He is the Gift

Bonjour!!
This week was so good! We started off with an exchange, I went to Angoulême and Soeur Z stayed here. Funny story, so as we are leaving our apartment I tell Soeur Z that she should take the keys so I don't end up with them in Angoulême, and she's like oh just hand them to me in the elevator. So we both space and I end up in angouleme with the keys!!! So Soeur Z and soeur schrebier have to come allll the way to angouleme to get the keys:) whoops.
So this week we had a goal to teach 20 lessons. It's the standard of excellence for our mission to teach 20 lessons a week. It isn't impossible, but it's pretty stinking hard here to do that. But we really wanted to do it. And we did! By last night I was so so tired. We worked our tails off and we saw blessings from it. We talked to everyone, we approached people who didn't seem approachable. And we didn't stop until we reached our goal for each day. We got our 20th lesson at the train station on the way to a members house last night, we prayed with him on the platform and everything! It was so cool. We really can accomplish the "impossible" when we put all of our trust in the Lord.
We have a new ami! Her name is Francella and she is so cool. She's from Madagascar and has a little boy. We found her porting another ami's house and she was really interested to learn more. We've taught her twice now and she accepted the soft committment to be baptized! Now we're just working on getting a date for her! Please pray for her!
Julie is doing soooooooo gooood!!! I'm just obsessed with her progress!! So we had a lesson with her this week about baptism, her date is the11th of April and we're just like no that isn't gonna fly! So we taught her more about baptism and how important it is and at the end we asked her what she thought about moving her date to the 24th of January.. and she was like ummm no that's too soon and I'll be busy with school, I'm not ready, etc etc etc. We asked her what was holding her back and she told us how she just feels like she needs to be perfect. We testified hard core about how you don't have to be perfect and none of us will ever be perfect in this life. By the end of the lesson she told us that she would pray about the 24th of January!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And she was like, funny that you picked that date because that's my mom's birthday! BOOM inspiration! I reallly hope she get's a confirmation about being baptized sooner, she's so ready, she just needs to believe in herself.
Aurech!! We watched The Restoration with him this week and talked a lot about Joseph Smith because that's what he struggles with the most, is knowing that Joseph Smith is a prophet. The Spirit was really strong and I think it finally clicked for him. When he was saying the closing prayer he asked Heavenly Father if the church was true and if Joseph Smith was really a prophet of God. In over 2 months of teaching him I have never heard him ask to really know if it was true. It was amazing, I know he'll get a response.
Funny story! So we we're teaching a lesson on the street on Thursday night and we get done teaching this guy and he's like "can I take a selfie with you??" haha umm sure?? It was slightly awkward/hilarious. We'll hopefully teach him again soon!
Saturday was district meeting and we got all the stuff for He is the Gift! FACT so for the He is the Gift they are giving all the missionaries pass along cards right. We'll the church didn't produce any pass along cards in French!! What the heck! It's French not click! SO since President Roney is the coolest human ever. He designed French He is the Gift pass along cards and printed about a bagillion of them and had the office elders drive all over the mission to give them to our district leaders! So cool.
Sunday was the best day of the week for sure. After church we practiced Christmas hymns to go caroling with the branch so that was great and then we went to the Descoubes house! They are a family in our branche and they are amazing! We took a train to their house and literally spent all day with them. We first ate really yummy food and then we helped them decorate their Christmas tree. For the first time, it actually felt like Christmas. It was so fun. And Frere Descoubes is blind. He has been blind since he was 16, but he is the most happy positive human I know. It's his job every year to put the star on top of the tree. I watched his daughter Sarah gently guide him to the ladder and help him up to put the star on top. I literally almost cried. After the tree was done we shared a Christmas spiritual thought and ate AGAIN!! After the drove us home. It was such an amazing day, I love that family and the love that they have for each other and the Lord. Their faith amazes me.
Well friends. That's it for the week! I love you all and I hope you enjoy this holiday season and truly remember that He is the Gift!!

