Happy Halloween!!

Bonjour!!
So this week has been great! I love Lyon and I love Soeur Clancy and it is just going so well! I'll give you highlights of the week!

JONAS!
Jonas is so cool. So prepared. This past week we were able to see him twice and it was fantastic. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and also the temple. Both of the lessons he accepted so well. He loved the idea of baptisms for the dead and being able to be with his family for eternity. It was just really cool because we planned his baptism for November but he is going to be out of town for a couple of weeks so we will probably have to push it to December. But the thing that was cool was that how he talked about how important baptism is for him and how he wants to be prepared because he knows that what he is promising to Heavenly Father and he is even more excited to go to the temple! He is doing great. Please keep praying for him! Also lots of crazy stuff is going on with his family in Africa so can you pray for them as well?? Thank you.

ANGELA!
So we have a new amie named Angela and she is awesome. She is from Nigeria so she speaks English. She is looking for comfort and belonging so I think that this is the perfect place for that:) We are excited to keep working with her!

CHARLES!
Charles is fantastic. He is another new ami. We sat down in our lesson and I wasn't sure how into it he was. But he surprised all of us! We started talking about the Restoration of the Gospel and he expressed his desire to change and repent of sins. He said that he really wants to change and become closer to God. He committed to keep seeing us and work his way back towards Heavenly Father. I'm so excited about it!

ZONE TRAINING!
We had Zone Training this week and it was great. We talked about the importance of keeping our lessons as simple as possible. When we teach, sometimes it is easy to get caught up and just kind of vomit everything we know onto our amis. But for a lot of people this stuff is SO new to them that it really is vital that we keep it simple so that they can understand. I love the quote in preach my gospel that says something along the lines of the Gospel should be taught in a way that it is simple enough for a child to understand it. The Gospel is so simple and so beautiful that it is so important for the people we teach to understand the simple truths of the Gospel.

STAKE CONFERENCE!!
So we had stake conference this weekend and it was SOO good!! Elder Homer from the Seventy was there and it was fantastic. There were many uplifting things shared but something I really liked was when Elder Homer shared the story about Peter walking towards Christ on the water. Peter was doing so good and then he got scared and started to sink. He called out for Christ to help him, so Christ reaches his hand down to pull Peter up and said to him " oh thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?" So we have all heard this story lots of times. But it really touched me when he was telling it. So often we let our doubts get in the way of our faith. Peter was literally walking towards Christ, he could see Him. But still he doubted. Even when we are completely focussed on the Savior sometimes we still have doubts. But he said that in times of doubt we need to hold fast to our faith and keep the commandments. Simple things, but they work.

After the saturday session of general conference we went to get tacos with President and Sister Brown! It was SO much fun! I love spending time with them and I feel blessed to be guided by such great people.

Today for Pday we explored  Lyon and took lots of cute pics! It was a blast. I'll send those next week cause they are on Soeur Zenger's camera.

It was a good week! The work is really moving along here in Lyon and I am so excited to keep rolling with it! I  love this work and I love the Savior. I know He loves all of you as well. Have a great week!!

Love,
Soeur Holmes

First week in Lyon

Bonjour!!
It's been a good week! It was kind of stressful, but good! It's been
quite the adventure! Brand new place, brand new companion, needless to
say it's been quite the adventure:) we haven't been too lost though!

So the week was crazy! So Monday I got to Lyon and pretty much just
hung out with Soeur Hurd and Zenger and it was a blast!! Tuesday
consisted of helping the stl's teach their lessons, and lots of street
contacting! Then the zone leaders took all of us trainers out to pizza
that night!

Wednesday I finally got my baby bleue!!! She's so cute!!! Her name is
Soeur Clancy. She's from Scotland and the cutest thing ever. She is
just so chill and happy and works so hard to speak French and she is
doing great. Then after we all went and visited this beautiful
cathedral together. It was so pretty, I love France. Then Soeur Clancy
and I were able to go contacting together! She just jumped in with
both feet. And we had a really cool miracle! We talked to this girl
named Clemence and let me tell you, she is so prepared to receive the
gospel! We started talking about the family and the temple with her
and she just burst into tears. She started talking about how her Dad
just passed away and how us telling her that she could see him again
gave her a lot of hope. So then of course I start crying as we
testified about eternal families. I'm so grateful for the gospel and
the knowledge that we have that this life is not the end.

