Apostle and a Saint (Patrick)

movie night! (Long story)  

Hello everything! What a week! We were on continent for a mission conference featuring Elder D. Todd Christofferson for the first part of the week, then returned to wonderful Ajaccio and nursed it back to health from our separation haha not really, it was all still okay. I can't wait to tell you all about our adventures, because we have had a lot! I am not going to go in chronological order but that doesn't matter because I never do anyway. Now I'm going to start a new paragraph.

So, Angela, our miracle ami, is doing great! She is taking detailed notes of the Book of Mormon, asking lots of good questions and she has a desire to change. So we taught her about the word of wisdom, something she especially wants to follow. And she keeps getting down on herself because she'll smoke a cigarette or drink a cup of coffee. I suggested once that we could throw it all out for her, and she denied the offer. But after one of our rdv's, as we were leaving, she said "wait!" And she came out of her kitchen with her bag of coffee, and we followed her into the bathroom where she dumped it all in the toilet and flushed. It was a lot of coffee and France doesn't have good water pressure so it just kinda got clumpy and wet, but we were all cheering and giving high fives and her son walked by and looked in and saw us all celebrating over some brown stuff in the toilet and he just was like "what the heck?!" It was hilarious and awesome. Go word of wisdom!

We also had an interesting experience while porting. We found a new little outer neighborhood, and most of the people kindly rejected us. We did, however, get let in twice. The first was by a Jehovas Witness lady who let us right in. She was super nice and we were pretty confused, so we told her we are the Mormon missionaries and she said "oh! I thought you were témoigne Jéhovahs!" It's funny because so does everyone else, and not even members of their own church can tell us apart hahaha. The other time we got let in my an awesome family! We got to sit down and teach the parents, but we met their three kids. They invited us back! I love families, and they are truly a gift from God! We've had a lot of cool little porting miracles this week, it's just so cool how magic Corsica is!

st Patrick's day

In other news, St. Patrick's Day was this week, and thanks to my mom and our fun traditions (that people mostly just think are crazy) we had a green meal! I'll send a picture but everything was green, and my comps were kind of worried at first because it's not easy to turn things green, but with some koolaid and some willpower, we did it!

All of our ami's are progressing very well, yesterday President and Soeur Vendassi came to visit Ajaccio and sacrament meeting was great!

my group!

Things on this island are speeding up and it's perfect. So I want to finish by telling about my experience at the Christofferson conference. We were asked to prepare beforehand, to repent and purify ourselves, and then to come fasting. I did that all, and felt pretty prepared coming to it. It was fun to see all of my mission friends and old companions, but I couldn't wait to see an apostle of the Lord. He walked in and we all got a chance to shake his hand, and as I shook his hand, said hello and looked into his eyes, it was like they were staring straight through me, but I couldn't help but smile. He has a light about him that is unmistakable. We presented our engagés to him (remember our challenge of trying to get 187?) and we ended us getting 223! Wow, we were all shocked! All the speakers were incredible, and I don't have time to tell you everything they said, but elder Christofferson spoke at the end, he answered questions and bore a powerful testimony of the Savior. He talked about having the spirit and listening to it, and he said that a blessing of missionary service is becoming better at hearing and acting the promptings of the service. I liked that because that's what I've been trying to do my whole mission! He said that it will be even more important as the years go on. At the end he said "I want you to remember this experience. Remember that I came and bore testimony to you that I know my Savior, Jesus Christ, and I know that He lives." That touched me a lot. My goal is to come to know Jesus Christ, and that comes little by little. You don't have to be an apostle to do it, you just have to be a disciple. I love my Redeemer, He rose from the tomb on that Easter Sunday long ago. We can live again, and we can have lasting happiness thanks to Him. I am thankful for this hope, his knowledge, and this true church. Happy Easter.

Avec amour,

Elder Hall

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