Week 68 (5/18/20): 😎 Je vois la vie ... en rose 🕶🏵🌹

Hello everyone !
I hope you had great weeks 😁 Mine was kind of stormy and cloudy and rainy but on Sunday the sun came out, and it was lovely, and today has been lovely to so I'm very happy. I got to go to a shopping center today where I could actually buy clothes for the first time in like 3 months which is important because the season changed. I didn't have many summer shirts or any summer shoes so now I'm much better equipped for the coming summer. I'm very excited for a proper summer here in Perpignan because it's beautiful... and I was here last year so I would know ! 😂

We had transfers for the first time today since March when everything with the virus happened so that was really exciting ! My companion and I are staying together in Perpignan but every other companionship in our district got changed. Us and the two cities nearest to us basically just rotated one person. So one person moved over to from city A to city B and then one person from city B to city C and one person from city C to City A so that was transfers for our district and sector .... It's so weird that Elder Gray is leaving, because he was here for my last transfer in Perpignan (last fall), so he's been here for a long time ! But it'll be fun to have a new person here to shake things up a little bit after so long.

We had a really good lesson online with someone I met on Facebook ! He lives in Belgium ! We are trying to help him meet the missionaries there, but it's still really cool that we can talk to him. We taught him about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was cool to hear his thoughts and opinions. He said he would read the book of mormon and ask God if it was true, so that was really exciting for us ! Now we just have to wait. That was our biggest miracle this week 😊 I'm so grateful to be a missionary and get to talk about God and his plan and like the meaning of life all the time because it has really helped me get a much better perspective on life in general and on the people around me and and why I'm here. Such an incredible blessing and opportunity.

Something else that's funny is my dad just had a mission mission zoom reunion and he found out that one of his old companions was a bishop in Switzerland, and there was a missionary from his ward that was serving in my mission (Elder Aeschbacher). Surprise, he's my district leader, and he was coming down today for transfers ! So I got a picture with him today for my dad, it's crazy what a small world the there is within the church. We're all connected somehow ! It was funny while we stopped by to say hi and grab a picture, one of the elders asked me if my hair was red and then took off his sunglasses and was like "oh, it's just my sunglasses". Then to show me, he took up a picture through the sunglasses. So I now have a picture of me in France through rose colored glasses so you know I've pretty much peaked in my life now 😂😂😂

Anyways I've probably bothered you for long enough. You may have noticed a difference, I'm actually writing this email with the voice recording text to speech so that's why this is longer. And more scatterbrained... for which I apologize, as well as for grammatical and punctuation errors because I did go back over it but like, I'm kind of scatterbrained on P days so anyways I hope you guys are doing super well and I'll talk to you all next week !!
Love ya !
Sœur Cate

Also, a picture of baby ducks, because they made me very happy 😊😊😊

Elder Aeschbacher, Rachel, and her companion

Before her companion cut her hair

Week 67 (5/11/20): The world is our oyster !!!*

*some conditions apply

Hello everybody !!
Guess what ?? We got to leave the apartment without writing up that whole essay ! Yay ! Though now it's illegal to not wear a mask in stores or on public transportation, so we had to get masks. We went to like, 7 stores to try to find them (walked like, a billion miles), but no luck. So we called Jean Brousse, one of the kindest human beings on the planet. He told us that this adorable old woman in our ward, Lucie (that I was great friends with when I was last here) was a seamstress, and she'd made masks ! So he brought us a couple. They're just white, nothing fancy, but they're really well made. So that's exciting ! Those masks are our ticket to freedom, we can go wherever we want now (within 100 km of our home, but like, that's not a problem). And parks are reopening ! So if the weather gets less disgusting (looking at you, week long rain forecast), then we'll be able to explore anywhere we can walk to !

The work moves forward, despite the weird circumstances. We've been able to have a couple really good conversations with people... and a LOT of conversations asking if we were single, if we were married, if our profile picture was us, how old we are, and a number of variations around the same theme. Oh dear. We asked the elders if they'd had the same problems, and it sounds like it's a lot easier to be an elder. Though one of them has been hit on by both a guy and a girl recently. The internet is such a strange place, it's every bit as weird as everyone tells you, and then some.

