10 May 2016 - Week 26: It's been a roller coaster

Bonjour tout le monde!!

This week, Soeur Rooarii and I had a lot of ups and downs, haha. Once again this week, we weren't able to teach our amis who had been progressing before the past 2 weeks. Funerals, break-ups, work... Lots of reasons why we couldn't see them! That was discouraging and part of the downs. And our efforts to find new amis through sondage and contacting failed--we got lots of straight up "no's". Usually, they act like they're interested a little and then tell us no later when we try to set up a lesson. But this week people just said no. I don't know which method I prefer, haha... 

But one of the ups this week was that our new ami Moise wants to be baptized! We had lessons with him Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Thursday, we were talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ (the five steps) and he said he's done the first two, faith and repentance, and now it only follows that he gets baptized! Moise has a lot of faith and loves studying the Gospel and learning at church. He also talks a lot with his brother and his sister-in-law about the Gospel, so he really knows a lot already. For his baptismal date, we offered the 21st of May but he asked for the 14th! It's his birthday and he liked the idea of being reborn on the day he was born. We (Moise, us, his family) were super excited and started preparing the program. But then on Friday night, Soeur Rooarii and I realized that he would need a baptismal interview with President Granger, not just with our district leader. That was a big down because we knew there would be no way to be able to arrange the interview and everything and still be able to announce the baptism on Sunday. But Moise is so humble and willing to accept the will of the Lord that he's okay to wait to be baptized if he needs to. So we're pushing the date back and it was actually arranged that he'd have his interview with President Thursday night over the phone with our district leader there to translate. This week, we learned a lot about accepting the Lord's will even if we have righteous desires in our prayers. God knows what's best for us a lot more than we do! But yeah, everything with Moise this week added to our roller coaster of emotions! 

Sorry about Skype... but don't worry I will let you know when I can do it. We haven't been able to find anywhere to do it yet! We have two members who offered, but we need to arrange it with them first. At  this rate I think it'll be next week or the week after... I will email next week and (hopefully) be able to tell y'all when. Everyone here uses tablets and Skype because it's free. It's just that we need to arrange it.

Je vous aime tous! Sorry my email isn't super long but it's kinda hard to write a lot sometimes!

Passez une bonne semaine!

Soeur Matheson

Here's some pics of our apartment to make you happy.

[We have] 3 beds because STLs sometimes have to keep other sisters during the transfers. No AC but we have a fan. Actually, it's been a lot cooler and rainier, so it's not bad.