What a week!! Lots of miracles and plenty of disappointments, but we're still standing here in good ol' Martigny!
Tuesday and Wednesday - We drove all the way down to Béziers, to work on my legal papers, so I can stay another year in France. It ended up being like twelve hours of driving, but we made it there and back safely! We got to visit with the Klemasz couple and even got to see a couple of my favorite members from when I was there - super fun trip, but wow I'm tired of driving!
Thursday was our exchange in Lausanne. Elder Sorensen and I got to teach a handful of lessons, and every one of them was so cool! Really cool miracle - we taught this one Columbian family who didn't really speak French. We brought a Spanish speaking member, and the majority of the lesson was this family and our member speaking back and forth in rapid Spanish. I learned some Spanish in high school, but I've definitely lost the vast majority (all of it. I've lost all of it.) since then. But I was able to understand 99% of what they said! Even Elder Sorensen, who'd never learned Spanish, was able to follow pretty well. Towards the end of the lesson we looked at each other, and Elder Sorensen invited the couple to be baptized, and they said yes! What a cool experience - the Spirit was so strong! We walked out and the member told us "everything you shared during the lesson fit perfectly with what we were talking about" Anywho, it was way cool and the gift of tongues is real!
Friday we had an awesome rendezvous with a young convert to the church. We met with him to help with his family history, and it was a really cool lesson! He'd never really looked into it before, but he was able to input his grandparents' information and will be able to take their names to the temple in the next couple months!
Sunday was our branch conference. We'd invited and had been planning on six of our amis attending church that week, and were so excited for them to hear the talks and all of that. Sadly, the night before and morning of, all of them canceled and we ended up with no amis at church. We were pretty disappointed. But then the stake president got up and gave this awesome talk on avoiding discouragement and depression, and it was honestly exactly what we needed.
All in all a pretty crazy week - it feels like our trip to Béziers was forever ago. I'm loving it here though, and I'm excited to see what this week brings!
One thought from the stake president - he asked us to imagine that it was the Savior up at the pulpit giving the talk. Would we feel even an ounce of discouragement or depression? Of course not! Hopefully we'd feel an urge to improve and serve, but negative feelings like depression are just not how God operates - He instills hope! Elder Holland talked about how Christ's command to be perfect can seem intimidating, but as soon as we understand that God is happy with our best, even if we're flawed, and that He'll be there every step of the way, it becomes a lot less daunting. Anywho, I love God and I love this work, even when it's hard!
Je vous aime! Bonne semaine à tous!
Elder Suisse
Pics:
Lac Lèman from our car window
Us, the Béziers elders and the Klemasz couple at an Indian restaurant
The (very overcast) Mediterranean!
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