Other than that, it's been a pretty chill week. I've enjoyed having picture quotes with general conference quotes. Finished Isaiah (bless that man). Thinking about starting Revelations. Why not ?

Love y'all !!
Sœur Cate

Week 66 (5/4/20): May the 4th be with you... and the 11th hurry up and get here

Hey everybody !
I hope y'all haven't gone crazy yet. Or at least not too crazy. I feel like a little bit of crazy was inevitable.

News for this week: there are Elders in Annecy !! So I did a few calls with them this week, helping them settle in and get into all the right group chats and everything, which was surreal. I'll be honest, I kind of thought I'd be going back to Annecy after this was all over, but it looks like the Lord has different plans ! It's also really funny because I have the old Annecy sim card, so I got a bunch of calls from people trying to contact the new elders- the branch president, the zone leaders, the district leader, which was really fun, because I hadn't talked to them for a while. It was beautiful seeing their branch group chat blow up with how excited they were to have missionaries again. And several reached out to thank me one last time, which really touched me. What a blessing !

Other random thing- I've started editing photos on my phone to make picture quotes with scriptures and general conference quotes on them to post on Facebook. I'm just starting to learn how to do it, but I'm having loads of fun, so that's something.

Well, we're going into our last week of full quarantine (unless they extend it again), so if the government is kind to us, we won't need to write out attestations. What is an attestation, you ask ? It's a form you have to fill out every time you leave your apartment. Every. Time. And if you don't have a printer (like your average missionary equipe), you get the great pleasure of hand writing it every time. See the attached picture for an example. It is such a joy. But we might not have to after next Monday !
I hope you all are doing well, and staying safe ! May the fourth be with you !
Love,
Sœur Cate

The lovely attestation

I changed the post card decorations (missionary interior decorating 🤣)

Unicorn cookies

Week 65 (4/4/27/20): Avez-vous pensé à rentrer dans les ordres ?

Hello everybody !
You'll all be happy to hear that I haven't killed the rose bush yet, and I've had tons of fun moving it back and forth between the back room and front room every day, so it gets plenty of sunlight. I've decided to name the rose Eponine. Because she's such a fabulous tragic character in Les Mis, doomed to an unhappy ending, much like plants in a missionary apartment. Because she'll probably end up dead after I leave... which is tragic, but what can you do ? Just because something isn't going to last doesn't mean it's not beautiful.

We have enjoyed finding and posting quotes, and Sœur Pulman painted one so it looked cute. And it spread pretty well, considering we didn't boost it ! So we'll mess around with that more in the future. It's cool to think of random people where never met being touched by something we post.

We also started talking to two new people this week, that we met on the last post we boosted. We called both of them this week, and we had some great starting conversations. One of them is catholic, and before he knew that I wasn't catholic (while we were still chatting online), he asked me if I'd considered being a nun. I joked to my companion, "actually, that's my day job." But all joking aside, he's a really cute old man who loves discussing religion and the bible, so it was really fun. Other than the fact that he has a really hard accent and talks super fast. But I know I can't get mad, because my international mtc district would always say I was the hardest to understand because I talk so fast, so now I'm just getting a taste of my own medicine 😅. It's just extra language study !

It's weird how much this whole quarantine lifestyle still feels bizarre, and yet how normal it's becoming. I think by the time it finally feels normal, we'll be heading outside again, but I feel like life just tends to be like that 😂

