Partir la-bas!

I found a two disc set of disney songs in french for fifteen euros.  you better believe I bought it.  Partir la-bas is the name of "part of your world" in french.  I listen to them during language study.  I must say, I never knew disney translated so directly sometimes.  Teeheee.

 

First off: Package.  Received.  No underclothing that I ordered however was found within.  does that mean they are still sitting in california, or did someone break into my box and steal my undies?  jerks.  They aren't that cute.  I'm kind bummed though... I was looking forward to those things. Sooo, if they are still sitting at home, after Christmas, could you send them to me?  I really do need them.

 

so it snows here.  A LOT. and I am SOOOOOOOOOOOO over it already.  This place gets darker earlier than even REXBURG.  I may need to take some vitamin d pills or something to stop from going crazy.

 

I'd love to say that I am already in love with this ville, but the truth is that I am seriously overwhelmed.  We do serious finding every day, and SOMETIMES have RDV's.  The ward is SUPER spread out, and the weather is horrible, thus no one can come to anything.  the ward party got cancelled because of snow, and then... okay, I could find a million things to complain about.  I'm just.... new.  I am so new at this.  And my companion doesn't really speak french, so she deosn't know anyone, where anyone lives, how to use the transport, or... sheesh, she's just a newbie.  So I feel like we just whitewashed this ville in the middle of winter.  I have had some serious prayers about needing some help, because I know I will be here at least two transfers, and I'd love not to hate life.  Thus, Soeur Edgerly and I are doing an experiment.  WWe are taking 24 hours to pray and ponder about what the LORD wants done with this area this transfer.  If He wants us to go door to door six hours a day, then we'll do it.  if He wants us to hunt down every inactive member in the tri city area, then we'll do it.  If He wants us to stand in the road and flag cars down to give them the messge of the gospel... I'll do it.  But we are tired of doing what all the other missionaries here did.  We want to know that whatever we're doing is the Lord's will, and not us running out of ideas.  Because we've been trying, folks.  I don't think I've ever had a harder fourd days on my mission, the first four included.  All I could see was a bleak bleak winter with no one who will talk to us and a ward that can't support us because they live in the literal middle of nowhere.  Soooo, I knoiw that the Lord prepares a way for all things which He commands to be accomplished.  thus, we want to know what His command is for Valenciennes.  We, as His servants, are entitled to that.

 

Funny stories of the week: my package got to melun two hours after I left.L  Thankfully, because there was this four hour block of no trains to Valenciennes, my old companion was able to take the metro up to the gare and give it to me.  It was there that we discovered that something was missing.  Everything else though is very cute and christmasy.  My new apartment is void of all christmas stuff, which is different than melun because we went christmas deco crazy.  But, thanks to terrible traffic and elders who don't know what they are doing on the streets of paris (yet... they're new), I actually got it!  Then, we went and had a RDV with this lady that my new comp, Soeur Edgerly, ported into.  She said "She told us that she was a jehova's Witness, but she would read the Boo of Mormon anyway."  Excellent!  Well, we got to her house and, shocker, no one was there.  We knocked again.  And we stood and waited.  Then Sr Edgerly looked over and into the window and said "... I don't know if this lady is jehova's Witness...."  "Oh no?  Why not?"  "Come look...."  In her window was a giant christmas tree and santas and other such christmas things.  Hmmm... this is fishy.  I told Sr Edgerly that she must have caught the woman in the act of robbing this house, and she thought that if she said she was JW, then we would leave her alone.  Little did she know that we do not get discouraged easily, seeing as one of our recent baptisms up here used to be JW.  Soeur Edgerly just looked at me and said "She was like 90 years old!"  I replied "Crime doesn't discriminate, why should I?  Don't be an ageist, soeur..."  We had a good laugh over that.

 

BTW- TORI do you remember our religion class with brother Palmer?  Guess who sat in front of us the whole semester?  SOEUR EDGERLY!!!  She started telling me some of the classes she took and she said that one and it clicked. "YOU are the one who sat by that other girl and talked the whole time!"  hahaha, I replied "that would be my sister.  We apologize, but most of our discussions were about the New Testament."  and then she said, "Do you remember bryan barrow?  he was so cute..." and then my mind just filled with memories of that class with you.  Sooo, just so you know, I did apologize to her for our joviality.  If that's a word.

 

okay, I love you all.  Christmas is going to be.... slightly bleak here.  but I'll let you know how it goes down.

 

LOVE!

 

Soeur Barros

do you believe in miracles?

Or santa? I don't believe in Santa, but I'd love to right now.

BEFORE I FORGET:
I HAVE BEEN TRANSFERRED.  SO, stop sending mail to my melun address.  my new address is

Soeur Kacey Barros
Les Missionnaires
19, ave Albert 1er
59300 Velienciennes

Et Voila quoi. 

Another item of business:  because I have been transferred, i cannot make my call at the member's house that I was going to.  So, I can either: byu a phone card, or... if you have skype, Mom and Dad, I believe you can call my cell phone.  Other missionaries have had their parents call them, but I don't know if they used skype.  But, if you have skype and can make free international phone calls, like Dustin did when he was in europe, I'll give you my phone number and you can just call me and we'll chat the day away.  Sound good?  Tell me which option works for you.


here was my last week:
Blaise had his baptismal reccomend interview.  Blew the district leader away.  BLAISE IS SOOOOOO AWESOME AND ROKIN'!!!!!  Also, we went to the jewish quarter again and bought gifts for the Mission Conference Christmas gift exchange.  my comp bought a dreidle (the limit was 5€), and I bought a small book of psalms in French and Hebrew, as well as English and hebrew.  I kept the english one because french is a for sure langauge that everyone would know at the party.  Also, we found a "12 tribes of isreal" card game.  Sr Flood bought it and we played it.  I totally rock.

