The week where I cut all my hair off

Bonjour!!
This week was good, kind of a rough one I won't lie, but good quand même:)
We had the super great opportunity to go to zone conference and hear
from Elder Adler of the Seventy. Him and his wife were there and they
were so great!! I took stacks on stacks on stacks of notes, but
something that really hit me was when he talked about that we chose to
come on missions. No one forced us, no one made us fill out our
papers, but we did it. We signed our papers and we made the choice to
come and serve. I made that choice. Sometimes on missions you have
highs and lows and it's really easy to get down and ask Heavenly
Father why these things are happening when we are working so hard to
do this work. It's easy to think that the grass is greener on the
other side. But something I did today was made a list of all the
reasons I came on a mission/all the reasons I love being a missionary.
Sometimes we just need a little reminder on why we signed our papers,
when you're having a low week it's easy to forget why we came, but
with a little self reflection it's just as easy to remember:)

He also talked a lot about really focussing on the language. He talked
about how important it is that we can bear a sincere heartfelt
testimony in French that will touch others hearts. He even gave us the
challenge to bear testimony to our companion in French every morning.
He wants us to work so hard on the language that we remember it forty
years later! This is also something that really stuck out to me. I
think I'm not alone when I say that at the end of your mission it's
easy to just get complacent with where you are at in the language. But
I was reminded that there is always something new to be learned and
that it's something that we still need to work on every single day!!

It was a great conference. It was so good to be there with the Adler's
and of course President and Sister Brown. I love them a lot and I'm so
blessed to be guided by these incredible people.

So we had a super cool miracle this week!! We were out contacting and
we had planned the night before to have a miracle at 5:45. So we were
contacting on a bridge when we saw a man a little way ahead of us. We
were a little hesitant about talking to him but we did it anyway. We
talked to him about the temple and how we've received these ordinances
through a living prophet today. He was all over it! He was super
interested so we asked if we could fix a rendezvous with him. So we
got his number and fixed a rendezvous with him. At the end he was like
thank you for stopping me, I am looking for a church and maybe this is
a sign. So cool!!! His name is David and he's great! So here's the bad
news we made a goof and wrote his phone number down wrong!!! BUT he
has our number and he wrote down the rendezvous on a card with the
place and time, so we feel like he's serious about coming. So if you
could pretty please pray that he'll come to our rendezvous on
Wednesday at five o'clock that would be soooo great!
I have a testimony that God expects us to expect miracles. Something
we've been taught in our mission is to expect miracles. To plan for
them and to not live our mission without them. We planned a miracle
and it happened. I know that when we show God our faith he blesses us
immensely.

So our amis, remember how I said that it had been a rough week? So
this week we had to drop a bunch of amis who just weren't progressing,
then Sophie came to church and handed us some cookies and said she
doesn't want to come anymore, and then Angela called us all
frustrated, said some stuff in Romanian and hung up. So yeah :/ so
yesterday I was pretty sad. But I know the Lord has a game plan. A way
better game plan then I have. So I'm going to trust Him on this one.
So we are starting at zero, we'll be knocking lots of doors and
pounding the pavement with contacting. But it's ok:) missionary work
is work right? I know the Lord has blessings and miracles in store for
us.

I know He lives and I love Him. I love you all and I hope your week is
full of miracles!

Love,
Soeur Holmes

"For the faithful, our finest hours are sometimes during or just
following our darkest hours."-Neal A. Maxwell

I love being a missionary!

I cut 5 inches off my hair!!!!!

Beautiful Toulouse!

soeur Neff, soeur Alder, the Poitier soeurs and me

The week we got punked!!

Bonjour!! I home everyone is doing well and had a good week! This week
was really good, it was so jammed pack with stuff that by yesterday we
were exhausted, but in a good way:) it's always like a good
exhaustion:)

The week started off with an exchange with the Perpignan Soeurs! They
came to Toulouse and I was with Soeur Pelucchi. Soeur Pelucchi is from
Italy but has been living in France for the past 10 years and is just
awesome!! You wouldn't even know that she's only been in the field for
5 weeks, she's just an incredible missionary. I was really impressed
by her teaching skills and her people skills. She's just so good with
people and when she teaches them she just talks to them like they are
her friend. It was great:) she's also a bomb singer and she sings a
couple of songs on the efy cd (the French version) and they are so
good! She's just great all around!

