May 27, 2013 - Grenoble, France

...and Seek out the Righteous Where e're They May Be!

famille,

bonjour! comment ça va? je vais bien! en faite, je vais partir à aix-en-provence aujourd'hui! So today we're going to aix-en-provence for an exchange with the soeurs there! I'm pretty stoked cause I only have been to aix during the winter, so there was no pretty lavender everywhere. But it was still beautiful, just not AS  beautiful as it could have been. but this time will be great. so this week went well, we had zone training in Lyon and we had mangez-vous with a few families in our ward and taught marie-france with one of them, and we played the missionary game with the other, we got a new ami, sandra, through another ami, sylvie (crazy, right?? miracle!!!), we helped marie-france move yesterday! Her dad came to help her move her stuff. she's moving home for the summer and will be back in august, which means I probably wont be here. Which is really sad. and she will totally be baptized!!! But yeah, we took a photo together and we met her dad and introduced the gospel to him also and gave him a Book of Mormon (!!) and that was great!!  so we moved down her bags and dishes and stuff, not a lot of furniture, but she lives on the fifth floor, which is actually the sixth floor in america. !!!! So that was a nice workout in a dress. haha. mais ça va. It was totally worth it! and the elders came and helped too. 

things have been going pretty great here in grenoble, we are seeing miracles everyday and we are getting more and more courageous and better at working together, my blue and I. she is great at wanting to talk to people and everything! I'm so proud of her!! and her accent is getting a LOT better already!!!!! sooooo cool!! oh, so mom sent me a letter this week, and I got it when we were leaving the apartment and I read part of it and put it in my bag, but I must have dropped it and I lost it!! so I was really sad and prayed to find it. So a few days later, we come home and the other equipe of soeurs tell us that this old man came to the door and rang the doorbell and gave them the letter because he found it on the street opened and he wanted to return it because he read the end and it said "mom" and he was told my someone that that was "maman" (mom), and he knew that it must have ment something to them, so he was asking for me but I wasnt there and he was hesitant to give it to them but he did and left a note for me, so I get home and I'm like, what??! so I call him and thank him and he asked me what it was about and I tell him and it was really cool. He wasnt interested in teh gospel, but he respected our religion. That was a cool little miracle.

Things are  going great, as I said before, but I gotta go cause our train leaves soon and we gotta go catch it! I love yall and I hope that you have a great week!!!

love always,

devaneaux

May 20, 2013 - Grenoble, France

I survived!

-so I had to forward this because I typed in soeur addis' email and finished up the email and did other stuff, then totally sent it without adding yalls email addresses!!! hahaha. I'm an idiot. so..here it is. enjoy!!! love ya!-

fam-

so youre probably wondering if I'm alive. indeed! I am still here!! and things are now going great. I feel good about everything! a little unsure, but you just gotta keep pushing forward and trust in the Lord, that he has a path for you!

This week was CRAZY. I went to lyon, back to grenoble, went back to lyon, shared a room with SOEUR HARRIS(needless to say we stayed up wayyy too late talking), got my blue, then came back to grenoble thursday night. phew! 

