Week 37 "BIRTHDAY WEEK"

Souer Jones' celebrating her 20th Birthday in Sete, France!!

First of all, we are going to Sete today with the other missionary elders because this is my birthday week!
Also, tomorrow for my birthday we are going to Palavas with
Soeur Poissionnier and our amis Christine!! She is taking me out to eat again and says she has a "suprise." Isn't that soo nice of her? It will be an awesome birthday full of lots of rdvs with amis and members.

Yesterday at church, I had one of the best moments for me on my mission. After stake conference, Soeur Poissionnier and Christine were talking with me. And they kept talking about how excited they were to celebrate my birthday with me. And then at the same time, they each kissed a side of my cheek for literally 10 seconds. I was just squished in the middle of them as they hugged and kissed me. I was literally enveloped by LOVE. Such a sweet little moment.

This week was a rollercoaster. I had moments during the morning and afternoon where I just down and unmotivated. I started comparing my mission to the other missions in the world. Sometimes I am like OH MY GOODNESS, FRANCE IS SO HARD. We talked with a member who served in
Arizona and she was saying how she had 10 lessons a day and couldn't stay too long for RDV's because everyone wanted to see them and they were too busy all the time. She said how they would always have meals paid for when they went out to restaurants because they were missionaries. It basically sounded like she was famous as a missionary. HA!! And I was like.... euhhhhhhh. I may have to say our mission is a little different. But you know what? This is the mission
Abby Jones was called to and I love it. I love France.

After some down moments this week, I had soooo many happy moments. We had a RDV with a recent convert, Laura. She is from China and I just loveeee her. She has the best Asian/ French accent. She made us a quiche. Little cutie. Then we had a RDV with the Elder's ami, Brenda
(from Africa). The spirit was so strong in the lesson. That was a blessing to me to feel the spirit so strong. She bore such a simple, pure, genuine testimony. We talked about prayer and watched the prayer video from the "Prince of Peace." She said, "I love God. He is the only person I have in my life right now. He is so faithful to me. God is love." Then on the bus ride home, we were with all 6 missionaries. There was this energy and light on the bus. A guy from New York started talking to us. Then some French man joined in trying English.
The gospel was being shared with whole bus and I just felt this excitement. This gospel and Jesus Christ bring REAL joy. I love being with other missionaries because I can see and feel the light of the gospel. Let's all try to be better examples of having joy in the gospel. Show others that the gospel really is joy!

Finding genealogy names with Soeur Carrado! Prepared for the Paris Temple.

Yesterday was such a miracle. I was feeling unmotivated to go out and go talk to people and do missionary work. I felt like angles were just pushing me along saying, keep going Abby! We are holding you up!

Genney, Daniel. We are with them with the family Charles.

A week ago we received a referral for a girl named "P". She is from Spain but is here in France for 2 months. We tried calling her but the number never worked. So we decided, okay, we will just try and pass by her house and see if we can find her. The problem was, we had no last name, no house number. Only her first name, street name, and telephone number. We said a prayer when we got to her street and decided we would try over 100 buttons on the building to find her. We were so determined and my faith was unshaken. We started sonning all the buildings asking, "Is there a "P" who lives here?" The answers were "no. no. no." After sonning a few, we decided to call her ONE
more time. And guess what? She picked up the phone! We were all, "uhhh hola?" We explained to her that we were actually outside of her building. She said she was home and that we could come in. We got to know her a little bit and she asked us where the church is. She explained how the missionaries are teaching her family right now in Spain and how she also wants to learn more. Maybe moments like this
are normal for other missions, but for us we were literally in a
dream. We fixed another RDV with her for tomorrow (April 25th). It was such a miracle for us. And now we have a new ami from Spain. I know that when we show God we have complete trust and faith in him, he fills our life with miracles!

Service project in Relief Society. Joshua helping me tape boxes and the other children doing my hair. They made a dreadlock and I ripped out a good portion of my hair.

Funny moments:
-After our RDV with Noemi, a member in the ward, Soeur Bonnamy and I were walking down the stairs and I slipped all the way down. Soeur Bonnamy and I were laughing so hard we could not breath. As I just lay there at the bottom of the stairs like a dead potato. (It reminded me of when Hez and I were at the Moa last year at BYU and I tripped over the chairs and Hez just laughed and laughed at me on the ground:)
- I had to go to the bathroom so bad yesterday and Soeur Bonnamy and I were sprinted/ wobbling home. Hahahah.
- Soeur Bonnamy and I had 3 mattresses in the apartment we were going to throw away. So we decided to put them on the balcony. And now we have this sweet chill out couch thing on the balcony that we eat on every night.

Soeur Bonnamy and I laugh so much. I love her. She is such a genuine, fun, real person. I feel so blessed to have her as my companion.

Love, Abby (last day being 19.... weird)