September 25, 2017

Want to spend pretty much all 4 seasons in Nancy? Sign me up!

Sœur Hunt and I get to stay another 6 weeks together! That will make more than 7 months for me here. I love it!!

We had a good rdv with our ami Joseph. We talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ. He doesn't have a lot of background or understanding of his role so it was cool to see him understand that yes Christ did die for us and yes He suffered for us but because of that we can be resurrected one day and we can be free of all sin and pain. Those two things make eternal life possible. Jesus Christ is essential.

Well we were talking and Joseph was saying how he doesn't quite understand all that we say but everything he reads he believes! We had the opportunity to ask him to be baptized and he said yes!! Although he doesn't quite understand all of it and he is moving in a few days, he does have the desire to continue and act! The best part was that we got to teach with a couple in the ward and they helped so much! They explained everything so clearly. I never want to teach without members again!

We also had a really good street contact. It was a young girl, maybe 23 and we talked for about 20 minutes! She was very open and interested to why we are here. We told her all about the restoration, even recited the first vision, gave her a book of Mormon, got her number, set up a rendezvous for just a few days later. We were so excited!! She seemed really touched. Well fast forward an hour and we receive a text from her saying she doesn't want to meet anymore. That was a little heart breaking but oh well. She's missing out!

We also received a referral from temple square in Salt Lake! I guess they were on vacation and come back this weekend. We will see how that goes!

I loved this simple statement of truth from the last general conference. "God the Father is the Father of our spirits. We are His children. He loves us, and all that He does is for our eternal benefit. He is the author of the plan of salvation, and it is by His power that His plan achieves its purposes for the ultimate glory of His children." I know He cares about us and is working hard for us to be able to have joy forever!

Soeur Giles


August/September Zone Conference





































Letter to Mom:
Wow that all sounds awesome!! You got lots of things done. I'm excited to see the house in a year, it'll be so different! I am SO excited for an avocado tree!!! And truf, that will make playing games in the backyard easier.
Tell hi to Brenda and the other lady as well. They are so nice!
How is Summer?
My week was good! We spent some time looking through my ancestors with the genealogy specialist in our ward. Her name is Noelle and she is awesome. She actually as some ancestors named Lucas as well! They are from luxembourg. The Lucas line on my tree only goes back to people still in the United States. I wonder how we could try to past that. Maybe we are related! haha
Another night we went to a young couple's apartment for dinner and it was so fun!! They both served missions and it was so fun hearing their stories. Also the wife was cutting the bread (apparently in the wrong way) so they had a 5 minute argument about how the bread should be cut when we eat it with cheese.
Another night we went to the Clavey family for dinner. His name is Gilles and her's is Ketty. They are both great grandparents only 70 and 60 years old. But Gilles reminds me so much of dad, just goofy all the time, and it makes me laugh! So we had some good moments this week, and good food!
And i am staying in Nancy for another transfer! It is my 5 th here. I'll for sure be gone after the next one :( that'll be 7 months here! I'm glad to stay with Soeur Hunt as well. We are doing well!
It was actually a lot warmer this last week. I haven't worn tights in a few days. But scarfs will be coming out soon don't worry.
Yes I feel very safe! I recognize all the crazies here and they are not mean just crazy haha. It is a very pleasant place to be!
This week I read the book. Our heritage. It is in the missionary library and it was super good. I love reading about the restoration of the church. But also it focuses not so much on joseph smith but on the fact that we do have continued revelation. We have a prophet today who is actually being directed by the Lord in what to say. How awesome it is that we get to hear from them this weekend! I'll watch the relief society one on sunday and then the 1st session also on sunday but other than that I think we have to find time in our schedule to watch them because of how big the time difference is. One thing I tried to do these past few weeks was to focus on the ones that where just given in April and use that alot during lessons because it is revelation that was meant for this time right now. And I found a new talk that I didn't remember super well each time I went into the gospel library. It was so rich with inspiration, i love it!
It makes me so happy to hear from you!!
Have a wonderful week mom! You are amazing and I am very very grateful for you!
Love,
Sœur Giles

September 18, 2017

This week we were walking around one morning deciding where to go to find and a man walked past us quickly and said "what's up sisters" and continued walking. First of all we need more information than that random man who knows missionaries because we do not see american tourists very often. So we followed him down the street and we saw that his car had broken down and his wife was there too! They are members and have been living in Germany for less than a year and were visiting the big cities around. But something happened and they didn't know how to get there car fixed. So we were able to talk with them a little while and find for them a place to go and get a tow truck. It was cool to be guided by the spirit to that place where we could help them!

Also I learned how french toast came about! Here it is called pain perdu or lost bread. So they would take the bread that is going bad and fry it to make it still edible. 

