Don't have cocoa powder and trying to make brownies? Just use chocolate milk. (Katie-Toul)

Hi everyone :)

What an incredible week. I feel like sometimes my emails take a more spiriual turn and sometimes I just highlight all of the hilarious things that happen to us. Let's go with the best of both worlds for this round?

Our mission had a goal to have a soirée familiale (family home evening) every single night the week of Pâques (Easter), Monday to Monday (so 8 fhes). At the beginning of the week we weren't sure we were going to have one every single night...actually we didn't have very many set up at all. But slowly everything arranged itself and we had one set up for every single night. And they were going great! The goal was to have a less-active or an ami de l'église (investigator) at each one, and it was working! Until Friday came around, and the family who we had planned to have one with on Saturday cancelled at the last minute. We were slightly frustrated, but did everything we could to find a family to have one with. The problem is in a branch with only a few active families, it was pretty hard to find someone we hadn't already used. BUT. We prayed. So obviously, with prayer, everything just works out. Right?

Soeur Evans was having kind of a sad day, so I made her a flower crown

 Wrong.

Saturday came and went. We tried everything. We prayed and prayed and pleaded and begged for Heavenly Father to help us have a miracle. Nope. And to top it all off, it rained a lot. By the end of the night, we were cold, discouraged, and tired.

Waking up the next day was harder than usual, though we put on smiles because we (well at least I) LOVE church. It was still rainy and we were still tired. But we had amis come that we weren't expecting and we taught some spiritually uplifting lessons, so all was well. Then the cool part comes. When church ended, we went up to a member and asked if it would be possible to see them that night with their less-active son (we had an fhe for the afternoon but not for the night), and she proceeded to tell us that we already had something set up with them and another family in our branch! Huh? I mean, we'll take it! Then I walked outside. The sun was SHINING and it was absolutely beautiful! Talk about resurrection symbolism. Even though our answer didn't exactly come when or as expected, we still had 8 soirée familiales. We just needed to trust a little. :)

Christopher's chess board

Speaking of fhes, let me tell you about a couple of them. The first one this week was with a member and her non-member husband and son, Patrice and Christopher. Tahitian wife, french husband, mix son. So funny :) Well, in order to try and interest Christopher a little more (who is 18 and very uninterested in the gospel), we decided to compare the Plan of Salvation to his favorite thing of all time--chess. Chess you say? Yes!

tiramisu with speculoos (like a ginger snap cookie)

Chess=Plan of Salvation. Duh. The objective of chess, in case none of you know, is to win. What do you do to win? You move your various pieces around in a strategic manner and try to take the opponent's pieces with your own. Sometimes you make mistakes, but hopefully you learn from them. What if you were to try and win at chess using only your one pawn? Or even the whole row of pawns? Could you win? Probably not. Luckily we have extra pieces to help us. What if you try playing without any kind of a plan? Could you win? Not likely. There are also rules that you must follow that keep the game in line and everything just. This is the same. God gave us commandments to follow. He gave us a plan to follow. He gave us extra help to get us through life. And by the end of the game, using God's plan, we WILL win! Cool, huh? :) Tiare, the mom, made this incredible tiramisu au speculos. TOO GOOD.

We also had one with crazy, super French people that took almost 3 hours! We only had a 10 minute spiritual thought. Hah. SO many courses. When has eating ever had to take that long?? Never. Goodness gracious, French people. But it was fun and lively and we got to eat a lot...so that's always good...right? 

ANGELIQUE AND LOIC. Have I even told you about them yet?? They are incredible. She is the sister to a member in Nancy, and she wants to get baptized. She has a date set. They are planning on getting married (she is also expecting a baby) as soon as possible. We have taught them a lot this week, and he is less believing, but yesterday at our soirée familiale he was expaining to the member how much he likes our branch and the people and good he feels and how he is not baptized YET. I have so much love and hope for these people!

What a crazy fast week filled with so much fun and wonderful missionary things. 

Also, this afternoon I made brownies. Unfortunately, we had no more cocoa powder, and because it is jour férié (public holiday), no stores were open. So I used chocolate milk powder. We'll see how this turns out :)

Joyeuses Pâques! (Happy Easter)

Love,

Soeur Pettingill

We made a quick with just poireaux (leeks).  Who knew?  French people love poireaux and some members gave us some fresh ones from their garden.

Happy Easter!