Blessed

Me and my comp Soeur Richardson :)

Last night we had a fried food party....it was a blast.​

 Can you believe I LIVE here?!

Salut!
Wow. Where to begin. This week has been absolutely crazy. Honestly...I have never been so exhausted, overwhelmed, or stressed my entire mission.

And yet...I have never, ever been so happy. Funny how that works.

This week was a little different because our first week here is kind of crazy. My équipe is a little different..because we have the apartment where all the sisters coming to Lyon stay. We had at least ten sisters in our apartment every single night this week. We have the missionaries who are going home, and then new missionaries, and then their trainers, and then all the missionaries who came for a conference. It is suuuper exhausting. But also...it is kind of just like one big party. Haha. I am not going to lie, it is crazy to be in charge of so many sisters. But also I get to see so many wonderful missionaries that I haven't seen in so long who I love SO much. It is crazy to me how many relationships I have made on the mission. But I have made friends here that I know will be friends for life... It is honestly incredible.

That is why all I can describe how I feel right now is blessed. So, so blessed. It has been a crazy week but like I said...I am sooo happy right now! I absolutely adore Lyon. And I knew I would. This is a super fun place to be. And the work here is INCREDIBLE. Seriously the work is going so fast I feel like I am running to keep up with it. Our ward is amazing. Seriously...the most functioning ward I have ever been in. It is so crazy. Our bishop is like....unbelievable. Granted, his wife is American and he lived in America for 12 years soo...he knows how to get things done. It is great. Haha. I just was amazed yesterday at church. I feel like I am having to run to catch up with how fast this ward is doing missionary work. And we have so many wonderful amis right now. I feel like I stepped into this whole new world of missionary work. That is another reason I feel so incredibly blessed. I just wake up every morning, walk the beautiful streets of Lyon and think to myself "What in the world did I do to deserve this?" I feel like Heavenly Father is pouring his blessings upon me. It is the most wonderful feeling. I am learning so much everyday. I am working harder than I ever have. I am having to push myself to work EVEN harder, every single day. And I feel more than ever that He is with me. I honestly couldn't even explain it if I tried. But it is the absolute most amazing feeling in the world. To know that He is on my side. To know that He is helping me to become the type of missionary I need to. More than ever I feel like He is helping me turn all my weaknesses into strengths.

There are a couple things that have been on my mind this week:

First, the miracle of The Atonement. Obviously that one could be talked about for days. But I have been thinking this week of the miracle of change. How much The Atonement literally changes us. How I have so many weaknesses. But I wake up every morning, and I ask Heavenly Father to help me. Because I literally can't do it without Him. And somehow, everyday, He makes me stronger. He helps me to build more faith. He helps me to have more trust in Him. And little by little...He is shaping me into who I need to be.
And He does that for all of us. All we have to do is be humble enough to turn towards Him and recognize that we cannot do it without Him. Change is such a miracle. That every single one of us can change. And I have seen it over and over again on my mission. And now I am starting to see it in myself. And it is truly the coolest thing. To look back on myself, just a short year ago....and to not feel like I am even close to the same person. I am so different. But in so many good ways. Well, I hope ;) haha.

Second, forgetting ourself in the service of others. That has been my goal my entire mission. And I feel like I am finally getting there. I can't tell you how good it feels just to finally stop thinking about myself so much, and to constantly have my mind on other people.

And THAT is why I am so happy. I know it is. The is where true happiness comes from. That is why I am so so incredibly grateful and blessed for this time in my life.

Wooow I have gotten SO missionary, haven't I? Haha. Sorry. We all knew it would happen :)
I love you all. I pray for you. I am so beyond grateful for you.
Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Soeur Magleby

Big city here I come!

This was our oh so wonderful sick day :)

Soeur Shields and her first kebab

Hello my loved ones!

I apologize in advance...this is not going to be a super long one this week. I don't really have much to say, for multiple reasons. First reason is I had a super weird sickness last week. We honestly couldn't do REAL missionary work for about 4 days. It was pretty bad. Honestly though, I was thinking how lucky I was that that is truly the first time I have ever gotten sick enough to have to stay home on my whole mission. I feel like I have been truly blessed health wise...so, I couldn't be too mad about it.  It just really throws me off not to be able to do missionary work. But, don't worry! I am doing much better :) Don't worry about me. Just send your prayers my way like I know you always do and I will be just fine!

