Monday, June 26, 2017

Vacation, Sleepover, and Break-ins (update #47)

Yay!   There are pictures from her companion this week!  

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Bonjour tout le monde!!
As you can probably see from the title, it has been quite the week :)

Tuesday we had another miracle rendezvous with Danielle

Wednesday morning we hopped on a train to Toulouse for Zone conference. It was a conference with all the missionaries from Toulouse, Montpellier and Bordeaux, SO FUN! . 
We had our interviews with President on Wednesday and helped Soeur Brown make grilled cheese for everyone. We spent the night with Soeur Kelley (MY TRAINER) and Soeur Cusick in Toulouse and it was so fun to catch up.

Cami with three of her former companions (Soeurs Wilson, Kelley, and Wadsworth)

 Then Thursday was zone conference, during which we found out that during the night the APs' car with all of our packages in it was broken into. A lot of people had packages from home stolen and my replacement iPad was stolen! Apparently j'ai une malediction de tablettes hahah. When I found out I literally just laughed; What are the chances that my iPad would get stolen out of my bag and then two weeks later, my replacement one would get stolen out of the assistants' car? C'est la vie.
So that was fun. We came back to Bordeaux Thursday night and had one normal day to be missionaries before Stake Conference started on Saturday. And I think it was one of the coolest days of my whole mission. Highlights include our rendez vous with Dimitri and Danielle.

Dimitri is an ancient ami we called at the beginning of this transfer. At the beginning he was super honest with us and told us that he wasn't convinced that our church was true and that he was just meeting with us out of curiousity. With every rendezvous he gradually comes around a little more and this time he agreed to be baptized when he feels like God has given him a direct answer and he said that he wants to come to church next week (something he said he would never do before)! It's incredible to see how the spirit works to soften people's hearts and change lives.

Then we had Danielle. Danielle is incredible. We went out and met her at the gat of the chapel then brought her inside to one of the only air conditioned rooms for our lesson. As we sat down she said she had a story to tell us. something "inexplicable." A little nervous about what that meant, we prayed and then listened to her talk. She then goes on to share with us that Tuesday night after our rendez vous she went home feeling really discouraged. She asked herself what the point of even trying was, she felt that she didn't know enough abut the scriptures or religion and that she didn't really want to keep meeting with us. The next day she was on the computer for something else. She said she couldn't tell us what she searched, what she clicked on, or how she ended up there, but she ended up on a website (mormon.org) that responded to all of her questions. She read the entire FAQ page (it's a tab at the top, you should read it too). She said the more she read, the more she felt an inexplicable feeling in her heart. She described it as a "pressure, like a peace" that filled her chest.

What I love most about Danielle's story is that it's so real. The truth is that life isn't all roses. Satan is real and he is doing his very best to stop us from being happy. Right when Danielle was on the verge of discovering something incredible, a message that was going to change her life, Satan tried especially hard to hold her back. To tell her that she was wasting her time, that she wasn't good enough. But Danielle chose to lead with her faith. She chose to take steps forward anyway, and she was blessed by feeling the Spirit stronger than she ever had before in her life. Opposition comes, but when we lead with our faith, miracles come too. And I've really seen that the worst opposition often comes before the biggest miracles.

The day before I contacted Danielle on the bus was one of the hardest days of my mission. Not for any specific reason, I was just struggling. I found myself on my knees with tears running down my face just feeling inadequate and horrible about life. The answer I got from Heavenly Father was that all I needed to do was love people. To focus on loving my companion, loving our members, loving my mission, loving everyone, and everything would work out. That's why I'm here on my mission.

The very next day I sat down next to Danielle on the bus.

Faith precedes miracles, but often, so does opposition.

Our rendezvous with Danielle ended with us fixing a baptism date for July 15!! It probably won't actually be that soon because she needs to come to 3 Sacrament meetings before then, but it was such a spiritual experience anyway.

Saturday (after our rendezvous with Danielle) the Brive and Poitiers sisters came in for Stake Conference! We had the adult session on Saturday and the session for everyone on Sunday and between the two we had all the sisters at our apartment for a sleepover which was a blast.

Anyway, life is great :) I'm really sad because this is Soeur Wadsworth's last week of her mission and I just don't want her to leave at all. But that's life I guess. Stay tuned next week to find out who my new companion will be :)

Love you all! Thank you so much for all your faith and prayers!

Soeur Camille Goold

Spending time with the Le Camus family.  They are wonderful.


Wearing her Christmas PJs!  :) 

District meeting (?)


Christina is an ami that's recovering from cancer....

A lunch out...


P-Day in beautiful Arcachon! 





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