More Stuff About Carcassonne

Ma Cher Famille et amis,

To Mommy, in france, mothers day was yesterday (fete de mere), so happy mother's day! We gave some flowers and cookies and a card to an old lady that lives downstairs from us and she spoke so fast that I didn't understand a single word she said except that Seour Fairchild was going to get married as soon as she got home. I don't know how we got to that point in the conversationm but it was funny.

 In Carcassonne, we are seeing all sorts of miracles. Like, while we were in Lyon, our only progressing investigator dropped us, so Soeur FC sent out a mass text to all the numbers on her phone, asking if they would like to meet the missionaries. A family responded ( we are meeting with them this week) and a guy named Isaac. Isaac told us later that he was actually in Lyon too when he got the text ( he just happened to check his phone that he no longer uses on that day) but he didn't call until a few days after, and we set up a lesson. He came out in the rain to have a lesson in the park (the rain wasn't that bad but still that's impressive) he loved the lesson, asked to come to church before we could ask him and is praying about a baptismal date. And that's just the first lesson! He came to church with us yesterday and he loved it. Soeur Fairchild said she noticed him crying at one point during one of the hymns. He is a golden investigator. He is from Africa and thankfully, his french is a lot easier to understand than most people's. 

That is just one of the miracles. Because our text was sucessful, the other two sisters in Carcassonne tried it and one of the numbers ended up being the number for someone else's phone than the person they meant to text ( it was supposed to be this ex-convict person who used to be an investigator, but it turned out to be some lady) that lady wasn't interested, but she called back and gave the numbers of someone she thought would be and unbeleivably the other lady was. Too cool.

Soeur Fairchild is actually a miracle. Its a miracle that she is alive. She was pronounced dead when she was born anfd has had an unbeleivable anmount of near death experiences since. ( like being struck by lightning, land slides, fires). She is also allergic to a lot of crazy things. Some of them are more normal ( like she is allergic to eggs and avocados) but she is also allergic to certain smells like a lot of perfumes and such. If we walk past a perfume store, she has to sprint past it and we don't put any perfume in our apartment. I've never met anybody who has that, but I don't mind it at all. It's kinda fun to sprint past perfumeries, or whatever they are called. She is one of the oldest sister missionaries in our mission and will be going home in two months, so she is quite experinced when it comes to missionary work. 

For my birthday we went to the castle, visited some shop, made cupcakes ( thank you Mommy) and had lots of fun.  The castle is huge and gorgeous. We haven't even visited the actually castle part of it, just the area inside the walls. So it is huge. Carcassonne is gorgeous. And I'm excited to get to know the ward more. We love our bishop to death. Daddy, I'm sure you already do this but, be extra nice to your missionaries. We appreciate our bishop so much. He is so nice and spiritually in tune.

Now, sorry to everyone who has written me and hasn't gotten a response yet. I actually wrote a ton of letters right before we left the MTC, but I couldn't get to a mailbox before we left and I still need to get stamps here. But expect them soon! 

If emailing me is convenient, please do. Us missionaries love every bit of news, advice, love that we get.

I love you all!

The gospel is true! God loves you!

Sorry any typing mistakes!

love,

Soeur Russell

Carcasonne 5/20/13

Cher Famille and friends,

If you havn't guessed from the email heading, I am in Carcassone :) It has one of the largest castles ever, which we will be visiting today. Speaking of which, Thank you for the well wishes for my birthday and thank you mommy for the package. Ze are making cupcakes later. So this letter may not be as long because I don't have much time and this keyboard is wierd. So warning to those who first get this messagem there are going tot be a lot of typos because I want to write as much as possiblt. So traveling to lyon was interesting, we almost missed every flight we had. and going through security there was a guy handing out free sunglasses with a giant umbrella coming out of his backpackm, and I later saw eating pinapple straight out of a can with a metal forkm right in the middle of the airport, interesting, Once we got to lyonm we were met by presidentm his wife and the APs. They are all spectactular. I cant wait to zork zith them morem We actually stayied in a hotel until friday because we had to do legality stuff on thurs but I met my trainer on weds. Her na;e is Souer Fairchild. Will write more about her abother time but she is a very dedicated missionary. In this area we actually have two companionships, and you will never guess who is im the other companionship......Soeur Luthi. :) she cant get rid of me ( not that she wants to) Carcassone is beautiful and I am ecxcited to try all the amazing foodsa nd meet all the people. our bishop is one of the best people \i have ever met, and I just had an eclair. :) Next time I need to tell about some of the miracles we have been having but its about time to go. I love you all! Micah, that is one of the nost hilarious stories ever, Zach I love your letters and drawzings and Thank you daniel and jennifre for so didligently writing meI love you mommy and Daddy love you all love the gospel

Soeur Russell

Sorry fot the typos!!!!!!!

