22 June 2016 - Week 32: We're district leaders!

Bonjour tout le monde!!

Haha, to explain the subject line: We had the transfer a week early, and for the past week and this week we've been waiting for the new missionaries to arrive. Because our district leader left and our new one is coming from Vanuatu on Friday, Soeur Rooarii and I are the "district leaders" for our district until then. Haha, all we do is send the zone leaders our stats at the end of the week, but it's still fun to say that we're district leaders :) Two sister and three elders are arriving on Friday.

We had a great week! First of all, we almost reached our goal to have 20 lessons in a week--we had 17! Woo hoo!

We had an exchange with Paita this week and I got to go to Paita with Soeur Vogel! Reunited enfin!! I had a blast because there's lots to do in Paita. There's always a lesson planned or an inactive member to visit. We were busy the whole day, and we had 7 lessons together. In 24 hours! That's almost half the number we usually have in Koutio in a week. In Paita, they can easily have more than 20 lessons, and they do! The cool thing is that the members work a lot with the missionaries there because it's a small ward. And they invite the missionaries to eat a lot but also invite the amis or inactive members they know, so that's awesome. But yeah, I loved getting to experience another secteur in the mission. I'm lucky as an STL because I have the chance to go to multiple secteurs when we do exchanges :)

Other good news! We found an inactive member on Friday! We'd actually gone over there to find a different person (an inactive sister) but it turns out she doesn't live there anymore, but this other inactive member does! Little miracles! We invited him to Church, but he didn't come. But hey! At least we found one of the lost sheep, and we'll work on bringing him back to the fold!

And another cool thing is that we FINALLY met and taught Steve, an ami [investigator] who'd had a baptismal date for March that the sisters before us had been teaching. When we got to Koutio, we could never get into contact with him. It turns out he was in Lifou. Now he's back and STILL hard to get into contact with because he doesn't have his own phone... But he likes to balade [ride] everywhere around Nouméa and he's actually contacted us through other missionaries in other secteurs that he'd run into, like Ouemo and Robinson. Awkward... But we finally met him on Sunday, and he really wants to get baptized! We're excited for him and ready to help him learn the Gospel and make the necessary changes in his life so that he'll be ready.

Other than that, things are going well here in Koutio, and I'm loving my mission! We still have the baptism of Marie-Christine set up for July 9th and the cool thing is that she took two weeks off work just so we could have more lessons and so she can take the time to really prepare herself by reading and studying the Book of Mormon and the brochures. We're totally taking advantage of that, and we have several lessons scheduled with her this week! I just want to let you all know that I know the Gospel is true and there are still miracles today!

“And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.” (Mormon 9:19)

JE VOUS AIME TOUS! 

TAL TOUL!

Soeur Matheson