April 19, 2011

April 19, 2011

Okay, let's try this again, but for real this time. I know I say this ever week, but this week was packed.

For starters, as I mentioned last week, we ran off to the Eiffel Tower last P-day. Some days I'm still weirded out that I live in Paris, and along the same lines it's just weird to me that last week I was standing on the Eiffel Tower! Now of course, if we were going to the tower, we HAD to climb it. (None of this wimpy elevator business ;) ) Over 700 stairs latter...that elevator started to look really good ha ha. But we did it! Wow, it was incredible!

On Wednesday, Soeur Thompson was on exchange and was working in the Paris Visitor Center. Oh my gosh, I love that girl! I can't even tell you how amazing it was to be able to see her before she heads home (next week!) 

Mom, you asked about the two girls. I'm assuming you meant the Mongolians. We didn't get to finally meet them until Sunday afternoon, but they are so cute! I love them already. They're going to take some serious work as far as the gospel goes, but that's just because they have virtually no religious background. But they're willing to keep meeting with us and have been reading the Book of Mormon. So there's hope. =)

We had kind of a funny/random experience in meeting up with them though. We were meeting them at a park/metro station. When we got out of the metro stop, we couldn't cross the street to get to the park because the road was full of literally hundreds of roller bladers! I didn't have my camera, but Sister Rowley went and talked to some random kid who we saw take a picture and asked him to email it to us. The picture turned out a little doubled and was just at the end of the group, but works all the same. Most of the time I wish rollerblading was a kosher in America as it is here. EVERYONE either has roller blades, roller skates, or a scooter. I'm still surprised every time I see some very nicely dressed businessman or woman happily racing down the sidewalk on a scooter. It's completely normal here.

On Sunday, we initially were going to have up to four English speakers at church. Our church doesn't translate like they do in the Paris ward or in Brussels. So Sister Rowley and I were going to have to translate. Knowing that, we ended up taking all of our French and English scriptures, plus each pamphlet in both languages. At the last minute none of our four English speakers could come, but we had five Americans walk in! With a quick change of gears, Sister Rowley stayed in Relief Society with Philomene (our amis with the baptismal date) and the woman from California, and I went to Primary to translate for the ten year old girl from Idaho who is here with her mom and aunt. And after church we had an impromptu lesson with Philomene. So we weren't able to go home before our appointment with the two Mongolian girls. So while we were at first disappointed that none of our four amis made it, and kind of frustrated that we had to lug around very heavy bags all day, it turned out to be a blessing. Had we not planned on the first four coming, we never would have taken our English books, which would have made translating a nightmare! Once again proof that God knows what he's doing. We just have to go with the flow and the blessings will show themselves to us.

As for Philomene, I flipping LOVE her! She's just adorable and the ward is being fantastic about fellow shipping her. She works cleaning hotel rooms after guests leave. So tourist season isn't exactly her slowest time of year. So she hasn't been able to come to our ward until last Sunday. She stood up in Relief Society and told everyone that she's coming now though because she's going to be a member of the church and this ward. She's just cute. And like I said, the ward already loves her and they are taking such good care of her. Our bishop is from Congo (like Philomene) and so they started bonding over that connection. After a few minutes he said that he knows the bishop and stake president down there and could send them her children's information directly to get the ward/missionaries working with them. They went into his office for a bit so she could give him the info. They ended up being in there for over half an hour. But when they finally came out, the two of them ran up to us practically giddy and talking over the top of each other. Bishop Hitoto not only took the info, but called Congo right there. They spoke to either the stake president or bishop (we couldn't tell which - they were talking far too fast in their excitement) and he knows Philomene's daughter! Philomene was absolutely ecstatic! =)

Other happy news of the week: we've got another baptismal date!!! =) It's not until May 29th, but she's going out of town for three weeks. So we couldn't set it any sooner. But by the 29th we should be in great shape. Now Soeur Rowley and I are just both really hoping that we can both stay here another transfer to see the baptisms through.

If I remember right, I told you about that man in Brussels telling me that I'm Polish, becuase "no Americans have hair like that." Well, I got a new nationality this week: Swiss. Go figure. Tons of people read my tag and label me as either Swedish or Dutch, my hair makes me Polish, and my bag makes me Swiss. Ha ha Once people hear my accent they generally know I'm either American or British, but...not that time apparently. ;)

Guess what Mom, we finally went to the cemetery! Oh my flip you would LOVE it!  We went yesturday for a couple of hours before we had to leave for our rendez-vous. The cemetery in Brussels was absolutely caked with moss (which I loved - everything was SO green.) This one has a totally different feel to it, but is still incredible. Pictures can't even show how cool it was. We're probably heading back next week too to try and see a couple more graves than we missed yesturday. If you ever visit Paris, it's a must!

