Salut!
The past few days have been hilarious and stressful. My stomach has been going crazy and so I am living off of rice cakes. Transfers are this week and we really had no idea what was going to happen. Usually you can kind of guess because of who is in what transfer etc, but since Stahly and I are the same age in the mission, it was impossible to guess. And we wanted to stay together SO badly. We have been planning our Thanksgiving dinner for weeks! AND since we live in the ward with the APs and the office elders, they know EVERYTHING days in advance, so avoiding them was SO stressful. We couldn't even look at them. Dramatic? Yes. But we just didn't want to know. And then we checked the email and STAHLY IS STAYYYING! We jumped up and down and hugged and the Elders were all like, "We have been wanting to tell you this for DAYS. This is ridiculous." So here we are, starting another transfer in Versailles.
Everyone is on vacance (Again you ask? Yes, again. And almost always.) so we didn't really have any amis to teach. Luckily Florence needed us to finish up the carpet, and with the help of the Elders, her apartment looks brand new! Along the way we learned some fun French games from her little girls, and I now know how to rip up carpet and lay linoleum. Useful life skills you never knew you would learn, and never knew you needed.
So we went out and searched for and found people who need some extra light and hope. And we found 'em. One day while we were in Suresnes, we were knocking on doors in an apartment building, and we knocked on a door, and a man with crazy hair answered. He lit up when he opened the door. We told him we were there to pray with him, and he let us in. He lives in a tiny apartment and he has one book shelf with two books on it. Guess which two books? The Bible and the Book of Mormon. He told us that he met the missionaries in the South of France years ago and that they gave him a D&C too, but he gave it to a friend and never got it back and has always wanted another one. We read a scripture about coming to Christ and being healed, and he just smiled as we read it. He is such a broken soul. After we prayed with him, he asked if he could ask us a question. He said, "How did you come here? Was it just random, comme ça?" And then Sœur Stahly bore a beautiful testimony of how God had sent us to him that day. That of all the millions of doors in Paris, we knocked on his for a reason because God loves him. And then he says with tears in his eyes, "You think so?" And the only way I can describe it, is that suddenly, in an instant, I had new eyes. He wasn't a broken, mentally ill man that smells like smoke. I saw him as a child of God, that God loved infinitely. And that is the most beautiful thing about being a missionary. There are no ordinary people.
We went back a few days later, and he had the Book of Mormon layed out on his floor, and he said that he has reread that verse about Christ healing us about a thousand times, because it is the only thing that brings calm and peace to his heart. We passed him over to the Elders to teach, and I am so glad they can start teaching him. In that same area, we were contacting and we started talking to a woman and she started walking away, and we were like what is happening? And then she turns around and says "Follow me, I am going to show you where I live and then you can come and teach me about God." Whaaaaaat. This never happens.
It was a week full of lots of beautiful miracles. So happy to be in Versailles and so happy that Sœur Stahly is staying! I will leave you with some words of wisdom to contimplate from our friend the drunk man at the gare: what does avion stand for? A- appareil V- volant I-immitant O-oiseau N-naturel.
I love you!
xoxo
Olivia
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