Happy Day of Looove!

Hello Everyone!

Well, hopefully this one will get to you just fine. I am glad that you were able to get the last ones one way or another. I felt so badly last week when I saw in all of your emails that you didn't hear from me the week before. But hopefully we got everything worked out! Sister Todd in the office was really nice to help out. I like her. I met her and her husband in the MTC right before they flew out here, so they have been here just a few weeks longer than I have. The couple missionaries are all really great. It makes me want to serve another mission later with my husband. How cool would that be?

Anyways, it sounds like your Valentine's Day was nice. It was a pretty normal missionary day here for me. It is not nearly as commercialized here as it is in the US though, that is for sure. But we shared a few thoughts with people about charity, and Sister Cutler and I both wore pink, so we celebrated it just fine. Plus, I have only been using red and pink to write in my planner this transfer, so I will celebrate Valentine's Day for 6 entire weeks haha. But we ate with Sister Lehmann yesterday, and it was wonderful as always. We also got to teach French class (which is huge on Mondays... I don't know why nobody comes to our class on Saturdays but a ton of people come to the Elders' class on Mondays...bah humbug) and we got to see Paola at Noche de Hogar! I think I may have mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, but she had gotten a job where she would have to be away from Geneva for a long time. She wasn't supposed to come back until March 20th, when I would probably be gone, but she said the lady she works for let her come back for a couple days for a break. So I got to see her again! Ugh, I love that woman. That definitely made my day. She is probably leaving again today though.

So Sister Cutler and I have ourselves a couple of Spanish investigators. They are not progressing yet, but soon enough. And it is really fun to teach in Spanish. Super hard, but fun. I have been realizing the last few weeks how much I want to travel to South America sometime in my life. There are a lot of Peruvians here, and with your mission experience, Dad, in Peru, I think it would be really great to go there. Can we go sometime... heh heh? Plus, Sister Cutler and I have managed to learn all of the words to La Bamba (there aren't very many), so I think I could do pretty well in any Spanish-speaking place.

Ooh a couple of things in reply to your emails: Dad, you asked if I ran any on Saturday? I did! We only had enough time to run about one mile, but I did run! Add that to the family total! We have been running almost every morning. Not a lot each morning, because we don't have enough time, but a little bit! And today we are thinking about running along the lake to the mission home and back. I think it is about 4k each way, so we will see. It is raining a little bit today (bah, after about 2 weeks of beautiful weather) but we can probably handle it. I am craaaaving running. It has been too long since I have gotten to run more than a mile or two at a time. Also, Mom, you mentioned that y'all have been playing Rummikub? That is great because Sister Cutler has talked about it before and has said how fun it is. I just told her that you've been playing it and she said 'Great! I will get together with them and play it every Sunday!' haha.

Things are going pretty well here. The work is pretty slow, but I am learning that that is kind of the norm. We do the best we can and even if we talk to people for a week straight and don't find any new amis that week, we keep doing the same thing the next week, and the next week. And then Heavenly Father will bless us with the miracles when the time is right. I am learning that being a successful missionary does not necessarily have anything to do with how many baptisms I've got or even baptismal dates. It is really a hard lesson to learn though, let me tell you what. But when I can pray to Heavenly Father at night and feel confident that He is content with my efforts that day, I ought to be sure that I am being a good missionary. But even still, there are so many things that I know that I need to improve on in order to be a good representative of Christ, and I am working on them. Oh man, I just want to be the best missionary ever haha.

So I won't get to email you again until after BIRTHDAYS this weekend. It sounds like you have some fun plans for the days. You will have to let me know how everything was. Daniel, are you excited to go to the stake dance? Don't be a wall flower, ok? I've been practicing the moonwalk here. You should work on that. I think it could be a hit and the dance. Anyways, imagine that I am saying this on Sunday:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL!

and this on Monday:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANIEL!

