The weeks when you hands-down deserve junk food and mail from home!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY VERY FAVOURITE 17-YEAR-OLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Quote of the week:

After "visits" with our district leader, Elder Widdup (where you do the work together and he evaluates you), he was going through our planners--

Elder Widdup: "You didn't plan a back-up for Amanda's baptism?"

Sister Olson: "No. I was assuming that would go through. And if it didn't, I was going home and eating ice cream."

It feels weird that a year ago, I was on my mission.... What the heck!

It was definitely a LONG WEEK!!! Nothing really huge even happened. We had exchanges with the Bathurst sisters, had a concert, and had regular missionary work for the rest of the week... But we were wiped out for some reason. Through a lot of lessons of learning to rely on the Lord though, we were able to end it stress-free and with a lot of hope and readiness for this week.

#missionaryprobs

-When you try to pull out your debit card, but pull out a pass-along card instead

-When your car is a mess because it's covered in law of chastity pamphlets

-When someone actually lets you in at a door and so you can't talk to as many people as you wanted to

-When your favourite apostate song comes on the radio at the grocery store

-When you accidentally introduce yourself as your companion

-When you don't care enough about what you look like because you're not available anyway

-When your favourite investigator offers you coffee

-When you realize you don't have much money for groceries because you spent your gift money from home on your recent converts

-When you realize you only have 5 minutes of personal study yet and you panic because you spent all your time reading the Book of Mormon in the language you're learning and didn't spend time preparing for your investigators' lessons

-When you get tired of people not wanting to talk to you about church, so you start stopping people on the street by asking if you can sing to them instead, and THEN they suddenly want to talk to you about church

-When you're out of finding ideas, so you just add the word "finding" to the end of your favourite activities so they seem legitimate... swimming finding; football game finding; fireworks, firearms, and other explosives finding; wearing jeans instead of skirts finding....

Every week, all the missionaries in the mission study the same topic. This week, it's repentance. Sister Olson and I had a great discussion about what repentance means... Because obtaining forgiveness for our sins is just the bear minimum that repentance covers:

1) Sins. We are able to be cleansed from all the things we do that are wrong. We don't need to feel burdened or guilty about them anymore. Heavenly Father forgives us and forgets our sins.

2) Weaknesses. We are able to turn our weaknesses into strengths when we apply the principles of repentance. Good becomes great. Weak becomes strong. We become better.

3) The fine-tuning. We are able to become like Christ. Things we don't like about ourselves that aren't even wrong can be changed. We become true disciples of Christ when we align every part of ourselves--even the parts that aren't necessarily wrong--to Him.

We've also been discussing a lot about faith. We've concluded that there are 3 different levels of faith:

Faith0: "Yeah, I believe in Christ." "Okay, will you [do this thing that will prove your faith]?" "I don't think I can."

Faith1: "I believe in Christ. I believe that doing this will help me. I'm not sure what the outcome will be, but I'll try it."

Faith2: "I believe in Christ. I have a testimony of this principle, because I put my faith to the test, and now I have received a witness that it is true."

I'm grateful for the first principles of the gospel and that because of developing a faith in Christ and applying repentance, we aren't only cleansed from sin, but we make perfection an actual possibility. I'm grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who created a plan that enables us to have constant progression so that one day, when we're with Him again, perfection is attainable--perfection in ourselves, and also in our joy.

Love,

Sister Lewis

We decided we weren't learning French fast enough, so we labeled the whole apartment

I think I'm funny or somethin. Heh heh heh.

The cute blessings that come from knocking on the homes where cute French kids live

Some bon food, la

"Celebrating" my year mark on the 24th:'(

My ice cream was two-thirds gone too:'( :'( :'(

Elder Wolsey hit me in the face with a snowball (which was really an ice ball, embarrassing), so he gave me "repentance chocolate"... Favourite brand? Not complaining.

Sad day.  Maple syrup suckers.  Elders are nice.

(Here's the link to the referenced song in the video.)