Thursday we got all moved in to our new apartment. Home sweet home:)
then some of the elders gave us a tour of Lyon so we wouldn't be
completely lost all the time. Haha later that night we had our first
RCM (aka missionary coordination meeting) and out Dmp (Ward mission
leader) is soooo cool and so into helping us! I can tell this transfer
is going to be a good one!

Friday we had a great lesson with out ami Jonas. He is so prepared. We
talked about the retab with him and it all just clicked and he
accepted everything. He's all set up to get baptized November 21st:)
please pray for him!
Also we have this super cool recent convert names Laura that we met
with! She's so cool. Like just the best. Young, funny, so nice, speaks
English. A real gem. We had a lesson with her about service and it
went really well.

Saturday we had quite the rendezvous! We went and ate lunch with a
family in our Ward named the Venet family. They may or may not have
kept us there for 3 hours. Holy cow. So much food. Poor Soeur Clancy
didn't know what was coming! Haha they were so nice though and really
welcomed us into Lyon.  Then we were able to attend a baptism for one
of the sets of elders (by the way there are 26 missionaries in Lyon.
26. So many) it was so cool! I love love love going to baptisms and
seeing how happy these people are when they come up out of the water.
They always have the biggest smile on their faces and you just know
that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are just beaming up above. It
was great!

Sunday! First Sunday's are always an adventure. But the Ward was so
nice and welcoming so it was good! Then we had a lesson with out ami
Anne Charlotte. She's so cute. She loves the gospel and is already
bffs with all the young adults. Only problem is that she's living with
her boyfriend, so we're working on that. Other than that she's great!!

It was a good week! Exhausting. Every night I went to sleep exhausted
but so happy. I love Lyon, I love Soeur Clancy and I love being a
missionary! It's the best job ever and I love being able to serve
Heavenly Father's children here.

Have a lovely week!! And keep your eye out for miracles. I love you!!

Love,
Soeur Holmes

Craziest transfer yet!

Bonjour!!!
So get ready for this. I got transferred. I left Toulouse and I am now
in Porte Des Alpes (Lyon), I'm white washing here, and I'm training!
I'm having a baby!!!!:) I'm feeling lots of emotions. But mostly
excited to start this new adventure.

So this week was great! I'll give you the highlights!
Hamid!! We have a really cool ami named hahmid and he's great. I think
I told you about him last week, but he's just progressing so well!! We
had a really good lesson about the plan of salvation. He accepted it
really well and said he would pray this week to know if he should get
baptized!

Samuel! So a couple weeks ago we met a guy named Samuel on the street
and we talked about the temple and the family. He was interested so we
got his number and set up a rdv. So we had this rdv and he was on
time!! Haha this is rare people. But the best part is that he brought
his seven year old son. :) He was so interested and loved our lesson
about the BOM. He has so much potential.

Angela. We saw her and cleared up a lot of confusion! We talked about
why we need the Book of Mormon and the bible and how the two complete
each other. She still struggles with accepting the fact that we do
indeed need the both, after showing her some scriptures in the BOM and
the bible she was a little bit more open to the BOM being the word of
God. She's progressing surely but slowly. :)

We did two exchanges this week!! One in Perpignan with Soeur Staples
and one in Toulouse with Soeur Tibbitts! They were great and I love
both of these girls so much. They are such good examples to me. The
best part about being an Stl was just being able to learn from such
amazing sisters. I'm grateful for their examples. If anything they
taught me more than I think I ever taught them.

Sorry that this email is kind of short but I'm out of time. I'm sad to
leave Toulouse, but I'm excited for this new adventure. I love you all
and I hope you have a great week!! Love you!!

Love,
Soeur Holmes

The Sordes

Me and camille

Me, Soeur Neff, and our zone leaders

I love Conference!!!

Bonjour!
Wasn't conference fantastic?? I felt like I was 3 again opening up my
very first Elmo. It was that good! I haven't seen the Sunday afternoon
session yet but I'm super pumped to do so. My heart aches for our dear
prophet President Monson, he doesn't seem well and I was so worried
during his talk, please keep him in your prayers. I was also delighted
to hear the announcement of the three new apostles. I know these men
are called of God and I'm excited for the opportunity we all have to
learn from them.
So here are some of my highlights from what I've seen of conference so
far, excuse my paraphrasing:)
Rosemary M. Wixom:
"God sent us here to prepare for a future greater than we can imagine."