I love you a lot and hope you have a great birthday weekend.
Oh also, here are a couple of pictures for you. I don't know how many got sent with the whole email issue the last couple of weeks, but I will just send you some. Actually, I don't think I have taken very many good ones recently, so I just sent you a picture of the Valentine's breakfast that Sister Cutler made for me yesterday. Nice!

Ok, well my time is running out. I love you all alot and miss you a lot! Have a great week! Oh, and Will, break a leg in your play this week! Not really. Don't break any bones. Just have fun and do well. Will y'all take pictures of his play for me? I love you!

Love,
ALLIE

Ok back to February 8:

So there you have it, I am still in Geneva! Ohhh, and I am loving it. Seriously, every day I love this city more and more. And Sister Cutler is one of the coolest people, best companions, best friends ever. We are loving being together. We work hard and laugh hard too. Oh, I just love her. She goes home at the end of April, but she is from Provo, so she will be around when I come home to Highland.

Anyways, you asked about the mission change... nuts, right? In the Nancy zone, Luxembourg is the only sister area. Darn! I really want to serve there... I could have an entire country as my area! And it's beautiful, apprently. And they speak Luxembourgish up there, which is a combination of French, German, Dutch, etc. AND there are a lot of Portuguese speakers up there apparently. Not that I speak any Portuguese other than about three words, but I realized last night that I can understand some of it. But that is a tangent. I am pretty excited to see what happens with the whole change. I want to stay in Geneva for as long as possible so I can be close to this mission home for as long as possible. But it will be cool to be able to serve in other places with a whole new roster of sisters too. Crazy!

This week was a little uneventful, so maybe it is good that I still have the stories from last week to interest you haha. I was sick almost all week with a pretty awful cold/flu something. We had to stay inside a couple days and it was misery. But Sister Cutler took good care of me. And the elders in our district too. Can I just say that it is a huge blessing to be surrounded by the Priesthood, even when I am on the other side of the world from my Dad. It is pretty great. But don't you worry about me, ok? I am feeling much better and am ready to get back to work. Yeah!

So I read in the emails today that Daniel made marching band and his play! That is awesome! What a fun thing. Also, Will's play is this week? Bah I am sad I will miss it. Will you send pictures? Oh and Dad, you asked about Skype for the Mothers Day phone call. I am assuming that we will be able to use that. That would be cool! Hopefully I will be able to find a computer with Skype on it, because I would love to see your lovely faces.

Well darn, I don't think I have much else to report on this week. Hopefully this email reaches you with no problems! That is super annoying that it messed up last time. But just know that I love you a lot and I am so grateful for you all. I hope you have a fantastic week! I love you!

Love,
ALLIE

Hello famille!

Well, it is freezing today and it feels like it could snow, but January is finally over and February brings hope of spriiiiing time and other good things. Don't you worry, spring will come soon in Utah too. By the end of this transfer, it will be the middle of March and it will be sunny and flowery and happy. Speaking of transfers, of course, I will let you know that I am staying in Geneva for another 6 weeks with Sister Cutler, and I am soo happy about it. I absolutely love it here, and I would have been really sad to leave all the people here. The members in both wards are great, my companion in super, we are going to find awesome people to teach, and the other missionaries here are great as well. I just love it. And I am just starting to feel a little comfortable with Spanish, so I am excited to learn more and get even better. So yeah! Geneva it is at least until March. Honestly, I could stay here for 6 more months and be happy. Also, I didn't realize that President Murdock was emailing you about the mission change, but isn't that crazy? It will be the France, Lyon Mission, and I could potentially serve in southern France... beautiful, no? The only two downsides are these: Luxembourg is going to become part of the Paris mission, so I only have until July if I want (get?) to serve there... and I definitely want to serve there! That is only a few transfers away, so I better start petitioning President to send me up there. Also, the mission headquarters will be moved eventually to Lyon, which means that the Chambésy address won't be the mission home anymore! I love that house and wanted to be a mission president's wife there at some point. Darn! But I'm really excited about the change. It will be neat to see where I can go and with whom I can serve. It is kind of sad at the same time, that it won't be the Switzerland, Geneva mission anymore though. But I will forever get to say that I served there!