avec amour,
Soeur Holmes

                                                                        District Meeting

                                               The beautiful Creche at the Descoubes House

                                                          Me with the Descoubes Family

                                           Frere Descoubes putting the star on top of the tree

                                                                 Me decorating the tree

                                                             

Thanksgiving

Bonjour!
This week was a good one for a lot of reasons, but first because it was Thanksgiving! We had a great day, we had district meeting so that was really good and mostly we went around and said what we were grateful for and such. Throughout the week we all made a list of all the things we were grateful for and then put why next to each item. A lot of the time we know what we are grateful for but we need to take a step back and really ponder why. It was great. I'm so grateful for many things but the first thing on my list was my Savior. He did so much for us, without Him we would not be here in the first place let alone celebrating Thanksgiving. I'm grateful for His everlasting sacrifice, His love and patience with all of us. I feel incredibly blessed to be loved so much by someone, He knows us perfectly. Hand your troubles and problems to Him, He wants to help. I love my Savior.
After district meeting we went to a members house who LOVES america! We had turkey and kind of mashed potatoes and it was pretty good! I mean it didn't taste like mom's but it was good! OK story. So we walk into this members house and she has not one, but two giant dogs. Boxers in fact. Large dogs scare me. These two dogs just start booking it at me and I'm like freaking out and she gets them to stop jumping on me when all of a sudden these two dogs just start like attacking each other and getting super scary, so I literally book it out the front door with Soeur Zenger! She calmed them down and made them stay outside until we left:) It's pretty funny now, but kinda horrifying in the moment!
Aurech, ok so he didn't get baptized. Sad. So I was on exchange with one of the sister training leaders and within the two days we had two lessons with him and figured out that he really isn't ready. He still has a lot of stuff to figure out with some people in his life and he still isn't sure if Joseph Smith is a prophet. We talked about moving his date again to the end of december. He told us that he felt good about that and that he knows he needs to be baptized but he really wants to be ready. I was a little heartbroken, but I know that if he really puts in the work he'll be ready. It's just getting him to act that's hard. Please pray for him.
Julie is doing so well!! We taught her again this week. We talked about following the prophet and we showed her some mormon messages by President Monson, she LOVED them. She book marked them on her laptop and everything. She's progressing so well. I love the light that she has with her, I know that it will only be brightened as she continues to progress towards baptism.
So something else cool that happened this week was that we had the opportunity to have a member work with us all day on wednesday! Her name is Noemie Meloen and she is the cutest ever. She's 18 and preparing for her own mission. She wen't to all of our rdv's with us and went contacting as well. Her testimony is so strong and it was cool to have her with us, she kinda got a little taste of missionary life! When the day was over her mom drove us home and gave Soeur Zenger and I those cute chocolate christmas calendars! You know what I'm talking about?? Where you eat a piece of chocolate each day?? It was really nice of them.
On Saturday we had a really awesome day! It was the first day of the He is the Gift initiative that I told you all about. If you haven't gone tochristmas.mormon.org and watched the video/shared it on social media do it now! So good!
We made a cute little Christmas questionnaire and talked to/watched the video with a bunch of people. It was really cool to see people in the Christmas spirit and for them to open up about why Christmas is special and how Christ is really the reason we have it. We talked to a woman on the bus and she said, "Today Christmas is all about the gifts and the decorations and the holiday, but it's about Christ, He is the reason." I'm glad people still believe that. He is the Gift.
I hope you all have a good week and go to that website! I love you!
Love,
Soeur Holmes

                                                                      Apartment view

                                                                     Me and Soeur Zenger
                                                    wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

                    gare aka train station in limoges. It's voted the most beautiful gare in europe

 

                                                                 Me and Laurence

David Archuleta is coming!!!

Bonjour!