This week we had district meetings! We had our district meeting
Wednesday and the Capitole Soeurs district meeting on Thursday. The
theme for the meetings was how we can be better planners. As
missionaries planning is KEY. As we were going through preach my
gospel and really talking about how we can become better planners I
realized that I haven't been planning as effectively as I can be.
We've been given so many tools so that we can make the best plans for
our amis, so we can really teach to their needs. Teaching to their
needs is so important, if I've learned anything on my mission it's
that every ami is different from the other. They all have different
needs, problems, etc. It's so important that we prepare specifically
for them and not just give them a generic watered down lesson plan
we've been using for the past couple of transfers. I'm definitely
going to work on being a better planner!

Angela! We were able to see Angela like 3 times this week and then she
came to church!! She's doing well:) she still has all of her problems,
but she's progressing slowly but surely. We have reset her baptismal
date for October 10th, we are praying that everything works out well:)
she came to church for the whole three hours yesterday and I was so
impressed. Nicolas (the baby) was being kind of a pill the whole time
but she was able to focus and I hope she got something out of it, it's
hard to get a lot out of church when you don't speak the language
super well. But he spirit is the same in every language so I hope if
anything she felt the spirit.

We visited the Bertola family this week and they are awesome!! Frere
Bertola is a convert and Soeur Bertola was raised in the church. Frere
Bertola met the missionaries through a friend and they gave him a BOM,
he read it in 8 days. Then he just showed up to church and asked to be
baptized! Haha every missionaries dream. That was 39 years ago, and
him and his wife are still going strong. I love hearing conversion
stories, it's cool to see how much faith they have and you can really
feel the power in their testimonies.

Ok are you ready for this story??? So on Friday we totally got punked!
Like Ashton Kutcher style punked. So we were on the metro heading to
an activity at the church and we hear two guys speaking English, well
we get off the metro and they keep saying, "sisters!" And trying to
get our attention, so we ignored them! Not because we were trying to
be rude, but usually when young guys are saying, "sisters!" They are
usually being creepy or making fun of us. So we keep walking and they
eventually catch up to us and say, "hey are you the Mormons??" So we
are walking to the church and they're asking us loads of questions
about Mormons, missionaries, etc. and we are answering all of them and
we even gave them a tour of the church! So we give them our card and
they leave. So we're feeling pretty accomplished! Two young normal
people are actually interested in the church! Well guess what???
THEY'RE MEMBERS!!!! They are in the other Ward so we don't know them
and they thought it would be really funny to play a joke on us.  It
was actually pretty good, they had us fooled!

So after getting punked we had an activity with the ja's! We made
cheesecake with them and they all loved it of course!! Then we talked
about the temple with them:) I really like talking to the young adults
of the church about the importance of the temple, I feel like they get
excited about it and they are the ones preparing for missions and
marriage so it's perfect!

Saturday we had a relief society activity in the morning and a
missionary fhe at night. The both of them were really good! We didn't
have a great turn out at the fhe but the elders ami came and some
members came and it was still good. We talked about preach my gospel
chapter 4, the power of the spirit in conversion, then we taught them
how to make American cookies and played games:) it was a lot of fun in
the end!

Oh! We also had interviews with President Brown this week! They were
through Skype because we gave a member of the seventy visiting our
mission this coming week. So yeah the interviews were super short, but
it was still good to be able to talk with president and get advice. He
really is inspired and I'm really grateful for him and Soeur Brown.

So for p day we were supposed to go to this really cool space museum
but like most other things in France it is closed on Monday:( sad
right?? So we decided to do a picnic instead! We all got Macdo to go
and took it to the park and had a picnic. This park isn't just any
park it's like a big kid park! It had this massive teeter totter and
this huge spider web thing that we climbed on. You bet your life we
played jump rope and swung on swings and played card games. Such a
simple P day but I laughed so hard I cried and felt like I was back in
elementary school. It was a lot of fun:) pictures and videos will be
following:)

Well kids that's it for the week! Sorry this email is kind of all over
the place, my brain has been kind of scattered lately. I love you all
and I hope your week is great!

Love,
Soeur Holmes

"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart
of man [meaning we cannot even imagine] the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9).

Me and Soeur Wolfe on the giant spider web

The missionaries of Toulouse 

"pday in the park"

me and Soeur Pelucchi eating a Twix!!

Toulouse for the win!!