So Dad, you asked about whether or not I have done the shoulder laugh...good news is that I absolutely have haha. Sister Cutler loves it. We are super sarcastic and weird together, and it is so fun. I am sending you a picture of one of our nightly activities: superman. Actually, we stopped doing it after only a couple of nights because it hurt my stomach haha. But we got lots of ridiculously unflatter pictures from doing that, so I would say it was a success. I sent you the least unflattering.

On Sunday, we got to attend a quadruple baptism... it was awesome. I love love love baptisms and this one was incredbile. Four men (3 from Africa and one from Iran) had made the best decision of their lives and were baptized. Three missionaries baptized three of them, and the fourth was baptized by a man who was baptized only a month or two ago...I love that! The priesthood is an incredible blessing that we have. It was amazing to see the front row of the chapel lined in white. I sent you a picture of them. Not in the chapel of course haha. But it is kind of a lousy picture because their eyes are all animal-in-headlights-like. But a good picture nonetheless. Also, we had a woman that we are teaching come! She has an interesting situation. She has been taught a lot before and had been coming to Church regularly for a long time, and now we are teaching her again, but she is unable to get baptized because she is from Iranian Muslim background. So, for her own safety, she can't get baptized at the moment. But she is full of miracles, this one. She is great. And she was able to talk to the Iranian man that was baptized, so that was cool. Persian is a crazy language, let me tell you what.

In other news for this week: an ugly mean dog bit my left hand clean off! I am just kidding, it was merely a flesh wound, but I really did get bitten by a dog. I am embarassed to tell the story, because it was just a dumb decision on my part, but I will tell you anyways haha. So we were in the local Migros grocery store, just buying some blood oranges (foreshadowing, maybe?), and as we were exiting, we saw this little dog tied up. He was just standing there, looking lonely and sad, so Sister Cutler said "should we try and pet him?" Being the intelligent almost-23-year-old adult that I am, I said "yeah!" and walked towards the dog. He looked at me but didn't do anything. So I stuck my hand out towards him and he sniffed it a bit and looked at me, so I went a little closer to try and pet him. And then he went ballistic. He barked and got my thumb in his mouth all at the same time. If I wasn't so shocked, I probably would have kicked him, so it is probably good that I just pulled my hand away, saw a bit of blood, and ran to the bathroom. It wasn't super deep, but he bruised my thumb and under my nail too. Ugly. I painted my fingernails to cover it up haha. You live and learn, I guess, right? It makes for a good story.

How are you all doing? It sounds like you are hanging in there, even with the cold weather. You are awesome. I am always so excited to hear from you and hear how things are going at home. I am excited to hear if Daniel got into the marching band! I hope everyone is happy and healthy... it sounds like that is the case, and I am really really glad. I love you a LOT and pray for you a LOT too. Have a fantastic week! I LOVE YOU!

Love,
ALLIE

Today I met Robert Langdon...

Hello!

I almost met Robert Langdon today. Sister Cutler and I remembered that we are in Geneva, Switzerland, so we decided to go to CERN. Plus, there is a girl in the English ward here who is a PhD student working/researching at CERN, so she said she would show us around and stuff. I tell you what, I learned a lot of information today that I will definitely not be able to remember in a few hours. It is pretty incredible what they are doing though. The LHC accelerator is a big tube, 27 km long, that runs under Geneva and speeds up particles to smash into each other so they can try and learn about the beginning of the universe. Pretty big stuff. We saw the visitors center and the Atlas control room (Atlas is the one of the detectors of the LHC) but we couldn't actually see the detector because it is underground with tons of restrictions. We would have had to cut someone's eye out for the retinal scan, just like in Angels and Demons. It was pretty interesting though. But anyways, that is why the email is a little later than usual, since we went to CERN first instead of emails first. Oh also, the picture outside of the big globe thing is after I had gone in the accelerator and become a super hero...