We got to visit a less active again, which was nice. She needs a lot of support and really enjoys our visits.

Have a wondeful week! 

Sœur Giles











Letter to Mom:

That sounds like a fun Friday party! Clay is lucky!! We have been making quesadillas here and I make a little salsa to go on it. And it's good that you eventually got to that to do list, if I was there we would have it done right away :) that's a lot of changes you have planned! Is dad's work going well?
This week was okay, a little tiring because we walked around a lot and couldn't find anyone but we are still going strong! This week is looking a lot better already.

It is kind of a stereotypical thing to say but I have really come to love the cheese here. Seriously it is like ice cream. People eat it with every meal and it just tastes so good. The longer I am here the more I love to eat it. It grows on you! At first you think it is nothing special but then you just want more!

I'll just say the few big things in the other email, love you tons. Thanks for all your support, 

I also pray for you every day!

Love,
Sœur Giles

Letter to Clay:

Clay you spelled banana correctly haha thank you for your email. You are indeed my favorite little brother :) and you will probably grow up to have my same excellent grammar skills because I also had mr Locken for language arts and he taught me grammar. We will see!! I sent you a letter today so you should get it next week!
It is COLD here. I need that nice blue blanket that you sleep with up here with me. I wear lots of sweaters at night. And lots of fuzzy socks.
My companion is super fun and very helpful. Even though she is new she is doing great!
Right now we have a few investigators named Joseph, Chloé, Irène, Alexandra, Nono and Sylvia. They are making progress slowly but surely.
How is your football season going? I heard you ran the ball, go you!!
Have a wonderful week Clay.
Love love love you!!
You're favorite Sœur, Hannah

September 11, 2017

Good times in Nancy!

Here are a few highlights of the week:

We actually got let in while knocking doors!! First time ever!! Well we hardly ever actually knock on the door, its more like press the little bell and wait for them to stick their head out the window. But we were at this little apartment building and we pressed the bottom name, she couldn't quite understand through the speaker so she opened up the window and peered down at us. We tried again to explain who we were and then she said "oh you speak English I suppose? Why don't you come up and we can talk." So we walked up and met Margaret! She grew up in Germany and while there her mom owned an apartment building and that is where the missionaries lived! So she has known Mormons her whole life. She has lived all over the world and speaks German, English, and French. She moved to Nancy because of her husband's work and has lived here ever since. Now she lives alone, but living a good life. She used to go to the English class taught by the missionaries and really enjoyed it. It was perfect because we will be starting one soon! She also invited us back on Mondays because she gets together with other old people and they speak English together. It was a neat experience.

This weekend was stake conference and it was nice to see so many members come together, the whole chapel and gym was filled with people! The best part was the baptism after. An ami from Luxembourg wanted to get baptized on his wife's birthday (Also Nancy has a font which worked out nicely) which was yesterday! Our ami Irène was able to watch as well! She has been coming to church for months but has trouble understanding basics. It was a great opportunity for her to see what the covenant is and how happy the new member was after he was baptized (even though the water was freezing because the hot water didn't work). She told me she really liked!

President Sorenson assigned each of the zones a way of finding to become masters at! Our zone is genealogy work which is perfect because our family history specialist is amazing and loves it so much. Her name is Noelle and we met with her on Friday to just go through family search and talk about how to use with our amis. It was so fun! Also she brought us a lot of patisserie which were delicious. We have been trying to talk about it as much as possible to people that we meet but I'd love to hear about how you have used genealogy and what blessings you have seen or experiences that you have lived. 

Also at the end of this month our ami Joseph will be moving to the south of France to find work. Which is super sad because he is loving all that we are talking about and he is just such a cool guy! But he asked if there are missionaries down there a few times already so we have high hopes! 

Have a wonderful week!

Sœur Giles




Letter to Mom and Dad:


Bravo dad bravo!! Very impressive, I actually really enjoyed it haha good job!
Can't believe baby Cassidy is all grown up! I remember watching the car drive away when summer left for college. 

