Hey everyone!
So this was my first week training, and it's been a bit rough, but good. Being the senior companion is A LOT more work than I was expecting it to be! But the elders have been wonderful and I have an incredible companion, so between them and the help of the members, it's been going well.
We went to the ice hotel on Monday, and that was fantastic. It was SO impressive what they do with ice and snow here. It was pretty warm, so there were parts that were a bit melty, but it was still really neat to see. Ramouski elders also came up with us, so there was a group of 8 missionaries, and that's always fun :) Then Tuesday was an adventure. Sister Pearson left early Tuesday morning and that was SO sad to see her driving away in the bus...I really miss her; she is just incredible. But she came back with her family to visit on Saturday and Sunday and we went out to dinner with them and had a wonderful time. Her parents were so nice and it was fun to sit and talk with her and find out all about her dying testimony meeting and dying party and everything like that :) It seems like forever away before I come back home, but then when I think about it, I've already been out for almost a third of my mission. There's not that much more time left....so crazy.
But anyways, so I stayed the day with Soeur Pelletier, the sister in the senior missionary couple, and she is so sweet. She has a very difficult accent to understand, so that made the day a bit interesting, but it turned out all right. Then we went and picked up my greenie! her name is Soeur Cottrell and she's from Alpine, Utah, but has lived all over the place. She's a professional harpist (plays for weddings and other concerts and things) and has 4 younger siblings. She's a convert....everyone in her immediate family have been members her whole life, but I guess she didn't live with her family for awhile and didn't get baptized until she was a teenager, so she does have a strong testimony of the gospel and can really relate to the investigators, which is a good thing. It has been a bit difficult, however, since I only speak a little bit of French and she doesn't speak ANY French at all, so sometimes it's a struggle to understand what's going on, but we've done pretty well so far :)
And the week missionary work-wise was pretty good...I'm still getting used to having to make all the decisions and Soeur Cottrell really doesn't know anything that's going on, which is to be expected, so we're working it out together. But we did get some finding in. And we FINALLY got ahold of Patrick and had a lesson with him that went really well. He doesn't quite understand what's going on though...he knows that baptism is a commandment and it's a good thing and he LOVES what we're teaching him, but we found out in the lesson we just had with him that he doesn't fully understand what baptism implies. He thought he had to live the commandments until he got baptized and then afterwards he could do whatever he wanted, to he said he still wanted to get baptized this Saturday, but then Soeur Belanger (our wonderful member who comes to most of the appointments with us) reminded him that when he gets baptized, he's making a commitment to come to church every Sunday from then on and we told him again that he had to keep the commandments AFTER he was baptized too, and he decided that, in that case, he was going to postpone his baptism until he could figure out exactly how to obey the commandments and really feel comfortable in living all of them. So it's a good thing; we really want him to be comfortable with the idea of being baptized and living the commandments so that he can keep them his whole life, not just for another week. We're meeting with him again tonight and we're going to watch Finding Faith in Christ and talk a bit about how faith does lead us to action but we really need to trust in the Lord and know that He'll help us to obey the commandments he's given us, or something like that. We'll see. I hope it goes well....
Oh, and the other day, it was so wonderful! So our next door neighbor/landlord, Frere Caron, is just incredible. His wife and his 4 children (only one of which lives at home) are all less active, but he is completely stalwart. So about 2 weeks ago he gave us a paper with a question his wife had had concerning a part of the Plan of Salvation and returning and living with God again. We found an answer and he invited us over this past Friday to talk about it. When we got there, his wife's brother and sister-in-law (both nonmembers) were there as well, and we sat and visited with them a bit, and then started to share the answer that we had found. We then moved on to prayer and how we can always ask God for answers and often He'll answer them in the scriptures or through other people, and her brother asked how I could have such faith in that, and so I gave a few examples and bore my testimony about the importance of prayer and then Frere Caron did the same. It was SUCH a great lesson. The next day we saw Frere Caron and he thanked us again for the lesson and said that his brother-in-law had been really touched by the lesson and really impressed by the things that we had said, so he's going to invite us over again the next time that they're over there for another quick lesson :) It was so exciting!
Then we also met this man, Roger. He's a bit odd, but really intersted in what we have to say. We taught him a first lesson and he loved it (I think...I really don't understand ANYTHING he says since his accent is so strong, so I usually just nod my head when he talks and pray that he's agreeing with what I say and then keep talking) and said he'd start reading the Book of Mormon immediately. he couldn't come to church this week, but he'd definitely be here next week. We're teaching him again tomorrow, so we'll see what happens! :)
Other than that, the week has been pretyy standard...nothing too out of the ordinary. The elders came up with a game for us to play while knocking doors, so starting tomorrow we're going to be playing "rejection bingo". they made us a bingo board with different numbers corresponding to all the different ways that people accept/reject our message, and whoever gets bingo first, wins. I'm pretty excited about it :) Oh, and it's zone conference this week which is always fun, and we're having our The Living Christ fireside this Sunday...I'll let you know how it goes next week! Love you all!
Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey
"As surely as this is the work of the Lord, there will be opposition. There will be those, perhaps not a few, who with the sophistry of beguiling words and clever design will spread doubt and seek to undermine the foundation on which this cause is established. They will have their brief day in the sun. they may have for a brief season the plaudits of the doubters and the skeptics and the critics. But they will fade and be forgotten as have their kind in the past." - General Conference, April 1994
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