Happy Belated Halloween!!!!!!!

Dear tout le monde, Happy Belated Halloween!!!!!!! It's my favorite holiday and I was pretty bummed beforehand thinking that they didn't really celebrate it here. However, I got a great Halloween card from you and also from the Activity Girls in the Byrd Springs Ward. What a great surprise! Also, I had been saving the dry mix for pumpkin cookies that you gave me for my birthday to bake on Halloween and they were delicious. Then we also had two groups of Trick- or- Treaters come by. We had left over candy for the first group, but none for the second. The second group smelled the cookies though and asked for them. I gave them the left over chocolate that we put in the cookies (the chocolate chips here are way expensive. It's cheaper to buy a bar and chop it up).  And THEN, we decided to dress up as an apartment and take pictures. Soeur Soares and I wore Boubous (sp?) that our new district leader bought us. Soeur Alley was a hipster and Soeur Ingram was a beggar. It was such a great Halloween because I got to do everything I would normally do for Halloween!! I'm glad to hear that you and dad also had a fun time for Halloween. I'm also glad to know that you'll have people over for Thanksgiving. It'll be pretty tough not celebrating it this year. Maybe an American family in the ward will invite us over or something. Although we only have one... Thanks for sending that picture of Chelsie and Grady, they both look great! I'm also glad to hear that people are getting my cards. You can send me more addresses now if you'd like Mom and Dad. Wow! Michael comes home next month! Crazy that Laura can say that now. And it's funny that he's coming home exactly one year before me, to the day. Dad, we probably run about a mile every day. We go about 25 minutes total, although I normally have to take about 3 walking breaks. Last week we had to go to the prefecture to figure out Sr. Soares' legality and then it rained and now she had tendonitis and can only leave the apartment for rendez-vous for the next week, so we aren’t running now. We're still progressing with Delphine slowly, but surely. We even thought that maybe she would be able to get baptized next week, but she didn't come to church again, which is kind of important. However, during our last lesson I saw that she still has a strong testimony, which was a comfort to me. We just need her to understand the important of her actually getting baptized and coming to church. We randomly found Mireille at the train station on Friday! Turns out she was sick and had to stay in Africa another three weeks. We're going to try to pass by her place tomorrow. We had two really great lessons with Severine and she says she believes everything we teach her except for the fact that she needs to be baptized by someone with authority. However, Sr. Soares says she's seen this many times and often people still get baptized. The cute thing was that her daughters even said they would pray to know if it was true. And one of them asked to have their own copy of the Book of Mormon. Also, Severine gave out two copies of the Book of Mormon to her friends from Togo, although one of them gave it back, it's a good sign though! We've also been working more with some new less-actives that I've never met. We feel really good about at least one of them and maybe another after tonight! Before I finish I'd like to share a special moment that I had with a family in the Torcy ward. They are a family I've become close to, especially since their daughter is my age and will be leaving on a mission to Arizona next week. They're the Peruvian family I told you about a few weeks ago. We were eating lunch with them and a friend of theirs from Spain after church. The mother (you I'd like you to meet someday mom, she's so great) and the friend were talking about gospel related subjects in Spanish while I played UNO with the younger kids. Even though I couldn't understand what was being said, I could FEEL it. There were many tears of joy through out the whole conversation. Then it was time for us to leave and the friend gave the prayer. The prayer was so sincere and so full of love for Heavenly Father and the Savior that none of us could talk for a full minute after. And we started singing hymns for another minute. Moments like those remind me why I'm a missionary. So everyone in the whole world has the same opportunity to feel this happiness. I love the gospel so much. It brings true joy to those that accept it. I hope everyone who reads this is doing well. I love you all! Bethany PS - The attached picture is of Bethany and 2 Sister Missionaries from Germany who had finished their missions and were returning home.