Superintendant!!

Hello! 

It's your favorite Sister MISSIONARY!!!!! Okay. I just wanted to be annoying with that opening line. But let's be real. I'm your favorite. I can't believe you guys had Thanksgiving without me...So RUDE!  I spent Thanksgiving knocking and trying to convince people that we really are not: T.J.'s (Jehovah's witnesses), polygamists, conspiring with Israel to attack Gaza(yeah what's the deal out there? I'm glad we don't get news coverage), cousins with Mitt, from Mexico (just Sister Lopez), So basically we were grateful that none of the above is true:) It was actually a pretty great day:) I love knocking!

So this week is a very good 

This week was really incredible! I feel like the Lord said, "Here Sister Perkins, have a miracle maybe a dozen?" I can't even count how many prayers were answered this week but I felt like everywhere I turned the Lord gave me huge blessings. 

So, as you know we went to Quebec last week which was a really, really big blessing. I had island fever and really needed to breath different air. Quebec was like a big breath of beautiful air. I loved it! Then when I got back to the island I received a phone call from no other than Lindy Pace (Aka Sister Pace, my trainer) she is here visiting. I was so happy that I danced around in a circle. I love her. I was able to see her that night for a few minutes and I just cried. Oh my goodness! I needed to see her. I felt like this little part of my heart that has been needing something that feels like home to be filled. And seeing her really helped me feel home. All I wanted to do was tell her everything that's happened in the last 8 months since I've seen her, but that was impossible. There are reasons that only I the Lord and I know, but I really needed to see her. 

While we were in Quebec we visited the sweetest little old lady named Lucy. She loved to talk! She told us about everything. And she kept calling me Superintendent. I think she thought that's what I said when I introduced myself as Sister Perkins. I'm going to tell President that I'm a superintendent now:) But Lucy is basically a legend in Quebec she's been an investigator for a very long time, but it could be because she talks sooooooo much. But a midst all of talk talk talking. She told us a story that really touched my heart. She said two nights before our visit she was really worried because the next day she had to do her grocery shopping for the whole winter(because she doesn't like to leave her house), so she buys five months worth of food, mostly frozen dinner type stuff. She said she was worried because she would be tired after shopping and she had no idea where she was going to put like 120 frozen dinners. So she said she did something she never does. She prayed. She said she asked God that if there was a way he could help her she would really appreciate it. She then told us that the next day she woke up with a lot of energy and when she got to the store "a nice young lad" who worked in the store told her that the store could deliver the frozen dinners to her house throughout the winter as she needed them. She said she was so happy that she couldn't wait to pray again to thank God. To us this might seem really menial, but to this cute little 80 year old lady it was like God parted the Red Sea for her. It really struck me that the Lord will make anything that is important to us, important to Him. It also showed me that our God is so merciful and so willing to put our righteous desires,even if they seem silly to others, in the forefront of His mind. He truly loves us. 

Keeping this experience in mind when we got home Sister Lopez and I decided out area needed extra help. Help that only the angles in heaven could organize, so we fasted. We fasted because we really needed new investigators.  Normally this would be easy, but President has asked us to knock and find in areas that are nicer than the average slums. It's really hard. Most people do not love us, and the rest pretend not to see us. We fasted and prayed and knocked. And we found no one. I wasn't feeling discouraged though. I knew that the Lord would do something for us. At about 8 o'clock that night we decided to go visit this family that we normally don't see. When we were walking up to their apartment building we saw this guy taking out his trash so we contacted him. He asked us for a Book of Mormon in English so we told him after our appointment we could bring one up to his apartment. When we brought it to him  he ended up asking us really great questions like: Where does evil come from? How do we find truth? Where is God? All of this really sincere questions that normally frighten me to death, but the Lord didn't leave us alone. With every question we had a scripture. This is the first time this has ever happened to me but I felt like I knew what he was going to say. It was really crazy. But after we answered a lot of his questions he asked us to come back this week. It was a crazy cool miracle. 

There were so many amazing things that happened I've only had time to share a couple of the amazing experiences that we had. God is aware of us. He knows out thoughts and the intents of hearts and if we pray he will answer our prayers. 

I hope you have a great week! Look for miracles, because they are everywhere if you just look.

I love you!

Bisous Bisous

Soeur Perkins 

 QUEBEC!!

What a beautiful City!

Hello everyone! 