Kicking us off,
Zone training! So it went better than I thought it was going to go. We
talked about all the new rules that president wants us implementing
into our missionary work and how exact obedience brings so many
blessings. Soeur Wolfe brought up a really cool point, she said that
God promises us that when we are obedient we are blessed. So when we
are always striving to be exactly obedient, God has to bless us. He
has to. Or He would cease to be God. God keeps His promises to His
children. That really hit me. I'm so grateful for obedience. It's not
just to keep us from doing stupid stuff, but it helps us become who
God wants us to be.

Angela! We FINALLY had a rendezvous with her! We decided to meet her
at a park near her house and so we showed up and I just about cried.
She was sitting outside the little pharmacy with her little basket in
front of her begging for money. While cute baby Nicolas sat in his
stroller crying with a runny nose. She looked exhausted. My heart
literally broke in half as I saw this struggling young mother. Her
life is so hard. She keeps being handed trial after trial. And you
know what she says to all of it? That it's the will of God and that
she knows that He is there for her always. She knows she isn't
forgotten. What faith. If I was in her situation and I don't know if I
could say the same thing. I'm so impressed by her willingness to move
forward. She's still reading the BOM every day and praying. I'm
excited to continue to move forward with her in this process as I know
that the Gospel brings so much joy, for I have seen how it has blessed
my life and the lives of so many others.

Exchange with Soeur Wolfe. Ok Soeur Wolfe is SO COOL. We had a
fabulous exchange. She's hilarious and such a good missionary. She
just does what God wants and she does it being completely herself. She
doesn't change who she is to fit situations. She's just honest and I
really respect that. We saw miracles together. We talked to tons of
people, fixed rendezvous, taught lessons on the street and had a blast
doing it. I'm grateful for her example of diligence but also her
example of that you can just be yourself and still be an awesome
missionary.

Remi. We had a heart to heart with him. Like he keeps meeting with us,
but he hasn't really been keeping his commitments and we weren't super
she if he really wanted to get baptized. So we talked about the
Temple. We just gave it to him straight, all the reasons we meet with
him and that his end goal is the temple, and that baptism is a step in
the process. By the end he still wanted to keep seeing us and we set a
date for October 10th, so hopefully he'll be ready. I know if he
really prays to know if the church is true he'll get what he's looking
for.

Hakim!
So on exchange Soeur Wolfe and I contacted this super cool student
named Hakim. He had literally been in Toulouse for like 2 days and is
from Africa. We taught him on the street and fixed a rdv to talk some
more. So we met up to talk some more, I got 7 mosquito bites during
the lesson but it was so worth it cause he is so cool!!!! So he's
Muslim but really open. We explained the restoration to him and also
eternal families and he loved it!! He loved how in our church the
family is such a big focus and how through Christ we can become closer
with our families. It was great! He's super open to listening but also
like really practicing Muslim. I hope we can continue to see him.

The Ducrocq's! Gosh I love them. So Saturday we went with them to
teach one of our Amis who lives far away. They are hilarious and keep
me laughing the whole car ride. Unfortunately our ami isn't
progressing very well and hasn't been for a while so we decided to let
her go:/ she's so great but she just can't grasp the concept that she
needs to be baptized again. I hope she'll be ready one day to accept
the gospel. Then we headed to go see Sophie who lives down the street
from our other ami. Sophie isn't doing too hot either. She keeps all
her commitments and comes to church either way but she is stuck.
Completely stuck. Can't feel the spirit and can't get answers to her
prayers. Now I'm not sure if it's so much that she can't get an answer
or that she won't let herself receive one. We've given her every
answer we could but still nothing. It's quite frustrating. We know how
much the gospel blesses lives and the truthfulness of it, but
unfortunately you can't force someone to believe. So we are giving
Sophie time. We're going to let her finish reading the BOM then we'll
see how she's doing. So it was kind of depressing because we had to
drop two Amis within like two hours, but the ducrocq's just have so
much light and love that they really cheered us up. For dinner they
fed us French fries and chocolate mousse. Score.:) even thought it was
kind of an exhausting day, it was still really good and we were able
to feel the spirit doing our lessons.

