Week 5!

Bonjour!

 

So not too much really happened in the way of new info for this week. 

 

As of Sunday, Soeur Archambault and I are the sister training leaders for our zone. It's not too much of a change, but we have more meetings. We do get to do the official welcome for the new district coming into our zone tomorrow night! We're so excited. We're getting 5 new elders and 3 new sisters. We were assigned to be the new sister training leaders because we're officially the sisters who've been here the longest. We work with the zone leaders a lot. They're two elders from the other district (I think I send a picture). They're a lot of fun.

 

A LOT of our zone left yesterday morning for Paris and Lyon. We had 4 sisters and 9 elders leave, so we're pretty small right now. I can't wait to get our new district in tomorrow and not have so few of us! It was pretty bittersweet to say goodbye to everybody. Everyone that was here when we got here is gone now. It's really weird.

 

This morning, we went to the temple. Soeur Archambault and I walked there with our zone leaders and the other 7 sisters in our zone. We were almost there when we see two guys in suits sprinting away from the temple. Upon closer examination, we realize that those two guys in suits are none other than our two elders. They had forgotten something and they sprinted all the way the three blocks or so to their dorm and back and managed to not be late - and in SUITS! The two of them running in suits had to be the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. We were all dying laughing.

 

Oh yeah, and I can say one whole word in Tahitian... repentance. So I'm pretty much fluent. I don't know how to spell it, but it sounds like it would be spelled Tata'arapa. 

 

Elder Bednar came and spoke to us again last Tuesday night! It was incredible! He continued to answer the questions he received on Christmas. I took a lot of notes that I'll have to send a copy of sometime.

 

Yesterday, during a lesson, Soeur Archambault was showing our investigator (Frère Headrick) the finger tricks to remember the 10 commandments, and there's one where you make a gun symbol. She got really into it and accidentally stabbed herself in the eye, then nearly fell out of her seat. So basically, the whole lesson stopped and Frère Headrick broke character for a good 5 minutes or so.

 

I think that's all I've got for this week! Je vous aime beaucoup et comme Soeur Archambault dit, "Je sais que Dieu vous aime"!

 

-Soeur Frost

The last bolder sentence translates to, "I know that God loves you!"

Week 4 - Bonjour! - Lessons, Language Learning Mess-ups, and Elder (Walter) Bonhomme de Neige

Hello!

So this has been a really awesome week! Soeur Archambault and I have been teaching a lot of really great lessons, so we're liking that. We had both of our investigators (read: teachers) commit to baptism this week and actually gave a mock church tour. The tour was a little rough in French, as we're lacking in conversational vocab, but it went really well overall.

While the two of us were teaching the other day, the Elders snuck out and built a snowman right outside the classroom window, so when we came back there was a snowman staring at us through the window. It was a major source of fun for a few days as we kept modifying him. At night, you could only see him if all the lights in the classroom were turned off, and we managed to really scare Frère Nash with that by having him stare out the window and turning off the lights. He said it looked like a monster with giant bug eyes because we gave him glasses and he was snowed on so much that he didn't exactly look like a snowman as much as a snow blob. Eventually he melted, and now he's a chunk of ice outside our classroom. I thought Elder Broadbent might cry when he saw the snowman, named Elder Bonhomme de Neige (bonhomme de neige means snowman) dying.

So as we learn French, there are bound to be a few incredibly embarrassing things said, right? Well this was an interesting week for that. First, Saint Esprit means Holy Spirit, and sang means blood. The difference between those two is not exactly huge in pronunciation, and so Elder Broadbent found out this week he's been praying for the "blood Spirit" instead of the "Holy Spirit" for around three weeks now. The other really funny one was when Soeur Archambault tried to tell me to "Frappez la porte!" (knock on the door) and she said "Frappez la morte!" (hit the dead.) Our teacher even came out of the room to laugh about it when he heard that, and I'm not sure we're ever going to let her forget it.

So that's about it here! Oh, and we're pretty sure we're having another member of the 12 come and speak with us tonight, so that's awesome!! Love you all!!!!