Teusday: All of our RDV's fell through.  All of them.  And I was experiencing a change of heart that day, so I was liek "hey, soeur flood... want to go knock on some doors for a while?" and she's like "yeah, let's do it!"  so we knock doors for an hour and only one person would talk to us, and she didn't have time then, so we fixed a RDV (that she didn't show up to).  So, at the end of our hour, sr flood and I were walking in front of these teenagers who had been folowing us for 15 minutes.  I was like "this is dumb" and turned around, heading back towards the church.  We passed em, and then spotted this little corner store.  my first thought was "I hope they have sugar, cause I want some," but I shot the idea down because I didn't actually need sugar.  Then my companion was like "Dude.  I wonder if they have Dr. Pepper.  In Belgium, the most RANDOM stores had Dr. Pepper."  For your knoledge, DR. Pepper is hard to find here, because it is imported, and my companion has a ridiculous affintity for it, thus we look for it everywhere.  So we end up going inside the store anyway.  The first thing they say after Bonjour is "Oh, it's the mormons."  Ah.  Awesome.  The man was kind of hostile towards us, but the woman was super nice and said "yes, they do believe in Jesus!  It's on their name tag!"  yes, it is.  Apparently she had met some elders in a different ville.  Then he started saying that we don't read the bibel.  ha.  I pulled my Bible out of my purse.  That put an end to his critisms.  Then he just asked questions.  She asked questions too.  And when we had established that Christ is the center of our religion, they pulled us into the back room and asked us to teach them about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith.  I am NOT joking, ladies and gents.  It was amazing.  They took the Book of Mormon and told us to pass by again, because they're going to read it and they want to know they can ask us questions.  We said, of course!  And they were so impressed by our knowledge of the Bible!  Well, that's because we believe the Bible to be the word of God as well!  We're going back soon.

Wednesday: Mission Christmas Conference.  It was AMAZING.  I got to see ALL of my MTC friends, half of which I had made cards for.  Then Elder Draleau gave me the funniest/ sweetest card I have gotten in a long time.  I read it later in the eveing when I was dealing with the less smart group of missionaries in the SNOW in Versailles.  Let me tell you that Versailles is NOT a town that knows how to deal with snow.  We were lucky to catch a train, because people in cars had to sleep in theaters and stuff because all the roads were blocked.  Anyway, attached is a photo that E.  Draleau and I took in the snow at the versailles chapel.  i think he was actually TRYING to look normal, so i figured it was family worthy. 

Thursday:  Exchanges.  We were hosting the Liège Soeurs, and it was quite the experience.  We had a good time, but a lot of things went wrong, as they usually do on exchanges.  I got to show Soeur nielson her first chateau (Fontainbleau), and then we headed off to our final RDV with Blaise.  It was the RDV where we passed him to the Torcy Elders.  It was sad and exciting at the same time.  I started crying, duh, and told him how happy I was for him.  Blaise has seriously been my little project, and it makes me so happy to see him making covenants with the Lord.  Then we went to a membver's house to do service, and she told us that going home from a mission is like HELL.  my comp, who is going home on Feb 2, had a breakdown.  Thank you members.

Friday.  I get a phone call from President saying that not only am I being transferred, but I am leaving a week EARLY.  yup, the sister I am replacing is going home this transfer, and the church has decided to send all our missionaries home a week early due to travling issues the week of christmas.  WHAT?!!!!  I had to run around and say goodbye all weekend, a week earlier than I thought I would have to!  PLUS, I STILL haven't gotten the package from home yet, so I might have to forward it, and I don't know how that will work.  On the off chance that it is sitting in Dad's truck and hasn't actually been sent yet, could you send it to Valienciennes?  merci!!  When did you send it, if you did already?

Saturday: Blaise's baptism.  NO ONE from the Torcy ward would come.  NO ONE.  I don't remember why, and I don't care.  And NO ONE from our ward had said they could come.  I must say I was pretty angry at the ward here.  I was so scared that Blaise would have no one but missionaries at his baptism.  Soooooooo I started to cry.  Nothing had gotten done, no one was coming, and it was partly my fault.  All my human weaknesses had ruined Blaise's baptism.  So I prayed, and told the Lord that I was going to have faith.  I did my best, and now He needed to make up the rest.  Blaise needed to know that SOMEONE besides half the missionaries in Paris cared about him.  And guess what?  people that I didn't even know knew about the baptism showed up.  Fernando, our DMP, even showed up.  There was a nice little group of 20 people showed up.  Funny thing is, I asked for twenty.
Maybe that doesn't sound like a miracle to you, but it was.  Not a person who showed up actually live in Melun.  They all travelled a distance to come.  And I know that it was by the Lord's power that it happened.

Well, that's all for now.  I gotta go.  Enjoy the photos!!

And that's our mennorah that we made.  yay us!!

LOVE LOVE LOVE,
Soeur Barros