But as I told you yesterday...I am no longer in Chambéry! I honestly never thought I would have the opportunity to serve in Lyon...I am still kind of freaking out that I am here. Honestly though...I am going to LOVE it. I already can feel that. You know me and big cities. And apparently the ward here is amazing. It is just so cool to be here, it really feels so different to be in the heart of our mission. It kind of just feels like one big party filled with a ton of really awesome hard working missonaries. I truly just feel so blessed to be here! I am also the Sister Training Leader here in Lyon, which really just means I will be going on lots of exchanges with a lot of other sisters, which I am super excited about. This transfer will bring a ton of changes, and will no doubt be super stressful...but I am just going to trust in the Lord and do my best!

It was a little sad to leave my adorable daughter Soeur Shields in Chambéry...but, I think it will be good for her. But we really did have a wonderful transfer together! I was a little sad to say goodbye to the adorable branch too, but like I said...I know I have wonderful things coming my way!

I will tell you about two cool awesome miracles we saw this week.

First...we were on a bus. And I decided to talk to this really nice looking older guy. We start talking to him, and ends up being from New Zealand. Then he goes "Oh wait...you are Mormons? I am on my way to go have coffee with my friend who says she used to be a Mormon! Do you want to come with me and meet her?" And we were like uhh...;yeah! Haha. So here we go walking to this café with this guy, me just assuming that it is going to be a less active member in our branch that we possibly know. And then she walks up to us and goes "Oh hey missionaries." In the most American accent I have heard in a while. So I immediately said "Wow! where are you from?" PROVO. She is from Provo. How crazy is that! Here we were, sitting at a little café in France with a girl from Provo who had lived in Chambéry for 7 years. And she has been inactive for that long as well. But it was so crazy..because she literally had a regular Mormon childhood. It was such a cool miracle though that we ended up meeting her!! I hope they can bring her back because she is such a wonderful person.

And THEN. My last night in Chambéry. I was packing and stressing about life, but we decided to go out and contact for a little bit. And the SECOND we walk out of our apartment, I see this guy across the street who is just staring at us as he walks in his apartment. But we get a lot of that...so we just kept walking. And then all of a sudden he is running across the street yelling "Pardon! Excusez-moi!" And they he says are you the Mormons? And we of course say yes. ... and long story short, this guy has been studying Mormons for YEARS. And he knows a ton about us. But he has not been able to talk to anyone that can give him real solid information about the Mormons, because he says he thinks it is so interesting. and he said "I just really want someone to tell me if it is true or not." WHAT THE. Haha we let him know that is what we do as missionaries :) It was just the best little miracle to end my transfer with!

Heavenly Father really blesses us when we do our best to serve Him. Seeing miracles is my absolute favorite thing. And I have a huge blessing to be able to see them every single day..It literally is the best thing in the world. I LOVE THIS WORK.
Haha..I said it wouldn't be long ;)
I love you all. I am so excited about my life at the moment. Things are crazy, but I literally could not be happier. I will see you all soon. Know that I am praying like crazy for you!
Bisous!
Love,
Soeur Magleby

Welcome to the family baby Hudson! :)‏

It was a SUPER hot day and we thought we deserved some ice cream...SALTED CARAMEL, that is. Best thing of my life.

......another hot day? hehe ;)

A member made me put these on because I told her I was terrible at them......hahaha. It was a great time.

We had an awesome lunch with a bunch of cool members this week. It was such a blast.

BOWLING!! Thiese are two of the kids from the family I was talking about :)

I told you....missionary work is hard. Hahaha.

Hi everyone!! Wow, well this is by far the most exciting week of emails I have had. I can't believe I am an aunt!!! :) I really...I am so excited to meet the little guy. He is way too adorable for me to handle. Thank you for all for taking the time to send me all the pictures and update me on everything!

I feel like my little mission life is so insignificant compared to what is going on with all of you...buuut I guess I will just talk about it and bore you anyway ;) I have actually had a super wonderful week this week!

I woke up Tuesday morning and decided I wanted to have one of those weeks where I was just absolutely exhausted at the end. I wanted to go home at night everyday just in pain and exhuasted because I had worked so hard. Honestly, I wish I would work like that everyday. And I should. But I really just had this like super extra motivation to really absolutely do everything that I could to work hard this week. And ironically...this week ended up being a blast. We ended up just having SO much fun! My comp even told me that I seemed like EXTRA happy this week. And I really felt it! Funny how the harder I worked and the more I tried to completely devote myself to the work...the happier I was. Heavenly Father truly blesses us when we consacrate ourselves and just do everything in our power to build His kingdom.

