LONGUEUIL July 25, 2016 "LOVIN' LIFE"

July 25, 2016

Holy cow this email time is flying by today... lots of fun pictures and fun emails to read. I'll try to share as much as I can :)

It's been a great week. Loving life. We're definitely learning the magic of constantly finding people. Making that extra effort to make opportunities to contact more, and really just talking to everyone around us. Regardless of how scary they look or how late we are to an appointment. And we're finding so many people. Lots of potentials, and setting up lots of lessons. Too bad we don't have more sisters in our zone to do blitz exchanges with in our area, because we need two more of us to actually see everyone. Craziness. But oh so fun.

We had some awesome first lessons this week. And got to set some baptismal dates, too. What miracles :)

One was with a 20 year old from Africa, Ulrich. Sister Prince and I actually met him back in may I think, and we've been setting and resetting appointments again. Due to weird circumstances with the Greenfield park car getting hit in a police chase (crazy), we had a little emergency split. So I got to go teach with Sister Prince again! So it was just meant to be that the two of us went and taught Ulrich. Kind of crazy lesson, involving walking 20 minutes with him to go to the library for the lesson, in which I was the only one who actually talked with him (so kind of weird). But the lesson worked out. Invited him to be baptized and he accepted. Then invited him with a date, and he accepted. Looks like we'll be working to help him be one of our transfer miracles :)

We also had this interesting first lesson with our new friends .. so crazy! I had met them on splits with Hermana Mayora a few weeks ago, and honestly did not think they were actually interested. It definitely took some pushing and pulling to get them to open up and be willing to give us their number. But to my surprise the number was correct and he arranged for a lesson yesterday. We showed up with our member, and found the address was a tanning salon. I hoped we'd gotten the wrong address, but also thought he'd just made a joke of us. But then his wife inside waved us in. So we ended up having a lesson in the basement of a tanning salon in his office. She  at first said she was too busy to stay. Then she started to open up. Actually she started to talk pretty loudly and quickly and get pretty worked up. Talking about how if God really did love her, why would he let so many hardships come into her life. Why had he allowed both her parents to pass away from cancer? Why were her in-laws battling with the same issues. She just opened up and poured everything out. With some tears as well. And we really couldn't say a whole lot. But we were able to say just enough to testify of how the restored gospel will be able to bless her, to open up the Book of Mormon, and invite them both to read about the resurrection, and the atonement of Jesus Christ. The member with us was able to testify gently and powerfully. We were able to say just enough so that she gained that trust in us. Enough that she opened up and said, "now you girls are going to come back and see me, right". (Yes, after talking in French for an hour she let us know that she was American from New Hampshire... good Quebecois practice, though :)).  So she has her Book of Mormon, and we have a return visit set up where we'll hopefully teach more. Pretty cool, though.

We're working to make contacting a more powerful teaching experience.. To get the people talking and see what's important to them. As Sister B puts it, "dangle the carrot", give them something to bite onto. It doesn't have to be anything too fancy, but really just start from that first contact to teach the people, rather than just saying the same approach every time. Absolutely wonderful :)

So there's this week. Lots of good things, lots more good to come as we press forward to work on our goals :)

love you all!

Sister Shelley