"Un sourire est l'amour de Dieu" (update #51)

Bonjour tout le monde!!

We're back into French this week (no more Albanian titles like last week), so no worries ;) the quote of the week this week comes from a random lady named Eve we met walking to the grocery store. She was walking on the other side of the street but called us over to come talk to her. She was asking us to help her increase the brightness on her phone because it was super dim and she couldn't see anything. We helped her figure it out after a few minutes and she was just the nicest, happiest woman ever. She said she had seen us the day before and wanted to talk to us because we were "jolies filles" (beautiful girls) and then she told us all about her life philosophies and beliefs. She's not super interested in learning more, but she was one of the kindest most genuinely happy people I've ever met. She said her philosophy is that "un sourire est l'amour de Dieu" (a smile is the love of God) and I can't say I disagree. It really the way we act and the little things we do that allow us to understand and share God's love. Anyway, goal for the week is to be more like Eve hahah.

This week end has been crazy! Highlights include:

going to Tulle (a cute little town about 3 hours away) to take care of my legality (meaning I've been in France for almost a year and I have to renew my visa, CRAZY!)

Our cute Albanian family coming to church again! One of the highlights of my week is the time we spend serving and teaching this adorable family every Sunday and Wednesday. We're still working on finding a way to teach them, but for the moment we're using Albanian pamphlets and google translate.

One of President Brown's counselors came to our lesson with them on Sunday. It was (as always) tough to communicate, but we really just tried to keep it simple and testify. Afterwards he said something that really hit me: "when you don't speak each other's language, it requires you to constantly speak the tongue of angels." And it's true that it's during our lessons with them that I have felt the spirit so strongly testify of the simple truths of the gospel. There is power in truth and there is power in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We've been working on planning our presentation for zone conference about "Facebook as a life skill." Yes, you read that right hahah. I'll update more on how that goes next week, but I'm really excited for this new tool to use in missionary work, but also to learn and apply now how I want to use social media to uplift and enhance for the rest of my life.

We are also in charge of making the lunch for zone conference so we've spent our nights after planning making cupcakes and cafe rio salad ingredients which is always therapeutic for me.

Today we went to centre ville and had Thai for lunch with our (favorite) member, Fiona. Then we went around and did some shopping and tried on berets. 

I love hanging out with Fiona because she is really like a best friend and it reminds me how lucky I am to be living in France and to meet all these amazing people that I never would have met otherwise. La vie est belle 💕

Danielle did respond to us!! Thank you for your thoughts, prayers and faith! She said the reason she hasn't been responding is because she didn't have any cell phone credit and she wanted to see us soon... but then she hasn't responded since then. So please keep her in your prayers. I really think she will come around, hopefully at the beginning of the next month. But for now all we can do is keep our faith and keep loving her so I guess that's what we'll do.

And now we're off to make "attrape-rêves" (dream catchers) with Caroline for soirée familiale!! Zone conference is tomorrow so we have all the sisters staying with us tonight which will be a party. Have a great week, je vous aime!!

Love,
Soeur Camille Goold

They made my apple pie recipe as a belated birthday treat!   I can't tell from their facial expressions if they were excited about it...or some other unknown emotion....haha!  

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