Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Today I Rode a Camel

3 June 2013

What a big week!!! I'm talkin' about in Utah! It sounds like a ton has been happening! So congrats on the trillions of friends leaving on missions soon... Guys, this is crazy. Church is true!!!
Birthdays! Mommy, Nellie... Gosh, I'm failing. I promise I'm better at birthdays than I make it sound like. But HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMACITA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love you, old lady:') And Nellie Coleman!!! Someone get Danielle Seegrist to write me! Freak!
Yes, the camera came! Last Tuesday! And apparently I have a bunch of letters waiting for me at the mission office that I'll get Wednesday or Thursday... OUIIIII!:)
Oh by the way, I didn't ride a camel today, I just couldn't come up with something interesting to say, so I went with that. Sorry to anyone I may have offended.
Quotesof the week:
1. Elder Waldie--on the phone with us this morning as we asked him and Elder Woodbury (who replaced Elder Nzojibwami) if they wanted us to pick up Subway for them on our way to meet them at the church. Elder Waldie was uncomfortable with us paying, and said, "How would we pay you back?" We answered, "Well, if we can use your priesthood [for blessings] whenever we want it..." To which he replied, freaking out: "My priesthood?! Sisters! What! That's priestcraft!"
2. An investigator--over text, as we left her lesson on the law of chastity: "I've been chastified!"
This week we had exchanges again, and this time I lead them (WHAT?! YOU'VE BEEN OUT FOR 3 WEEKS AND YOU LEAD EXCHANGES BY YOURSELF?!) in Riverview with Sister Thompson, who's also still in training! So it was a little crazy, a little stressful.
But I committed the Choret* boys to baptism.
By myself.
Kachiiiiiiiiiiing-uh! (Mika voice at the end of that song. Shoot, can't even remember the name
 of the song. This is what missionary work does to youuuuu D:)
So yeah, June 22 and July 13 will be great days for us! And as far as mission goals go, Riverview is smiting down those goals and surpassing them like crazy! Heavenly Father is hastening His work, and is beginning to trust the Moncton ward with His children.
Life is good.
I keep getting a lot of questions about French, so here I go! Everyone listen up.
I've been picking up French like CRAZY. Seriously, it's a miracle how much I've been learning. I am by no means fluent, but I can say way more than I ever thought I'd be able to say. This week, President came to New Brunswick for interviews, and he asked me about my French. I told him how difficult it is to learn it without a French companion and without someone to teach it to me, and he is going to have one of the French Elders call me weekly to have a half-hour conversation with me in French. Kind of intimidating, but I'm glad to be doing it because I have a lot of work to do, and it's hard to do it on my own.
And my understanding of French has been crazy too! I could understand a lot when I left home, but with everyone's weird accents here (Acadian, Chiac, Canadian French), I couldn't understand quite as much. And then BOOM, this last week, I've been suddenly able to understand so much more. It was a huge breakthrough for me. I spend a lot of time speaking French now and am much more confident in it.
Hey, remember how I skipped a year of French? Because the homeschool thing threw everything off?
Yeah, that was the year everyone else learned a ton of verb tenses. And did Sister Lewis learn any of that? Nada. So my biggest problem right now is saying anything that's in a tense other than "Nous te remercions de ton evangile" and "J'ai oublier mes Preach My Gospel". Haha ahhhh it's really confusing and stressful. I need to get a French-English dictionaire aussi.
In the BoM right now, I'm in Alma 32. I just read about the people getting wicked again and praying irreverently at Rameumptom. Alma prays to God because the wickedness of the people sickens him and makes him sad. He says: "Behold, O my God, their costly apparel, and their ringlets, and their bracelets, and their ornaments of gold, and all their precious things which they are ornamented with..." as he describes the wicked people in his prayer. That reminded me of Isaiah 3. Let me quote a few verses from that chapter, but replace a few words with their definition:
Moreover the Lord saith, Because the church is haughty, and walks with stretched forth necks and desperate eyes, walking with short, rapid steps in an affected manner it goes, and making a tinkling with its feet: Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the church, and the Lord will discover its secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their hairnets, and their ornaments shaped like a crescent moon, The chains, and the bracelets, and the veils, The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, The rings, and nose jewels...
Now picture a person like that. Someone with chains about their neck and their wrists and their ankles, walking with their neck stretched forth because they're being dragged by the chain around their neck. This person has desperate eyes. Later in the scripture it says this person has a bald head. This is a slave. And by reading Moses 7:26, we know that this person is a slave to the devil: "And he beheld Satan; and he had a great CHAIN in his hand, and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness; and he looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced."
Now go study this some more, because with those two references, you can go on studying about Alma for days:)
Okay, that's all for today! I love you all, I LOVE YOUR LETTERS, and I miss everyone like crazy!!!!!
Church is true!!!!!!!!!! Love you!
Sister L

No comments:

Post a Comment