at first it was really hard. the new equipe of soeurs were acting like i wasnt really a part of their equipe for the first few days that I didnt have my blue which was pretty lame cause we were suppose to still work all together as a trio with me as senior comp, but one of them was deciding everything and asking the other if they liked that idea..it was awk. cause I didnt want to say anything cause I'd only be with them for 2 days. so i got over it, and then i got my blue! who is from north carolina, goes to byu, took a lot of french in college so can speak grammaticallycorrectly but we are beginning to work on her accent and her understanding other people. which is CRAZY cause i feel like I'm a real trainer!! cause apparently my accent is not bad to french people and I understand what people are trying to say!!!! 95 percent of the time! haha. so thats a LOT better then when I was a blue! but yeah. i cant help but feel kind of cool when she contacts and people dont understand then i say it and they do understand. and when we finish a contact and my comp is like, what'd she say? and i'm like, she said she is late to work and she cant talk. lol. its not that I'm rejoicing in myself, I'm rejoicing in miracles. GIFT OF TONGUES!!! yeah. I think of a specific time, when she asked what brings this guy happiness  and the guy was like, huh? and she repeated and he was like, i dont understand, and I just repeated the word happiness in french cause I knew thats what it was that he didnt get and he was like, OH! yeah. I felt cool. but yeah, being a senior comp is definitely different, had a rough moment cause i'm like helping the other soeurs and trying to guide them but also train and my blue felt like i was giving them too much attention and whatnot but i talked to her about it and its cause they NEED me! and she was like, i feel like we're not working hard enough, and i was like, you've been here TWO DAYS. hahaha. and friday (her first day) was weekly planning! and we taught 3 LESSONS! AND we had to have a correlation meeting with the new equipe of soeurs and the elders and the new elder in that equipe. haha. so.. I talked to her about how organization is really important when we are all in the same ville and that we cant work sufficiently if we dont plan ahead of time. and that this week we would definitely have time to go out and contact for hours. lol. so she finally began understanding. phew! But its going really good now. we shared our own spiritual experiences and why we decided to go on a mission and all of that, and I think we like each other alright! :) She does know great french already, which is a very big blessing, and she is super sensitive and sweet. and likes to laugh, so that is great! But just trying to make sure that she knows that missions are about working hard and doing our very best, but that we can laugh and enjoy our mission, too! after all, we shouldnt be robots, we are real people and thats the great thing about being called to serve in a certain location, that the people you find and teach are the people that needed YOU and YOUR personality at that time to help them improve themselves and their lives! SO yeah. big testimony of that. introduction of the white handbook. haha. seriously! 

Okay, gotta jet, but I love yall so much and am so grateful for yall!!! Things are going great here and I'm excited to have this new missionary with so much energy to serve!!!! HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!

love always,

devaneaux 

ps-elder wilson, me, soeur harris!!!!! first time i've seen soeur harris since my second transfer at blues conference!

May 14, 2013 - Grenoble, France

Just what the countryside looks like here. whatevs. (aka so ridiculously wonderful i took a photo) notice the lonely tree on the top of the hill to the right. so cool.

May 14, 2013 - Grenoble, France

you gotta have FAITH!

okayyyy

so update, I have soeur lewis and soeur hall here in grenoble with me and theyre on their second transfers. theyre both nice girls, one just turned 20 and the other is 19. yeah; weird. one has had 1 semester of college. weirdER. I'm like, yeah..I'm 22...3 years at byu..nbd. blah. old. but its okay, I'll get use to it pretty dang fast, I think. So this last week we had a million mangez-vous with members because soeur addis was here for 5 transfers and just died. crazy how that happens. dead. dead and gone. but she will live on in our HEARTS! :) what else...our stake pres is a beast and always gives great talks, and he came and spoke for our ward conference on sunday and it was again great! he actually has a mormon message thing! I dont have time to pull it up for you, but yeah. its good. umm...oh, already got the 4th missionary, dont have to worry about that. 

 there's a talk by..I dont remember who, but he talks about how our Heavenly Father gives us trials and hard things in our lives to make us stronger and better then we were, and he uses the analogy of a gardener talking to his plant, and how the plant talks back. the gardener cuts off some branches and the tree asks, why, why gardener are you cutting me down? I've grown this big and i've done so much good, why cut me down now? and the gardener says, because I'm the gardener, and I know of your potential. I'm making you a stronger, bigger tree then you have ever imagined. and he talks about in this talk (called "the gardener") how he has seen those times in his life  when he feels like he has been cut down, but he has learned that it was for the best. and he says that he would say to the gardener, "thank you, mr gardener for cutting me down. for loving me enough to hurt me". and I thought a lot about this talk when I got the call for me to  train and found out that 2 very young sisters would be coming here. So I am viewing this as him cutting me down, loving me enough to hurt me for a bit. Life is hard. I am positive about this. I am also positive that we have a loving Heavenly Father. He gives us trials so that we can become stronger. What doesnt kill you makes you stronger, to be cliché.  He knows what we can handle and He has trust in us that we will do our best and become even better then we were before. Isn't that what it's all about, to progress? To become better then we are right now? Well, this is that moment for me. To become better. We all have a divine potential. Dieter F Uchtdorf said that if each of us knew this it would change the world. How incredible is that? We need to better ourselves all the time. And not only that, we need to serve. Showing the pure love that our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ has for us to one another. Let's all make the change we need to make today.   