All is going well here. I've really been thinking about how to work with the members. We have a really cool family here, Eynora and Alexandra. They are both in their twenties and served missions and really supportive. But I talked to Eynora yesterday and she noticed that of all the converts that have been baptized in the last 2 years, only one comes consistenly every week and is very reliable. He is actually the young mens president and he was baptized less than a year ago! His daughter is one of our amis as well. But we were talking about that and how frustrated she is because she has put a lot of work and effort into this people and not very many of them stay. We're trying to figure out why.
But I have really been feeling that the key to growing the ward here is members talking to their friends. I realized our members are mostly all related. There are ties in almost every family. That's really the only way the ward has stayed together! So now we have to build the connection between the members and missionaries not so that they just hand us all their friends but so that they feel comfortable sharing their testimonies with others and do the work themselves. So as members what advice do you have? What would you like the missionaries to do so to help you share the gospel? How's our family mission plan going? :)

My testimony and understanding of the gospel has really grown while being out here mostly because I study and apply the teachings to others lives then I am also able to apply it in my own as well.
We had a fun experience this week. We were walking on a street in the old part of town and there were big numbers on the ground so Soeur hunt was looking at them. An older guy in front of us makes the sign of cutting his throat and tell us thats where it happened while pointing at the ground. We were super confused but we stayed and talked with him and his family and they told us about during the war in Nancy a famous guy was killed so thats why there were numbers on the ground. Then we started talking about how we are from the US ad they are actually going to new York next summer! They are super excited. So here are the pictures from that. In the middle is the mark of Lorraine (the region that we are in) and now I see the mark everywhere and I never noticed it before!
Thanks for your emails, tell clay hello! You are a wonderful family, I am very blessed!

Love, Sœur Giles

Sept 4, 2017

Has it been 6 months or 6 days?

Another good one! We have found a nice neighborhood to knock doors and went there a few times this week. It was very fun to just walk around and enjoy the summer evenings even if we got told that everyone in the Lorraine region is Catholic and staying that why. They were super surprised to know we have a ward here.

 
Yesterday all the university students came back!! The city was so lively, good things are coming in the next few months. 

We also had zone conference this last week. 2 bishopric members and 1 stake high councilman from the Nancy stake came and observed us while practice teaching and gave us insights into working with the members. One thing that I really liked was that we need to become the message if we want these members to feel of our love and help them share the gospel with their friends. It is more than what we say, what makes a difference is who we are. 

Our ami Joseph came to church yesterday for the first time! He really liked it. The ward was very welcoming and even Joseph was going up to the people he had met before and saying hello. He volunteered to read in amis class and was not timid at all, it was awesome to watch!
We had a rendezvous with a less active and her less active friend was there! We met THE Marie Claude. Marie Claude is just another less active who is friends with the less active in our ward. Not anyone actual special but till now she has been a mystery because Marie Therese talks about her all the time but we finally met her!I had only heard stories about her for the whole time I've been here but we finally met and she was surprisingly normal and very nice. 

I really like this verse in 3rd Nephi "Arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole earth, and have been slain for the sins of the world." Though this was when Christ appeared in the Americas, it could also apply today. We don't have to blindly believe anything. Christ invites us to have spiritual experiences for ourselves, to be personally healed through Him.

Bonne semaine!
Sœur Giles














Letter to Mom and Dad:


I think the fallen tree is pay back for all the times we threw things over the wall. But weird and interesting that it just fell without an external force! Good thing no one was outside! Also I heard there is a hurricane or something in Texas and that there is lots of flooding! Are the Jacobson's okay? And Todd and Shelly live there too right? And Maria and what's his name! Oh i just remembered its John. Oh and we can't forget about Chip and Joanna?!? I wear my magnolia farms shirt a lot.

I'm glad Mackenzie had a good time in florida and that the baby is doing well.
That is so hot!! The summer here was not bad. It is already starting to be really chilly in the mornings. Fall is coming quick. It will be a long and cold winter. Sometimes its hard to tell myself to get up because it is dark outside now and it hasn't been the whole time I've been here and I don't realize it is 6:30! But the alarm is loud enough. In all my dreams I am a missionary but normally the setting is at home or somewhere else so everything is super weird! Then random people start speaking French or signs are in French, hahaha!

As a companionship we started the challenge that Elder Nelson gave us to go through all the sections of the topical guide on Jesus Christ and read and mark them. Well we are doing it just for the Book of Mormon right now. And it was interesting knowing that Nephi knew what Jesus's name would be 600 years before his birth! Also it is cool seeing about how many witnesses there are on each subject. There are a lot of verses that mention he created the earth.

So President Sorenson wants us to make the mission song more reverent so I learned the song in a few days to play it for zone conference and it turned out very nicely, well as nice as it could be. Normally it is sung pretty fast but with the piano it has to be slower. 

The flowers and the garden pictures are very pretty! Crazy Cassidy is going to college. Seems like just yesterday it was me and Jake. You dropped us off at Helaman halls in the good ol green machine. She will have a great time! 

Sœur Hunt's French is progressing. It takes a lot of work to speak but the comprehension is coming. We are going to split up the lessons more evenly now so she will practice more and more. 

Tell Clay good job for running the ball! He is a stud.
That's about it for this week. Have a wonderful one!

Love, Sœur Giles