Happy Cambodian New Year anybody? (Katie-Toul)

Hi everyone :)

We met a lady last night who told us that the next day is the Cambodian New year! That's why she had food set out for her ancestors. She was very old and couldn't really speak French...but we obviously understood some things. 

So how is everyone doing? I love being a missionary. This past week FLEW by...I barely had time to breathe, and now suddenly I'm sitting at this ghetto internet café doing emails again. It just blows my mind. But a busy week is a happy week as a missionary...and actually, probably just in general. I don't really remember though. Let me tell you about some of the miracles we saw this week.

Making cards at Sisters' Conference

We had a SISTERS CONFERENCE! It was so wonderful. All of the stuff we did was super fun, but my favorite part was seeing all of the people I love SO MUCH in one place at one time! One of the funniest things about it (I thought) was what we had for lunch. Normally, at conferences, we have sandwiches and apples or something. This time we had croissant sandwiches, fancy salad, apple, and a giant chocolate macaron for dessert. So fun, so good. :)

We also had a really giant miracle that happened all throughout the week. At the beginning of the transfer, our district leader told us as that as a district, by the end of week 6, he wanted us to have taught 60 lessons (in one week). So this week was the week. And our district goal for this week was to pray at every single prayer during the day (which is a lot!) that our district will reach this goal. AND. No, we didn't teach quite that many, but we taught the most we have ever taught in a week, and during the slowest week of a transfer. Me and soeur Evans were extremely blessed to have lesson after lesson just handed to us by the Lord. We met so many incredibly people this week, and saw so many teaching miracles. 

Here's one: Soeur Evans was telling me while walking about how during her whole mission, she has always wanted to teach someone who is really searching with real questions for the truth. For the most part as missionaries we convince people that they are searching. But we always hear those stories about the miracle ami who was found because a missionary was at a certain place at a certain time. So we both start personally praying for someone who is truly certain. THE NEXT DAY. We get a call from a member who has been on the brink of becoming inactive (we had met them exactly one time since being here). She proceeds to tell us that she has this friend named Aurélie who keeps asking her questions, so they set up a day to talk about the answers to those questions and wanted us to come. I asked the member if there was anything in particular we should prepare as a lesson, and this is what she said: "No, nothing in particular. Aurélie is just really...searching for the truth." 

Okay, Heavenly Father. 

And the lesson was incredible. She is completely searching and wants to see us again! And do you know

what the wonderful thing about member referrals is? The people they bring are so NORMAL. They are just normal people with normal lives. Often, the people we find, feel the need for the gospel because of something they're lacking (often temporal needs) in their lives. YOU, members, know the normal people who are searching for something to fill the lack of spiritual in their lives. 

We also ate MacDo with our Président de Branche. Ew.

Gérard is incredible. We watched President Monson's talk with him, and he said that he had this question that he has been searching for the answer to for years and years and could never find it. Then, in that 15 minute talk, the exact answer he was looking for was there. He was so excited to go home and watch the rest of conference to "find the rest of his answers" :)

Samedi (Saturday) sport with Tahitians anybody?? We played volleyball and met lots of new Tahitian member referrals :)

Angélique and Loïc are our most recent, coolest people of all people, amis. Angélique is the sister of a member in Nancy, and she told us after the conférence de branche on Sunday something that excited my heart a tiny bit. She said, "I just feel so good here. What do I do to get baptized the fastest??" Her brother, Jean-Jacques, also just got baptized in Nancy. We were able to go because she went, and I got to play the piano. Hurray! :) She is so cool. We should probably let her know about all of the commandments she's going to keep soon. ;)

37 = number of cats we saw this week.

Let me just tell you...prayer WORKS. Thank you all so much for everything you do! I love you trop! 

gros bisous!

Soeur Pettingill