It is true! It is true! Lopez and I skipped town and came to Quèbec. We were lucky enough to get permission to come here for a split. I have always dreamed of Quèbec since I was with Sister Pace and the Honeyhead. My, oh my, it is beautiful!

This week was a really good one! We had a lot of fun and ran around like little chickens with no heads. Also, kind of fun. It has also been getting chilly in these parts. You know it is starting to get cold when 7 celsius is hot. We are like polar bears here!

So this week Sister Lopez and I had a dinner appointment with the famous Athanassi family. They are the ones who danced for us after our super formal dinner. Well this time dinner was the interesting part. They started out with the traditional vegetable soup, and then after hummus and veggies and then the main course. Cute little Sister Athanassi made a huge pot of ravioli, not bad, right. And for the sauce she mixed yogurt, mint, and about 3000 cloves of garlic. Raw garlic. Did I mention we have been contacting a lot of people, lately? So they serve us huge plates of ravioli swimming in this yogurty mixture and wha-bam! Instant heart burn. I am about a quarter of the way down and the oldest sister of the Athanassi family says, "I can't eat this! It's making my throat burn!" So they try mixing everyone's white sauce with more yogurt. You know what that did? It just made more white garlic sauce. Oh did I mention that Lebanese people do not drink ANY liquids during their meals? Yeah. Nada. So, at this point I'm dying for water, I have heart burn and my eyes are burning. Also my companion isn't saying a word, so I have to try to eat and make pleasant conversation. Poor Hermana Lopez was just trying to eat this stuff. After a good 20 minutes of them waiting for me to finish, Brother Athanassi kind of just takes my plate when no one is looking. Bless his heart! We thought the misery ended there. Do you know what we had for desert? Pastries made of dates and a big glass of.....dark chocolate milk. Yeah. That made for an interesting mixture in my tummy. We love the Athanassi's just not the fire breathing garlic sauce. 

This week we also had an amazing lesson with Nicole, our deaf investigator! We taught the plan of salvation and I can tell you, the spirit was there!!!! How do I know? Well, I taught the whole plan of salvation in sign language and pictures of course and she understood me!!!!! Sister Lopez would add in her two cents, here and there, let's be real, sign language is not easy. But the spirit was present and we could see her little face light up as we explained each phase. It was a beautiful thing. 

We also had a lesson with a former investigator who went to Haiti for 3 months, but just came back about a week ago. We were talking to him about people in the ward that we wanted him to meet and we said, "Oh have you met Frére Pierre?" And he said, "No I met this really tall guy though." And I said, "Oh Frére St. Martin! Il est tres méchant!" Which means "Oh he's really nasty/spiteful/mean/evil." My companion looked at me like what are you saying? Yeah I felt pretty dumb:)

We've been working on contacting a lot in this area. I'm not the best at it. I get really nervous. But we've been talking to a lot of people with a lot of sad eyes. And it's really made me think about what the light of Christ does to our physical appearance. It makes us stand up straighter, eat healthier, smile, laugh, and even beam. I have gotten a little chubbier, I have lost hair like a cat, and a myriad of other crazy things. But I feel great! I really do. I wake up in the morning with this energy and I can see in myself more light. And I think that's really what we do everytime we get closer to the Savior. We bring more light into our lives. It reminds me of Alma 5:14 And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?I've been asking myself this question. And it's really made me think, and really made me want to try harder. I have a testimony that the Lord changes hearts. He's changed mine and I know if you ask, He can change yours.

I really hope you have a beautiful week! Oh yeah! Happy Thanksgiving! Every time I say that I think of that part on You've Got Mail. "Say Happy thanksgiving back." "Happy Thanksgiving back" I'm grateful for you and for your examples. For your love and for your letters that always cheer up my days! Remember to love each other! 

I love you!

Bisous Bisous

Soeur Perkins

 So excited to play in fall leaves!

Yay! for Fall!

Hello dearlings..... Yes the Lopez and I think we have a cat living in our house. Okay that's the lie we've been telling ourselves because everyday our hair falls out in massive gobs. Good bye, hair! I'm  going to save all of them and make myself a nice wig. I hope you enjoyed that opening line, because I've been working on it all day. 

Oh my goodness before I forget I want to wish my little Fia a happy birthday!!!!!! Oh my goodness!!!! I can't believe my little Fia monster is 4! It's so crazy. Fia you are such a gorgeous little lady and I can't wait to play with you again! I love you nugget! 

Other than our hair falling out life has been pretty good. We've had some really nice sunny days! Oh so great! We've seen some miracles and eaten up this beautiful fall season. 