This week was a good one! We got in contact again with Aurech!! Praise the heavens above! So we are planning on baptizing him this Saturday, I keep praying all will go well. He says he wants to contact his family first and make sure they are ok with his decision. It made Soeur Zenger and I a little nervous but we hope he feels more at ease once he talks to them. I know that everything will turn out how it needs to. We jus have to have faith and really trust in Heavenly Father.

Julie is doing wondeful! And progressing so fast! We're almost done teaching her everything and her baptism is in April! I just keep praying that she'll move her date up. She's beyond ready. Our lesson this week went really well. She opened up to us about how she just doesn't feel "perfect" enough to get baptized. She was like "I'm trying so hard and doing my best, I just hope God knows I'm trying." We explained to her that she'll never be perfect in this life, none of us will be. But that God is happy with every small step we take towards Him. He never expects us to be perfect. I love this quote by President Uchtdorf, "We have all seen a toddler learn to walk. He takes a small step and totters. He falls. Do we scold such an attempt? Of course not. What father would punish a toddler for stumbling? We encourage, we applaud, and we praise because with every small step, the child is becoming more like his parents.
Now, brethren, compared to the perfection of God, we mortals are scarcely more than awkward, faltering toddlers. But our loving Heavenly Father wants us to become more like Him, and, dear brethren, that should be our eternal goal too. God understands that we get there not in an instant but by taking one step at a time."

I love that quote. We'll never really reach our full potential in an instant. It takes time, luckily we have a loving Heavenly Father who is always willing to hold our hand and walk with us if we let Him.

In that same rdv with Julie, we were finishing up when a man walked up to us in the library and said, "I know you! And I know that book!" I guess he used to meet with the elders, we asked if he had read it lately and he told us no, that it was too long and too hard. As he walked away I looked over at Julie, she looked kinda puzzled. She said, "That's too bad, I hope he understands one day before it's too late, but God is good." God is good and He loves all His children, even the ones who have gone astray.

So this weekend we had stake conference in Bordeaux and it was wonderful! That was the first time I've heard President and Sister Roney give a talk in French, it was really cool. It was really cool to attend a conference all in french, I was worried that I would have a hard time understanding but amazingly I understood most of it. The french is coming, slowly but surely! In the conference President Roney said about 3 different times, "Invite the missionaries over". It must have sunk in cause that night we got invited over by two different families for this week! There is something special about teaching members, it's hard to describe but I love being in members homes and teaching them.

OH I ALMOST FORGOT!! So we had zone training this week and they announced that David Archuleta is coming to our mission for our Christmas Zone Conference! Cool right?? I mean I've never really been like a hard core fan but he has a nice voice. Soeur Zenger was pumped and literally started to cry, she's a big fan, so this will be goood :) Also at zone conference we talked about something really cool that the church is doing for Christmas! In about 2 days you can all go to http://www.mormon.org/christmas/countdown and check it out! This video they are launching for Christmas is soo cool and we are going to be using it a lot this season to find new amis. The church is putting this video as the main banner on youtube the whole month of dec, so each time you go to youtube it'll be there! Which is awesome cause like the whole world is going to see this video! ALSO it'll be one one of the giant screens in timesquare in NYC the whole month too! The church is getting legit with social media my friends I am pumped.

This week was great! I'm so grateful for all of you and all your prayers, I feel them in my life. Have a great Thanksgiving and keep a list of what you are thankful for this week! I love you!

avec amour,

Soeur Holmes

Golden

Bonjour!

The word that describes this week perfectly would be golden! Let me explain:)

So we have a golden investigator named Julie as I have kinda talked about in past emails. She is the best and progressing quickly. We had two really awesome lessons with her this week. We started teaching her the commandments so we thought we we get the two hardest ones out of the way first. We taught her the word of wisdom and the law of chastity. And because she is so golden and amazing she accepted both of these commandments with such ease! She even bore testimony to us of how important she thinks they are and how she wishes that more of the world could live these standards. She is truly one of those people who are ready for the Gosepl. I always heard that there were golden investigators, but I never really believed it until we met Julie. ALSO we got Julie to pray aloud for us for the first time! She was so nervous, but she did such an amazing job and the Spirit we felt was incredible, I know she felt it to.

