Maren's Mission to France: Week 16 - Sister Hopkins Transferred

FAMILY!

Well, surprise surprise I'm staying in Tours. But my beloved Soeur Hopkins will be leaving for Evry, and Sr Anderson will be coming down from the North to join me! She's super nice- I met her at the Cook Conference a couple weeks ago because she's Soeur Walton's trainer! So apparently she already knows all about me. I'm super excited to get to learn from her but it's going to be super weird to not be here with Sr Hopkins. But she's acutally going to be with Sr Walker [Maren's MTC companion] so it's sort of like a crazy big extended family over here. Sorry if you didn't follow that but yeah TRANSFERS!

That means that on Wednesday we get to head into Paris again- I am so spoiled. It was a really good week which can pretty much just be summarized into Thursdy.

We were going to have our branch Soirée Noel [Christmas party] on Friday so we went around to our amis (especially the ones that have kind of stalled out and stopped progressing or we had lost contact with) to bring them invites and pray with them and ALL OF THEM WERE HOME WHEN WE PASSED BY it was probably the most productive day of my entire mission. We went to just invite them and let them know we were thinking of them and it was so beautiful to see them light up knowing that they were just loved.

It gets better. That night we planned to pass by Stephanie, who we ran into on the bus last p-day (she's an old ami of Sr Bradley and Hopkins who had a baptismal date a while back) and she told us to come by last Thursday and Saturday and Sunday because she wanted to come to church and get baptized and we were SO excited - but then she wasn't there when we showed up on Thursday and we figured that she'd just changed her mind or something. anyway back to this week- we passed by to drop off an invitation and as we were heading back out of her bâtiment [building], who do we run into but Stephanie. And she was just like "come up come up, you don't have any other rendez-vous right?" and we were like "what is happening I thought you didn't want to see us..." anyway long story short she had been talking to her sister-in-law (who is a member that lives in Metz who was the one that originally got her to take the lessons) that day about some of the tough stuff going on in her life and her sister-in-law (a champion who I will love forever for this) told her to get in contact with us and then we SHOWED UP THAT NIGHT! It was a miracle and we were able to just tell her how much her Heavenly Father loves her and is aware of her.

She has a real desire to change her life and be happier but I know she's got a lot ahead of her so we're praying like crazy for her.

Other than that this week has been a lot of Christmas door-to-door offering to sing Christmas Carols to old people that don't really want to be bothered. It's really fun to get to see so many French people though since we've been going through neighborhoods instead of bâtiments. I've decided they're honestly the most awkward group of people on the face of the earth. In like the most endearing way possible but seriously, they don't have any idea how to handle it when someone knocks on their door (or most of the time rings their doorbell from outside the gate like 15 feet from their door) they either say something like "c'est pourqoui?!" [what's it for?] or "c'est qui?" [who is it?] or just awkwardly laugh and close the door without really responding when we offer to sing/pray with them. At least we don't get yelled at! So yeah the French are the best.

Other highlights from this week- MANGEZ-VOUS! [Dinner appointments] Basically the best thing of my life. They really encourage the members to have us over during Christmas time so I'm probably going to gain like 1000 pounds. Worth it. We had crepes last sunday, fondue with the Djemai's and raclette on Saturday.

The Djemais, from the Tours branch

The Djemai's are amazing and I love them so much. We're going to their house for Christmas and I am SO excited. They gave us Ferrero Rocher [chocolate] and told us we were amazing missionaries and basically just made us feel like the most successful soeurs on the face of the planet.

Keepin' it real here in Tours- let me know if you guys want to hear about anything that I've been leaving out.

Love you so much! Thanks for everything!

Soeur Hansen