Speaking of fall. So now that all of the leaves have fallen the trees look super bare and kind of ugly. Sister Lopez and I were driving the other day and it was quiet than out of nowhere she says, "I'm really afraid. These trees are going to fall and kill someone." I just looked at her like she was nuts. Every time we see a big tree she has to tell me that it's going to kill someone someday.Then this morning when we were leaving our house to go do laundry at the Sisters house there were people cutting down some of the big trees by our house and she looked at me and in a very solemn voice she said, "See. I told you." What a nut. 

So, we've been trying to get to know the people in our ward better so we've been setting up lessons with random members in the ward and we set up an appointment with this super nice family from Brazil. Well, we show up and guess what? It's a dinner appointment and they've invited someone. The only problem was that we didn't know if this chica was a member or not. So we kind of just smile and sit there while the family talks to her.Then the sister brings us our plates of food. Yeah. I had like 3 cups of rice and half of a chicken. Sister Lopez had like half the amount of food on her plate. Ridiculous. Then she gives us a huge glass of straight pineapple juice. Yeah. If you ever want to lose weight really quick I have the diet for you. So, after everyone is sufficiently stuffed like turkeys the mom says, "Okay now we will watch Finding Faith in Christ." About halfway through the movie I thought "I'm a gonner. I'm not going to make it out of here." Then about two minutes before the movie is over the sister stands up and turns it off. Then she sits right in front of the investigator and says (in like a tv preacher voice) "Do you have FAITH?!" Sister Lopez and I had eyes as big as saucers. Then the sister went crazy on this poor little chica. The rest of the night was pretty eventful but I will spare you the gory details. Oh dinner appointments. 

We were in the neighborhood of another Haitian member this Friday night so we decided to pass by and see how she was doing. The only problem was that we saw her walking down the street and normally we would've have honked and waved but she was dancing as she was walking so we just drove alongside and watched her. We were laughing so hard we couldn't even breathe. So after we creeped on her sufficiently we decided to wait just outside of her house and then we ran into an old investigator that this member introduced us to. Long story short we ended up having a really good lesson with this member and our investigator. At the end the member wanted to sing Lord I would Follow Thee. The only problem here is that when she sings she sounds like those motion sensored Halloween ghosts. So, the whole time I'm trying to keep myself from dying of laughter and then I just lost it like the last two verses. So after the investigator who is this old Haitian lady says, "why were you laughing?" And I did something no missionary should ever do. I lied. I said I got lost. And the member said, "they're learning French sometimes it's hard for them when they sing." When we left the house Sister Lopez said, "You big liar!" As you can see, I still not have solved my problem at laughing in the most inconvenient situations. 

One of the coolest parts of being a missionary is less active work. I really love working with less actives. It's hard. But when you see someone come back it's so rewarding. when I first got into this area my comp and I started working with this family that has been  inactive for about five years. We've visited them every Sunday since I got here but haven't seen very much progress. Sister L and I were starting to get really frustrated and talked about dropping them, but we just couldn't. I kept thinking about Jacob 5 "It grieveth me that I should lose one of these trees." We just couldn't do it. This week we had two family home evenings and we invited this family not really thinking they would come. Well, they came to both and after both they promised to come to church. And we weren't too sure. Well, they came yesterday. I teared up a little bit as I was jumping up and down outside the church when I saw them walking up. It was so beautiful! They really loved being there. I know that the Lord was probably more excited than I was. It strengthened my testimony that no matter who we are or where we are the Lord is aware of us and He will never foresake us. Never cease to look for the people in your life who need you as an angel to help them back to where they need to be. It would grieveth Him to lose one of us. Don't forget that.

I hope you have a great week! I love you so much! 

Bisous Bisous!

Sister Perkins

 My favorite place in Montreal. The fruit market:)

Me and Nueces in the Fruit Market

Bonjour! 

It is a cold chilly cloudy day here in Canada. Actually this morning it was blue and sunny and then we went into Walmart for like 20 minutes and wa-BAM! It was gloomy and cloudy. Sister Lopez was not amused, nor was I. What's the deal Canada?  It might be time to start praying for blue skies again. 