EVA

We saw the most beautiful miracle this weekend. As we were walking home from a long branch council I turned to Soeur Zenger and said, "let's contact a few more people on the way home." We were hungry and tired but it felt like the right thing to do. So we began and quickly didn' have much success. As we kept walking I saw a woman to my right and the thought quietly came to me, "contact her" so we did. We got through about 2 questions on the questionnaire when this woman looked down, and began to cry. She looked up at us and said "I'm sorry, it's just that you have something very strong with you." She continued to try to compose herself. Soeur Zenger and I just looked at each other and began to cry as well. We began to tell her why we were here and that the strong feeling she was having was the Spirit. We testified of the Book of Mormon and how Christ's true church has been restored to the Earth. As the discussion came to an end we fixed a rdv and parted ways. As we began to walk home with tears in our eyes, we looked down and realized we still had the Book of Mormon in our hands! We quickly ran to catch up with her. Once we caught up to her we gave her the book and again testified of it's importance. She said to us "well of course it's important, you ran back."

We walked home filled with the Spirit, we literally felt like we were floating. It was a miracle I will never forget. God loves His children. People are ready for this Gospel, we just have to watch for them.

JIMA

On Saturday we had another "golden experience" with contacting! As we were approaching a bus stop we saw a woman standing there. I felt like I should talk to her but I kinda just pushed it aside. (never a good idea) She got on the same bus and the whole ride I wish I would have talked to her. Luckily for us she got off at the same stop and got on the same connecting bus we were getting on! We had to contact this lady! So we did. She began to tell us out of the blue that she had just lost her sister and she hoped there was a way she could see her again. We testified hard core about the plan of salvation and I just happened to have a pamphlet with me! She was really excited to hear about this message and we'll be seeing her again next week!

So some sad news, remember Aurech our ami who is suppossed to get baptized asap!! Well he kinda went MIA. We've been trying to get ahold of him all week, but his phone just rings and rings and then disconnects. We even went to his house, but he wasn't there. We left a note on his door but no response yet. My heart broke a little. We've been working so hard with him and he is ready to be baptized. I keep praying that he will show up again. Please pray for him.

This week really was golden. The work here in Poitiers is really expanding and I feel incredibly blessed to be part of it. The Gospel is true, I know that. We really are God's children. I love Him.

I love you all! I hope your week is great and that you can see miracles in your own life this week. They really are there, we just have to watch:)

Love,

Soeur Holmes

Poitiers

Hello my darling family!

Turns out I am staying in Poitiers for another transfer! This transfer is kinda weird cause it's only 4 weeks but then the next transfer is 8 weeks, that's just kinda how it worked out with the new people coming in and stuff.
So yes I am staying here and I got a new companion! Her name is Soeur Zenger and she is from St. Louis Missouri and we are already great friends. She is actually only 1 transfer older than me in the mission so we're one of the youngest companionships in our mission. We're excited to get a lot of great work done here.

Aureche...so he probably has the most opposition out of anyone I have EVER met and it makes me so sad. He couldn't get baptized because our branch president was out of town and we didn't have anyone else to preside over the baptism AND we don't have a font here so we have to take a 2 hour train ride either to Angoulême or Limoges to get him baptized so that's also kinda frustrating. So we are praying to get him baptized this weekend because if it isn't this weekend it will be in December and he really can't wait that long with all the oppositon he is facing right now. Please pray that a miracle will come to pass and we can get him baptized ASAP!! He is so ready and his testimony is strong, it's just figuring out the small things now.

