December 11, 2018

Bonjour Family!! This has been pretty much the best week of all time! ANNICK GOT BAPTIZED!! We have been working with her for such a long time and it finally happened! My joy is full! SHe got confirmed on Sunday and her babies got blessed the same day. It was such a sweet meeting. Another cool thing that happened, was that we invited Solange, Zeinaba, and Victor to come to church and they came! They`re only kids but they came! They are the cutest and they had such a fun time at church! We hope that they will come back next week! It was wonderful because President Phillips came to see the confirmation so he got to talk with Annick a little bit and meet the kids. It was beautiful! Earlier this week our friend Nicolas gave us a referal. One of his friends Sophianne. We came and taught her and she LOVED our message! We are going to try to schedule another date with her to come back and teach her more. She was seriously so kind and open and curious! We also went to visit Joyeuse (Joyous) who we met last week on the street. She has 10 brothers and sisters! TEN! And when we walked in her dad, was reading a restoration pamphlet from our church. (we did not give them a pamphlet) They had received it from a missionary months ago, but had never been taught afterwards! We were like, whoa that`s from our church! and he was like, really? wow tell me more! It was so crazy! They were from Tanzania so we gave them a Swahili pamphlet and he was so surprised! (They always are when we do that haha) Needless to say, this week we made 7 new amies!! 7!! AND a baptism! That`s crazy!! To top it all off, we had a special Christmas Zone Confrence yesterday! It was beautiful! I am so excited to spend Christmas here! I know that i will never be closer to Christ than I am now, doing the things that He would be doing on Christmas day. I am so excited for that. I know that we will see mircales. truly. We plan on making a Christmas breakfast as a district for the people in our ward who are alone on Christmas morning so that they can have some joy and friendship. There are so many people who, for them, Christmas is not as happy of a time. I just want to share as much joy as a i can with the people who are soul sick and need the soothing balm of Christs love to heal their broken and hardened hearts. We have really been praying to find the soul sick. Its been at the forefront of my mind this whole season. I want to challenge you to find the soulsick this season and help them to feel even a little of the love that theur Savior has for them. They are so beloved in His eyes. I have a testimony that as we see people the Christ sees people, our eyes and hearts will change and we will feel pure joy and so will they. Mircales will occur, that is a promise. I love my Savior. He is my best friend. I am here in His name. And i couldnt think of a more honorable name to wear. I love Him. I know He lives I hope that your week is lovely and full of light! Love, soeur Bates