Leaving Quimper

Bethany emailed us late last week that the Mission President had decided to close Quimper to Sister Missionaries and only have Elders serve there instead. She was very disappointed but understood the situation. Her current companion was finishing her mission and would be going home to Tahiti. And there was no other sister to pair with Bethany. It won’t be until the end of March that a huge group of sisters will be coming from the MTC in Provo. So Bethany was assigned to go to Versailles and work with two other sisters. However, we received another email today saying that those plans had changed. She was being sent to serve in Arras, a town in northern France near the Belgium border. A sister there had become very ill and was being sent home and Bethany was needed. It has been a crazy week for her but hopefully she has adjusted. Her new address is: Sister Bethany Paxton 22 Rue Doncre 62000 Arras FRANCE Dear tout le monde! Well, I'm leaving Quimper. This is going to be a trial for me because I truly love this place and I had so many plans for the sector. Especially since we were having so much success this week! As I told you last week we did Spiritual Finding on Wednesday. We could feel the prayers that were being sent from all over the world. I talked to two American girls on the bus who are on a study abroad and they took our number to give to a friend who goes on a lot of mission trips. We found three people who made appointments to see us again! It really was a miracle!! Then on Thursday we had lunch with Molly, the teacher. It turned out she's the professor of the American I talked to. She is soooooo nice and is very respectful of all religions. She asked if we wanted to pray before eating, but we explained that it wasn't necessary at a restaurant. However, SHE said that she always enjoyed praying with her Methodist grandparents, so we prayed. I asked if she believed in God and she said yes, but hadn't found an establishment where she would like to worship. She kept saying that our church meeting was very "powerful". I asked if she'd like to have the lessons and she said yes! We set another appointment for Thursday so we'll be passing her to the Elders.     Sadie (Bethany’s cousin) is turning in her papers (for a mission) ????!!!!!!! That makes me sooooo happy!!!! I can't wait to hear where she will go.  It was one year ago last week that I turned in mine. Maybe she'll enter the MTC around the same time that I did. Maybe she'll go to Mexico like she was planning on doing for school.    Thanks for Lauren's (a good friend from church who is also on a mission) email. Wow! She's training!! And I laughed so hard when I read the name of the ghost that she lives with. It was totally a Lauren thing to say! Until next when I tell you my adventures in Versailles! Bethany

Happy February Everyone!

Here are a few notes Bethany wrote to the family: I haven't been able to practice the stick (car) yet, but Sr. Alves keeps saying that we should. The real thing that worries me is driving in France. It's not that much different, just more one-ways and round-abouts, but it still scares me. There is a DVD called “How to Drive in France” that I'm supposed to watch, but we loaned it out to someone and I need to remember to get it back. I might feel better about it all once I watch that. BTW, I just found out that we get the car for three weeks and then Lorient gets it for three as well. I thought they only got it for one week. That means that we give it to them for the first three weeks of next transfer. Suddenly I have a lot more of a desire to hit those farther away cities than I did before! Thanks mom for fasting for Quimper! It may take some time for things to get going, but I'm prepared for it. It took nearly two transfers for Torcy to get on its feet after I arrived so I'm used to it. Happy February Everyone! And Happy Late Birthday to my little sister Laura!! 21!!! You can go on a mission now, oh, wait.... ;) Well, we thought that the big group of sisters (new missionaries) was coming in next transfer, but it turns out it won't be until the one after. We're only getting one new Soeur. That means I won't be training next time, and that when I do it won't be in Quimper because it wouldn't make sense for me to get a new companion and then kick her out after one transfer just so I can train. Zone Conference was this week as well as interviews with the President. We traveled nearly 3 hours by train to Rennes for the conference. The chapel in Rennes actually looks like an American LDS chapel. All of us Americans were a little homesick when we saw. One Elder said, "It’s almost perfect except there's too much green grass." He's from Arizona and I said, "It's not too green for Alabama!!!" Interviews went well. I expressed my fears of being too robotic when I'm contacting people. He and discussed that for a little bit. We also talked about the strategy of Sr. Alves and me for “porting” earlier in the day. President turned it down and said that we shouldn't be scared by darkened houses with the blinds down. People are home and awake, even if it doesn't look like it. He explained it in such a positive way that made me not so afraid of porting at night. I love our President! Right after the conference we started our exchanges. I was in Quimper with Sr. Pymm. She also served with Sr. Soares and we enjoyed exchanging crazy Sr. Soares stories. She was the exact answer to my prayer of having someone teach me how to be less afraid of porting and being less robotic. We worked really well together and even got several referrals for other missionaries is Bretagne. One hung-over lady gave us her number, but when I called she hung up. Haha! She probably thought she had made a horrible drunken mistake. Our miracle this week happened yesterday. A woman named Molly came to church because she was doing a report of other Christian denominations in Bretagne, other than Catholicism. She's American, but has been living in France since she was 10. She prefers speaking French. It was a fabulous testimony meeting in the Branch and I could see a big smile on her face the whole time. Afterward I saw her leaving and I ran to talk to her. She really enjoyed church and asked us to come speak to her American History class that she teaches, since Mormonism is definitely a part of that history. She said she's not sure if it can happen though because the French really don't like mixing education and religion. I told her I was going to be a History teacher and I knew how to keep it secular-ish if she needed. We have to get President's permission though to do it. Then she surprised me by asking if we could meet her for lunch. I was surprised because I figured anything else she might want to know she look up on the Internet. But then I realized that it wasn't THAT kind of information that she wanted. She was touched and wanted to know more from us in a spiritual way, not an educational one. I'm going to call her tomorrow to set up a rendez-vous!!! BTW, N___ didn't get baptized last week because the Elders weren't able to see her for two weeks to give her the rest of the lessons. However, Sr. Soares told me that N___ was at church two Sundays ago (and maybe this week for all I know) and she looked super happy! Have a wonderful week everyone!! Bethany