I love yall so much and am so grateful for each of you. thanks for supporting me in my time of need and for the love that you have for me and the gospel. I know that our Heavenly Father loves each and every one of us and knows us personally. He knows us. I know that Jesus Christ suffered and died for us so that we can have the strength we need to get through life and trials, and to repent and become better. We matter to Him. 

I love yall and I hope you have a great week! I love letters! :)

love always,

devaneaux

ps. photo-I got to hang out with soeur bertolio all morning/afternoon before I came back to grenoble at 4! it was SO GREAT!!!  I love her!!! what a great example to me of what I should be like with my blue. just show lots of love and be PATIENT. she needed a lot of that with me. haha..seriously.

May 13, 2013 - Grenoble, France

fam et amis,

real quick and real email later, but! if you havent heard, I'm training. and we are getting a new equipe of soeurs who will both be on their second transfer and they've never been to the ville. so..we'll be an equipe of 3 until wednesday and I'll be going back to lyon to pick up my blue! That's what's going down. love yall and it was SO GREAT to talk to yall!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love yall so much!!! and I am totally hanging out with soeur BERTOLIO RIGHT NOW!!!! I love my mission mom. shes the best.

love always,

deveaneaux

May 6, 2013 - Grenoble, France

Praise to the Man

fam-

hello! so this week was okay. okay because soeur addis was sick until tuesday (got sick on friday), then i got whatever she had on wednesday until saturday. nasty cough and tired as a dog! but yeah. we still taught lessons! wednesday was the worst for me and I slept basically the whole day, which actually helped a lot and i got better faster then soeur addis! and my cough is almost all gone! Got a blessing from the elders so that definitely helped me. love the gospel! 

so this week we taught yannick a couple times and he is so accepting! I LOVE africans! they just love and have so much faith in Jesus Christ!!!! Its incredible. He's golden. he was a referral from the elders in lyon, well, a family in lyon who had them meet their nephew, who is yannick. he is really cool and just having issues with gettin baptized AGAIN, but we taught him about it and told him that he should pray about it. he accepted. and he came to church! 

Dan went to the temple and brought soeur addis and I little Book of Mormon figurines!! So cool!!! I got Nephi, soeur addis got Lehi. Keepin that thing forever! so cool!! He is really doing great, and he's reading this so awkward!! haha just kidding, dan! lol. 

Caterina, another ami, she's the athiest one, she told us on tuesday that she had this dream on saturday night that she was with Jesus in a garden and that she was wiping his face with a white shawl, and that there were mean men who showed up with torches and took him, and then she woke up with this reallly bad stomach ache problem and threw up and was  still sick when she came to meet us on tuesday, and seh asked what it meant, and she never remembers her dreams, then we told her she should pray to be healed (before we offered for her to get a blessing and seh accepted but the elders werent in town) and she was like, yeah maybe and then we saw her on tuesday and she was better! she said on tuesday night she woke up and threw up once more then she went back to bed and felt better. and she said she had read, and we watched the restoration, and then wayyy later in the lesson soeur addis was like, oh, have you pray? and she was like, oh yeah, I did. actually, it was on tuesday night, before I threw up one more time and then went to sleep and felt better. and we were like, "...WHAT??? thats the answer to your prayers!!!!!" and she was like, you think so? and we were like dying it was so obvious!!!!!!!!! hahaha. and we were like, you have been praying for a sign, this we think is your sign.  and she was like, huh! it was crazy. so yeah. she is progressing, needless to say. slowly but surely.

Lets see..oh in zone conference we had interviews and pres roney asked me if i was ready to be in charge. haha. I was like, eh....I COULD...but yeah. then he asked about the language and then he asked soeur addis a lot about me and if i was ready and it freaks me out!!!!!! We are getting more soeurs then we have senior companions, so things will be changed around for sure. transfer calls on friday, so I can tell yall in skype whats happening. ant, ask mom and dad about the skype thing. okay, gotta jet, but thanks for the emails! I love yall! the church is true and Heavenly Father really does answer prayers! Alligning our will to His. I am praying that I'll be prepared for whatever is ahead for me and whatever ville I'm in (probably here since soeur addis is dying). Pray for me too, please. :) love yall so much and I pray for you all the time!!! so if something good happened...your welcome. ;) jk jk. love yall.

love always,

devaneaux