This last week was incredible! It was the week of Pâques (Easter). As a mission we have all been doing a special "Easter Miracles" plan. Kind of like our "Christmas Finding" initiative. I love it when President launches programs like this. It is amazing how unified the mission becomes and how many miracles we see. So anyway, we've been working since March on this project, which included contacting and porting focused solely on the Resurrection, visiting less-actives and then also involving the members. We worked with our DMP to set up soirée familiales for every night the week of Pâques with members and their friends…not an easy task. There was definitely a lot of discouragement as door after door rejected us over the past few weeks, as soirée familiales fell through etc. But we kept on going... I really learned a lot about faith and diligence.
Let me illustrate dilligence with an experience we had during this "Easter Miracles" project. So, the assistants gave everyone flyers that we could go a put in people's boite des lettres that presented our Easter message a little bit, and said that we would be passing by in the coming days. Soeur Tupai and I really tried to pray and follow the Spirit to know which quartiers to put the flyers. We chose a cute little neighborhood just filled with young families. I don't even know how many times we went there, maybe a dozen. We contacted everyone in the neighborhood and had it narrowed down to just two houses who were potentially interested. We tried them both one night, and the first one said they actually weren't interested...so there was only one house left. We knocked on the door and a young mother answered (her husband had answered the first time and said to re-pass). She was open to the message, but busy at the time. We decided to come by again later. We went at least three more times...either no one was home, or we heard the baby crying (so we didn't want to disturb them). Then this week we had planned to try again Thursday afternoon. There had been a huge manifestation that morning (a paper business is being closed down, so angry works threw papers ALL OVER the city--roads, trees, highways, buildings etc), so there was a ton of traffic. We were pretty late getting back for lunch and I thought of just cancelling our plan to go see this family. I thought "who knows if they'll even be there, we've tried so many times already..." I started to doze off and I got the clear impression that the mother was there and it was the perfect time to go see her, that the baby would be sleeping etc. So we cut our lunch short and ran to catch the bus. And what do you know, she was there! The baby was sleeping and she let us in right away. We had a wonderful discussion about Easter and we are going back next week... Diligence bring miracles.
Now let me illustrate how powerful prayer can be. We had no luck finding people to teach the week before last... It was pretty depressing actually. Soeur Tupai was taking it pretty hard. I tried to keep as positive as possible, but even I was getting a little down. It was Tuesday night…the whole day was just a long string of rejection… We were about to start knocking doors in a quartier where we had placed the flyers and soeur Tupai gave a little prayer. In her prayer she said "Dear Heavenly Father, please bless us to have a good time with the new friends we are going to find tonight." I was surprised at her prayer, and she was too! She said that the words just came out like that... So, we ring the first door bell and a little boy answers, he calls his father over, who then calls his mother-in-law over. We ask if we can share a message about Easter and she lets us in immediatley, just beaming. She shows us pictures of her entire family, we meet her grandchildren and her husband who is fighting cancer. We laugh, we talk, we pray...and we are going back this week. I've never had a prayed answer so quickly and so specifically! It was amazing.
Oh man! So many other miracles happened this week, but my computer time is almost up...zut! Well, Saturday we had a miracle soirée familial with Karine and Christophe. They were so courageous to come with us to a family they didn't even know…I just love them. And on Sunday we had two families of amis at church! And we have even more soirées planned for next week... I just love Arras so much and I'm so excited to have another transfer with Sr Tupai!!
I love you all and I'll talk to you next week:)
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