(Note from Mom: I thought the typos were funny - left them in :)

Sœur Russell and Sœur Fairchild

      49, rue Marceau Perrutel

      F-11000    Carcassonne 

      France

At the MTC with Sister Schrecengost (going to Ukraine, Donetsk)

New France, Lyon Missionaires 5/14/13

In Lyon With President and Sister Roney 5/14/13

My last few hours in the MTC!! 5/13/13

Mes cher famille et amis,

In about a little more than an hour, I will be on a bus to the airport! Super exciting! Next time I write I'm sure I'll have way to much to tell you about planes and french speaking peoples and new companions. So anticipate that!

To my family, I will probably be calling between 3:15-5:15 chicago time. And I have a calling card which takes up minutes everytime I make a connection so I'll probably be calling one person. I think it doesn't take extra minutes if we make it a three way call (or whatever its called). So I'll probably be calling Mommy and we can figure it out then. So expect my call. And I'll be sure to tell you this when I call but Happy late Mother's day!

This week has been great. Tuesday night, the sisters were all talking about ww2 and concetration camps and Soeur BN, who had been quiet up until now said, " Jews like Orange juice?" We all died. No matter what she meant by that sentence, it would be hilarious. This whole entire time, while we were talking, she was probably wondering what in the world ww2 and juice have in common.  When we finally calmed down enough to turn off the lights and everyone was falling asleep, I didn't fall asleep for a couple hours, which is unusual. So I was laying there in the dark, when I glance over and see the outline of someone sitting up in the bed next to me. I was thinking, if I didn't know that that was probably Soeur Kupfer, I would be freaking out. But it was still a little creepy. While I was staring at the bed next to me, suddenly, I hear someone speaking full on parseltongue. Truly, parseltongue. With hissing and scary sounding not really words. And the figure laid down. Let's just say I had an even harder time falling asleep after that. I told Soeur Kupfer in the morning what she ( I really hope it was her and not something else) had done and she couldn't even appreciate the full effect because she has never seen harry potter. Sad. We have some funny stories about sleep talking. Apparently, one night I was speaking french in my sleep! ( none of it made sense, but I'm still impressed) and Soeur Fortuna started sighing and saying "oh, I don't know that word". She sounded very upset. :) As you can tell, we think about french a lot. On weds, I got to be a missionary host. I would greet the cars coming in, extract the sister from her family, lug her bags up, lug them upstairs, grab her books with her and take her to her classroom. It was a pretty cool experience. Thurs, we had infield orientation, which was a lot of sitting and going between dead tired, hot, cold and spiritually ready to to go part some lake. ( what reason we would have to part a lake, je ne sais pas, but it would be cool) That night was the highlight though, SBN and Elder Taylor started rapping the first vision in french. I wish I could send you a video of it, but maybe when I get back I can show you. Remind me to ask Seour Luthi for that video. :) Friday was our last day of gym and volleyball. Too sad. Our sisters were full of volleyball awesomeness. And Saturday was our last day with Seour Sandoval. :(  Sunday in sacrament meetting, we ended up doing that musical number we had worked on earlier and it turned out well. We did part of it in french and SBN sang in italian and I sang in english and Soeur Fortuna was perfect on the violin and Elder Erickson was so nice to play piano for us. So it turned out well. Before we did it, I was being really nervous like I always do ( its unreasonable, I know, no ones going to boo me,but it always happens) and I glanced down at my sheet music and read the first line, " I know that my reedemer lives" and thought to myself, that if I can't tell a bunch of missionaries that in the MTC, there is no stinkin' way I could say that in France. And, of course, it turned out ok. In relief society we had Janice Kapp Perry come to speak. She wrote new lyrics about the sister missionaries to the tune of As sisters in zion. Its called the sisters in zion. And we were the first ones to sing it. :) The mtc is awesome. And the elders were jealous. Later we were talking about how much we appreciated each other in our district and Soeur Luthi told me that she wanted to be more like me in a lot of ways and sometimes wondered what she was bringing to our companionship. It's funny, because I felt the exact same way. Soeur Luthi was always watching over me, helping me, not getting mad when I would act like, well, me and she was such a hard worker. We were really the best possible comapnions for each other. I'll miss her and my entire district. It's a good thing we are all going to the same mission.

So, now that I'm about to leave, an overveiw on the MTC. Even though there are little things that were bothersome at the MTC, (shower lines , cafeteria lines, cafeteria food tout jour, chaque jour, wierd schedules) this really has been one of the top experiences of my life. The spirit is everywhere and everyone is so willing to serve and be obedient. I love it here. and I'm sure I'll love Lyon.

So I'm off!

Je vous aime!

Love, Seour Russell

France, Lyon Soeurs

 Language Training

France, Lyon district (and teacher)