Bonjour Famille!
This week was awesome. We had an exchange here in Perpignan with sisters from Montauban again, and then went up to Toulouse for a few days to do some back-to-back exchanges there. I love learning from other sisters! It's fun to get to spend time with them and learn their little tricks--basically just steal all their good ideas and use them to help you become a better missionary. Some of these sisters I've known for a bit so it just feels like we're all hanging out with friends and doing missionary work at the same time. Love it! We took some pictures in a pretty part of Toulouse and it's just little moments like that that I remember "I'm in France and it's the best!!"
One of the days in Toulouse we went to teach a part-member family, and the mother who is not a member taught us how to make Flan au Noix Coco which is flan with coconut and it was SO GOOOOOD. And not very hard to make! We also learned how to make two different kinds of caramel and I did one all by myself :) It was delicious. Definitely copied the recipe and will keep that one for life. I've started to acquire a few French recipes that I can't wait to try on my own later. One of those being crêpes--I made them the real French way! None of these easy-peasy crêpe-maker stuff we have at home. It was hard. There's a picture and they're not gorgeous but could be worse. I think I finally got the hang of it on the 5th one.
Something I've also started to do on my mission is start a "future book." A lot of other missionaries have been doing it and I joined. Basically it's just a book of ideas you get of how you want your future to be--home and family life, church, career, spouse, all those things. You just get so much inspiration on your mission for how you're going to do certain things--how you're going to teach your kids the gospel everyday, what traditions you want to keep and create, what your plan is for continually progressing in education, etc--that you have to take advantage of it and write it all down. You won't remember it later unless you do. Mine so far is pretty limited but when I get an idea here or there I jot it down.
Since this is President's last transfer the assistants have asked us all to do a little something as a gift. We're supposed to go to the coolest place in our sector and take a picture with our companions, print it out, and write a little note on the back. We'll send them all in to the office and they'll make a book of everything for President and Sister Roney before they leave. I remember President told me in my first interview that when he served in Perpignan, he rode his bike to the border of Spain and stuck his foot over the border. Soo we may or may not be riding over to the border today and taking our picture there for fun. Maybe not the coolest or most beautiful place in our sector but he'll get a kick out of it.
This week for our cooking class Sebastien taught us how to make duck with a balsamic sauce and it was pretty good! Have a few pictures. Two non-members were there and it was fun. I love our ward :)
Can I just take a moment and freak out about how much I love being able to study every morning for three hours? I LOVE STUDIES. It's always been one of my favorite things about being a missionary. I've always loved reading, so maybe that plays a little part in it. Seriously though, never before have I understood "line upon line, precept upon precept" as much as I do now. It's amazing how you can read the same books over and over again and build upon your knowledge each time. In the MTC I felt that I would get sick of Preach my Gospel so fast but instead it's becoming the opposite. I love it more and more, like the Book of Mormon, every time I read it. One of the recent converts in our ward, Lucie, even testifies about how great it is. She studies it daily and tells me often "C'est vrai. On a besoin de la parole chaque jour. Sinon on va oublier." We need to study the scriptures and gospel everyday or we will never progress. It's that simple. Ahh I just love learning so much. And conference talks are like my drug. Hmm maybe not the best choice of words here? Haha but seriously I've had to ask the STLs to borrow general conference Ensigns from years ago because I finished all the ones in our apartment. Everyone reread a conference talk from a few years ago! Imagine it in the voice of whoever gave it. It's better. I can't wait to get iPads so I'll be able to more frequently find talks from living prophets and apostles for studies.
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