Week 50 - Loving Belgium and the Belgians

FAM!

Hey everybody that I love because you are awesome humans! I hope you've all had a really great week!!

We had a really great week this week- not sure exactly how to summarize it into something interesting for you all who are not missionaries but for those RMs out there- we did pass-bys and EVERYONE was home! so yeah. It was sweet. Felt so efficace. 

There were lots of really frustrating things that happened this week- RDVs falling through when we had members set up to come and amis not showing up to church, the norm persecution and such but it was really cool to see how much I have changed through the last couple months, because a lot of those things would have really just wrecked me, but now I feel like I'm actually able to handle it with a lot less rage crying haha, woot personal growth! But really, I think God periodically tests us to see if we will use what we've learned from previous trials and choose to react in a better way, the way we learned is better from going through that same situation before. (I don't know if that sentence made any sense but I don't know how else to explain it... sorry it's really hot here) 

Anyway, just something I was thinking about a little. 

Fam, I'm sorry I don't have more to report. Or even that many pictures this week- Liège isn't exactly the most beautiful place I've ever been haha. But it's lots of fun. 

It's really interesting to see the differences between the French and the Belgians, I'm not sure I've found all the little quirky differences yet but I've definitely noticed that the Belgians are much warmer- the French can be warm and open but it's more rare and it usually takes more time for them to open up to you. The Belgians also are much more likely to be overweight haha like I think I saw maybe like 10 obese people in France, they're ALL over in Liege. They just really like frites and gauffres. But over all I really am loving Belgium and the Belgians. It's lots of fun.

I think that's about all I've got for ya! 

You rule!!

Soeur Hansen

-- getting my ipad at zone conf in a couple weeks! stoked! everybody pray that they don't get stolen or broken or recalled or something! 

Week 49 - First Week in Liège

With Soeur Archbold at Château Vêves

FAMILY

Hey team! I made it to Belgium! It’s a crazy place! and Liege! I don’t really know how to describe it. It feels very different than France but I’m not sure exactly why or in what ways. So yeah this is a super interesting and helpful email so far. 

But I love Liège, the branch here is super cute and we have PEWS in the chapel!! In the other two villes I’ve been in there have just been chairs because the chapel is also the cultural hall so yeah! PEWS!!! So stoked! 

Liège chapel

I’m back living in a four-person apartment which is really fun and I’m living with Soeur Sabando who replaced me in Tours and was trained by Soeur Anderson! So it’s been really fun to hear a little about my beloved bleuville. 

"The view from our apartment"

But anyway, this week! 

Monday we went on a tour of Rennes with our awesome DMP, Frère Moal. I think I told you guys a little about it. So fun. I love those elders and Rennes so it was fun to just be all together with everybody before transfers! We had a really great couple of transfers together. 

Tuesday we got a bunch of passes from one of the equipes of elders that closed. (we have no missionaries in this mission any more!!) 

Wednesday was transfers which basically meant 12 hours of traveling. Two and a half hour train to Paris. We had to leave early because we needed to get Sr Walton to the training meeting so we got to Paris around 9 and my train to Bruxelles wasn’t until 2:30! So basically I just hung out in Chatelet (it’s our meeting place for transfers, it’s a metro station) and saw everyone I know in the mission which was really really fun. Then we got up to Brussels, and had to take another hour long train to get to Liège! 

So far since then we’ve been keeping busy running around, I’ve met a couple of our amis but I’ve still got a long way to go. They’re pretty cool! 

"super Liègeois apartment complex where a bunch of people we teach live..."

Today we were out with the Redds- the senior couple in Liège. They took us to a castle called Vêves, out south of Namur (they can take us out of our sector on pdays). It’s a really cool little medieval castle, super fun. Not really anything like my Loire Chateaux but it was still really cool- and it was somewhere the Redds hadn’t been so that was fun. After we went through Namur to get some lunch- really cute city. Lots of brick. Thats kind of Belgium’s thing I think, brick. and in Liege it’s dirty brick haha. 

Anyway, pretty good week, got some frites, got a gauffre so I’m pretty happy! 

Love you guys! 

soeur hansen

"Last photo from Rennes - this is the Portes Mordelaises, one of the original gates into the city- when you enter you had to promise to uphold and defend and protect it or something, pretty cool"

Week 48 - Transferred to Belgium!

Finishing up six months in Rennes

Hey guys this is going to be really really quick I'm so sorry! 

I'M GOING TO BELGIUM!! We got the repertoire [mission directory] on Saturday! Going to Liège! And Sr Walton is TRAINING! So freaking excited for her and for this new change! 

Uhh so many miracles this week- got some referrals which never happens so that was super cool! Just a really good well rounded week to end off this transfer. But I don't have my planner so I can't remember any of it! 

But I'll try. Here we go! 

We just worked really hard! 

Wednesday the zone lords set the goal for each of us to give out two Books of Mormon during the day so we tried to be all inspired during our contacting block and we gave one away! Last minute of our contacting time! To an older lady that I didn't want to contact but did any way! Miracles! 

