My dear Cheries!

Just in case you did not get Bethany’s new address, here it is:

Soeur Bethany Paxton

22 Rue Doncre

62000 Arras

FRANCE

My dear Chèries! (If you know French you know I basically just used the same word twice),

Holy Cow! The bathroom looks totally different! (We sent a photo of our ongoing bath remodel).I like the new shower curtain mom, unless Dad, picked it out...;)

Thanks for inserting part of Katelyn's blog! It's funny how I already knew some of that stuff about islander culture from having four islander companions.

Nope I didn't get the flu. I don't know how I did it considering that I was stuck in the apartment with Soeur Lai for 5 days. We only left to go to the doctor and do p-day stuff for a few hours. However, she slept most of the time and I stayed in the living room area so we weren't "breathing the same air".

Wow, I can't believe that it snowed in Huntsville. Here, I've telling everybody how warm it is there compared to Arras. It is actually super cold here and sometimes I think I might freeze to death if we stay out too long, but then you know...I don't. ;)

Arras is basically in Belgium and they do a lot of Belgian customs like saying "si vous plait" to mean both "excusez-moi" and "merci". I'm never quite sure which one they're trying to say. They also say "je vous en prie" instead of "de rien". (When you reply back to “Thank you”. Like “You’re welcome”.)  I think it's all pretty cool! And for my former French classmates I just want to let you know that I'm pretty much living in the film "Bienvenue Chez Les Cht'is"!  The Cht'i accent is so funny (all of their "s" sounds are switched to the "sh" sound, if it were in English the word "seaside" would be pronounced "sheshide"), but surprisingly I can keep up. Not that I've actually met a whole lot of them.

Oh and there are Friteries everywhere. French fry shops. Apparently the fries here are just as good as in Belgium, which were the best I had ever had. However, we put off eating them because we're going to be going to Belgium tomorrow for Sr. Lai's Belgian legality so we'll eat some there. I'm also excited to eat waffles again!

And to answer your question Mom, yes, Tahitians roll their Rs and so when they speak it almost sounds like their speaking Spanish. However, I have no problem understanding Sr. Lai, but I have caught myself rolling my Rs too! Yikes! Haha! After all of those years perfecting my French R and now it gets attacked by a rolling one!

The area here is huge! We have to dedicate certain days when we go and visit the "far" cities and see all the amis and less actives we can in that area. On those days it takes 45 minutes by train to get there. However, there is one lady in the Ward who spends all day with us on Thursdays driving us to our "far" appointments as well. She's really great. Really, this whole ward has become really dedicated to missionary work in the past year. Everyone is so willing to teach with us, drive us around, pick up amis for church. It's amazing!

Remember how I said that during the one day that we were able to do missionary work before Sr. Lai got sick that I thought she and I really worked well together? It's still totally true!!! Honestly, I love having her as my companion! We have so much fun, even when we have to do porting in the cold. Once, I pressed a random number on the intercom for one building (common method for porting apartments) hoping someone would let us in. I thought a little girl answered and I asked to speak to her parents, but it was, in fact, a tiny old lady with a really squeaky voice. Soeur Lai almost fell over laughing and I had really hard time not laughing while trying to testify over an intercom.

She and I have had soooo much success during porting! Who would have thought that a place so cold could have people who are so open?! Our schedule next week is so packed with return appointments that we started having to schedule people for the week after. We don't tend to want to do that because then people forget about us, but we don't have a choice! What a wonderful dilemma!

So I don't know if I have time to tell you all of the miracles for the week, but I'm going to try...

Family Lenfant: 32 yr old inactive man with 18 yr old girlfriend non-member, weird at first, but I got over it. Girlfriend and children (10 and 8) taking the discussions. The miracle is how much the kids love learning about the gospel and ask really great questions! It's so much fun to teach them. We're still trying to get the girlfriend to open up, but she listens in on what we say. The dad wants to become active, but still not quite willing to give up bad habits. He loves that we're teaching his children though.

Family Leclercq: Less-actives, but have really been doing great at coming back to church. Sr. Leclercq asked how she and her husband can prepare to be sealed in the Temple!!!!! Sr. Leclercq met one of our other amies (Marie) and asked her over to have FHE someday!!!

Marie: 21 yr old mother with baby. Believes strongly in God (named her baby Christ) and enjoys the lessons. Really loves testimony meeting. Found out about fasting yesterday and agreed to fast to know when she should be baptized!!!!

Family Asset: Father and 3 older kids are inactive. Younger 3 kids are starting to go that way. Before our lessons with them all of the kids really enjoyed talking to us and we had a good time. Once we started the lesson though, the older ones and the father literally turned their backs to us. The mother was desperately trying to get them involved, she started weeping and telling us how difficult it was for her to be the only active member of her family. It was so sad and I almost started crying too. Then I did something that I was told I could do in the MTC, but I have been afraid to do. However, I felt inspired to say that as missionaries we have a certain authority and by that authority I promised her that if she continued to be faithful she would see her family become active again. I hoped it helped and I prayed the rest of the night that Heavenly Father would comfort her.

What really bothered me was that as soon as we said the closing prayer, the kids and father turned right back around and started talking to us like nothing had happened! They were deeply hurting their wife and mother and they didn't care!! The good news is that the next day at church one of the older sons was there (he was very adamant the night before about not going). I made an effort to talk to him and get to know him better. I was glad to see that he got along well with the other young men in the ward.

Whew!

I think that's all for now. Until next week!

Bethany