Maren's Mission to France: Week 20

Château de Chenonceau

Hey Fam, Happy 2015!

I get to be a missionary for this ENTIRE year!

This week was really great - started off with a trip to Chenonceau, which was absolutely beautiful, so so worth it. We ended up not having as much time as we would have liked, but got to see everything and take lots of pictures, so a good P-day.

Other than that this week we kept busy doing lots and lots and lots of porting and contacting and planning and being missionaries.

"Bûche de Noël with fireworks!"

Wednesday night we celebrated with our Relief Society president. She's absolutely incredible. We had our little meal and a bûche de Noël [Yule log - a traditional French dessert for Christmas] - with a firework candle. Very exciting stuff.

Thursday we got to sleep in again and watched the Emma Smith movie and made crêpes for our own celebration. We spent the evening with the family Kehli. We told them that we watched Frozen for Noël and that Sr Anderson has been teaching me "Let it Go" in French. Their little 7-year-old doesn't like La Reine des Neiges [The French name for the movie - The Snow Queen] so naturally we started singing Let it Go to her. I think she about died laughing. Such a fun night.

We had a super cool miracle yesterday though! For weekly planning we called pretty much everyone in our phone to set up rendez-vous with whomever wanted to see us (actually fairly successful) and one lady said she'd come to church. Sunday rolls around and no one shows up, we were disappointed but not totally surprised. Then halfway through testimony meeting one of the brothers who blessed the sacrament (they stay up at the sacrament table through the whole meeting... not sure why exactly) got up and brought this woman into the chapel - he'd seen her in the lobby through the windows in the doors behind the congregation. Anyway, he directed her to us and we figured she was the amie that was going to come. After sacrament meeting we were talking though and she told us that her sister, who is a member in California, had been telling her to go to church so she looked up the address and the hours and came! She got a little lost and that's why she was late but she told us she had the strongest feelings that she needed to come and that even when she got lost and realized she was late something told her that she needed to stay. Her name is "E". Such a neat lady.

We grabbed a member, a recent convert, and had a little lesson with "E" in the chapel afterwards. The member was such a pro, explaining missionaries and church and the Book of Mormon and generally just being incredible. "E" is absolutely INCREDIBLE and we are so so excited to meet with her again. And it was really just beautiful to see the branch just LOVE her, welcoming her and introducing themselves and offering to give her a ride home and just all kinds of awesome member-missionary stuff.

After that we spent pretty much the rest of the day with the Kehlis, teaching little lessons to two of their family friends. Both Muslim and not super interested, but super super nice and we got to see the miracle of reaching our member present goals which our district/zone/mission has been really focusing on this week.

Really getting excited about this week, we're hopefully going to actually get to teach a lot more and work with some really awesome people- members and amies.

Celebrated my birthday (Wooh!! 20!!) with crêpes. We're going to a castle again today!

Love you guys so so so much you're the best and I am so grateful for you and all your support.

Soeur Hansen

PS: A big old shout out thank you to all the people who sent me christmas cards, I LOVE them!

PPS: We met this man in a park and he asked if we wanted to learn about the history of the park so we were like "okay" and he told us about these trees - sequoias - and that you can punch them and it doesn't hurt. We were super weirded out at this point and a little deprived of oxygen due to his smoking but I was like "there is an old man in france telling me to punch a tree. I'm going to punch this tree." We staged some pictures after. It actually doesn't really hurt, something about the bark but yeah, definitely a memory.