Linda S. Reeves:
"Sisters, I do not know why we have the many trials that we have, but
it is my personal feeling that the reward is so great, so eternal and
everlasting, so joyful and beyond our understanding that in that day
of reward, we may feel to say to our merciful, loving Father, “Was
that all that was required?” I believe that if we could daily remember
and recognize the depth of that love our Heavenly Father and our
Savior have for us, we would be willing to do anything to be back in
Their presence again, surrounded by Their love eternally. What will it
matter, dear sisters, what we suffered here if, in the end, those
trials are the very things which qualify us for eternal life and
exaltation in the kingdom of God with our Father and Savior?"

Dieter F. Uchtdorf:
"God didn't design us to be sad, he created us to have joy." And
"exaltation is our goal, discipleship is our journey."

Neill F. Marriott:
"It will all work out.":)

Robert D. Hales:
"The Lord will always lead us, but will we let ourselves be lead?"

Jeffrey R. Holland:
"The closest love to the Savior's love is the devoted love that a
mother has for her child."

Dale G. Renlund:
"The Lord has called me for what He can do through me."

Henry B. Eyring:
"Only through the Holy Ghost we can see things as God sees them."

There were SO MANY that I loved but those are a few that really
touched me. Now my all time favorite talk was the talk by Elder Larry
R. Lawrence when he talked about what lack I yet? It's funny because
earlier in the week as I was studying the life of the Savior, I
studied that story. And so it says in Matthew 19:16-22,
And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing
shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good
but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the
commandments.
18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou
shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear
false witness,
19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself.
20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my
youth up: what lack I yet?
21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou
hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven:
and come and follow me.
22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful:
for he had great possessions.

This story always gets me. Like Elder Lawrence said, a lot of the time
we are humble enough to ask the Lord what lack I yet? But we aren't
always willing to change what He asks us to change. We are all far
from perfect, myself included. It's not always easy to go before the
Savior and ask Him what we are lacking or what is keeping us from
progressing. But as I've seen throughout my mission, if we are humble
enough to do it and follow through with the answer we receive, He will
change our hearts. And he will help us on our path back home to Him.

I guess I'll tell you about my week now;) besides conference being the
ultimate highlight we were able to find a new ami!
His name is Hahmid, and he has read the BOM twice now and loved it.
During our rendezvous he kept asking, why are there so many churches
when there is only one God?? That's my favorite question:) I'm excited
to keep working with him.

A super nice lady on the bus gave me her scarf! Cool right?? I was
like hey I like your scarf and she said I could keep it! There are
some really cool people in the world.

We had district meeting, it was great! We talked about the importance
of bearing testimony which goes along perfectly with our 30 day
challenge from Elder Adler to bear testimony of the Savior to our
companion every day for 30 days and not miss a day. We recorded
ourselves the first day and the last day we are going to record
ourselves again to see the difference. It's been a really cool
experience so far!

We did an exchange with Montpellier and it was fabulous. I was with
Soeur Grant. I did an exchange with her back in Cannes when she was
bleu. She's grown up so much in the past couple of transfers. She's
one of the most talented missionaries I've ever met. She speaks
incredible French, loves people, and is an awesome teacher. Also she's
just fun to be around. I love her:) also funny story! So we were
leaving their apartment and Soeur James and Soeur Nef were in there
making calls and such so you know we leave like normal and lock the
door. So we get to our next rendezvous which is super far away when
the Soeurs call and tell us we locked them in the apartment!! Yeah
it's one of those that like if it's locked from the outside you can't
get out. Poor things. They were stuck in there the whole afternoon
until we got home that night! But it was kind of funny:)

Well kids that's it for the week. Sorry this is so long. I love you
all and I'm grateful for your examples. I know our Savior loves us
individually. Have a great week!

Love,
Soeur Holmes

Conference Time!!

We bowl hard!

We found  the scripture John 3:16 on a wall in Toulouse

Lunch after district meeting

Conference Selfies

Me and Soeur Grant

On the train at 6 am!! Not fun!!

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!!