Zut, alors....

This week was pretty darn fantastic. We found a beautiful Sri Lankan family that just moved here from Greece who's super interested in learning more about Christ. We have another investigator who could be baptized this transfer and be an amazing member. What did I do to deserve this??

This weekend we had cultural night with the young adults :) Everyone presented a little something about their country or city if they were from France.  We learned about Peru, Albania, Finland, and two small towns in France that are so different from each other! And of course….Georgia was REPRESENTED. I just talked about baseball, Coca-Cola, and overweight people. That's what French people expect.

FACTS I LEARNED:

• Finnish fact: the music from the hymn 'Be Still My Soul' is originally Finnish. It is the tune of their national anthem. 

• Apparently Albania is the coolest country ever and I need to go there immediately after my mission.

• I've been making drastic grammatical errors in my contacting for the past eleven months. Yeah. Thanks Tahitian companion for never correcting that. OHANA MEANS FAMILY. What are we?!?!

Aside from my battle against perfectionism, I have been able to see a lot of change in this past week with how I handle criticism and being compared to Finnish people. Life has been a lot less stressful when I remember and focus on why I'm here. I wasn't called as a missionary to be complimented on looks or be talented at piano or perfect at French or the most confident person or anything other than who I am. It's actually a pretty profound experience stepping back and looking at what motivates a human being to do things. A lot of what we do in life most commonly comes from an extrinsic motivation, especially if you are required to give a weekly report on everything that you have been doing. I think the key to missionary work is to switch that over to intrinsic, especially when you have real investigators. I've been really trying to focus on making that switch. So much easier said. In the process of all this, I've felt very humbled in realizing how much I have to depend on God to help me with these changes. It's something that I want to do for myself, not just as a missionary, but as a person, as a future teacher, a future wife, a future mother, a future traveler. How much better would this world be if we focused on doing good simply for the love of doing good?

I love you. I pray for you. I thank God for you. Prenez soin de vous-meme.

Sœur Green

Culture night! I'm very proud of this photobomb.

Albanians and Peruvians. Welcome to France.