Well,
Like you mentioned, I am hitting my year mark this week. I know it is so crazy. I want to deny that the time has sped by fast because each day still can feel soo slow but unfortunately what they say is true. Your time on the mission does wiz by. While it does feel like I have been out here for a very long time, it is still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I only have a third of my mission left. It's still a good amount of time though so you will hear lots of more stories and testimonies before my last day comes!
Alright so I don't have lots of time right now but I'll just give you a little update about the week! So this past week we were super lucky to have a zone conference with Elder Hamilton of the Seventy. It was super amazing. During his portion of the meeting he asked us to talk about some of our difficulties here on La Reunion doing missionary work. My hand shot right up. Finding people! It is so hard to find people! Know that vacation is over, everyone is working during the day and there is no one to find when we go porting or walk around downtown. You know what Elder Hamilton's secret was? Talk to Everyone. Yep, that was what he told us. We as missionaries need to talk to everyone. At first I thought that there must be more because that is the first rule as a missionary - talk to everyone but then I realized that we really could be doing a better job - that we SHOULD be doing a better job at talking to literally everyone. One of the missionaries who served for a short time in France said that at one point they used to keep track of how many people they talked/introduced themselves to in a week. One companionship was able to talk to 2,000 people a week! When they rode the bus they used to walk up and down the aisles talking to every single person on the bus. That is what it means to talk to everyone and that is what we need to be doing as missionaries!
Sr Gardiner and I have really been trying to test it out and committ ourselves to talking with literallly every person who crosses our paths. It is really hard. And we have talked to some unpleasant people. But it feels good to know we are doing our best and already we have had some people interested - perhaps people that normally we would not have talked to! Really what I have been learning (especially from Sr Gardiner because she is a super example) is that talking to everyone is sort of a test of faith. God needs to know that He can trust us. That if He puts someone prepared in our path He can trust us to talk to them. If we won't talk to everyone then He can't trust us and so it would be wasted on us to put someone prepared in our path. It is a test of faith. We need to have faith that there ARE people out there who are prepared for us. And I'll be honest sometimes it's hard! Some of these people can be so stubborn and closed and ignorant of even their own beliefs! But they are children of God who have divine potential and we have to talk to each one of them so they can have the chance to change and understand the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The biggest adventure of this week is that on Thursday we woke up to this big pile of water on the floor in our kitchen. It turned out there was a big leak underneath the sink. So we had to turn off our water at all times to minimize the leak. Unfortunately that makes taking a shower really difficult because if the water is on, then the puddle grows at a rapid rate in the kitchen and all our towels were already soaked. So luckily Friday they sent in a ward member to try and fix it. He worked on it for nearly 2 1/2 hours and then put in a temporary piece to limit the water flow. Meanwhile we hung out downstairs in the senior couple's apt because he is a man and we can't be in the house with him at the same time. Complicated. Luckily that mostly fixed the problem and then the Zone Leaders came by a couple of times to try and make the fix more permanent. It still hasn't exactly stopped leaking 100% but we can keep our water on so we are very happy!
In other random news. There is a man here who must be the Reunion Martin Short. He looks just like him. And he has the personallity of the Martin Short character from Arrested Development - very cooky and into young pretty girls. We have run into him way more times than we wanted to while walking the streets.
I finally made those French beignets! They were delicious and Sr Gardiner said they were even better than the ones that her REAL french companion used to make.
We recieved the exciting news that we are GOING TO MADAGASCAR!!!! for four days next week! So that we can personally be at a leadership meeting instead of making a skype call! So we will get to see what it is like for real over there! We are incredibly stoked! So next week's email might be late or something because I'll be doing it over there!
Well that's all folks! Love ya!
Love,
Sister Stewart
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