Well like always, I don't have loads of time. So, have an awesome week! I love you!

Love,

Kim

Isn't General Conference Awesome!!!

April 4, 2011

Don't you just LOVE conference?! =) I realized something this weekend that I had never considered to be a "blessing" before. I can't even tell you how happy I am that I speak English. It is such a blessing to be able to literally "listen to a prophet's voice" rather than a translation. It's definitely something I had never thought of before, but I can't imagine having grown up with voice over translations and jokes and references that didn't make sense. (Like in the "Fundamentals of our Faith" talk by Elder Oaks in the January Ensign, he said that many Americans believe that Joan of Arch was Noah's wife. In French that doesn't make any sense - "Arch" in her name and the arch that Noah built aren't the same word at all. Just in English.) I'm also extremely glad that the church that we watched the transmission of Conference in had a French room as well as an English room! Listening to all six hours (we didn't get to see the Sunday afternoon session) in French would have been very headache inducing ha ha. The one semi negative bit about conference: nothing has made me more trunky than watching conference. I love Salt Lake. And all the shots of

Temple Square

, the Conference Center, and just Conference in general just scream "home" for me. But it was still kind of cool to know that we were seeing or listening to the exact same thing at the exact same time. =)

And I loved Elder Bednar's talk! He gave a talk in the MTC that my district watched the recording of that literally could have come from the exact same outline as the one he gave yesterday. Sister Call repeatedly talked about how she wished he would give it in conference. Well Soeur Call...you got you wish! (However, I think I still prefer the MTC version, but yesterday's was SUPER close.) I'm just thrilled he gave that talk so I can have it in writing now.

We had a pretty...difficult rendez-vous this past week. We went to see an inactive sister that we meet with regularly. She's a smoker and asked us to help her quite. We gave her a copy of the program we have in our area book to help people stop smoking. But she said she wants to really understand it before she starts. So she asked for nine days to study it before starting. We told her that was fine, but we'd still like to meet with her in the mean time to try and help her understand it ever better. She agreed. So we had a rendez-vous on Friday night. We felt like we should go over the Word of Wisdom with her (she said she didn't remember even hearing of it before.) We asked her to read a couple verses - she ended up reading the whole thing. Afterwards, we talked about what the section (D&C 89) says, commands, and promises. We then said, "Will you live the Word of Wisdom?" She said yes. We then said, "So will you stop smoking and drinking alcohol?" She said the smoking she can't quite cold turkey yet (since she hasn't started the program yet) but she'll work on it. However, she won't give up wine "because {she} drinks wine to remember Jesus." She told us that Christ drank wine. Thus wine isn't bad. She also showed us a gold goblet that she has and explained that she puts it on her coffee table next to bread and her bible and then more or less blesses and takes her own sacrament -"since Christ told us to do so." I asked her if she remembered coming to sacrament meeting and taking the sacrament. She did. I explained that that is how we follow the "do this in remembrance of me" commandment. But she just said, "No that doesn't work because the Mormons use water. Jesus' blood is red." She went on to say that she knows that it's red because she's seen him. She had a vision while praying in some church. She was engulfed by a pillar of light. And in the light, dead and bleeding on the cross, Jesus was spinning over her head with Mary crying at his feet.  We also found out that when she was baptized she was still smoking and drinking. She just told the other missionaries that she didn't do either. (Not trying to lie; She just didn't consider herself to be a smoker or drinker.) We talked and talked and talked, but it feels like it's a loosing battle. She just doesn't get it and we have NO idea how to help her. So...needless to say, kind of a frustrating situation unfortunately. But, we're going to keep trying. We just don't know quite how yet.

Happy news: we've got a baptismal date!!! =) The Paris soeurs (that I live with) passed us an amis on Monday. She's wonderful! I absolutely love her! =) She's only met with the missionaries three time (including us) but already loves the church, Book of Mormon, and -as of yesterday- general conference. She's amazing! Amis like her don't come every day. She's such a miracle. We're SO happy to be able to work with her.

