St. Etienne

124 Rue Bergson  Immeuble ce Neptune 42000 St Etienne FR (my new address)
Dear family and friends,
I miss normal keyboards :( These ones have the a in the corner of the keyboard which is really strange and other letters in wierd places. So Im constantly typing things like Ze hqd q RDV zith thqt Fq,ily. Or I ;iss peqnut butter. I am constantly reveiwing what Ive typed.
The Phelipe Family (the brazilian family) in Carcassonne have a Baptism date!!!!! I literally found out ten miutes ago when I was looking at the mission news letter. They will be such great members, Im sure. There are going to be three baptisms at least in Carcassonne! Carcassonne hasnt had that many baptisms within a that small amount of time for like ever. I am so excited!
St Etienne is awesome too, but very different from my last ville. For one, it is a lot bigger. There are three different tram lines and there are constantly things to do. I expected opeing a new equipe would mean finding a lot of people ( contacting, going door to door), but we are constantly busy here and have a hard time fitting finding in. All the members want to meet with us and there are so many less actives to visit and things to work on for the sector and apartment. But somehow, we have still managed to find people in the few seconds we have been able to run around contacting. The Lord really provides a way to accomplish his work. This week we are meeting with a lot of people (potential investigators, members, inactives) so we will be busy.
So now, Ill back track a bit, all the way to transfer calls. That day is kind of funny because whenever the phone goes off, the entire apartment kinda runs around like headless chickens, whether it is the president or not. At one point one of the sisters (who shall go unnamed) even slipped and fell after hearing the phone go off. (ok, it was me and the call wasnt even from president) But the calls are always extremely short, because there are so many of us to call. I was the last one to talk to him (when he finally called ( I didnt slip that time)) and I was on the phone with him for like an entire minute. Afterwards the sisters all looked at me and asked what he was saying to me that we talked so long. We talked for so long because I made repeat the name of the ville 3 times. And even then, I thought it was a different ville. A call to Soeur Moderstinski confirmed that.Then a sad sunday of saying goodbyes later, I was put on a train with 3 bags by myself. It felt extremely wierd to be sitting on train by myself. The only other people there were the driver and some random guy. It was very wierd to not have another woman nearby. But after a layover, where I had to get all of my bags off the train, The train with Soeur Mod pulled in. She helped me pull my bags onto the next train and headed to our next layover in Lyon. In Lyon, There were a bunch of missionaries helping others get onto their trains and such. Of course all of them asked us where we were being transfered to. Before when I had told people St Etienne, they would just say they had never heard of it. But while we were in Lyon, Each person would get excited and say, Youre The opening equipe! Everyone is so excited that we are here.
Once we arrived in St Etienne, we expected someone to greet us, but after waiting for a while nobody showed up, so we borrowed somebodys phone and called the office elders. Apparently, somebody should have given us keys and a phone while we were in Lyon. ( I think everybody was a little confused about what was going on, it was a crazy tranfer day) So the office elders drove all the way up here to give us keys and our phone and help us find our apartment. During that 2 hour time, This nice man came up and talked to us and we ended up having a lesson. So the Elders arrived right at the end of our lesson and came back and told all of Lyon that we had found an investigator within our first hour of being here. That will be a hard reputation to keep up with.
But St Etienne is so amazing, the ward is so supportive and excited we are here. We have a lot of young sisters in the ward who either want to go on a mission or already went on one. They are all so helpful.
Earlier this week we had blues conference. (A conference for all the second transfers) It was so great to see all of the people from the MTC again. At one point, some missionaries were asked to participate in role playing some contacts and they asked one sister from my MTC district to do it. In the MTC she had a hard time with french, because it was completely new to her, and she did that contact perfectly. Our entire old district was jumping excitedly afterwards. It was so cool to see how everybody had changed.
That was also the last time Ill see SFC on my mission, this is her last transfer. Sad. :(
I love you all!!!! I still have a lot more to write so until next week.
Miracles come after Faith!
Trust God!
He loves you!
love, Soeur Russell