Saturday, January 16, 2016

14 January 2016 - Week 10: CYCLONE ALERT!!

Hello everyone!!

Sorry I didn't email earlier! Mom, don't worry, I'm totally fine! We had a cyclone alert during P-day this week so we weren't allowed to go too far from our apartment just in case the cyclone decided to hit us. It was mostly in Vanuatu, I think, but we got some pretty good rain here! 

Last week and this week have been pretty good! We've been teaching a lot more! We have three new amis, and we'll have another once we get to teach him on Saturday. And we finally got to see Sabrina, an ami that we've been trying to see since we got here! So we have 8 amis and we also have 2 convertis recents we go see each week (one of which is the Tuahivaatetonohiti family and they're awesome!) and we try to see some inactifs, most of whom are old mamis who can't/don't want to come to church. We've been pretty busy the past couple of days with lessons. We've been trying to schedule our lessons for earlier in the week so that if people cancel we can move them to Friday and Saturday. We've also been working with the members more, especially Soeur Bayon. She loves bringing people to church and she's a member present in a lot of our lessons, so that's cool. We're trying to get other members to come to our lessons too to have some variety and plus Soeur Bayon can't do everything even if she wants to, haha. Plus, we need members in our lessons with William, Lucien, and David parce que [because of] missionary rules, haha. And our two amis with baptismal dates are doing really well! And we're going to invite Lucien and the Draytons, an elderly couple we've started teaching, to be baptized. We think they could be ready! At church, Soeur Tellus and I have been sitting apart from each other so we can sit with more of our amis. It's really cool to do that even though it's hard to have a conversation with who I'm sitting with without Soeur Tellus, haha. 

We've been doing this thing called La Promesse de 21 Jours where we wrote a list of amis, convertis recents, and inactifs that we wanted to focus on and every day we pray for them by name morning and night and read a scripture about missionary work and faith. We're nearing the end of the 21 days and we're seeing the results! Our amis are doing so well and we've been able to have contact with the people that we hadn't been able to see yet, like Sabrina. It's amazing to see and it's been a testimony to me that if we have faith, miracles will happen! We've been trying to have more faith in the work and it's been helping a lot! I'm actually sad that the 21 days is almost over, but I know that if we continue to pray in faith for our investigators and do all we can, miracles will happen. 

Random thought: yesterday we were in Centre Ville after a lesson and we were sitting on a bench in the Place de Cocotiers, the main plaza where everone hangs out because there's shade and nice places to sit. We saw a lot of tourists from a cruise ship and you can pick them out really easily just based on their clothes and some have their ship cards on lanyards around their necks haha. It makes me wonder how touristy Dad and I look when we're on our cruises... Awkward! haha but now I want to take a cruise.... :)

Also, we've been taking the bus more because it's a long walk from our apartment to Centre Ville (our secteur is huge.....) and it's fun because on the bus they like to play popular music but it's usually really cool remixes of American songs. It's hard to not sing along, haha! Also, the bus has the clime (A/C) so we really enjoy that :) It's been really hot here because it's the middle of summer. The rain cooled it down a bit, but it's been getting hotter and hotter. I sweat a lot and I haven't worn makeup since I stepped off the plane in Vanuatu, and my hair is usually in a bun or a braid. We have fans in our apartment and we have them on full blast all the time! We just got a new one because one we had broke and the new one is really powerful and awesome. The senior missionary couple, the Guerrera's, who take care stuff like buying things for the apartments and the cars and the carte de sejours [permission to stay] (btw, I went to do mine last week and now I just have to wait for it to be made and then I'll be official!) they only buy the best for the missionaries :) 

I've been great! My comprehension of French is actually getting a lot better, even with all the different accents. One of the hard things is that people here speak quietly even if you're outside and it's noisy or it's during a meeting in a big room. Half the problem with comprehension here is just even being able to hear people speak, haha. My other problem is that it takes me waaaaayyy too long to form sentences when I speak French because everyone speaks so fast and doesn't really give a lot of time to respond before they keep talking, haha. But I'll keep trying! :)

Je vous aime! Bonne semaine!!
Soeur Matheson

Pics!
1. A failed attempt at taking a zone picture... We were trying to use the timers and there were about 12 cameras and not everyone was ready when they went off..... 
2. There was a dog and her puppy waiting at the bus stop with us yesterday. There are a lot of dogs here. Another one was a small chihuahua, and he followed us while we were walking. He was really happy haha
3. For Mom, our laundry "room" haha. It's outside.
4. Soeur Tellus with our new DVD player! We didn't have one, so we couldn't watch any of the training videos (or any of the church videos... sometimes you just want to watch a movie, haha) She's really happy about it :)





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