Hello everybody !
It has been a roller coaster of a week (like normal, hahaha), but it's been a good one. I can't believe it'll all be over so soon. For those of you that don't know, I'm flying home next Tuesday. I'll be traveling for 19 and a half hours straight... pray for me 🤣
The older woman we were teaching last week suddenly decided that we were a cult, and she would never talk with us again. We're not really sure where she got that idea, but since she refuses to talk to us, I guess we'll never know. It was initially really hard for me, because I wanted to reason with her, I wanted to have a chance to get her to talk to us. But the spirit guided me towards a different approach - ask of God. So we wrote her a super sweet text telling her that we weren't going to try to convince her of anything, but that we knew that she could always get answers from God. She hasn't responded, but now any time she looks back at our conversations, that's the invitation she'll see. And I hope that someday, in a few months or a few years, she'll give it a shot. I've never felt so at peace about dropping someone though, so I'll just trust God on this one.
Our friend Abel in Ghana finally met the missionaries in his city ! He had been kinda reluctant to meet with them, but he finally accepted to last week, and then he had them with him at his house when we called on Tuesday ! We were so excited to see them, especially when we saw that Abel now has his own physical copy of the book of mormon and several pamphlets to study. We taught him about the word of wisdom, and how God asks us to experiment upon his commandments to see the blessings he is waiting to give us. Abel was laughing, because he'd protested against giving up tea, and he said, "so to know if I should give up tea, I need to give up tea ? Okay, okay ..." He's such a genuine person, and it's a pleasure to know him and work with him. And it's such a blessing to know that he's got good elders taking care of him now.
It's weird being a missionary when you can't stop people and talk to them. But our mission president has asked us to walk around outside still and be visible. So we've been doing that a lot. There's one man that we said hi to 2 days in a row, and he stopped us and asked us if we spoke English. He's from Sierra Leone, so he speaks English ! We had an awesome conversation, got his number and email address, and invited him to church. He came, and even though he didn't understand everything, he liked it. We encouraged the Elders to talk to him (we have to have a woman with us to teach men, which isn't super convenient, so often we'll pass our male friends to them), and they totally bro-ed out, and he says he's definitely coming back next week. By small and simple things (just walking around saying hi to people) are GREAT things brought to pass. On a similar note, my companion has taken to carrying a book of mormon with her everywhere. We were on a bus, and a woman kept staring at it. She got off at the same stop as us, and said she had the same book at home. Apparently she met missionaries... 20 or 30 years ago at english classes. And she asked us a few questions, and then accepted a pamphlet. She didn't want to give us her number, but we gave her ours. So who knows ? Sometimes it's just baby steps, but it matters to God.
Anyways. For our touristy adventures. Yesterday we went on a walk to get videos of nature for a video we want to make, and I took my companion up to this like, natural park area on the top of the city. The sun was going down, and threw sky was stunning, and we were ringed by mountains, honestly, it was heavenly !! We got lots of great pictures and videos, so hopefully we're all set 😅 It was so much fun though !
And today we're headed down to the spanish border. We were going to go earlier this morning, but our train got delayed an hour and a half... sooo now y'all have gotten a long and comprehensive weekly while we wait.
Ok, report back. I know why people retire to the south of France. It's because it's so chuffing beautiful. If you ever get the chance to hike along the french-spanish border (note that we, as good missionaries, stayed on the french side), right next to the sea, take it.
Love you guys !
SÅ“ur Cate
