HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!! I hope you're all doing something fun to celebrate one of the greatest holidays of the year :) Sister Palmer and I made sugar cookies and valentine's for several of our less actives and took them to them which was a lot of fun. And the Groux's made us each Valentine's....so cute :) And then tonight we're eating at the Bishop's house and we're not quite sure what we're doing after, but they told Sister Palmer to make sure that we wear red, and I love that family so it'll be a wonderful evening. Other than that for today we're just relaxing, trying to catch up on sleep...it should be a great day :) Except I didn't get Janey's package yet...so sad. We onyl get mail from the office every couple of weeks and the last time that we got it was about 3 weeks ago. But we're going on a split with Concordia sisters this Wednesday (I'm going back to my greenie area for a day with one of the girls I trained...I'm way excited!) so we're going to stop and pick up the mail then. So I'll get it soon! I can't wait! :)

This week was a really good week. It went by kind of fast...I don't really remember much about what happened. There were a couple of fun stories though...on Saturday we ended up having 2 dinner appointments one right after the other and that was a bit intense. The first one is a returning less active who I LOVE and who has decided that she is feeding us dinner every Saturday until I leave (even though we have dinner appointments for at least one of those saturdays already) and she feeds us TONS. She always gives us salad, the main course, and then a dessert, but she doesn't eat the salad or the dessert because the main course fills her up. But we can eat more than she can, so she gives us everything, haha. So we were there and she had invited one of her friends over and that was really neat to meet her...she's coming to the dinner again next Saturday and wants to watch the Restoration DVD with us because the less active told her about it and she was really interested. So that'll be neat :) Then right after that we went directly to another DA with a family that again fed us too much. I think I've gained at least 5 pounds just this weekend. We were both full halfway through the first meal and I honestly didn't think I'd be able to finish the dessert on the second one, but I did. But then the next morning (Sunday morning) we ate breakfast with our ward mission leader (I LOVE that family as well...they're just so cute!) and we could barely finish it and we were still full for our DA Sunday night. By the end of the salad we couldn't eat anymore and we still had the main course and the dessert. It was all really good, just a lot more food than we're used to in a very short amount of time. But I love the members in this ward...they're amazing :) And it's interesting...somehow everyone found out that I'm leaving in about a month. i was trying to keep it a secret except from one or two families, but it spread to everyone and they all keep asking me about plans as soon as I get home and trying to figure out when I'm getting married. Sister beaumier said I wouldn't even come back this summer because I'd go home, find my "chum" (boyfriend), get married, and then be pregnant this summer. Then the Grolaud's decided that I needed to marry someone French and so I'd probably marry the missionary that I was going home with. God would make it so that on the plane ride home I would sit next to another returning missionary and start talking to him and we'd get married not long afterwards. I said I didn't think that would happen since I'm not going home with any other missionaries on the same plane and I didn't think I'd fall in love that quickly and he quoted that "any righteous man and woman living the Gospel can have a happy life together" or whatever the quote was. Just kind of funny. They're not helping me focus on my mission, haha.

But luckily Sister Palmer and I are focusing really well. we taught quite a few lessons this week and things are going great. There was another man who showed up at church this Sunday who we'd never met before, Jean-Guy. Turns out one of our members invited him to come and listen to him give a talk. So Jean-Guy came in and asked us if this was the church of Leona. We didn't know that that was the first name of Frere Caron, so we thought he had asked if this was the church with the Liahonas, the French version of the Ensign magazine. And so Sister Palmer responded "Yeah, you can find one in the Library" and he was a little confused. We quickly realized that it was his first time there so we gave him a tour of the chapel, talked about missionary work a bit, and then he stayed for all 3 meetings and participated and really enjoyed them. We're teaching him on Saturday which is really neat. I'm excited :) Denis came to church again and we taught him the second lesson and he's going to work to be baptized...we're going to meet him every Saturday. He said he left our meeting on Saturday (the plan of salvation....we kind of skipped over the veil and turns out that was a HUGE thing for him, haha)and wasn't sure if he wanted to commit himself and if he wanted to keep meeting with us or not, but then he told Frere Angulo yesterday after church that he had thought about it all night long and couldn't stop and kep comparing us to every other church and finding the "catch" but so far he hadn't found one. So he wanted to keep meeting with us every Saturday until he found something wrong or got baptized. So we'll keep meeting with him until he gets baptized, because I'm confident that he won't find anything wrong...this IS the true church and it is led by God Himself. It'll be good :)

Oh, also a funny story: so yesterday we left our DA which was out in Boucherville, an area that I don't really know all that well. It had snowed several inches and the lines on the road were all covered up. So we had to turn left on to this slightly larger road and a car came down it from the direction we were turning and was in the lane I thought we were supposed to be turning into. So I looked a little farther and saw a median and then another opening for the road. So I went, passed the median, and turned into what I thought was my lane on the road. We got stuck and I realized that it wasn't a road, the other person had been driving on the wrong side of the road and we had just turned into a set of train tracks. Sister Palmer got out to try to push and 2 girls pulled over to see if they could help us, but there was nothing they could do so we asked them to leave, and then I just tried backing up and we started to smell burning rubber from our tires on the railroad tracks and then a tow truck pulled up and stopped and the guy got out and told me how to turn my wheels to get myself unstuck. It was definitely an experience....first time I've ever driven on the railroad tracks :)

But it was a fun week and this week is going to be even better. We have a lot of lessons set up already and the area is doing pretty well. I love the members of the ward and I'm so excited to work with them this week! It'll be great. I hope you all have a wonderful week...I love you and Happy Valentine's Day again!

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey