Bonjour Toutes,
What a week it's been! Can you believe Christmas is only 51 weeks away? If it makes any of you Americans feel better, the french here were putting up decorations for Christmas in October also. Christmas was great. It really was hard to not focus on me during this Christmas, seeing as I'd never really been asked to do that before. I did feel super loved with all the notes and packages from home, though. I'm going to try to remember the lesson I learned this year of 'forgetting myself and focusing on others' with me all year, and really make next Christmas the best Christmas ever. Soeur Alves and I are doing great. I know she's helping my french a lot, although my accent is still ridiculous. I was a little despondent the other day about how I'll probably always have my accent, but then I thought, "Hey, do you know who else speaks with an accent? President Utchdorf. And if he's cool with having an accent, then I'm cool with having an accent, also." I then also remembered how I wasn't called to learn french perfectly, I was called to preach the gospel in it, and the people can understand what I'm trying to say even if I can't say my 'R's' like them. We had Christmas Eve Dinner and Christmas Day lunch with the Famille Fauchi, here in Quimper. It was the first 'Creole Christmas' for the both of us. The best line of the evening with the Fauchi's was when I asked Soeur Fauchi how to eat the langoustines (which are like little baby lobsters), that still have the pinchers and heads and eyes and everything, and she said, "The first step, is to decapitate the langoustines." After 30 seconds of laughing, we finally got to step two, which was to break the undershell, and then eat just like the shrimp. Most of the food was decent, although I won't be asking for the recipe of the sausage purée stuff that consisted of meat, spices, and blood. The next day, after finishing our lunch with the Fauchi's, we spent the afternoon with Frère and Soeur Lucas, who are some of my favorite people I've met. They took us down to Benodet, which is the coast 15 minutes from Quimper. Then we went back and had some cake, hot chocolate, and toast with the Lucas. Then somehow (Christmas Miracle?), Soeur Alves and I both managed to squeeze 75-80 minutes into our "one-hour long" Skype conversations with our families. We also had sister exchanges this week, so Soeur Rhondeau (who was in my ward last year at BYU) got to spend the day with me in Quimper.Soeur Alves and I also did a lot of discussing, and we decided that pretty much all our investigators (amis) aren't really progressing, which means... we might have to drop them. So to start off the new year, we will be focusing our efforts of finding new people to teach, hopefully with the help of the branche. Today we had lunch with the Diévals, and will have dinner with Elise and her kids, the Fauchi family, the Rifostas, and the Caplains, and tomorrow, since it's another P-Day, we plan on sleeping, A LOT. Here's to an awesome 2013!!!
Bonne Année!
Soeur Bracken
No comments:
Post a Comment