Our week this week has been pretty cool. I told you last week that we were having a week of consecration to prepare for some miracles in finding people. Well, it has been pretty incredible what happens when people are faithful and working hard to show that faith. We started the week off with a fast, and then we have been speaking ONLY French all week. That part has been fun but tiring. I am surprising myself, though. French is easier and easier every day. I am excited for this evening, though, when we can speak English again haha. It is just much easier to express yourself and be funny and stuff in your native language, you know? Buuuut this week, we contacted a lot of old amies that we found in the Area Book and some of them were really excited to talk to us and meet with us. We were able to start teaching a couple of them! Also, we hadn't been able to get ahold of Vivian, the woman who we taught in the park a couple weeks ago, but I called her the other day and she answered! For the most part, it was a really encouraging week. We did have a couple of sad things though. Paola found a job (which is a HUGE blessing...she needed one so badly) but it is in the mountains, so she will be out of Geneva for three weeks at a time. She left on Friday, and with transfers being next week, I don't know if I will see her again while I am on my mission. It was really really sad to say goodbye to her. Bah. But maybe I will stay in Geneva, and if not, I will see her after my mission I am sure. But another heartbreaking thing: did I ever tell you about Gwenaelle? She was a woman that we were teaching that was soo spiritual and making so much progress. It was always nice to go read the Book of Mormon with her because she understood things really well. She is leaving for Argentina for a month with her family, so we went to go say bon voyage, and she told us that she doesn't want to see us anymore when she gets back. I tell you what, that was one of the worst feelings. It definitely was not the first time someone has rejected our message and everything, but I think it was the first time that it was someone that I really know and love and was progressing so well. Ugggh it put a little damper on the day. But honestly, the rest of the week was so good. It is hard to do at times, but I try to remember how good the good moments are and not get discouraged by the poopy moments. Anyways, the Lord answers prayers. That much I know. And I am so grateful to hear that y'all have been praying for our zone and our goals as well. The power of prayer and faith and work is pretty amazing.

Sister Metro had an appointment in Geneva yesterday, so she came Sunday to stay at the mission home. She wanted to see me while she was here, so President and Sister Murdock invited Sister Cutler and I to have dinner with them Sunday night....oh myyyy it was a little bit of heaven. We just got to sit back and relax and eat home made food and chat with President Murdock. He and Sister Murdock are so funny. I want you to be able to meet them. When we were driving to the gare to pick up Sister Metro (they took us with them after Church), President Murdock told me that Sister Murdock has told him how much she likes my sense of humor... Huge compliment! I am definitely in with the Murdocks. I just love them.

I have been playing the piano in the primary of the Spanish ward and it is my favorite part of Sundays I think (except when I get to eat at the mission home). They are starting to learn the new Primary song for this year's program. It is so so good! Will, are you learning it? I don't know the words in English, but a rough translation of the last line is 'and if I listen with my heart, the Spirit speaks I know'... I bet the words are much more eloquent than that haha. But Mom, I know what you mean about the Primary pianist being the best calling ever. I love it.

Thank you for your emails. I love being caught up with what's going on at home. Know that you are always in my prayers. Daniel, will you let me know when you find out about marching band? I'm glad that your audition went well. I love you and miss you a lot... Can you believe that it has almost been 6 months? I have just over a year left. Nuts! Have a really great week, ok? I will let you know next week what is happening with transfers. I would really like to stay here... I love love love Geneva and I love the people here and I love Sister Cutler. We will see! Anyways, I LOVE YOU!

Love,
ALLIE

Happy January 18th!

Dearest Family,

Good morning! I hope you are all doing really well this week. That is great that it warmed up a bit! We had some really nice weather here for a couple of weeks but it is starting to get cold again. Bah. That's January for you I guess. But it's ok, January is almost two thirds over.

So I haven't sent home a picture of me and Sister Cutler becaaaauuuse we haven't taken a good one together yet. Buuut I will send you one that we took last night. Maybe you shouldn't publish it on the internet though because we put 5-oclock shadows on our face with newspaper ink and it isn't super flattering. But I will make sure we take a nicer one soon! I also sent a picture of me doing a headstand in our apartment. Just a normal evening in the sister missionaries' apartment... Also, there is a silly little video of how we get from floor to floor while we are porting a building. Basically, we just did silly things this week.