Then Saturday we were finally able to meet with this referral from some members- she came to an activity a couple weeks ago and wants to learn about croyance [belief]. She's been studying the Bible and then plans to read the Book of Mormon and Koran and such. She's an atheist but interested. It was really really cool. She's about 16 and really good friends with a member family so we taught her there (such an amazing experience, like seriously I've been waiting for this my whole mission) it was a little all over the place with everybody teaching but we were able to really dive into her questions. She came to church with them the next day too! Soeur Rainer (whose house we were at) told us that she just absolutely LOVED doing that, she's a returned missionary and a great teacher, and she just told us how much she loved teaching again and how her kids got into it and how they were able to help this girl who is just searching. SO COOL. So fun.

Love you guys so so so much! Here I go à Liège!! 

Have a great great week! 

sr hansen!

"She's wearing Nikes!"

The sisters... and the sisters

Week 47 - Girls Camp and Tour de France

Family!!

I have so many things to communicate to you that it is hard to do in an email once a week but here we go anyway! 

Breaking it down by days- gotta stay organized. 

Monday. P day. Normal. Took a nap for like two hours which was heavenly. We'd planned to do some other stuff in ville but that did not happen. That night we had a rdv with "C" and "I". They're so fun. You never quite know what's going to happen, you have to just be ready to respond to anything and sometimes have really thick skin. But that little Chadian firecracker who contacted me on the metro 4 months ago has a pretty big place in my heart. As we were getting up to leave she and "I" start singing this totally African (but in French) hymn and sort of dance us out of the apartment. I would pay a million dollars for a film of that moment. 

Tuesday. I don't really remember but we did some contacting and walked around a lot. Got a referral from the elders. Woot. 

Wednesday. SUCH a good day. We went to Camp Jeunes Filles!! [Girls' Camp] So funny story for the start of this story- we'd been told we were going to to "camp" which in French sounds like "cahn" with a really nice French nasal ending, so we've been thinking this whole time that we were going to Caen, the city for the camp haha so we end up in this little town called Pouance or something and we're like "this is no where NEAR Caen!" duh. Soeurs. So yeah. French is definetly still not my first language. 

But Camp Jeunes Filles. SO fun. Such an amazing day. They asked us, the Angers soeurs and the Nantes soeurs to come up and do some classes, because the youth theme is "oh ye that embark in the service of God...." So Tuesday night the girls received their mission calls and then Wednesday was the MTC. 

When we first got there though, they wanted us to introduce ourselves and talk about why we were on missions, and focus on chapter one of PMG. So we did that, but the Nantes soeurs weren't there yet so we were sort of just filling time so we answered some questions and then sang the mission song and did notre object if [PMG - my purpose as a missionary], and then sang the mission song again haha. 

Then we did our little classes- ours was on effective studies and they wanted us to focus on how to study and apply the sciptures, and specifically the Book of Mormon. And then in the afternoon, the equipes [teams] (they were in trios because there were a lot of non members (10 of the 42 girls weren't members!!)) came and taught us in little spots around the campground and the lake it was next to. 

SO cute. So many just good little moments with those girls. 

And THEN President and Soeur Babin showed up. They were doing a fireside that night for the girls- we had permission to stay, even though it was late (Pres: "well, the president de mission isn't too far so...") but we had to leave with the leader that brought us to camp. But not before we took a selfie with him and sr babs! I love them so much. 

Such a spiritually enriching day. Seriously, Sr Walton and I were talking about it, just it was so fun to get to talk about our missions and how much they mean to us and remember how amazing this whole experience is. And five hours of language study was pretty good too. 

Thursday/Friday. Not nearly as interesting as Wednesday.

Saturday. TOUR DE FRANCE. We had a rdv in town so we thought we could go to it and then also be in centreville for when the Tour passed but when we got in there was NO way we could get to our amis house so we changed the time and then decided to take our lunch hour to wait for the Tour de France and then go off and our other stuff that day. And we ended up talking to this Irish couple for like an hour and a half. It was so so cool. They were very similar to French people (kind of believing but kind of not, lots of really interesting questions about us/belief in general) very tricky questions sometimes - very much a "not be confounded before men" moment which was cool. And it was just really nice to be able to talk and teach and testify in English! Usually its really hard but it was really cool. 

And then the tour passed! Bucket list! 

Sunday. Did some porting, met a peachy old man named Michael. 

And yeah. That was my week. So so so much information dumped on you- please enjoy the pictures. 

love you guys!

sr hansen  

Week 46 - Zone Conference and Peach Cobbler

With Sr Hopkins

 Hellloo

No climbing tree stories this week, sorry to report but we did do lots of other good stuff!

LIKE- zone conference, so fun to see everybody, Mama Hopkins [her trainer] is in my zone now! She's so old haha. We got to practice teach her and she was (in true mama hops fashion) almost in tears about how much my French has improved. So cute.

