1,009

An adorable member in our ward knitted us all gloves!! So cute. I love this picture.

Saying goodbye to Elder Ashton!

Salut! First off, I am staying in Limoges! With Soeur L! You should have seen the little dance we did when we got our transfer call. I was so excited. I am SO excited to be spending Christmas in a city and with a companion that I love so much! Elder Stephens is staying here with us as well! We are very excited that we all get to stay here and have another blast of a transfer. The only change we saw was Elder Ashton leaving us. Yesterday was a pretty sad day to have to watch him get on the train to leave. I have seen so many missionaries die, and it kills me every time. And we were especially sad about Elder Ashton leaving yesterday because it has been such a blessing to have been able to serve with him in the same city this transfer.

I think one my favorite things about the mission is how many people I get to meet who are such amazing examples to me. There are already so many members I have met who have had such a huge effect on me, and also so many missionaries. I am so grateful for the amazing missionaries that we have in this mission and that I have the chance to learn so much from their example! It is really interesting to see how the older I get in the mission the more it kills me to think about leaving. It scares me always talking to missionaries who are on their last transfer and they talk about how fast it goes by. Like it seems like your mission is so long and all of a sudden you wake up one morning and you are on your last transfer. Gosh that is so scary! Because yes of course I love you all to death, but wow I still have so much to accomplish before I am anywhere close to going home! I am hitting my 6 month mark this month which means I only have a year left to be serving the Lord. That is so crazy to me. But I definitely don't let myself think about that too much. I just try to make myself aware of it so I am propheting of every moment that I have here!

I am so grateful for this transfer and all the things that I have learned. But it is always so fun to begin a new transfer as well. It is like every 6 weeks I get to evaluate myself and make new goals and continue to try to work to become the kind of missionary I know my Heavenly Father wants me to be.

Alright, now with the real stuff. 1,009. I am so proud of that number. Because that is how many people Soeur L and I invited to come to Christ this week! To give you an idea of how huge that number feels...for my entire mission, on average, I usually have somewhere between 300 or 400 contacted every week. But, we made a goal to talk to 1,000. We just felt like we really needed to end this transfer with a bang. And my goodness we did! This week was honestly soo tiring. Probably one of the hardest working weeks of my mission thus far. But we made a deal with God and asked him to grant us with new amis and with miracles if we accomplished this goal. And boy did He follow through! I saw so many incredible miracles this week. It was AMAZING. We went from having one "kind of" ami who wasn't even progressing to having two amis with a baptism date, and AT LEAST 10 really solid potentials that we are trying to make rendez vous with! It is crazy!! I wish I could sit and write down every single miracle I saw throughout the week because there were almost too many too count!

But there is one that is really sticking out in my mind. Because it was absolutely hilarious. It was about 6:00 and we still had about 150 more people to contact to make our goal for that day. So we just went to centre ville where we knew it would be easy (blessing we decided to make this goal when we did because everyone is out Christmas shopping!) So we were just standing in the spot where we usually street board and just talked to everything that moves. Haha really though, I felt like such a hunter this week. Sometimes I feel really creepy a missionary. Anyway, talking to everyone who is walking past, and everyone was being super rude. Not just saying no. Like every single person I tried to talk to was not even giving me a second. For a full hour and a half, I couldn't even get ONE person to stop and listen to me. And it got to the point where I just stopped in the middle of centre ville, looking over at Soeur L and yelled out (in French, might I add) "WHERE ARE THE ELECT?!" I just literally looked up at the sky and said to myself "Okay. God places people in my path. I have to have faith in that. There has to be someone here that is going to listen to me. " and then I see this guy about to walk past me and literally say out loud "Maybe this guy will listen." His name is Jack and he is SO sweet and we are going to have a rdv with him this week. Haha! Okay so yeah he isn't one of the guys we have engaged to baptism BUT that was such a humbling moment and just really showed me how much God is aware of me.

The work is happening here in Limoges! It is incredible! I couldn't be happier to be spending Christmas here in this beautiful country surrounded by people who I love so much.

"Service adds substance to our souls" said the oh so wonderful President Roney. Man is that true. As I serve the people around me I am learning more love than I have ever felt before. It is the most amazing learning experience in the world. I love you all so much. Thank you for all the sacrifices you make for me. I will see you all way too soon! Keep spreading the love of Christ! Love, Soeur Magleby