Oh how could I forget! Today we did something really cool for p day!
So with all the missionaries in Toulouse we went to this place called
Burger and Co. Now these are not your wimpy macdo burgers, these
things are huge. And it is hard to find a good burger in France. Did I
mention they sell Dr. Pepper there?! It like doesn't exist here! It
does, it's just expensive:) so yes I ate a massive burger which was
called the "highway to hell" (all the burgers were named after 80's
songs) and drank a Dp with some of my favorite people. One of my
favorite p days! Best part? Our waiter was SO nice! Gave us free onion
rings and free American candy. And when I went to pay he gave me too
much change and told me to keep it. What??  He was just so nice. It's
really rare that someone is that nice to 11 young kids wearing
religious badges. Either people take advantage of us and charge us
more money or their just rude. But he was so cool and I was really
grateful.

Good week overall! Taught lots of lessons, met really cool people, ate
good food and spent time with people I love. I love being a missionary
and all it entails. I love you all! Have a great week full of
miracles!
Bisous,
Soeur Holmes

"So it is that real, personal sacrifice never was placing an animal on
the altar. Instead, it is a willingness to put the animal in us upon
the altar and letting it be consumed! Such is the “sacrifice unto the
Lord … of a broken heart and a contrite spirit,” (D&C 59:8), a
prerequisite to taking up the cross, while giving “away all [our]
sins” in order to “know God” (Alma 22:18) for the denial of self
precedes the full acceptance of Him. In the name of Jesus Christ,
amen." -Neal A. Maxwell
Challenge: go read, deny yourselves of all ungodliness by elder Maxwell

Zone Training!!

Tender mercy!

Bonjour!
First week of the transfer, done. Seriously the weeks are going by
faster and faster! I don't have a ton of time today so I'll give you
the highlights!

Remi! Remi is doing well! He's progressing so much better than before.
He used to ask a lot of questions that aren't really relevant but now
he asks pretty good questions! We asked him to be baptized on the
third of October! He said he would pray about it and let us know. I
pray that Remi takes this important step and follows the example of
his Savior. Oh! He came to church! He only stayed for Amis class and
like 30 minute or sacrament, but hey it's a start.

Sophie! So Sophie is doing well! Last time we saw her she said her
week was bad and she just seemed really down. Well she showed up to
church this week super smiley and happy! Also last time we taught her
she was in alma 22 and now she's about to start Helaman! She just like
was not progressing, but I feel like she's actually starting to
progress now! She even asked when general conference is! I'm so
excited about all of it. Please pray for her that she will keep up
this new attitude.

Angela! Things were going real bad. But now we might get to start
teaching her again! We have a lesson this week and we're just going to
really have a heart to heart about everything that's going on right
now in her life and hopefully we'll be able to pick up where we left
off so she can get baptized before the end of the month:)

Tender mercy! So we were on the bus going to church when we ran into
this woman who I had contacted a couple weeks before on the bus going
to church. We had been calling this woman trying to fix a rdv for a
couple of weeks with no response. Well we saw her on the bus and she
apologized for not calling back, that she had been really busy with
work. But she said that after September 15th she would love to see us!
She used to have the missionaries over every week when she lived in
Madagascar. And her uncle is a member. So cool!
Sorry this is so short, but most of our week was spent on trains/ in
Lyon for mission leadership council. MLC is always so good. The Browns
are incredible and so inspired. This Mlc was kind of intense. We
talked a lot about rules and policies that we use as missionaries. As
missionaries it's so so important that we are exactly obedient. It was
a really good reminder that we need to be giving our very best for the
Lord. We can always strive to be better, it was a nice reminder for
myself. It's super easy to get complacent, but the Lord needs our very
best. And when I think about it, 18 months is just a very small price
that I pay for all He did and does for me. I'm so grateful for my
Savior.
I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week!
Love,
Soeur Holmes
Challenge: read "beware of pride" by Ezra Taft Benson. It's like real
intense but real good.

A "Hurd" sister sandwich!

me and Soeur Zenger

me and Abby (Soeur Wallace)

My MTC Companion :)

Me and Souer Brown

reunited with some Elders and Sisters from Cannes and Nice

My MTC homies

Me and Soeur Neff

Staying in Toulouse!!

