Sister Houde and I in front of our apartment

October 28, 2013

Bonjour,

This week was a lot more organized then last week for sure! We have met most the people the former sisters in this area were working with and have started teaching them. I feel like we run all day long though its crazy. We wake up in the morning study and then its just non stop from there from one appointment to another. My companion may be small with short little legs, but I have to almost run to keep up with her! This past Thursday it was our turn to go on exchanges with the sister training leaders. They live in Gatineau Québec, an all-French speaking area. I was the sister that went there and my companion stayed in our area. I was really nervous because I hadn’t had to communicate with other people beside missionaries in French a whole lot. It went really well though all of them just tried to talk slow with me so I could get it. Their Québécois accents are so hard to understand sometimes! We met with this older lady and we were talking to her for awhile and she kept feeding us these weird mints and I was trying to follow the conversation the best I could but her accent was so strong! She looked at me and asked me a question my brain kind of just froze so I just yes OUI! (Yes) and my companion looked and me and said no, no she asked you if you were Portuguese. I was like OH oops nope I’m not Portuguese. 

I love missionary work I’m being spoiled right now being able to teach in English people who are around my age that I can relate the gospel to them. My companion and I was teaching a recent convert this week about what was taught at stake conference because he wasn’t able to be to it. It was of course what a lot of talks have been on lately... MISSIONARY WORK. We told this cute Chinese man in very simple English so he could hopefully understand that missionary work is very important and that we should invite our friends to church so they can find the happiness like he did. He said, "Ok I think I understand." Then Low and behold yesterday at church he comes walking into church with six other Chinese people he came up to us and said "look I bring friends!" We were so amazed and happy that he had done what all of us need to be doing. How great would it be if every member could just bring one member to church! Church was really great this week because I got to meet all the members that my companion Sister Houde has been telling me about for two weeks! I am some how with heavenly fathers help getting better at street contact. I still am scared to death to talk to random people, but I can tell everyday that it is getting better and better! Our service project her at Dows Lake is so awesome. Every Thursday we get to feed the homeless dinner. It is so gratifying to be able to do that and help those who cant help themselves! I have been blessed with such a great companion. She is such a great example to me and i have already learned so much from her. It’s so great that she has been back to this area three times in her mission because she knows the area so well. There has been so many times where I have been so lost trying to find directions but she always knows where to go. The other great thing about my companion is she loves to joke. This makes me feel so at home because I have missed my family jokes. The other day we were on the bus and she told me I should try to listen to everyone that is speaking French so that I can become more familiar with it. She said listen to those people over there and tell me what there saying. I listened really hard and looked at her and said "Sister Houde I suck at French I cant understand anything there saying!" she said its ok just try to listen harder she could tell I was listening really hard because she started laughing and then told me I’m just kidding that’s Arabic not French!! She was lucky we were on the bus I was going to kill her!!! She has helped me a lot with my French though and I help her with her English a lot. 

It has started to become colder and colder every day. After emailing’s we are headed to get me a Canadian goose coat I don’t know what it is but it sounds warm to me!! I hope everyone has a fantastic Halloween and enjoy knocking doors for one day so you can feel like a missionary like me :) ha-ha

Love,

Sister Dick  

premier semaine dans Canada

Bonjour!

Wow what a week! I made it to Canada last Monday around four Canada time. President Patrick took us to the mission home and we got to meet his whole family. They are all such nice people. Sister Patrick fed us Thanksgiving dinner since it was Canada’s Thanksgiving! On Tuesday we had lots of training on different things pertaining to this mission and then it was the big reveal for where everyone in my district would be stationed. The first one president Patrick announces is…. Sister Houde going to Downs Lake in Ottawa with..... Sister Dick speaking.... English. My District started to laugh because the night before we left I had told them all I had the biggest feeling I was going to Ottawa, English speaking. The rest of my district got put in Montréal speaking French except one elder who will be speaking Spanish and one sister who got called to way north by... Santa Clause you could say. My companion from the MTC got put in Montréal but speaking English! She about died because she doesn’t even own an English set of scriptures or anything. It was super hard saying good-bye to my district I have become so close to them, but I know some time I will see them again! Sooo my companion sister Houde is from you will never guess… Montréal I have never heard of anyone getting there mission call to their home mission before, she was totally capable of going out of the country or even out of province ha ha. She has been out for 1 year and 3 months and the funny thing is she has been in this same area for nine months of her mission she just keeps getting called back to Ottawa, Dows Lake. She learned English in the MTC, but she speaks it pretty well. I try to speak as much French as possible with her so when I get called into a French speaking area I haven’t lost all my French. Our area is so great it’s a YSA branch and our area is down town Ottawa where there are two big universities. It’s really crazy going from being a country girl to living down town. We do A LOT of street contact and it scares the crap out of me. Never in my life have I ever had the feeling to just go and talk to people on the street about the gospel, but that’s what I do every day! My companion gives me confidence that I can do it though since English isn’t even her first language. The diversity here is crazy, we are teaching someone from Afghanistan, France, Africa, Algeria, Finland, you name it and i have seen someone from there here. There is still a lot of French here and everyone switches to speaking French to us when they hear my cute companions accent. Tonight we have our first lesson in all French so we will see how that goes. On Tuesday we have a lesson with a guy who can only speak Spanish, so that one is going to be way interesting. I have gotten the real Canada effect here they really do say “EH” its hilarious they add it behind every sentence they make. The taxes here are really high, and they only have milk in a plastic bag instead of a carton. I have already seen so many miracles. The other night we were street contacting in the freezing cold (apparently not even cold weather yet) and I was having no luck.  I started talking to this Chinese guy but he was in a hurry and walked away really fast. Sister Houde asked me how it was going and I told her “no good this was terrible” then we heard someone ask us if we were lost and needed directions. We turned around and it was the Chinese guy. We told him no, but we are missionaries and asked him if he would like to hear a message. He said yes right now! We told him all about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and he loved it! We called the Chinese elders and they came and talked a lot of gibberish or Chinese either--or and set up another appointment.  Well on Sunday he showed up and loved church. I know that if I wasn’t here he might have never been able to hear of the gospel. Even though we won’t be teaching him because he is Chinese I know I did something good!  One thing that has really surprised me so far on the mission is when I street contact, a normal question we always ask if they say there religious is “what role does god play in your life?” and never do people have an answer they just kind of pause and say well I don’t really know. I want everyone to think of that question of “what role does god play in your life?” and if you don’t know try and figure it out! I love you all so much emailing time is really hard because we don’t have a lot of time, but letters are great so send those! Have a great week and pray that I don’t freeze to death.