Not true, we worked hard. As I have mentioned before, pretty much all we have been doing is finding this transfer. I don't know what is happening, but we have next to zero progressing amies. We haven't been able to get ahold of Gladys in like 3 weeks, which is super sad to me. And Vivian, the woman with whom we had the awesome rendez-vous in the park, has not been answering her phone either. Baahhhh! It is super hard not to get discouraged, but what can we do, you know? We just have to keep doing what we are supposed to be doing and leave the rest up to the Lord and these people. We had a zone conference yesterday and President and the zone leaders talked about not getting discouraged and being faithful and diligent and patient. It was really good and really motivating. Alsooo, apparently our situation is happening in the whole zone, so we were discussing that and decided to have a week of consecration to prepare for some serious miracles. So we are going to start it tomorrow with a fast and then we are going to do a bunch of things like cut our meal hours to allow more time for finding, plan differently, speak only in French all week long, etc. I am ready for it. We are excited to see things start happening here. At the same time though, it is so important to have the faith that things are going to happen on the Lord's timetable, you know? It will be good though. We have a mission goal of 100 baptisms before Easter, so I think this is a good way to fire ourselves up for that.

Oh also, I had to give a talk at zone conference. And sing in a musical number. It was the Sister Bentley show, apparently haha. But the talk went well. I spoke about humility. It was so good to study that and think about it and recommit myself to practicing it better. Hey question: do yall study Preach My Gospel together? It is such an incredible book, seriously.

Sister Cutler and I took our dinner hour on Sunday to go to the rebroadcast of the CES fireside with Elder Cristofferson. It was soo good! Grace you went to that, right? Such a good topic.

Well, I better get going. We are throughing a surprise birthday party at the mission home today for Sister Dix, Elder Williams, and Betty (the cute little woman that works at the mission home). All the missionaries are going to be there, so it should be fun. We made a ton of these cute little origami flowers out of newspaper to put around the room. It will be spectacular...? Haha throwing parties makes me nervous. I will let you know how it turned out. Man, I am sorry I don't have a ton to report on this week. I love reading all of your emails though! I do have some more letters coming your way, so be ready for those.

Anyways, I love you all a lot a lot a lot! Have a marvelous week, ok? I LOVE YOU!

Love,
ALLIE

Hey Family!

Good Morning!

So I laughed while I was writing the subject of this email because Sister Cutler and I have been singing a lot of things to the tune of that silly song 'Hey Santa.' So say Hey Family with that song in mind and it will make you laugh... maybe?

Anyways, thank you for your emails this week! It was so lovely to hear from everybody! I have a long list of people that I need to write back, and I might have some time today to write letters, so hopefully I will be able to get some out to you today.

You all asked about Sister Cutler and how we are getting along and everything... I absolutely adore her. She is from Provo and has been on her mission for about 14 months. We laugh a lot and have a lot of fun. She is hilarious. She taught me how to crochet (I knew at one point how to, but I had forgotten) and we have been doing a little bit of that. I started to make myself some gloves but I got frustrated and quit so she finished one for me. I decided to start with something a little simpler, like a cover for my Bible. I will let you know how it turns out. Being able to crochet and knit opens up a whole new door of gift ideas... don't be surprised if all I give you forever more is scarves and Bible covers and stuff... haha.

Well we have been working hard this week trying to find people to teach. We have talked to a ton of people, and have been able to teach some of them. Only a very few of them want to meet with us again, but it's ok. We just keep doing what we have to do, you know? Something that I have noticed, though, is that a large number of people that open their doors are not wearing pants. I don't know what it is about Switzerland, but apparently people do not wear pants when they are at home. A lot of times they hide behind the door when they answer it, but it is still super uncomfortable. Weirdies. This crazy pantless lady let us in the other day. She finished the little discussion about who knows what with a little pat on my head and a super uncomfortable hug. And then she gave us some fruit to take home. We left it in her mailbox on the way out.

