Deux Missions Françaises : Joyeux Noel et Bonnes Fetes! (Katie-Mulhouse)

Dearest family of all families:

The great thing about being a missionary is you are always in a good mood to write your family because you just miss them so much!! I'm glad you got my package!! It's nothing too special, but I wanted to send you all a little surprise for Christmas to say thank you for all of the support and love and letters I get :) Mom, your display looks beautiful! I bet everything went perfectly and looked beautiful and just was great. Which means that you can totally do anything without my help and STILL make it look incredible ;) That's one thing we won't have time to do! Make sugar cookies! But I would like to let you all know that we're still making cinnamon rolls on Christmas Eve. I mean, it's a tradition!!

And I'll let you know about everything else we did either when we talk...like in person but through a computer...or in my email next week :) I'm SO EXCITED to get to see you all! I love you guys :) As far as this week has gone, it's been a good week. We went to Paris on Wednesday for a special Christmas Conference (that's where we got the letters you sent). It was actually Tuesday night. We went and stayed with the St. Ouen soeurs and then all met up to go to the conference the next morning in VERSAILLES! Elder Allen is in his 7th transfer and he had never been to the Versailles chapel before. So like, this is a rare thing. And we found out that we went there instead of St. Merri because there were 5 zones that went!! That's a lot. Usually it's only 3, maaaayybe 4. And it was amazing. Mom, remember those four steps to contacting I sent you in a letter? We talked about those again, but changed it from Alma Contacting to Christmas Contacting! Basically our goal is to sing des chants de Noël (Christmas carols) with anyone willing to listen! Whether it's contacting or porting or anything. It's kind of like caroling, which is totally an American truc (thing). So that has been amazing. I will tell you our experience with that later :) Versailles is AMAZING!! It's so beautiful. The chapel is a lot bigger than the one in St. Merri, too. I'm sorry I slacked on taking any pictures...that was dumb. And I got to see a lot of people, like Elder Bailey from the MTC! He's in Charleroi, Belgium, where Sr. Gordon just came from. It was a fun day. A hard day for proselyting though...we didn't even get back to Mulhouse until after 9 that night...but that's okay. :)

At the Versailles Chapel for Zone Conference

Practicing "Christmas Contacting"

Reading the surprise Christmas letter the mission asked families to send their missionaries

So yesterday we decided to go porting (tracting) for a little while in this adorable, toootally Alsacian neighborhood (I wanted to take a picture of the houses, but it was kind of creepy because there were people places...) and we had an hour and a half. First we visited this coordonnée (address) we got from this lady we met on the street a couple of months ago...we've tried contacting her a plusieurs fois (several times) but finally she answered! And she let us in. And we sang to her and her three children and prayed with them and she said we could come back after the fêtes (holidays)! So that was a little miracle in of itself. And THEN we had about an hour to go porte these adorable houses. We knocked about 15 doors. Probably half weren't home. We talked to about 7 people at their doors and 3 (yes THREE) let us in. That is incredible. We can porte for hours and only have one person let us in, if that. Christmas time is magical, and even if none of those people are baptized, we still helped them to feel the Christmas spirit through our chants de Noël. And the Spirit WAS there and it was so strong. I know the Lord is with us. His hand is in this work, especially while we are celebrating the time of His birth.

It's been kind of hard this week...we don't have any progressing amis (investigators) and only had one ami come to church with Xhoana. Ardian didn't even come and he isn't willing to keep reading even though he says he wants to know. But what an incredible opportunity we have been given to FIND.

I love this gospel. People are so open right now, and even though we don't have many progressing amis right now, what a better time than now to go out and talk to EVERYONE about His birth?!?! I love it. And it works especially well right now :)

I love you all so much!! I'm super excited to get to talk to you in less than 2 DAYS!!

Talk to you later!

Sœur Pettingill

P.S. One of mine and Sr. Gordon's transfer goals is to try one weird food each week. This week we tried what's called a lichi (?) fruit. They're weird...but strangely tasty. Like grapes with huge seeds in the middle and they are all spiky on the outside. Yeah. Kbye :)