Love you tons !
Sœur Cate

A member is learning to do fishing knots 

Proof that i have not yet killed my rosebush

Week 64 (4/20/20): What to name a tiny rose bush

Hey everybody !!
I'm enjoying being in Perpignan, it's so much fun to call members and remember working with them before. We did a lot of calls this week, and it's beautiful to feel the spirit as we share messages of peace with them. And being encouraged by them in return. 😊
Work with amis comes and goes, but that's true when we're out of confinement too ! I'm not seeing a ton of success right now, but I figure we'll just keep trying a bunch of different things, and God will help us do His will. 😂
This week I worked on studying discipline, because let's be honest, it's very easy to let discipline slip in a quarantine. 😅 It made a huge difference in my week ! I wasted a lot less time, and my studies became a lot better (I'd been a little less serious with them recently, because I was having trouble staying motivated), and I saw soooo many blessings ! I really immersed myself in my study of Isaiah, and even though I'm probably only understanding a thousandth part of what's there, it's POWERFUL. And having the time to ponder afterwards while cleaning has just been such a cool blessing. I love the wide view Isaiah gives. Humans have such a short term perspective, but I feel like Isaiah helps me understand God's perspective a little bit more. He's such a loving God. A wise God. A thoughtful God. An organized, methodical God. A patient, merciful God. Who wants to see us become the best that we can be. It's actually calmed my anxiety a bit too, because when I start to get an inkling of just how much He knows, and how well planned out this entire earth's history is, I worry less. It's SO much bigger than me and my influence. I'm a grain of sand in a universe of beaches. I can't mess this up. All I have to do- all that's expected of me- is to work hard to glorify my God and follow the commandments with the highest degree of obedience that I'm capable of. And push to be better. The big stuff, the world trends, plagues, international obstacles and pieces I don't see fitting together ? That's not my problem. God's got it all under control.
That's about all... OH ! I bought a tiny rose bush !!! It makes me very happy. I still need to come up with an overly pretentious french name for it. Stay tuned. It's the little things 😁
Love you guys !
Sœur Cate

Week 62 (4/6/20): 🦎 Lizards and conference, I'm a happy girl!

Hey everybody !!
How about that conference ? I had so much fun listening to it from my apartment, it's the first time I've listened to everything in english on my mission ! And I really like English when I'm listening to something for a while. I loved hearing about the temples announced in Dubai and Shanghai, it's incredible to see the Lord opening doors for more and more people to have access to learn more about this incredible gospel. We really do live in the last days that prophets saw and dreamed about. They're real, we're here ! What a blessing for us to see prophecies fulfilled.

Speaking of prophecies, I've had a lot of fun studying Isaiah. I asked God for some direction, something to use my time well, and God said to study Isaiah. Because I have some time to devote to study, it's actually been really fun. Between the french and english translations of the bible, the commentary in the book of mormon and the doctrine and covenants, and the seminary and institute manuals, I have plenty of places to start 😁

Ok, my weird fun thing of the week: I love lizards. And I found a stretch of a road while we were out walking, with all these little lizards sunbathing !! So we were walking along, and we'd hear them darting off into the brush, and sometimes I could see them, and it made me really happy. Sometimes you just have to take joy in the little things. 😂

Love you tons !
Sœur Cate

Week 61 (3/30/20): Mises à jour de notre petite appartement

Hello everybody !

So it's been almost two weeks of confinement now, however there was a change made to rules about going outside that gives us permission to leave the apartment for one hour every day to get some fresh air. Such a huge blessing !! Unfortunately, we have to stay within a kilometer of our house. Which is not very far. So we'll get very familiar with that surrounding kilometer. I'm glad we have a park though. Honestly, that's gonna save my sanity. My companion and I went and had a photoshoot there, just to distract ourselves and break up the monotony, which was refreshing.

In other news... there isn't really other news. People keep asking me how we do missionary work in a quarantine, and I'm just like, buddy, I'm asking myself the same question. We do a lot of calls to members and less actives, to check in on them and discuss whatever they've been studying (or to share a spiritual thought). And we call our friends as often as they're available. We study a LOT, and message people on Facebook. And ideally I should be posting more, but that just feels unnatural for me. But I'm working on it !

We did join in on the worldwide fast yesterday, which was pretty cool. It's incredible to think of the power of all of us putting our faith together all over the world. And there is real, genuine power that comes with that many people turning towards God together. Even in times of trial, there are still incredible people doing wonderful things. And ima just choose to focus on that 😂😅

Thanks to everyone that's been sending me emails, it seriously means THE WORLD to a quarantined missionary ! And take care of yourselves. Until next time, this is your favorite religieuse cloîtrée, signing off.

❤ Sœur Cate