BUT a week or so ago we found this lady name Vivian and her 5 year old son Ryan. She is from Paraguay (so she can go to the Spanish ward) but speaks really good English. We taught her in the park on Saturday and it was so wonderful. She felt the Spirit, for sure. Her cousin is a member and was married in the temple, but lost her husband a couple years ago. But because of that, Vivian already has a knowledge of eternal families and was so touched by that. She unfortunately didn't come to Church on Sunday, but things are looking really good with her. I am excited to see her progress.

We haven't seen Gladys in a couple of weeks, but hopefully we will be able to see her this week. She still hasn't moved back to Brazil, and I don't know exactly what her plans are. But I would love to still be able to teach her and hopefully help her be baptized this month. Sister Cutler and I made a goal for three baptisms this month. Things are not looking super great for getting three, but we have some potentials. I think what is important is that we work really hard finding and working really closely with the amis that we do have.

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about France last week! Right after I emailed you, we ran to catch our train to Lyon. It was just under a 2 hour train ride through lovely France. Lyon is a HUGE city. I think it is the 2nd largest in France after Paris. But we met the other sisters there because they had some paper that I needed for my legality. We went and got that done pretty quick. I had to have a medical exam and get an x-ray of my lungs, which they gave to me as a souvenir or something, and it is now hanging up on our wall at home, right next to Sister Cutler's haha. But after that we had a couple of hours before our train back, so we went up to Fourvière, which is this huge basilica up on a hill. I attached some unflattering pictures of it (as well as one of me with a donkey we saw). It was huge and really cool, but it doesn't hold a candle (haha candle...Catholic...) to temples. But it was cool to see. I also got to ride on the metro, eat a kebab (sick... I am pretty sure it gave me heartburn), and buy cheaper French groceries. All in all it was a really great little trip.

Despite my kebab eating adventure, Sister Cutler and I are going on a healthy kick. We started running again and I LOVE it. Seriously, I can not tell you how much I missed it. We went for the first time on Saturday and it felt SO DANG GOOD. Plus, the weather has been incredible the last few days. Saturday was like 13°... I don't know how much that is in F, but it felt like 50s. Oh my heavens it was amazing. I didn't even wear a coat! It is a little cold today, but it supposed to be 14° on Friday...yeah! Oh, I would be so pleased if winter is over... hmm. But seriously, the sunshine and the warm weather just makes me feel so happy. I felt a truckload of gratitude and I just felt good. That was the same day that we taught Vivian. We got to teach her outside in a park. Dreamy.

How was the Frigid 5k? I still remember that one last year... that does not seem like very long ago. Weird. But hopefully everything turned out well. And school is going well for everyone? Like I said, I will write more personal letters to you soon, either today or next week.

Hey don't forget that you have someone in Switzerland praying for you. I love you all a lot and I know that Heavenly Father is aware of you. Just keep relying on Him and really sincerely trusting Him, and things will be good, I promise. I can't wait to hear from you again! Have an incredible week! I LOVE YOU!

Love,
ALLIE

P.S. George Bush is going to be in Geneva on February 12. Cool, huh? Maybe I will still be here.
Another P.S. Mom and Dad- I got a dumb migraine the other day... first one in months. But a couple of days before and for a couple of days after, I got weird light-headed rushes.... do you think those are connected? I am not super worried about it, but it was kind of weird. Let me know what you think?

Bonjour from France!

Bonjour famille!

I am just kidding in the subject... I am not in France yet. BUT I will be there in just an hour or so. We get to go to Lyon for some legality stuff. And people say that Lyon is pretty cool, and I get to ride on a train, so it will be a good day, I am sure.