One More Week!

Une Semaine Plus (one more week)

Bonjour,

This is my last week here at the MTC and it’s been so great! I have had the funnest, most spiritual moments ever in my life. On Friday we got our travel plans and I am leaving Monday October 14th at 3:30am from the MTC.  Our plane will leave Salt Lake at 7:30am and fly to Detroit Michigan and then from Michigan to Montreal. There are nine missionaries flying together there from my district and then a Sister and an Elder who are from Calgary Canada who just got her last Wednesday because they already know Spanish and French! NOT fair right??? I’m very excited to head to Canada, but scared to death at the same time. Every time the native French speakers talk to me I just freeze and all the French I know goes right out of my head. On Thursday my district and I had a really neat experience. We went to TRC where you go and talk to members in your language and share a spiritual thought to help your language and teaching skills. Well when we went in the building we held the door open to five people that spoke French. They Ended up being the members we taught in TRC they were all five from Montreal! They were so cool but it was very scary because none of them spoke good English. It was like stepping right into my mission. They were all up here to watch conference live. This week my companion and I got to host new international missionaries coming in. They gave me a sister from Sweden and she spoke very good English, but had an awesome accent. It was really cool to hear about her culture and how her family became Mormon! Sometimes I like to think I can try and speak any language so this week I tried to read Danish Scripters and German scriptures from some elders in my district. They laughed really hard, but to me it sounded like I was hacking up a lung when I read them, which is exactly how they sound!! This other elder from Spain in my zone can’t speak very good English at all so to talk to him I thought I would share him my testimony in Spanish, that my awesome companion taught me how to do. Well it went pretty good until everyone else in the room realized what I was doing and got all quite so they could here me! I got all embarrassed, but he liked that for once he could understand what I was saying!

I hope everyone was able to see conference and if you didn't I really hope you will go on LDS.org and watch it because it was such a great conference! My favorite talk was Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s he really has a great way of speaking. I love what he said about the church would only be perfect if it was ran through perfect people, but Jesus is perfect and his doctrine is as well. Jesus works through us so it’s not perfect. It is so true, people judge the Mormon Church a lot because they know of this one Joe Shmow off the street who was once a Mormon and he did something bad. We are not perfect, but I can testify that this church is true! My favorite saying in his talk was “Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith”. That is an amazing saying that was really cool to hear because I know that it is so much easier to doubt than to just go on the faith you know! I felt so privileged to be able to watch general conference with every missionary in the Provo MTC surrounding me. I’m so thankful that almost every prayer they gave at conference had bless the missionaries in it because I know those prayers are being answered and we are being blessed. When the congregation stood up and sang called to serve it was so cool to sing it loud and proud with 4000 other missionaries along with everyone else watching conference. After conference was over we had a surprise devotional by Vocal Point they are BYU's famous acappella group. I felt like I was watching Pitch Perfect live it was so cool! This last week in the MTC I’m going to live it up and try and learn as much French as possible! On Tuesday we have a general authority coming to talk to us for a devotional I’m super excited to see who it is and I know it will get me really pumped to go out to Canada!! Have a great week next time I write I will be freezing to death in Montreal.

Love,

Soeur Dick

P.S.

The scripture that I found this week that has helped me is Mosiah 4:9 it talks about man cannot comprehend all that the lord can. This has really helped me a lot this week for myself and for the people I have been teaching. This gospel can be a lot and it can be confusing when we teach our investigators its so much to take in and with our terrible French its hard to even understand what were saying, but I just shared this scripture with them this week that we can not comprehend everything we must have faith and know that we will understand everything someday! I memorized this scripture in French so I can share it the best I can!