 

And we got our iPad! (singular) haha we got a call on Monday night from the STLs that the iPads got stolen from the mission office on Sunday night. Kind of a bummer, we've been waiting FOREVER for these dang things but it's just kind of gotten to the point that it's a joke. I feel really bad for President and Soeur Babin, they just looked so tired and stressed at zone conference. I know it's just been so frustrating for them to keep telling us that we're getting them (we had a mission conference about it!) and then to just not have it happen for so long. They redistributed so every equipe has at least one iPad, it's registered to the person who's been in the ville less time so it's technically Sr Walton's, they've started the ordering process again but last time it took like 4 months so I'm not holding my breath haha. 

But anyway, the rest of the week we've been busy downloading mormon messages and liahonas whenever we're at the church. 

Other than that we had a pretty good week, still hurting for some new people to teach but it's been good to get out and do some finding! 

"C" and her brother "I" are awesome, they're both reading and so engaged in our lessons. It's so fun to teach them, it gets pretty intense sometimes but they're just great. It's still cracking us up that we have a guy ami. It just doesn't happen in this mission haha. 

I'm trying to think of some miracles or some funny stories for you guys!

Fourth of July! We proudly wore our red white and blue! Ended up spending most of the day at a relief society activity learning about finding balance in our lives (missionary lives are crazy out of balance haha) and then teaching clarisse and isadore! We made BBQ chicken and baked potatoes for dinner and had peach cobbler! Well it was really like peach crumble/crisp because cobbler is really complicated. But it was so good! We were blasting motab "God Bless America" all day and breaking out into the star spangled banner randomly. It was so fun. 

I love you guys! don't have too many pictures for you this week but i'll get them sent along! You're great and thanks for all the love and support! 

maren

Week 45 - Climbing Trees

Helllooo family!

So. yeah. this week. it was good. and it's starting to get hot so that's fun! and also makes me lament air conditioning (especially in buses) France. its not that hard. 

But anyway! 

Tuesday we had our exchanges and it was really great- did a nice three hour block of contacting which I hadn't done in a LONG time so it was nice to know that I still have that in me! We talked to some really cool people, so it was a good night! 

other than that we just kind of ran around Rennes having a blast being missionaries. 

In honor of Erik's tree climbing story I guess I need to partage one of my own haha made me laugh when I read his. 

SO picture this.

Saturday night. We had frudge city that day (our three rendez vous fell through- which ended up happening to every equipe in Rennes actually, we were 0/9 on Saturday) so we were walking up to a pass-by doing some contacting and I was all bugged because it seems like whenever I pick where we go contacting there are NO people. So we ended up in this park, which I wanted to go into, and it was naturally, DESERTED. So we sit on this bench for a second because it was hot and we'd been walking for like an hour and I notice this beautiful tree with low hanging branches. 

So I climb it. 

With Sr Walton's encouragement. "you need to climb this tree to get out your frustrations at this day" 

It was a good decision.

I've developed this new need to run around on rocks and climb trees. (very safely, of course) We're calling it my midlife mission crisis. I'm also blaming it on the fact that I'm going stir crazy in this ville. Don't worry. I was only like 5 feet off the ground. [looks like more than five feet to me]

Anyway. lesson learned this week- sometimes you just need to do something a little different to keep yourself from going insane. 

love you all so so much! you're the best. 

soeur hansen

"Jacques Cartier Metro steps"

"Look Kip"

Soeur Walton and Pablo Casals

Week 44 - Come what may and love it

"Ten months"

Family!!!!!

Hello everybody!

Not sure exactly what to write you guys this week, to be honest it was one of those weeks where it felt super long but at the same time it's kind of hard to see what you were actually able to accomplish, kind of a frustrating feeling. 

Mostly, it's just because we weren't able to see any of our amis this week, everything got cancelled or changed or bumped at the last minute and it was just a little bit hard. One of our transfer goals is to just love whatever comes our way, laugh, keep an eternal perspective and all that other good Elder Wirthlin talk stuff. But sometimes it's really tough. So we had the chance to learn and grow and make this week a better one. 

Anyway, last Monday we had our super zen chill peace day at St Malo- so we're going back today! We're both at the point in our missions (and I'm at the point with Rennes) where it's really nice to get out of town and go do something different for a day! And the beach is a great option for us!

Tuesday we had district meeting, comme d'habs [as usual], and did some work. 

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday we did work and planning.

Saturday! We had a rdv with our amie, "C", but we had to confirm it so we called and a man answered and we were like ... okay whatever, she's African. And he said he'd tell her we called when she got back. So we were like "yeah. okay, sure you will." BUT then like an hour later we got a call from her!! She calls me "Ansen" and it's really funny. Like it doesn't matter who calls it's always "Ansen." In kind of a grunt.  So we head over there and her brother is there, and he's super interested, we walked in and he was READING THE BOOK OF MORMON. Joined us for our lesson which was about enduring to the end (thank you 2 Nephi 31:20) and we really were pushing her to come to church which she hasn't done yet. So like in the middle of the lesson he's like "so what's your church like, how does it work on Sundays?" AHH so we commited both of them to come and THEY CAME!!!!!!!!!

It was such a miracle. So grateful that they came, it's super hard to get people to church here for some reason so we're saying gratitude prayers for days. 

You guys are great love you lots. Look for the Lord's hand.

Soeur Hansen

Photos from St. Malo