Salut! Well transfer calls came and I am staying in Toulouse! I will be receiving my new companion Soeur Nef! She's from California and a whole foot taller than me, we will be quite the companionship! Soeur Stapley is heading to Nice! It's a bittersweet moment when someone you really love leaves. I learned so much from Soeur Stapley and I'll miss having her by my side. But I'm also excited to learn lots of things from Soeur Nef! It should be a good transfer:)
This week was slightly crazy. In different ways. Monday was zone p day! We went to this place called Toulouse Plage and played beach volleyball together. My volleyball skills are still as bad as ever but I can officially serve it over the net! Progress my friends. Haha it was super fun and we all had a really good time together! Then Mondaynight we started our exchange with the Perpignan sisters. I was with Soeur Staples. We went and visited Angela. It kind of ended up being a crazy lesson. She has just gotten home, Nicolas was hungry and crying, she was trying to cook dinner, her mother in law kept interrupting, and everything was just going bad. She told us how she's been talking with a "prophet" who told her if she joins the Mormon church that she's a horrible person etc, etc. Every missionaries worst nightmare. It's in these moments where I realize that I literally can't control anything. I just have to try my best and leave the rest to Heavenly Father. We left discouraged but hopeful that she would read the law of chastity pamphlet and pray for the next rdv. Then we tried to find a less active but got kind of lost and almost missed the last bus of the night, but hey we made it!
Tuesday was such a cool day! It was a full day of back to back rendezvous! It's been a long time since that has happened. It felt so cool! We started the day off with teaching this man named Remi who had met with missionaries before. He's just really discouraged right now. He believes in God but kind of feels abandoned because he isn't getting responses to his prayers. But he's willing to try again, so we're excited to see where this goes. After Remi we headed to the church to meet Tya. So Tya actually referred herself! She's friends with a member in our Ward and she's writing a book. Her main character is Mormon! So she wanted to know what we believe from the real source. Alors, she called us! It was a cool rendezvous, we talked about a lot of different things. Mostly just answering her questions and such. I don't think she's actually interested in joining a church, more curious if anything. But super willing to learn and listen so that was really cool. If anything she has a better idea of who we are and what we believe. We're going to see what we can do about actually teaching her:) stay tuned. After Tya we had such a good rdv with Lien! She's the really cute girl from Vietnam that I told you about last week. She's so cute! She's Buddhist but not practicing. She was so curious thought and our lesson about the Book of Mormon went really well. We committed her to read and pray. I think she had a lot of potential and I'm really pumped to see where it goes with her. Whoo! Quite the day! We ended the exchange we these really yummy raspberry chocolate pâtisseries. I'm seriously considering opening up a boulangerie in America because I don't know how I'm going to exist without them. Overall it was a good productive day! Soeur Staples is a great teacher and really hard working.
Wednesday! We had district meeting. So we went to half of our district meeting and then half of the Capitole soeurs district meeting. It was cool to see how the two different district leaders took two completely different approaches for district meeting. Our district meeting was all about  the power of the spirit in conversion. It was such a cool meeting! In Preach My Gospel there is a a part where it talks about the spirit in conversion and what a member must feel, a missionary must feel, and investigator must feel in the process of conversion. Then he had people share from their different point of views how they felt. For example an elder who is a convert shared his experience (investigator) another elder shared his experience helping convert a friend (member) and I shared my experience with Yazid (missionary) it was so cool! It was really neat to hear the different points of view and no matter what role you play each piece of the puzzle needs the spirit in the process of conversion. In the other district meeting we talked about how even though we are doing this big temple project we can't forget all the other great tools we already were using before. It was good to have a little reminder of all the wonderful tools the Roney's gave us, now it's time to incorporate those with all the new tools that President Brown has given us. I feel so blessed to have been given two amazing mission presidents to guide us in this work.
Thursday was great! Haha well it started off not so great:( we went to do soeur Stapley's legality in albi. We got to albi and realized we had forgotten her passport! And so we get there anndddd turns out that her rendezvous isn't for a month. Whoops. So we went back to Toulouse and did a lot of less active hunting, which was fun. Then we had the Capitole Soeurs sleepover because transfer calls were Friday morning. We did the usual Tim tam slams and bible prophesies to prepare ourselves for the transfer calls. Haha it was fun!
The weekend consisted of packing and visiting less actives and members. We were able to go to this really far place called foix Soeur Chautard who has a less active husband. We went with Soeur ducrocq and we took Soeur Chautard to get ice cream. She told us her conversion story and we talked about the importance of the temple. It was great. I love talking about the temple!!  Their is such a special spirit that comes along with it. Also!! So when I was in Tarbes there was this great family named the Polteau's, well they showed up in Toulouse on Sunday! They might be joining my Ward! It was so cool to see them!
It was a good week. This transfer went by fast but slow. I can't believe I'm starting my 10th transfer as a missionary. It seems like yesterday that I arrived in Tarbes, not speaking a lick of French. Haha weird how fast time goes. I'm so grateful to be a missionary! I love this work and I love the Lord! I love you! Have a great week!
Bisous,
Soeur Holmes
Challenge: read "the touch of the master's hand" by Boyd K. Packer

                                                              Saying good-bye to Soeur Stapley

Zone p-day

Trains, Trains, and more trains!!