Other happy news: We went up to Lille this week for my medical appointment and...I'm legal in France now! =) So looks like I'll get to stick around a bit longer. ;) I had to have a chest x-ray as part of the appointment. After they developed it, the guy was looking at it and talking to me and very happily pointed out to me that I am in deed not a smoker. ha ha Good to know French Medical Man.

We also met with an another amis this week that we've had a little bit of a hard time with. She's seemed like she was only letting us come over to be nice, but didn't really care or know why we were there. We didn't know what we wanted to teach her though. The more we thought and talked and thought some more we were drawing complete blanks. It seemed the more we tried to figure out what to teach, the more lost we got. We finally settle on something, but not because it seemed "right". It just seemed the least "wrong." However when we got there she told us that she hadn't had time to read the chapter we left her. (We could not remember AT ALL having left her a chapter to read.) So she went and grabbed her Book of Mormon and the note with the chapter written on it. Since she hadn't read before we got there, she wanted to read it with us. So we read 3 Nephi 11 with her and it was perfect! The Spirit was so strong and fully directed the lesson. And she let us in on SO much of her life and beliefs. She's been SO prepared for the gospel. Now it's just a matter of time and her agency. That lesson was a real miracle. Had we remember leaving that chapter, I'm absolutely certain it would have affected our plans for the lesson. But instead, because we "just happened" to forget all together, the spirit was able to lead the lesson in the EXACT direction it needed to go.

Mom two things. 1) I think I got all the pictures now. =) and 2) you're not the only person I've met who can burn spaghetti noddles in water! We made a MOUNTAIN of noodles for district meeting this week, and a whole lot of them got burned and stuck to the bottom of the pan ha ha.

Have an amazing week!

Love,
Kim

The picture I attached is of that "submarine" I told you about last week, but this time the guy is actually inside of there! You can see his head and one hand poking out. (It's not a good picture, but you get the idea. I had to take it really quickly and from a distance. He was shouting at me and that was the only second that there weren't people in the shot)

Want to see a submarine?

March 28, 2011

I really don't understand English speaking Parisian hobos. On the way to do emails today, we passed this guy who hurriedly stood up from his sitting spot against a building, rushed over to us, and invited me to go "see the submarine." The submarine in this case is a mountain of random stuff piled on to some kind of wheel system. Yup...I passed up that opportunity.

This week has been full of "little" miracles. On Tuesday we got to see one of those "proof that exact obedience brings blessings" moments. We wanted to leave the apartment right at 10:30 so that we wouldn't lose a minute of that day. Normally we're out pretty quickly, but it's usually ten to fifteen minutes later. We hopped on a metro and just started talking. After a moment, the men sitting across from us leaned over and asked us something. We absolutely had no idea what they said. ha ha We had them repeat the question a couple times, but our comprehension wasn't getting any better. Finally Sister Rowley realized they were asking if we were Jehovah Witnesses. Turns out, we weren't understanding their French because they were speaking English ha ha ha! We of course told them we weren't but explained a bit about who we are. One of the men was not at all interested, but the other got off the train and talked to us for about half an hour. He's from Ghana and is living in Paris with his sister. The two of them are here working to send money home to the rest of their family in Africa. He's SO dang cool. We set up a rendez-vous with him for Friday. He's easily one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. And he has been so prepared to learn about the gospel. We met with him on Friday and had an awesome lesson with him. To make it even better: the lesson was in a park. (The weather has been unbelievably beautiful this week!!!) We found out that he is actually barely out of our area - which was kind of heart breaking. We really didn't want to give him up. But we explained the situation to him and told him that other missionaries would be teaching him. We asked him if we could give them his information so that they could get in contact with him. He was totally fine with that idea, but only if he could have their number too, because "If they don't call me by Sunday, and I don't meet them at church, I need to call them Sunday night." He repeatedly explained that he REALLY wants to meet with the missionaries as often as he can "because you bring a good thing. I need this." He just rocks! =) And none of that would have happened if we'd left a minute later and caught a different train.