SO things are going GREAT this transfer so far! I absolutely love Sister Cutler, she is a doll. She is from Provo and has been on her mission for about 14 months. She is super nice and hilarious AND she loves the Beatles. We are on our way to a great friendship, she and I. She doesn't speak much Spanish, and neither do I, so we are not going to be able to do much teaching at all in the Spanish ward. But President Murdock wants us to still go to the Spanish ward every other week or so, so there will be a sister missionary presence there or something. And we are both trying to learn more Spanish this transfer so we can maybe still do some good in there. To be honest, I can already notice a difference in my Spanish within the last week. I don't have Sister Metro to rely on anymore, so when members talk to me, or when we happen to contact a Spanish speaker on the street or at their door, it's all me. It is kind of neat to see how much I actually know! Not a ton, but enough to get by. And I will study a lot more. It is going to be good.

We have a lot of time to practice both languages because we have been doing a lot of finding this week. Since we passed all of our Spanish speaking amis (investigators) to the elders and we only have a couple of other amis that speak French (both of whom have been unavailable because of the holidays), we haven't had any set appointments this week. But we have worked hard and I love it. We have been going to new places in and around Geneva and talking to a lot of people. I had set a goal right before Sister Cutler got here to talk to at least 40 people a day. Turns out that is a easy number to reach when you are contacting and porting for 4-6 hours a day. But it is SO good. I love talking to people. Who would have thought, right? We found this great building in this place called Carouge. It had 18 stories and 10 doors on each floor. SO many people! A lot of people said no, but we were able to find a few people that were semi interested or wanted us to come back. And then I talked to this great lady Sofie on the tram last night. She was telling me about where she is religiously and everything. It was super apparent that she is a very spiritual person. I have been recognizing more and more that everybody really does have the light of Christ. Everyone has the capability to recognize truth and good. They might not realize exactly that that is what it is, but they understand that it is something that they want. Does that make sense? It kind of does in my head. But then that is where we come in, as missionaries and all members, who have that truth and light. We are supposed to help them recognize the Spirit and help them be able to communicate with Heavenly Father for themselves. What an incredible gift that is, and everyone has it! I am really excited to (hopefully) continue teaching and working with these people that we were able to teach this week... and continue finding more people who are ready and prepared for this!

So the other day, we were doing some sonnerie porting, which is where we just talk to people via the sonnerie (the intercom thing that buzzes up to their apartment). We were talking to a lot of people on there, and then this guy comes down and talks to us for just a second and then goes into his little storage unit at the bottom of the building. He comes out a few minutes later with two wooden, decrative plates, each depicted with a different little Swiss design. He said 'I'm not really interested in your religion, but here are a couple of souvenirs for you!' Haha they are fantastic. Mine has a Saint Bernard dog on it. We hung them up on our wall, of course. I will have to send you a picture of them sometime.

Also, I wanted to say thank you for your emails this week. They were all really nice. They are always really nice! Reading them is definitely the second best thing to talking to you on the phone. It is so good to be a part of the things going on at home. I am glad you are feeling better, Mom. I can't imagine that it was very fun to be sick. And I hope everyone had a great first day back to school! Listen to this: only about 2 and a half semesters until I am back. That's nothing!

So this email isn't super long because we have to go get on a train soon. But just know that I am doing really well here. I love Geneva even more every day. I love my companion and we are going to do great things this transfer, with the Lord's help of course. It's cold and I hate it, but I am staying warm enough. It just makes me appreciate spring and summer time even more! And I love being a missionary. It is hard and fun and sometimes discouraging and a lot of times rewarding. I hope you all have a lovely week! I will talk to you soon! I LOVE YOU!

Love,
ALLIE

P.S. Picture explanations: A mediocre picture of me with the Jet D'eau. I wish the sky was blue for that, but there's Geneva for you. Also, a picture of my winnings from the Galette des Rois at Soeur Lehmann's house yesterday. Apparently, on the 6th of January they celebrate the king or something. They have these pastries called Galette des Rois, and there is a little King figurine (or in my case, a sheep) hidden somewhere in the pastry. The person that gets the piece with the thing in it wins and gets to wear a sweet crown. Cool! Ok, that is all for now. I love you all!