FAMMMMM!
Quote for the week:
"Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.'...Hope sweetens the memory of experiences well loved. It tempers our troubles to our growth and our strength. It befriends us in dark hours, excites us in bright ones. It lends promise to the future and purpose to the past. It turns discouragement to determination." Samuel Smiles (yes, that's really his name)
It's been a crazy last couple of days, but lots of miracles.
Had a great afternoon last P-day, went to the church and listened to some of the talks from the Sunday Afternoon session that we hadn't had the chance to watch and did some crafty stuff. I'm turning into a dorky sister missionary. I have a little scrapbook - Zapbook, excuse me - something Sr Bradley did that she passed on to Sr Hopkins and I've started doing. It's just basically a little book of blank pages that you can just fill with stuff, I got some pictures printed off, and I've been saving train tickets, candy/cheese wrappers, tickets from tourist things, brochures from cathedrals just little stuff that's fun. I'm really excited to see it all come together :)
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| Sports Night FHE at the Church |
Wednesday we had some empty time so we went and explored our area a bunch, just basically rode the bus to the end of the line to check out places on the map that neither of us had been to. Good day, lots of things to go back to when we have time again. That night we had a lesson with Antonia and we had a member with us which was really nice. We also learned that her stage name is Zirka, which means star in Ukrainian. She's so great.
Thursday we did planning and went to a bat. (bâtiment aka going porting aka door to door) there was this super creepy German man who answered his door with shorts so short we thought he wasn't wearing any at all, and we're pretty sure he wears dentures but had taken them out because he had no teeth and we could not understand ANYTHING he said. Hahaha being a missionary is great.
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| Finding Day with the whole zone |
Friday we had our FINDING DAY! The whole zone came to Tours to just do contacting all day- until 3:30 so that they could all make it back in time for golden hours in their own villes. We did two exchanges, one before lunch and one after. Before lunch I was with another bleu, she's in her second transfer and I forced myself to take charge because this is MY ville and I actually did some contacting and talked to people. No one was really interested which made it a LOT easier because I didn't have to try and hold a conversation but I did it! Success.
After lunch I was with a native French speaker and also probably the most amazing person I've ever met. Her name is Soeur Tehoni (I think, it's something like that) she's from Tahiti and she joined the church about four years ago. She went to the temple dedication with her friend and immediately knew that the temple was holy so she gave her information to the temple workers and said "I want to be a member of your church" but NO missionaries found her for FOUR years. and then they didn't invite her to be baptized, a member did, even though she was reading Preach my Gospel on her own as well as studying everything else. She got cut off from her family for a while, although that's better now, and she said that she'd still call them every holiday, every birthday even though they would hang up on her or tell her to stop calling. She's INCREDIBLE, and she made me feel special because she wants so so bad to have a member family. It made me realize how incredibly blessed I am to have all of you.
Saturday we had a miracle! A RDV fell through because our ami had forgotten/overslept so we were going to come back later and we just were going to walk back to the bus and go have lunch but it was a little early so we went the other direction and then turned around to go back (let's pretend that made sense) so we ended up on the other side of the street and Sr Hopkins contacted this girl who had headphones in so I was like "no way are we going to get to talk to this girl" but she totally took them out and started listening to us and SPOKE ENGLISH. She's from Tours but she lived in India for 6 months and loves English so she just learned it. But yeah she was super cool and open with us and said that she's honestly feeling a little bit lost right now and we were able to teach her about how much her Heavenly Father loves her and is aware of her and doesn't want her to feel that way. Probably the best thing though was that we were talking about how much hope and joy there is and light there is in the world and she was just like "yeah, you don't even have to say anything I can just see it in your eyes", and she was just like, "I want that." It was AMAZING. I mean because I've grown up hearing stories like that and hearing that there's something that people see, but I'd never had the experience first hand of knowing that someone else could actually see that in us. It was a beautiful beautiful experience. She lives in Rennes so we got her number and passed her to the Soeurs there, we told them to take good care of her.
As you can imagine we were FLOATING for the rest of the day. Which ended up being a really really long day. But that's okay, we broke out the hot chocolate. Actually it's chocolate milk mix but we were out of milk so we heated up water and put in hot chocolate mix. If you put enough mix in you can trick yourself into thinking it's good haha.
Sunday was great, love love Sundays. Antonia was sick though and couldn't come :( Took some time to get a hold of all the contacts we got from the finding day. Super excited about this coming week. We need to go to Paris on Wednesday to do some paperwork, and we're going to be there all day!!
I want to start another thing: Music of the Week!
- Down to the River (as I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good ol' way..)
- Amazing Grace
- Savior, Redeemer of my Soul (we only have it off of 17 Miracles though)
- Come thou Fount (as many versions as possible)
Favorite things:
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| Soeur Hopkins making flour cakes |
- old men in berets. completely without irony. not hipster. just wearing a beret.
- African peanut butter. it's awesome. different but good.
- flour cakes. haha new experience, we were OUT of food. I mean not completely, we had like some spaghetti noodles and this super old can of beans but we were OUT so Sr Hopkins made flour cakes- flour and water and you fry it in a pan and dip them in basalmic vinegar with salt. Remarkably filling. Felt like a pioneer.
Also -- mom don't read this part -- we bought a box of Nougat Pillows and a box of Choco Pillows on Monday and they were both gone by Friday. SOOO good.
Love you guys so so so much thank you for all your amazing support/emails/letters/love!
Soeur Hansen
PS - Soeur Hopkins just sent me this story - you should add it to the blog:
This week I admit to feeding Soeur Hansen flour cakes. Yes, I am the best trainer in the world, right? It's what the pilgrims did! We have been laughing off and embracing some of the experiences that have just been occuring time and time again. This week, we had a member come with us to teach at an ami's house. This ami is very artistic and has portraits hanging all over her house-- even of her 'au naturel.' She was so excited to show the member all around her house and I was somewhat hesitant of walking into that room. But as soon as I walked in, our ami smiled at Soeur Hansen and I because in place of the portrait she normally had hanging up was a lovely painting of a desert camel.
Miracles happen.
PPS - We saw a hedgehog this week!
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