On Wednesday, we had interviews with President and Sister Staheli. I absolutely love them. They really are amazing people. =) And Sister Staheli and I had the coolest conversation about how time changes everything. She talked about how eighteen months seems like forever, until about six months in and then it just slips through your fingers -all because just a little time has passed. About how missions are about 10% of an elder's life thus far, but because of their age difference, the three years that she and President Staheli have served for is only 20% of their lives. About how the age difference between parent's and their children completely changes the perspective they (the parent and the child) have about almost everything. And then on the grand scale of our time in existence to that of Heavenly Father's and the amazingly increased perspective he has for us. It's kind of a hard conversation to explain in words here, but it was just...cool. =)

We teach English class Wednesday nights. This week somehow they started asking us about how we get around in America. Everyone was completely shocked that Sister Rowley and I both drive and have cars. One of the guys asked me how many cars my family members own in total. When I told him that in my family, we each have our own car, he again freaked out and asked how we ever had room to park them. So I explained briefly how we all fit in our drive way. He was even further shocked by that, imagining how big our house must be then. Sometimes I forget how different "real" life here must be. I think I disconnect from it because I'm just in missionary mode and don't view this as "real" all of the time. (If that makes any sense to you.) I can't even imagine what it would be like to grow up here. We are SO crazy spoiled in America in ways we never even realize (like having "big" driveways ha ha)

Lessons I learned on Saturday:

1) Everyone in Paris has an umbrella. I don't have any idea where they all came from. Saturday was a really nice sunny day and then a minute later, it was pouring! But everyone had an umbrella instantly. We saw all of these women who weren't even carrying purses, suddenly whip umbrellas out of no where! I don't understand how they all did that, but I was pretty impressed ha ha.

And 2) French people who don't have the "hidden umbrella magic trip" up their sleeves are terrified of the rain. Seriously, the second it started raining, the roads/sidewalks cleared. Everyone just stood under store awnings or huddled in the hallways of the metro next to the exits waiting for the rain to stop. No one was willing to move without an umbrella until the rain stopped. Ha ha ha The French are just funny some days. (Okay, so I guess lesson #1 is negated by #2. Not everyone had an umbrella, but...you get the point.)

My favorite moment of that day came after the rain had basically turned into a quite drizzle. We we on our way to a rendez-vous when we saw this little girl who was probably about two-years-old, in an adorable French rain coat, cute pink rain boots, holding a purple plaid umbrella, spinning, skipping, and twirling in the rain. She was SO cute! Sister Rowley and I would have both been more than happy to take her home as a souvenir. ;)

Paris is covered in flowers right now. I love it! I wish you could see it. We ended up with a weird situation on Friday and had Sister Reeves with us for the day. We had to leave the apartment pretty early and didn't get to do companion study before we picked her up at the train station. But we didn't have time to go back to the apartment and study before our shift volunteering at the Red Cross. So instead we had comp study in a park, near the Red Cross, surrounded by flowers. It was a good day.=)

Have an awesome week! I love you!

Love
~Kim

Missionaries in Paris with Kim and Sister Rowley

Irish Pub across the street from Kim's apartment on St. Patrick's Day.  It was an all nighter.

Kim with Sister Rowley in a Park in Paris

The flowers are amazing.

The homeless man in his "submarine".

How do you burn spaghetti in water?  It takes real talent=).

It's spring time in Paris.  Kim with Sister Rowley

You can't find any more beautiful girls than these sweet sisters.

Elder Alan Schwind and Kim at the Zone Conference right before Alan came home.

Belgium Police on roller blades with Sister Thompson looking in amazement

Real Belgium waffles.  YUM!!! No calories, right?

Valentine heart made from smashed beer cans.

Sister Thompsen and Kim in Belgium

Schaerbeek, Belgium at night fall on the street where Kim's apartment was.

Belgium missionaries on P-Day.  There a happy lot=).

The group of God's Army in Belgium.

From left to right: Sister Woodruff's companion, Sister Thompsen, Kim and Sister Woodruff.

Back in Paris=)

March 21, 2011

How weird is it that I live in Paris?!

