Serving the Lord in a Beautiful Place

Hey everyone! This past week has been extraordinary! What an awesome 7 days! We started off by doing an exchange with the St Genis Elders and I was in their sector. There, we had a really great RDV with their amis Steven and Josée. They live in a suite that looks over Geneva. It was really impressive,haha. They are some really cool people. Steven is English, Josée is Brazilian, and they had their friend James from Wales there too. They showed us around their place and showed me (the new one) all of the sculptures and Indian bridal veil curtains and other cool stuff, haha. They both work for world-wide organizations in Geneva and told us about all of their travels.

 

The lesson went really well. We talked about the Refiner's Fire with them. I shared Alma 5:14, Malachi 3:2-3, and Moroni 7:48 with them and talked about how the Lord will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver and will purify us until He can see his image in our countenances. As we yield to his agenda, not ours, we can become purified silver in the hands of our Master. I love this concept so much and it gives me motivation to continue to live the Gospel. They really enjoyed the lesson and invited us to come over again. 

Then on Wednesday, we went to Lausanne! We had District Meeting, which I didn't have much time to prepare but it went well. The district is great. There were 12 people there because the Sister Trainer Leaders came as well, so it was alot of fun. I referenced a talk by President Packer and we fixed goals on how we can help our amis progress more. Afterwards, we did a zone finding day in Lausanne. We changed comps and I went with Elder Lucas Peters from Germany. He is a great missionary and we went HARD. We had a ton of great conversations. We had about 20 conversations about the Gospel with people and taught 2 lessons in about 3 hours. I found this man on a bridge and I walked up to him and started to chat with him and I ended up teaching him the Plan of Salvation. He didn't speak French very well but at the end of the discussion he had tears in his eyes and wanted to be taught by the missionaries in Lausanne. I met this Italian painter who had the coolest mustache ever named Ernesto. He is married to an American and he gave me all of his info and wants to "grab some coffee" with me the next time I am in Lausanne, haha.

 

After the finding day, we visited a less active family in Gex and prayed with them and then did some tracting in the area until we went to the Cosentino's house for a BBQ!  It was so good!  We are still making a ton of progress with the FMP and we are getting coordonnées (contacts) from it now! 

We also taught Christophe this week. He is not progressing as much as he has been in the past but he committed to read more in the Book of Mormon. He prays for us as well as other members of the ward every week. I also saw that he prays for Austin Murphy and his friend Jacob because they came with us to teach him one time, haha, rad.

On Saturday we had a really great RDV with the Celi family. They are half Peruvian and half Argentinian. We walked in and there were a TON of people there. They invited about 9 other people to come and they were all speaking Spanish like crazy!  I want to become fluent in Spanish after the mission because it is a pretty cool language (almost as cool as French).  We had a great time with them and testified of John 16 and talked about Jesus Christ and why we are PERSONALLY grateful for Him in our lives. I think we can all take time to reflect on why we are personally grateful for the Savior.  It was a great RDV and el espiritu was there :) 

Today was the cherry on top :)  Probably one of the best Pdays on my mission. One of the members in Gex, Nicolas Zinsuis, took us to see Lac d'Annecy and the Chateau de Menthon today.  According to my watch, we hiked up more than 2,000 feet. It was a view that was  très magnifique!

Love you all!  Have a great week :)