-Soeur Frost

Week 3 "A partay! And some other things as well, I suppose"

Below is the latest email from Jordan we received yesterday.

So this was another great week here! We very much appreciated the party gear - we took lots of pictures that I'll have to send to you a little later. What started out as our small district eating junk food and drinking sparkling grape fruit turned into the district of 6 elders two doors down hearing us and stealing the noisemakers.... So it was a success? We had a lot of fun! I've got pictures of our teachers in funny hats, plus all of my district and most of the other district who joined us.

The next evening, the other district had stolen one of the funny tiara things (dubbed "party crowns" because that makes it more manly when you're wearing a sparkly pink/purple/gold hat) and were forcing Frère Laguan to wear it. At the point I caught on, I was asking a question while sitting in my rolly desk, and all six elders were about ten feet away from us, with me in between them, staring at him and slowly advancing in a pack, because he had taken off the hat. It was terrifying, and I wasn't even the one they were after! He quickly answered my question, and then whispers to roll my desk into the middle of the hallway, successfully blocking almost the whole hallway. He then took off in a dead sprint, quickly followed by all the elders, two of whom vaulted my desk. I'm told they chased him to the parking lot, then stood at a distance and watched him get into his car. Never a dull moment!

Last night, Soeur Archambault got a Dear Jane letter... from her FHE brothers from school. They wrote a letter as a group acting like they were breaking up with her for a girl "who doesn't object to a $5 engagement ring from Walmart". It was so funny! Also, she says it's not cold in Kansas City, because where she's from they don't cancel school unless it's colder than -45 degrees Fahrenheit. ...I could never live in Canada.

We got new teachers this week! We've only had one class with them, but they're pretty cool. 

Yesterday morning, Soeur Archambault and I both went to take showers in the morning and successfully locked ourselves out of the room. We had to borrow a key card from another sister to get access to the other floors to look for someone with a master key. Finally, we got back into our room, but forgot to bring the key card to access the floors, so we ended up stuck out in the stairwell. All in all, it was a great big fail in true "us" fashion. We were 20 minutes late to class. Luckily, so was our teacher! 

Well, I think that's all I've got for you. Love you all!!

Week 2!

Below is the email we received from Jordan:

"Bonjour!

Christmas here was phenomenal! We had Elder Bednar come and speak to us! It was so awesome, he handed out 200 cell phones (no, we couldn't call home on them) and gave us a number we could use to text questions to the iPad he had with him on the stand. He spent an hour and a half answering our questions, with help from his wife. Sister Bednar is awesome :) The rest of Christmas was great as well. We had a talent show, and ate kettle corn while we watched The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Christmas concert from 2012.

We've had a fun week in our District. We're all pretty close already. We had a substitute teacher all week named Frère Nash. He's awesome. He keeps referring to us as "the funny district" because of the things we say to each other and because we can't even sing one hymn together in French without cracking up because it's just so bad. We call ourselves the Graveyard Choir.

Yesterday, we spent probably a half hour trying to determine Elder Woodbury's "type". I think he was a little bit embarrassed. Okay, more than a little bit.

Soeur Archambault and I had two "investigators" that we were teaching last week. One in French, the other in English. On our last lesson with the French one, he committed to baptism, so that was an awesome success! We tease our elders because we got a commitment first. We also had our English investigator ask us this ridiculous question that we didn't know the answer to, so we spent the entire next day finding her the answer. We asked the class next door, their teacher, and Frère Nash, who finally gave us the perfect answer. Then, she didn't show up to our appointment. Talk about disappointing. But the French "investigator", Steven, turned out to be our new teacher, Frère LaGuan, who's a really cool guy. So now we have two teachers!

We're all excited for our New Year's Eve party tomorrow night that our district is going to throw together. It'll be awesome! Love you all!

-Soeur Frost"

Here are a few pictures Jordan shared with us.

The Christmas tree they made for their room

Jordan's District outside the Provo Temple (A District is the group you train with)

Jordan and her companion