Chèr tout le monde

 

Before Bethany’s email, here are a few of her responses to some questions we had: We are supposed to do 1/2 hour to an hour of language study everyday. I have to admit that if we're busy that's the first thing that gets dropped from our schedule. However, I always enjoy it when we have time for it. It's cool how I'll learn a new thing and then I'll hear someone use that new phrase/idiom/grammer principle and think to myself "Hey, I just studied that"! Actually, I think President Caplain would love an Alabama T-shirt.  Did Alabama win the title again? Size XL I think. He's not fat, but he is REALLY tall. His wife is also tall, she used to be a pretty popular model in Paris, but quit when she joined the church. Also, we got Bethany’s entire debit card issues resolved with the bank. We were surprised at how many people responded with similar experiences!   Chèr tout le monde, It was a wonderfully sunny week here in Quimper. People keep saying it's very strange to have this much sun here, but I'm just grateful that Heavenly Father loves me enough to keep sending sun. We had District meeting this week in Lorient. Lorient is a 45 minutes train ride away which is so different then how things were in Torcy. It was also weird bein the new person again, but I've always liked meeting new people so it was actually really fun. Our Zone Leaders attended the meeting this week and one of them, Elder Foley, was in Torcy my first three transfers. So I saw enough familiar faces to be happy. We struggled with “finding” this week because normally the best time to do finding is after 6 here. Normally the French don't eat until 8 and are still up talking all the way until 9:30 or 10. However, people are in bed at 7:30 here in Quimper, so we've decided that we're going to ask President if we can change our finding hours to 4 to 7 instead and then come home and eat. We have been seeing a lot of inactives and recent converts. The good thing about visiting them is that they are best at giving us referrals. We've also been doing a lot of Visiting Teaching because the Branch is so small that they need us to be companions for several women in the ward while they go Visiting Teaching. It's a little bothersome to me because we could be using that time finding new amis, but things are different here and I have to learn to adjust. Our miracle this week was that after we went contacting in the center of town one day, we decided to go home for dinner. I was soooo sure that we were going to have something good happen that I was kind of disappointed. I kept trying to take the long way back to the bus station so we could talk to more people. Good thing I did, because as we waited for the bus and French guy came running up and asked Sr. Alves if she was from the Tahitian Island of Rurutu. We were surprised that he would know that. It turns out his wife is from Tahiti and they often get together with other Tahitians in Bretagne for dinner. We gave him our information and not even an hour later his wife called to invite us to dinner. The dinner was yesterday and we spent 6 hours there!!! A long time for sure, but they asked us a lot of questions about the church. We're hoping that a little seed of interest was planted.   We also bought and built a dresser all by ourselves! You'd be so proud of me dad! (See photos) Actually, Sr. Alves did most of it, not because I didn't want to, but because she secretly did it after I went to bed. Ok, not so secretly, she was hammering until midnight. I don't know why she felt she had to finish it in one night. Haha! Wow Dad! The Blue Man Group concert sounds awesome. You guys always seem to see cool stuff while I'm away. Since you guys were so close to the front did you get paint all over your clothes? We're you able to take some good photos on your smartphones? Some members have shown me the Facebook page (of the France Paris Mission) and I did get to see myself singing Silent Night. I thought my outfit looked terrible, but all in all the video was good. I'm glad that friends and family of missionaries can get good updates from that page. I don't know if Narré got baptized. I doubt it though, just because she still had a lot of obstacles. However, I don't think that means the baptism is off, just that it probably got moved to another date. We got a call from the Torcy Soeurs, but we missed it and they didn't answer when I called again. If I get a hold of them I'll ask what is happening. Hope everyone has an awesome week!!! Bethany