This week has been almost as adventuresome as my very first week in the field. For example:
-I have no idea where I am the majority of the time. The 14 Parisian metro lines are going to take a while. Brussels only has 4 and I barely made sense of them before I left.
-I am still not used to the apartment fully. Living with three sisters instead of one makes a huge difference, but not in a bad way, it's just different. I have my own desk now! =) In Strombeek we didn't have room for a desk. -we just studied at the small kitchen table that we had. The city noise is a bit crazy to try and sleep through. Stombeek was initially hard because it was silent and pitch black. But now that I'm used to that...I live in down town Paris, across the street from an Irish Pub (St Patrick's Day was pretty epic over there ha ha) and upstairs from a Latin dance club. Ha ha ha yup...our weekends are pretty intense. ;) So to say the least, it's a touch different than Belgium.
-the work is almost 100% different from what I was doing before. It's still typical missionary fun, but Sister Rowley and I work in a completely different style than Sister Thompson and I did and we have a totally different genre of investigators. But, it should be good. It's definitely making me learn a lot - especially with Sister Rowley and I both being so young in the mission.
-French is still very difficult for me. But I was to the point where I could follow a lot of the conversation. I may not be able to respond well...or at all, but I could at least tell what we were talking about in a rendez-vous. And then...I moved. Wow the Parisian accent is SO different than the Belge. I'm serious, it'll be a miracle if I ever get the language thing down. It's a dang good thing Sister Rowley took French in college before she entered the MTC. We'd be up a creek otherwise.

There are monuments absolutely everywhere, and the majority of the time, I have no idea what they are. But somehow we lucked into having a "Paris walks" book written by a BYU professor for the study abroad students. It explains a lot of different museums, statues, buildings, etc. I found one in there yesterday that Sister Rowley and I are pretty excited about. It's for this massive cemetery (188 acres!) They've got some pretty big names in there from what I was reading too. We're not going today, but at some point, we have to! Is it sad that the P-day activity I'm most excited for (that we've planned thus far) is wandering around a cemetery?! Most people just want to see the Eiffel Tower (which we also plan on doing), but we fly all the way to Paris and we want to hang out in a cemetery.

Happy news! Sister Thompson called me on Friday, and she and Sister Judd set a baptismal date for one of our amis!!! =) Apparently she was super cool about it too. Sister Thompson was totally expecting her to say no at first and had planned out exactly how she wanted to respond. But when she asked her if she would "follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the proper authority" she just looked at her and said "uhhh....oui." (as if it wasn't even a question ha ha.)

I'm sure there's a thousand things I could tell you about, but where do I even begin?! Life just keeps plugging away. Sister Rowley and I have a lot of work to do.

Just a heads up, our mailman can't get into our building, and thus, can't get to our mailbox. We pick up mail at the post office on Mondays. So far, as best she can tell, Sister Rowely hasn't had any problem getting mail that way. So it should still be safe to send mail to my physical address,  but if you're ever worried, the mission home is always a safe bet.

Random Muslim story of the week. Last night, we ran into a guy on the bus, who really creepily leaned over to read my name tag. When I noticed him, I seriously jumped. He explained he was just reading the tag. We asked if he'd seen one like it before. He had, but "on those boys with the ties. Why aren't you wearing ties?" Umm...frére, we're girls. After talking with him for a bit we got on to the Book of Mormon. He told us that he has several copies at his home. That's not a terribly uncommon response, but they are usually referring to the Bible. But after a few more questions, he assured us, he really does have a Book of Mormon. Not only does he have it, he's read it. AND "I love that book, but I have one problem with it. Who were the original people in America? Were they white or black?" He went on to explain that the only way we ended up with Indians was by mixing black people and white people. Umm...okay...weird question and logic as it is, but even weirder...how does that become a problem with the Book of Mormon? ha ha some people are just so...unique.


I'm glad things went well with Alan. I can't believe he's home already. Alright random story time again, but this just popped into my head. When missionaries go home, we say that they've died. Alan called to say goodbye to me on Thursday night. At one point he said, "I'll see you on the other side." I made fun of the death reference a little bit at the time, but I didn't even connect that until now. Wow how slow can I be this week?!  But technically he's right. We'll both be dead before I see him again ha ha.

Have an awesome week! I love you.

Love
~Kim

One More Week Down;)

March 7, 2011

One more week down! And a rather exciting one at that.

We had exchanges this week. Sister Thompson went to France and Sister Gappmaier and Sister Reeves came up for the day and were my comps. Can I even begin to tell you how stressed I was about the whole situation?! I would have been happy to run off to another city and follow someone around for the day to see how they work, but the other way around...Just knowing I was going to have to try and get the three of us around for the day, pretending that I knew what I was doing, as if I know the layout of the city was freaking stressful. Let alone figuring out what to do with our time.