Bonjour!
This week has been another week full of trains rides, within three days we took 14 hours worth of trains! 14 hours worth of trains to go to the prefecture in Nice for a 30 second rendezvous to pick up my legality! Crazy. Sometimes after being on a train for a really long time, I tell myself "thank goodness trains aren't common in America because after 18 months of trains I never want to take a train again!" But I think once I'm home I'll miss peacefully riding a train through the south of France. I'll start at the beginning:) Monday was great! We had a great lesson with Angela on faith! She has so much faith and even though her life is incredibly difficult right now, she has faith that the Lord will help her and that she will be able to overcome her problems. She's just lovely. Then for p day we went to this really cool museum with the other missionaries! And then that night a cool miracle happened! So we were on a bus heading home for the night when I saw this lady and I kinda felt like I should talk to her but we had made eye contact a couple of times so I felt awkward going up and talking to her. But I put on my big girl skirt and did it anyway! So I start talking to this lady and turns out she's from Vietnam and the most adorable person ever. She wasn't super religious but she was so sparked by our conversation that she gave me her phone number and email and told me she wanted to keep talking! Also she told me that if I'm ever in Vietnam I've got a place to stay:) yessssss.
Tuesday! So we didn't have a lot of time Tuesday because we had to take a train to Marseille at 3 and it's a four hour train ride. But in the time we had before our train ride we decided to go pass an ancient ami. Her name is Maud and she was being taught for a really long time. Then her boyfriend got interested so he was being taught as well, but then her boyfriend got less interested and it was kinda tearing apart their relationship. So she picked him. Anyway so we decided we would just show up at her house and see if she was there. And she was! And she told us they weren't interested, but she let us in! She told us the story about why they stopped meeting with the missionaries, but she also used the words "we're on standby" so that gives me hope that they'll start meeting with us again! She also expressed that she misses praying and coming to church, so maybe our little visit was the answer that she needed:) also about a week before meeting maud we were out contacting on this giant bridge by our apartment and we stopped this couple and asked if we could talk with them, they said no but they knew what we were and they had a lot of member friends! Turns out it was Maud and her boyfriend Olivier! So when we met Maud for real, she was like "didn't I meet you on the bridge?" I really don't think it was a coincidence. I think Heavenly Father is sending her a pretty clear message to meet with us again. I hope she follows through with that prompting:)
Then we took the train to Marseille! We traveled to Marseille and spent the night there with the sisters there. They just barely put a sister equipe in Marseille after years and years of not having one. It's really sketchy there. Like I think Marseille is one of the most dangerous cities in Europe, so I've been told. BUT guess who's in Marseille?? Soeur Gerritsen! One of my companions from Cannes! It was so good to see her and catch up!