Julie:) she is our ami from Guadeloupe and she is the coolest person I have ever met. We taught her the gospel of Jesus Christ this week with one of our recent converts and it was so cool. The Spirit was incredible. She is literally a sponge. She soaks up everything we teach her so quickly. You know how you hear people talk about how there are just certain people who are ready for the gospel? Yeah, she is defintely one of those people. She knows how much happiness this will bring her and she picked a date to get baptized! She has chosen April 11 which is kinda far but we don't want to rush her at all. But we hope with time she'll realize that she wants to get baptized a little bit sooner. Also she came to church for the first time this Sunday and it was amazing. She was beaming from ear to ear and she had this light in her eyes, it was incredible. During out ami class we talked about eternal marriage. Our branch president was there, a recent convert named Catherine who is preparing for her own temple marriage in August, and 2 sisters from Bordeaux one of which just got baptized two months ago, her name is Sara. So we're having this great lesson and everyone is just giving great comments and Julie is just smiling and making great comments as well and it's just the best. And then it gets better. We felt impressed to ask Sara the recent convert to share her experience with her baptism. She got quiet, smiled and tears filled her eyes. She expressed how she had never felt this way before and that getting baptized was the best decison she had ever made and that she has never been happier. She was crying, I was crying, Soeur Caldwell was crying, we all were crying, and Julie was crying! The spirit was incredible and I knew in that moment that Julie knew it was true.

This week was great. So many blessings. It's always sad to say goodbye to people you care about, saying goodbye to Soeur Caldwell was really hard. She was my trainer/mom and I was so so so blessed to have such an amazing companion. She taught me more in 12 weeks than I could have learned in a lifetime on my own. They do say you progress and mature at a much faster rate on a mission; and I really saw that these past 12 weeks. So though I am sad to see her head back to America, I am grateful for all the laughs and life lessons I learned.

Have a good week everyone! Look for a miracle every day. There out there I promise:)

Love,
Soeur Holmes

Me and Soeur Wallace at Zone Conference

Zone Conference 

Soeur Caldwell and I dressed up like CATS for Halloween

CATS

Happy late Halloween everyone! I hope you ate lots of candy and did crazy fun things! Soeur Caldwell and I were (drum roll please) CATS of course! Everybody wants to be a cat! So we dressed up like cats, perched on just about every surface in our apartment and took some great photos! It was a great Halloween!

This week we had zone conference and man it was SO good. Elder Kearon is not only so wise but so funny! He gave us great council that I will use my whole life.
Something he really talked about was choices. In the scriptures a lot of the time or just in life we say things like "take courage" but he was telling us to start saying "choose courage" it is definitely a choice to have courage it is a choice to be happy or sad it's a choice to be lazy or work hard. Our entire lives are made up of choices, some more critical than others, but they are all choices in the end. I am grateful to have a loving Heavenly Father who guides me to make the best choices I can. Our choices not only effect us, but the people around us as well, something we all know, but not something we really think about always.
He also taught us to "become the message" it's easy to say the message or preach the message, but it's hard to really become the message. To really practice what we are preaching.
It was such a great zone conference and I got to see a lot of familiar faces so that is always fun!

Unfortunately Aureche did not get baptized, he had to go to Paris for a family emergency. But he is on track to get baptized this saturday so please pray for a miracle that it will happen!!
On Saturday we went to Angoulême, because the sister's there had a baptism. This was the first baptism I have gone to in France and it was beautiful. It was so simple. The message was so pure. It wasn't about the food or the decorations, he didn't have anyone there for him besides us 8 missionaries and the bishop and I can't think of a more perfect baptism I have seen. The spirit was unreal and his sweet simple testimony was so strong. I love seeing people change their lives for this great message.

Sorry this email is short but those are just the highlights of this week! I included pics of Halloween and such! I love you all and I am grateful for your prayers and support. Thank you thank you. Have a great week!

Love,
Soeur Holmes

Oh you know you're a missionary when you call movie stars Elder Dicaprio hahahahah Soeur Caldwell did that yesterday and I have never laughed so hard in my life.