Courage brethren and on, on to the victory!!

This week was...crazy.  Our week was greatly affected by one of the great traditions of the nation of France... a train greve(strike).  If there is something the French love as much as wine and cheese, it's striking.  haha...yeah, we take the train A LOT here in Arras...so this week was kind of a headache...I mean a culturally informing experience.  But Heavenly Father was right there to make up for it!

 

On Wednesday all of our plans fell through because of the greve.  So we had to improvise.  We decided to stop by our ami Vi (she's from Vietnam).  We've passed by numerous times lately and she was never there.  but this time, she was!  And her husband Florent was too!  It was a really cool lesson and they are excited to see us again and learn about more about the Book of Mormon.  Yay!  A new friend.

 

Then that afternoon...another tender mercy...exchanges with the sister training leaders...none other than Soeur Linton and Soeur Cameron!!!!!!!  Yes, you heard that right, my dear friend from the MTC, Soeur Cameron spent 24 hours in my ville!  My exchange was actually with soeur Linton which was equally cool.  But it was fun to reminisce about the MTC with S. Cameron:)

Soeur Linton and I seriously had a BLAST.  What a great Soeur.  She is just one transfer ahead of me and we've served in neighboring villes pretty much our whole missions.  She is super chill and we really learned a lot from each other.  We set some exchange goals and Soeur Linton decided she wanted to work on being more courageous.  I really jumped on the idea, because I need more courage too.  So in the morning I studied courage in the scriptures and it was really inspiring and motivating.  My favorite scripture I found was in 2 Timothy 1:7

 

"7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

 

I have really learned the power of scriptures during my mission.  This one just fueled my and Soeur Linton for the rest of our exchange.  We were invincible.  We just contacted and ported like crazy, and we didn't get down when we were rejected.  We had Joseph Smith's battle cry in our heads, "Courage brethren and on, on to the victory!!" And we had a miracle together.  We were porting and a lady named Doriane answered.  She seemed like she was going to say no, but Soeur Linton courageously asked a second time, "can we come in and pray with you?" and surprisingly, she said yes!  The spirit was super strong and I could really tell that Heavenly Father loved this woman.  We fixed another rendez-vous for the next week and she even gave us chocolate :)  Yay for an exchange of courage with Soeur Linton!

 

Soeur Liabeuf and I did a lot of porting this week... and we found some really neat people.  A lady named Antonia from Italy and a cute older couple named Florence and Immanuel.  I feel like Arras is exploding.  The Lord is preparing people, even in tiny Arras, France.  Not even a major French train greve can get in the way of the work;)  even if we were packed like sardines for an hour in the gare du Nord in Paris and then the told us to all get off and wait for a different train... and the greve is continuing this week too.  Courage brethren, and on, on to the victory!  Gonna need it this week too:)

 

Love you all, have an awesome week everybody!

 

Soeur Hilton