And you are probably expecting that I am going to tell you that after working SO hard that I saw tons and tons of miracles. But to be frank...it was a hard week. In the work aspect, that is. I already told you how super happy I was all week. But, I feel my faith being suuuper tested right now. But I truly have been able to learn SO much this week. I couldn't even begin to put it all into words. But I feel Heavenly Father just building my faith so much right now. I have been praying more faith, and I really feel like this is the way that He is giving it to me. He is testing me. He is building me up. He is seeing if I can keep my faith solid despite the fact that we aren't seeing much success...we honestly have no amis right now. This is the first time this has happened on my mission, where we literally have no one to teach. We have lots of potentials...but they are using their free agency and choosing not to keep to church. It is super frustrating. But yeah, we kind of lost Lina this week. Long story short...opposition. I think she let it get the better of her. She just really kind of went off the deep end, and I think she just isn't quite ready yet.  Soooo we are starting with a clean slate!: Definitely devoting this week to finding new amis.

BUT there is a certain family I would like to tell you about this week. I actually don't really know why I haven't talked about them yet, because they have been a HUGE part of my work here in Chambéry. They have just been a huge focus for me. We have this absolutely wonderful beyond words family we are working with. A family of 5. Over the past couple transfers here, they have been a huge focus of mine because sadly, we have not started to teach them yet. We have an AMAZING relationship with them. We have been over to their house so many times, playing games, eating dinner and ice cream, doing nails, haha. They are so incredible and I love them more than I could really explain. But they are just those people that have really good realtionships with the missionaries, and come to our activites, but were never super interested in being taught. So that has just been my huge focus these past few weeks. Is figuring out how in the world we can start to teach them. And we saw the biggest miracle this week with them!!

We went over just to pass them by and invite them to our branch activity in a couple weeks, and we ended up staying over there for a couple hours and eating dinner with them. It was so perfect. And then at the end...I had to use all my courage AGAIN (like last week) and ask them if next time we come over we can share our message with them.

AND THEY SAID YES!!

Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself. It will still be a long journey for them to get there. but I know they can! We are going to try to start teaching them this week :) And another huge miracle is they ended up coming to our movie night and we watched The Testements...and there is no way they didn't feel the spirit testify to them that night. We are finally getting somewhere. Such a cool miracle of the week!

I feel like Heavenly Father is just teaching me so much right now in my life. I had a night this week that honestly..I felt really down. Haha I know I just told you I was super happy all week. But it was only one night! After our lesson with Lina. I felt really sad. I just felt my heart aching for these people. And I was really upset with myself at just how plain SAD I felt. Because I have no reason NOT to be happy! But then I realized that honestly..I wasn't thinking about myself. By heart was literally aching for these people who aren't accepting the Gospel.

I can't even really describe to you what it feels like. But I feel like Heavenly Father is really blessing me recently with a pure LOVE for these people. To the point where it sends me on my knees in tears just asking Heavenly Father to help them understand. There are just so many people who don't understand. And it breaks my heart.

But even though it is hard..I am so grateful I have been able to be blessed with this amazing love for these people. I can't even begin to fathom what our Father in Heaven feels for each one of us. I can tell you that I know with all my heart that this Gospel is true. I am so grateful for these moments that I have almost everyday where someone tries to get me to doubt my testimony.But I get to look them in the eyes and tell them I know with all my heart that God exists, and that He loves us and cares more for us than we can ever even imagine.

I love you all. I am so happy. God is so wonderful. He is blessing us more than I feel like I even deserve.
I will see you all soon.
Love,
Soeur Magleby

BOLDNESS. And faith :)‏

Here is July in France....SO much rain! Haha, it is actually SUPER weird weather for summer. But yeah...We have been working in the rain this week :)

My exchange this week with a wonderful Italien sister, Sister De Feo! She is so awesome, it was a fun day :)

Annnnnnd there was this one time Soeur Shields and I didn't get home until past 10 PM annnd also rode a whole bus ride home with us being the only ones on the bus. We partied. (Same day as the above photo...Don't worry, I don't wear the same outfit all the time)