Wednesday! We woke up and headed straight to the gare to catch our train to Nice! It was weird to be back on this side of the mission. The Cannes/Nice area is just so different from Toulouse. It kinda feels like two different worlds. Haha but it was cool to go back! The elders in Nice were super nice (haha puny right??) and helped us get to the prefecture to pick up my legality. We even got lucky and got to take a picture in "the Niceian diamond". I'll explain. So pretty much the elders in Nice started this thing where the 4 of them when they take a picture anywhere they call it "the Niceian diamomd" and they take a picture in a diamond form. Sounds weird but oddly hilarious. So to get back to Toulouse from Nice we were supposed to take an airplane! We were SO pumped. So we are looking at our boarding passes and such when we realize that he accidentally ordered us tickets for Tuesday, not Wednesday! So instead of getting home Wednesday evening we took a train to Montpellier to spend the night there! And guess who was also staying in Montpellier??? Soeur Zenger!!!!! Another one of my old comps from Poitiers! I just got so lucky and got to see two of my old companions! It was great! It was kind of a n'importe quoi day. Haha (there isn't really a translation for n'importe quoi in English but pretty much it means "whatever".)
Thursday! Woke up super early again and took a train back to Toulouse!! Feels good to be home:) We headed straight from the gare to the church to meet a member there to take us to another members house to do service for her. So we ended up wallpapering a room for Soeur Marand's mom who is like 90 something years old. It was a birthday present for her:) she loved it! The wallpaper was like this beautiful island scene, I wouldn't mind waking up to that every day! Also wallpapering is harder than you'd think. Haha but it was fun! Then we headed to a lesson with Angela! She is doing well and excited for her baptism!
Friday was kind of a crazy day! We had planned 3 different rdvs with members who lived nowhere near each other. Making it seem pretty much impossible to get to all of these places with the crazy bus schedules. But with a lot of prayers we were able to see all 3 of these members and talk about the blessings of the temple with each of them. We encouraged each of them to prepare themselves and their families for the temple open house in Paris next year. I'm so excited for the amazing people of France to have a temple in their own country.
Saturday! Taught Angela the word of wisdom! She had so much faith and just accepted it so well. She used to smoke 10 cigarettes a day and now she's down to 1. Please pray for her to be able to stop completely! She's so cute and she understands that if she wants to get baptized she has to stop. I love her so much!!!! Also when we first started teaching her when we would go over all of her neighbors and family members would like hard core stare at us and be super judge mental. Now we're totally homies with them! The spirit really does soften the hearts of others. Later that night we went to our dmp's (Ward mission leader) house for dinner. Him and his wife both served in New Caledonia and are just awesome. They told us mission stories and their son in law shared his conversion story, it was great! Love them!


Sunday was great! We taught relief society. The lesson was on the talk, "truly good and without guile" by elder ringwood from this last conference. I'm obsessed with that talk. It ended up being a really good lesson! Angela was supposed to come to church but she got sick and is in the hospital! We don't know what's wrong but we're praying really hard that she gets better soon. Please pray for her!
This week was just kind of all over the place. Haha we weren't really home and when we were it felt like we never stopped running. I love this crazy missionary life and I'm so grateful to my Heavenly Father who gave me that push I needed to serve a mission. I love this gospel, I love this work, it is His work. I love you all! Have a great week!
Love,
Soeur Holmes
Challenge: doing something nice for the missionaries in your ward:)
Pics: cool pic of my plaque, saw Soeur Gerritsen in Marseille, and Us with the Nice elders forming a "Niceian diamomd" haha

I love Zone Conference!!

Bonjour!
Another great week come and gone in Toulouse. I can't believe that we are starting week 5 of the transfer already! It feels like the transfers go by faster and faster now days, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

We had a good week! I'll start with my exchange in Capitole! (I don't know if I explained this but Capitole is in Toulouse it's just the other sector, our sector is called Concorde) I was with Soeur Tibbitts and it was great. I learned a lot from her, she's just a really solid missionary. She doesn't let anything phase her or get her down. To me that's incredible. As a missionary you have the highest highs and the lowest lows, but when the low moments hit, when rendezvous fall through, when someone rejected us it didn't phase her. It was really impressive. I'm really grateful for her example, it's easy to get discouraged when things don't go as planned, but if we just take these moments that are difficult, learn from them and move on, I'm positive that if everyone treated life's circumstances like that we'd all be happier. Easier said than done:)
Now back to the exchange, we had a cool rendezvous with a member of their Ward who is 94 and her less active daughter. They were really nice, the little old lady was quite the sass, I liked that:) we shared a simple message about Jesus Christ and it was pretty powerful. Even though I've seen "because of Him" probably 50 times now, I still get chills every single time. The simplicity of the message is beautiful, but it's something that is relatable for everyone. The daughter really liked this videos message of change. On my mission I've learned a lot of things, but one thing that sticks out to me is that it is never too late to change. Because of the Savior, we can change our lives around. I really like this quote from the talk, the brilliant morning of forgiveness by Boyd K. Packer, he says, "there is no habit, no addiction, no rebellion, no transgression, no apostasy, no crime exempted from the promise of complete forgiveness. That is the promise of the atonement of Christ." I really believe that statement, I really believe that God wants to save all of His children, but we have to do our part.