This was a pretty good week, but as you can see from my title we ran into a lot of nueces (Translation: crazy people). In my attempt to be multilingual I was speaking to Sister Lopez the other day and I was trying to tell her she was nuts and instead it came out in Spanish so I said, "Tu eres nueces!" She thought it was so funny that we've been saying it all week. And then we started calling all of the crazy people we saw nueces on the metro, on the streets, in our mission:) Nueces everywhere. Sometimes the nueces are funny but a lot of the times their craziness is just more weird. Sister L and I decided to start a novela when we get home called "Nueces enomoradas" staring William Carlos Omar Levy Ricardo Romero. Yeah. We're s

Language has been a topic of comedy here. The other day Sister L and I were talking and she said, "I think I sound like Encarnacion when I speak English." To be honest I've never actually thought about it so when she said it I started laughing super hard because it's kind of true. And so all week we've been singing the Encarnacion song from Nacho Libre. I've also been making her say "My favorite animal is puppies." Not to worry though I've had my fair share of English mess ups this week. For example the other day we went to buy some frozen pizzas at the store as a district for lunch. And I was walking across the street and this guy walks by and said something to me and I laughed and smiled because I had no idea what he said. And then I turned to one of the French Elders and said, "What did he say?" And he looked at me like I was nuts and said, "Pizza's ready." And I looked at him like he was nuts and said, "What does that mean? Is it like a French thing?" And he said, "No. It's English. It means the Pizza is ready." Yeah. I needed the Frenchie to explain that to me. And on Saturday Sister L and I went to find a referral we received by mail that only had a street but no number. So we decided to knock the whole street. So, people would open then door and we would say "Bonjour nous cherchons pour Loulou Tarascus?" And if they didn't know what we were talking about we would contact them. There was this little old lady who opened the door and here is Quebec there are a lot of apartments that have two doors and to get to the actual apartment you have to walk up a hallway of stairs so we usually just yell from the bottom. Since the lady was old I yelled really loud, "BON-JOUR! nous cher-CHONS pour  Lou-LOU TARASCUS!" And in English she said, "What?" So I Yelled it louder "NOUS CHER-CHONS POUR LOU-LOU-TA-RAS-CUS!" By this point Sister Lopez is laughing super hard and trying to tell me that this lady is actually speaking in English. Yeah. I'm having a hard time. 

We've been doing a lot of member work in this ward. So, we've tried to visit every member in our ward starting with letter A. We've found out where a lot of members don't live anymore. But my favorite was the other day we went to find this older Quebecoise sister and so we walk up to this door and ring the bell and I'm looking in through the window and I see all of these picture of this Asian couple on the wall and I look at Sister Lopez like "Mayday Mayday!" But she was already asking this crazy Asian lady if she was Soeur Bougie but she didn't speak English so we both ended up laughing really hard and tried to contact her. Fail. 

Oh good news. We didn't get blown away in the Hurricane winds last week. But we thought we were going to. I've gained weight, but I guess not enough because Sister L and I were fighting the gale force winds everywhere we went. It did not do good things for my hair. 

Every Thursday night we have the honor of teaching the one and only Daniel Bolduc English class. Daniel is member of our ward. He's a real life Ghostbuster. Really. He told Sister C he does a Ghost check on the church once a week. This week for English class he wanted to talk about idioms. Embarrassing fact I've learned more about English than I ever knew before teaching English class. Like I had no idea that idioms were called idioms. So he asked me to write some on the board and explain them. So I did a couple and the one of the Elders started writing some other ones on the board....So I decided to be funny and started making up idioms. Like "It's like two pirates in a supermarket." It means that it's pretty crazy or unusual. Also, "It's like trying to perform a root canal on a walrus." It means it's a really difficult or big job. So if you hear any of these floating around 2 language English speakers you know who to thank.

This week my District Leader gave us this really amazing talk by Elder Bednar  called "The Atonement: And the journey of Mortality" to study for the week. I've already read it 4 times. It's amazing. Elder Bednar talks about how the Atonement wasn't created to just make bad men good but good men better, and how we can use the Atonement for more than just repenting of our sins. He stresses how we can use the Atonement not to remove us from the circumstances we are in but to use it to give us the power to change our circumstances. My favorite quote says, "As you and I come to understand and employ the enabling power of the Atonement in our personal lives, we will pray and seek for strength to change our circumstances rather than praying for our circumstances to be changed." Every time I think I understand the Atonement I realize there is still so much to learn. But what I do know is that the Lord will strengthen us if we ask Him. 

I hope you have a great week and stay warm! We will be starting our seven-layer bean dip bundling this week! 1 degree today! 

I love you!

Bisous Bisous!

Soeur Perkins