happened this week.
We were on the tram one day and this man, not of a Christian faith, decided to follow us and talk to us about religion. He had some pretty strong opinions, but we were just calm and listened and only shared our point of view when he asked, nonetheless we stated the truth simply. These situations can often turn another direction if you aren't careful, but in that moment I was just so aware of what I was representing and tried my hardest to just keep it under control, especially so those around us could see that missionaries are tolerant and we love people of other faiths. After he got off of the tram my companion and I just said 'he was nice.' and that's it. I noticed that the woman that had been sitting accross from me the whole time looked rather familiar, and asked her if we had met before. It turns out that we had. I didn't know exactly what to say, she had obviously just overheard the whole exchange, and so I just complimented her cool African necklace. She took it off and gave it to me right then and there. She is the mother of four children, and is from Ivory Coast (like Roger) and lives close to the less active member who teaches me piano once a week (have I told you about her? she is great and from Bulgaria. mom would be proud that on her bday I had my first piano lesson at her house and I can now muscle my way through two hymns....like riding a bike I guess :) she and I also bonded over a song from macedonia that I learned in BYU folk dance...turns out they really do sing it in Macedonia! It is a small world after all!)
That was a long parenthetical bit of information, wasn't it!
Here's my closing thoughts. Like my parents in Washington DC, living in big European cities for the past year has caused me to consider a lot of things that we just aren't confronted with on a day to day basis in suberbia. I am convinced that God lives and He wants us to love eachother. Love changes everything. It really does. I would like to echo the words of so many in General conference that encouraged us to love and cherish eachother. We must rise above fault finding and judgemental behavior and love everyone, for each soul is of infinite worth. We are children of God, we are brothers and sisters, and we need to act that way. I pray that I may have more charity. I pray that we may all share this great love with one another. I pray that the Lord will bless and keep you all this week. I pray that the Lord will bless my dear country and home of America in this time of election and our freedoms may always be protected and that we always be grateful for them. And I pray that you will pray....that we will all pray, with more purpose, that the Lord may grant us the blessings He so desperately wants to give us.
All my love!
Soeur Waldron
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