Salut!!
Hey everyone. I am not going to lie...This is one of those weeks that I really was not quite sure what to write about. We have had a really wonderful week (as always), but no huge news. So pretty much I just wanted to share with you what I learned from this week.  We had our Zone Conference on Wednesday. And this time around it was interviews with President Roney! Which, like always, is my favorite :) I really do my best to always prepare for my interviews with him. We only have one every other transfer (which means 6 for me) and I really like to go into them prepared because if I do..I really get amazing inspiration every single time. Pretty much all of us missionaries are just obsessed with President Roney but he really is like...my favorite person ever. My biggest question for him was about sacrifice, and so we talked a lot about that because like I told you I have been studying it a ton. So, I learned a lot about that..but I already touched on that topic in my last letter. So I will tell you the amazing things I learned about faith this week!

Ever since Elder Andersen came here our mission has just been studying and talking and studying some more about FAITH. I have learned so much more than I ever really thought I could. I never thought I could learn so much about something I already that I knew about...and President taught me a really cool concept about faith this week I want to share with you.  I told him that I have been having a hard time not letting my faith drop. Because I try so so hard just to expect miracles but then tombez-vous after tombez'vous..it just gets REALLY hard to try to keep my faith that people might ACTUALLY show up to lessons. And President said to me "Well...getting upset when the miracles we want to happen don't happen is pretty much like asking for a sign." Haha. I felt like he kind of put my in my place, but it is true!! Just because the miracles I expect to happen aren't happening...doesn't mean that miracles aren't happening at all. President talked about how Heavenly Father doesn't always give us miracles because that would be like giving us a piece of candy every single time we do something right. And what kind of faith would that help us to grow? And he talked about how miracles can at times actually diminish our faith. I had NEVER thought of that. But it makes so much sense! That He can't just show us miracles all the time because He is constantly helping us to gain more faith, and He tests us by doing that. We have to be constantly tested and have our faith tried to REALLY develp the faith that we need. He also taught me that REALLY what faith is...is trust. Complete trust in our Saviour. And most importantly, putting more trust in HIM  than we have in OURSELVES. That is the key. That is real faith. Trusting Him more than you trust ANYTHING else. And that is how we develop real, solid faith that will get us through everything that we experience in life. And not only help us overcome the hard things..but helps us have happiness along the way :)

I hope that makes sense...it is really hard at times to describe to you what is going on in my head and the kind of amazing things I learn. All in all....all we really have to do is put our trust in our Savior. Love him more than anything else. Serve Him with all of our heart. Give our selves to Him. Give our who LIVES to Him. And do everything that we do in life because we love Him.

Easy, right? Haha. None of us will really be able to reach that point in this life...because of the fact that we are human. But, we can get really, really close. And we can do our best. And that is what I can't wait to spend the rest of our lives doing!

And then here is my miracle I will share with you for the week :) This ami I was talking about last week, the husband of a member. I talked to president about him, and he gave me some amaaaazing advice. He told me to look him in the eye and say "You know what, without the church in your life...you are going to be just fine. You will live a good life, and you'll be okay. But if you don't join the church..there are a lot of people whose lives will NOT be fine. When you join this church you will be an amazing example and have an incredible influence on people. But if you don't, people's lives will be BAD without you."

Wow. Super bold. But SUPER brilliant. So yesterday afternoon...We went to pass their house. They are SUPER hard to get a rdv with. And this whole past week they have been gone. But by a huge miracle, they were home!! And they let us in. And we got to sit and talk to them for a while and it was so so good. And I have to tell you...I almost left their house without doing what president asked me to do. I am so dang scared of this couple. Haha they are just SO cool that they are super super intimidating. It is hard to explain. But it took a ton of courage....but I did it. Right before we left. I looked straight into his eyes, and said those words.

...I have been working on my boldness recently...and I think my prayers were answered. I really can't believe I said that to him. It was terrifying. But, I did it! haha :) So there is my miracle for the week. It was a really cool moment.
I LOVE YOU ALL. I pray for you all. And I hope you have a wonderful week.
Put your trust in Him. All of it. And He won't let you down.
Love you!!
Love,
Soeur Magleby

Editor's note: We felt like Soeur Magleby didn't finish her story as to what happened after she was so BOLD.  She answered, "The end of the story is that he seemed super shocked after what I said, but then didn't say anything.but I know he thought about it that night :) that is what president told me would happen."