Luckily Sister Thompson really made is as easy as she could for me and went over ever tram, bus and metro stop we would need for our rendez-vous along with labeling the needed streets in our map book. (But putting that into practice was going to be another story all together.) But guess what! We didn't get lost! Ever! =) We even went contacting for a while in a city I haven't been through before, and I still navigated our way out of there!!! There is hope for me yet! =)

One of the funniest parts of that day was an accidental door contact that we made. We were going to see a sister that was baptized last June, but when we got to her building, her last name was different on the sonnet and they weren't listing first names. Sister Gappmaier figured we should just take a random guess. So she rang one of them. This old man came to the door. He was not exactly thrilled to see us when we told him that we are volunteers for our church. But before he could shut the door we quickly asked if he knew the woman we were looking for. He basically gave us a "Yes....why?...." type of response. We told him that she's a member of our church and we wanted to speak with her, but couldn't remember which doorbell was hers. So he rang it for us, but rather than heading back inside, he suddenly found us far less intimidating (now understanding we weren't -initially- there for him) and chose to talk to us while we waited for her. He asked about our belief and why we were there (as missionaries.) However as we were explaining, he cut in right in the middle of a sentence and asked Sister Gappmaier where she was from. Then asked the same question of Sister Reeves. But when he turned to me he didn't ask. He just quickly said, "Okay and you're from Poland." Laughing, I told him I'm American. I don't speak Polish, and I've never even been to Poland. But that didn't satisfy him. He was absolutely insistent that I was Polish. After going back and forth for a minute, I assured him that I am most definitely American. He pointed at me and said, "Not with that hair you're not. No Americans have hair like that!" How did I miss it? All this time I've thought I was American, but if I'd only looked in the mirror, I would have known for the past 21 years that I am in fact Polish! ;)

This week's been a bit rough for my district. In general, people expect European missions to be difficult, but it's still not easy to live through and Brussels has a reputation. In 2009 they had 42 convert baptisms! They were the highest baptizing area in all of Europe. But things are totally different now. They were about to open a third ward, but now the two they have are struggling to survive. The work has basically hit a wall, and none of us really know what to do about it. And it doesn't help that the ward members can't see the kind of effects they can have on those around them. Most of them were contacted by missionaries directly when they joined. So the thought of talking to their friends, family, coworkers, etc. seems all kinds of foreign and pointless to them. It's definitely been interesting to be able to see the dynamics of this young, small ward compared to typical Utah wards that have been around forever and have really been built up to be pretty strong. Don't get me wrong, I love the ward and the members are great, but there's no question that it's very different from what I grew up around.

The other worrisome thought is how do we help all these relatively new converts step up into leadership positions and gain testimonies of the different auxiliary departments and programs of the church. Right now, our ward is more or less run by the Americans that live here. But this summer, the majority of their contracts will be expiring and they'll be moving on to their new assignments. At that point, we'll be left with people who are still trying to figure out the structure of the church themselves, let alone being asked to keep their ward functioning.... Like I said, not quite the same as back home. But, we'll keep working and doing our best to help them grow. And hopefully as a ward they'll have enough faith and strength to stand on their own and keep the ward running. I know they can do it, but they need to find a way to know that too.

We've got zone conference tomorrow. As weird as it was to see him after almost two years, seeing and talking to Alan has become "normal" now. Can I tell you how weird it is to me that that's the last time I'm going to see him (again) for over a year?! But, guess what! You'll be seeing him in about a week and a half. Also weird, huh?

I think it's becoming basically normal to me now, but when I first got here, it was super weird to me how green it is for being February and March. But it's still bizarre to me to see all the blooming flowers everywhere! It's winter! Flowers aren't supposed to exist in winter! Utah really is a dessert! ;) Despite the signs of spring, this week has been SO cold! I can't even tell you how excited I am for summer. =) And I don't even have Bumbles to decorate my world like you do! ;)

 The happiest part of the week: we have seen the sun for three days straight!!! The days have been freezing, but beautiful despite the cold. I wish you could see it. It really is gorgeous here. It was gorgeous enough the other day that we went contacting in a park. I can honestly say, if I were Belge, I don't know if I'd ever leave the parks here! ha ha ha

We just haven't had any epic stories over the past few days to tell you about, but it's been a good week all the same. We have transfers coming up next week. (I can't believe I've been here that long!) Sister Thompson and I are planning on staying together. We'd both be shocked and heartbroken in we split up for her last transfer, but...you never know. Could make for a pretty exciting week. We'll just have to wait and see.

Have an awesome (and hopefully warm) week! ;)

Love,

Kim