May 27th email!

Hello all!

So today this awesome family in our ward... Which by the way pretty much is the ward! haha they had 3 daughters and a son and they all got married and had kids and they make up the bulk of the ward and the primary but they are soooo great! But they are taking us to this cool chapel on the beach or something? I don't know I just know that we had to email early this morning because we are leaving this morning and will be gone for a good chunk of the day and we have no groceries so that must happen! So ya! I am excited for that but you will all wake up to this email and probably be a little confused? Haha I am writing this at 8 in the morning here which means you party animals might still be awake:) its midnight where you all are! But yesterday was mother’s day in France so Bonne Fete de Meres to all you mothers out there... again:) This same family had us over for a BBQ on the patio out in the countryside... yes it was amazing and everything you would imagine a French countryside to be! There was a vineyard on every side of us.  The husband of one of the daughters is our bishop... so if you remember me going to their house last week this family gets a little confusing! haha so ya it’s kind of sad though the dad of all these daughters is inactive and its super sad because this family is what holds this ward together. He is sooooo cool too! Like so so cool and his family will be together forever but he won't if he doesn't get his behind back to church... and start following the word of wisdom... loves his coffee! but he makes me laugh so much and I don't understand him super well because his french is like french and spanish mixed but he is super cool! 

So for last week we were in Lyon for a training that my trainer had to go to because she is still technically a "new missionary" and then on Friday we went to Zone training in Montpellier which is like a 2 hour train ride away.... so we weren't in our city that much once again buttt we have A LOT of less actives in our ward here in Perpignan and we try to visit a lot of them throughout the week and with a new equipe here we can cover more ground then we could with only 2 sisters here before.  So we dedicated one day to visiting less actives we visited like 4 people! sooo much french i thought my head would explode! and apparently our name is polish... every time i introduce myself they are like oh your polish and i am like no german and they are like no your polish... i am like haha whatever you want me to be i will be:) haha but we visited this one guy Jerome and he is sooo cool he is obsessed with bob marley and is like a young adult and from the islands just a cool guy and all 4 of us visited him and shared a thought and they we were like why jerome don't you come to church? so he gave us his excuses and we were like ok well its super important and I bore my testimony at the end... not completely sure if what i was about to say was relevant to conversation but i was like we need people like you jerome we need bright smiling faces and church and we need your fun spirit.  this ward is small but they have fun and they thrive off of the church and you can too.... guess who was at church yesterday... Jerome!! ahhhh it was sooo great! Its really cool because when I first got here I was thinking that we needed to build the young single adult population because they will get married and have kids and they is how the ward can grow in number and size and some of our investigators are worried if they get baptized if they will ever find a spouse.  We have been blessed to find a handful of new investigators that are just around that age! and we are bringing people back to church which is really excited! we have a huge investigators class on sunday because of all the people we got to come back from our visits and from people we are already teaching! So mom I have this investigator and her name is Christelle and our appointments always consist of baking something while we teach her... can you send me that caramel de leche cake recipe and if possible the conversions to the metric system:) haha thanks! 

But ya a little about Christelle... she is about 40 years old and her boyfriend is a member but he was less active but now he is completely active because she is investigating the church.  She has 2 kids from a previous marriage and one little baby girl with him his name is Stephanie.  Their little girl is getting blessed this next Sunday... ya i know they are like totally a part of the ward but she has a lot of debt i guess and so they don't want to get married because it will ruin his credit?? i am not sure butttt she has an autistic son and in our last lesson we were talking about eternal families and at the end i bore my testimony.... haha i always testify at the end of lessons because that's about all i can contribute:) haha but i told her that her daughter... yes i didn't understand that it was her SON that is handicapped.... would be perfect in the next life and that we all will have perfect bodies and live happily together. hahah i keep mixing up brother, son, daughter, sister, ya its a problem after the appointment my companions were like by the way its her son that is autistic i was like ohhh mince!(oh man in french) so ya that was a fun experience!

Then we have Amandine... we haven't met with her that much so I will tell you more next week when we meet with her more but sooo far she is extraordinarily slow... like comprehension of a child and short attention span... i get a little frustrated when we teach her because i know we are not teaching simply enough and i don't know how to get her head out of the clouds haha but ya there is lots to do there! she is like 30 years old and is friends with Christelle.

We also went and helped the Benedetti family... they are in our ward... paint their new house.  they are super nice and another family that is like the backbone in the ward.  The mom and dad both served missions and one of theirs sons is serving now and they others are all teenagers and make up the bulk of the young men and young womens! haha they fed us and when we prayed to leave Sister Benedettis prayed the sweetest prayer ever! She started crying and told the lord to bless us and that they were so grateful for our sacrifice to be here.  ITs moments like that that really put my mission in to perspective.  I realize that I am not just here to find people but to build the people up that are already part of this gospel.  

Anyways super good week! lots of ups and downs! Mission life is crazy crazy! Hopefully this week will be more organized and we won't be in a million different cities in one week! I love you all mucho! Thank you for the love and support and the prayers! I need them and I feel them thank you!

Bonne Semaine!

Soeur Modersitzki