10 February 2016 - Week 14: Zone Conference with President Granger!

Bonjour tout le monde!

This Monday and Tuesday, we had Zone Conference with President Granger! We talked about being clean, being ready, and being busy! It's always awesome to have conferences like that because you feel so much motivation. The hard part is keeping that up and applying everything we learned/were reminded of/the challenges from the mission president during the conference to the work in our secteurs.

It's been HOT this week. February is the worst month, apparently. Good thing it's the shortest! The work is hard because we walk and then we get tired really fast, but people are really nice and when we have lessons sometimes they'll give us water. We also are being smart and carrying water with us, so don't worry Mom, I'm not dead! :) I get a little sunburned pretty much everyday... it's unavoidable... but it tans quickly now, so that's fun :) 

It frustrates me when people cancel their lessons the minute before. It frustrates me when we walk all the way to the lesson, or take the bus into town, and don't have a lesson. It's hard to feel like you did nothing that day. But then I just remember that our secteur is one of the ones with the most lessons. Most other secteurs the missionaries are just contacting and tracking down people from the area book. I just remember that we could have 0 amis, but instead we have a lot. I try to be happy all the time, because what's the point of being unhappy?

Last week was a really good week for us! We had 15 lessons and we gave away 7 Livres de Mormon! That was cool! This week it's been harder because whenever our shedule for the beginning of the week is different than normal, it's hard to get back into the normal rythm for the rest of the week. That's annoying. A lot of our amis have said they can't have lessons because they're busy with work and with school starting. Or they just keep rescheduling... Grrr. We're supposed to have 2 baptisms this weekend, BUT one of the amis went out of town without telling us and won't answer the phone... and the other we just keep having to reschedule the lessons... awkward... So y'all will know on Monday whether that happened or not...

We have a new investigator that's from Vanuatu and who's just in New Cal for work. She's really ready to hear the Gospel! We gave her a Book of Mormon in Bislama (Buk Blong Momon) because she wants to read it in her native language (she speaks French, but she doesn't like to read it.) She prayed at the end of our first lesson in Bislama. That was really cool! We're going to invite her to be baptized at our next lesson, and I think that if she's read the Book of Mormon this week, she'll accept! :)

Our district has decided to really work to integrate the members in missionary work. We came up with some ideas of activities and firesides we can have that members can invite their friends to. We just need the bishopric to approve it but we're having a meeting with them tomorrow morning and we're hoping they'll be on board. The ward really needs to get involved in missionary work here because we really can't have success without them. I think the work will really pick up here as we start to work more closely with the members. 

I'll be emailing again on Monday, so I'll try to write more and send some pictures. My camera battery died right when I plugged it into the computer just now... SO SAD. Y'all will just have to wait for the video of President Granger improv dancing during the variety show we had during the zone conference! Haha :)

Je vous aime tous! Bon week-end! 
Soeur Matheson

Hey, guess what! Here's some pictures! Soeur Tellus saved them on her USB key! Y'all will still have to wait for the video of President Granger dancing! à lundi! [Until Monday]

We got a bunch of macaroons last week! My favorite was the framboise (raspberry).

The South Zone with President and Sister Granger, their daughter Dimity, and the APs! Soeur Tellus and Elder Tuarau ruined it, haha.