Week 14

Bonjour ma famille!

First I want to say happy late Birthday to Greg and Brittany (sorry I missed you!), Julie, Audrey (I can't believe you're in Young Women now how exciting!) and Jessica yesterday!  I also wanted to thank everyone who has sent me letters: family members, friends, members from the Orange Crest ward and anyone else, thank you!  It is always so fun to get a letter, sorry I haven't written many people back, there just isn't enough time as a missionary.  It goes by too fast, I feel like I'll never accomplish all that I want to while I'm here because of that, but I'll do my best.  Thank you Carrie, Brian, Caden, McKenna, Tanner, and Clara for the easter package!  That was so much fun to get and even though I LOVE the French chocolate and food it's funny how you start to crave American food when you haven't had it in a while so that candy was perfect ;) although my face hasn't gotten any thinner, but that's okay. 
Congratulations to Jenny and Mike!  You're new little baby boy Samuel Thomas Reeves is adorable!  He looks like Megan to me, at least from the pictures I saw.  I'm very happy for you!  Mom it's been great to hear all that's been going on in the Riverside mission I especially loved the story about President Plocher flying his helicopter right over the mission home!  That's hilarious!  I loved hearing the story about Amalie the French foreign exchange student who lived with the Dyers.  It makes me realize that there are a lot of prepared people like her here in France I just have to look for them, otherwise I will never find them. 
Well, this last week was really great!  We didn't teach as many lessons as we have in the past, but we got 4 new phone numbers!  One lady is named Ernestina from Ghana who speaks English.  I told her about the church and the said she had never heard about it.  She then asked where it was and I said here in Versailles.  She also asked if it is in English, I told her it is in French, but we translate into English so she got very excited!  I hope we can get her to come.  We had a less active come to church last week and two more are supposed to come this week!  We left our apartment at 7 am last week to go and meet Martha and go to church with her just to make sure she would come and she did! 
On Monday evening we had dinner au chez famille Doby and took Sonia with us.  She is an inactive member who actually attends an Evangelical church now.  It was awesome though because Soeur Doby taught her in young women and was able to ask Sonia a bunch of questions and there was a lot that we found out that we didn't know before.  We are going to re-teach her all of the missionary lessons that investigators usually have before baptism and we hope we can help her regain her tetstimony.  She's really a great girl there is just a lot that she doesn't know or at least has forgotten about the restored gospel. 
We had exchanges on Tuesday.  Soeur Murray and I went up to Valeniennes (it's in Northern France) and Soeur Didier came down to Versailles with Soeur Woodruff.  It was such a good exchange!  Soeur Rowley is probably the best examle I have seen as far as following the promptings of the Holy Ghost and contacting everyone in her path and she always prays for the Lord's help.  We taught a family who has been meeting with the missionaries for a long time and we had planned to talk about tithing, but when we got there and as we talked with them all of us felt the strongest impression to talk about prayer and the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ through Joseph Smith.  At the end of the lesson the dad looked at Soeur Murray and I and said, "It's not an accident that these sisters met with us the one day they were here in Valenciennes."  The spirit was very strong and it was such a great lesson.  (By the way, the mom thought I was Parisien because of my accent!  She was surprised when I said I was American.  I was very excited, that means my French is getting better, at least my prononciation.  Their accents on the other hand were so hard to understand.  The Northern French have very different accents than Parisiens.)  We then taught a young man from Togo.  He had met with the missionaries a long time ago, so we were asking him what he remembered and what he had been taught.  He pretty much taught us as he shared his testimony and a basic summary of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I then asked him if he had a desire to be baptized.  He looked at us with a confused look on his face and then explained to us that he had been baptized! he just hasn't been to church in a long time and hadn't been able to find it since coming to France and wanted the missionaries to help him start coming back to church.  We apologized for having misunderstood and explained that we are still learning French.  He understood and he's very excited to start going back to church and meet other young adults. 
On Thursday we were going to pass by a few amis but we missed the bus and a huge storm was coming in so we decided to stay in Versailles and we took a different bus toward Marguerite's home, but then we accidentally got off at the wrong stop.  We had said a prayer telling Heavenly Father what we had planned to do but if we were supposed to do talk to someone else to please let us know where to go.  When we got off at that stop we all looked around and felt like we should go porting down that street.  At the first house the man wasn't interested, but at the second house we talked to a young man from Marseilles who was here visiting his parents.  He said he was non-believing, but that it was because he's never really thought about God before, but we invited him to meet with missionaries in Marseilles and when we asked if we could have his number he said "Of course!"  At the third house the woman wasn't interested so we kept walking and we a woman walked past us so then I ran to catch up with her.  We talked for a little bit, but she is from Romania so she didn't understand much and she told us she had just left her daughter's house but had to hurry and catch the train.  I realized we had walked past her daughter's house and I had seen her talking with her daugher.  We then turned around and weren't sure which house it was but we kept walking and then we came up to one where I felt like we should stop.  Soeur Murray and Soeur Woodruff saw some play toys in the back yard so they said it was a good guess.  We rang the door bell and it was her!  Her name is Mariana.  She was very sweet and has a little girl (maybe more children).  We told her about the importance of our message and how much it can bless her family and we have a set rendez-vous on Wednesday!  I'm so excited!
We stopped by Julia and Rui's last night.  We still had a plate that had given to us with some cake so we went to return it.  I felt kind of awkward at first, not knowing how they would react or if they would let us share a message.  It was actually only Rui, but thank goodness for threesomes because we got to go in!  We talked to him about the importance of prayer and scripture study and how important it is to not just read our scriptures but study them and really ponder about what we have read and studied.  It went really well and you could tell by the end of the lesson there was a light in his eyes.  Maybe now he really will feel the difference when we aren't there.  He told us that their stopping the lessons wasn't permanent and he even mentioned that he wants to pray in English at our next lesson.  So I hope they will call soon asking us to come back.
Well, I must go now, but I love you all!

Bisous, Soeur Reeves

P.S. Soeur Murray has a new companion, so there are now two Versailles equipes.  Her name is Soeur Moraga.  She is actually a senior sister, but her companion doesn't come until August.  We really like her!  She is from St. George and was a French teacher and served a mission in Tahiti when she was a 21.