Angela! Angela is fantastic. Her French is so limited but she just oozes so much love. We were able to see her three times this week. It was so great. The first rendezvous was about the restoration, it was tough with the language barrier and we left the rendezvous pretty discouraged. We left her with the restoration pamphlet in Romanian and told her to read it for our next rendezvous. Well the next rendezvous I was on exchange in Capitole, but apparently she read the whole thing, discussed it with her husband through the phone cause he's in prison, prayed about it, and found out that it was true. She had so much faith! We found out that the best thing to do with her is to discuss like half a lesson, give her the pamphlet and then discuss the rest with her the next rendezvous. She doesn't speak a ton of French, but she speaks enough that if she reads the pamphlet before we can discuss with her. Even though the language barrier is tough, we've already seen her progress so much! She really does understand and she's so excited to get baptized on September 19th. When we were leaving her house she said the closing prayer, in Romanian of course. I don't speak a lick of Romanian but what's cool is that sometimes we can pick out what she is saying in prayers and at one point in the prayer she blessed Soeur Stapley and I and our families. I was so touched, we left the rendezvous on cloud nine. It's true that the spirit is the same in any language.

Wednesday we had kind of a weird day haha it started out great. We had a lovely rendezvous with the Hitoto family. They are fantastic. Frere Hitoto is from Paris and served his mission in our mission and Soeur Hitoto is just the most adorable pregnant person ever. They are super delightful and you can guess it, we talked about the temple:) we played this cute "guess where the temple is" game and shared our feelings of why we love the temple, and talked about the feelings we get when we get in the temple. Their just so great. Then things got weird haha so after out rendezvous we decided to go porting in their neighborhood. And it's going pretty normal, mostly people saying no but we had some good conversations as well. Well we get to this one house and we ring the doorbell. This incredibly sweaty man comes out. We actually end up teaching him a lesson! Well it's just odd cause he told us he has his beliefs and isn't interested in our message, but he kept asking us questions and every time we answered one he couldn't contradict us. Anyway by the end of the conversation I ask him if we can pray with him, he says yes so I ask Soeur Stapley to pray. She does a lovely job and we say amen and look up and at the same time he just strokes both of our faces and says, "aller en paix" (means go in peace) hahahahahahaha so strange! It took everything in me not to burst out laughing as we walked away. But also it was slightly touching? I think he felt the spirit and just didn't really know how to express himself, so he stroked our faces. Haha I don't know if it's as funny typed up but it was hilarious when it happened.

ZONE CONFERENCE!!! Can I just say how much I love zone conference?? I love it. This zone conference was a tri-zone conference. So we took the train to Bordeaux the night before and had a little slumber party with sisters there, always a good time:) Our zone conference was just so good. All about the temple. So inspired and so good. We had a big discussion about things that are working for us and such. We mostly talked about how if we are going to be sharing the temple with everyone and telling them to prepare to meet the temple standards, us too must live our life at a temple standard all the time, getting rid of anything that wouldn't be welcome in the temple. I really just love this new focus, I feel like it's broadened my perspective so much. I'm not so much focussed on baptism as I am focussed on helping others get to the temple. When we broaden our perspective, our amis perspective changes as well.

Saturday we had a really great day! So we were supposed to have a Ward picnic but it rained so that didn't happen:( so after a great lesson with Angela we headed to the Ducrocq's for a fhe. They shared the story of Abigail in the Old Testament with us. The story is in 1 Samuel 25 and its so cool!! If I would have just read it on my own I wouldn't have understood the symbolism of the atonement. I highly encourage you to read it and find the parallels to the atonement. Then they fed us Pb&J sandwiches:) I miss those!

Sunday was lovely! Angela came to church and is progressing so well!!!!!! We had a lesson after church through Skype with elders in Romania! It was so cool for her to be taught in her own language. She understands French well enough, but it was nice to just have them clear up questions she had and such. We are going to do that every Sunday. Oh get this. The world is literally so smaller, it's even smaller when you went to Davis High haha. So one of the elders in Romania who did the Skype was like, "Soeur Holmes, did you go to Davis?? So did I!" I didn't know who he was but it just goes to show how small the world is.

It was such a good week! I'm so grateful for the gospel, my family, my Savior, Angela, and so so so much more! I love this work! Have a great week!!!!!:)

Bisous,
Soeur Holmes
Challenge: read notwithstanding my weakness by Maxwell
Pics! The three zones at zone conference! Yes we have no shoes on, we did a water activity! Oh ps allez vous means will you. Me and Soeur Stapley , selfie of the Toulouse zone and the assistants

Zone Conference

Look at my tan lines!!

Me and Soeur Stapley

Zone Conference