Soeur Sarah Hunt France Paris Mission: A walk in wonderland...

This week was full of adventures! I loved every second of it!

First, we had Zone Conference on Tuesday. It was so fun to see some new faces in the zone. I was able to see Sœur Bell again which was great! We were able to catch up on stories about Nancy and boy we had some good laughs from the memories we made. It was a great conference and I learned a lot and was spiritually edified as usual.

On Wednesday we were able to do some finding. We found this young girl who is most likely still in high school. She was polite and listened to us. Her name is Florine and when we stopped her she had her ear phones in and she seemed pretty sad. There wasn't a whole lot of people around, so I knew we just needed to stop her. I ended up asking her what things made her happy in life and she said nothing, nothing makes her happy. I testified of the happiness this gospel, our message, brings to our lives and how we wanted to help her find happiness in life. We exchanged numbers and she seemed like she was interested in listening to us again. I wish I could have helped her more on our first contact. We texted her Saturday evening because we concluded that young people like texting rather than calling for the most part. It worked, she texted us back! It was a cute little conversation and I guess she just needed someone to listen to her because she wanted advice on how to forget someone.... she had a boyfriend, ok it's complicated, she said it wasn't a relationship like that... ha-ha well we gave her some advice to get herself distracted in something she likes doing or *talking under our breath* prayer... *cough* *cough* Anyways it was fun, she’s cute and were excited to talk to her more about the plan of salvation this week!

Alright here comes the real adventure, hold on tight folks.

We had the opportunity to go to Paris for OFII, Soeur Skouson’s legal papers. Our train to go down was at 8h15. The night before we slept so very sound and nothing was going to wake us up, you know... I guess that's why I had 50 prompting to check the time on my tablet. I think the spirit was trying to tell me something... but I shrugged it off, all you want to do is sleep you know and my alarm has never had problems. The only other problem I had once with my alarm was when I was in Nancy with Soeur Giles and we woke up at 7h30 because apparently my alarm was on mute... why is that even an option LOL. Anyways my body just kept telling me it was time to wake up, so I finally decided to check the clock and it was 7h20 and we had to leave for our train at 8h00. My tablet was all the way powered off because it died the night before and I forgot to turn it back on and Soeur Skouson forgot to set her alarm too... yeah, we need 2 alarms... Anyways we jumped up really quick and we were out the door in seconds ha-ha

We reached the gare 10 minutes early and when we printed out our tickets the mission office in Paris who gets us our tickets got them for a different gare.... not the one we needed. So, we were going to miss our train because you need a 20-minute bus ride to get out to Calais Frétun. Anyways we called the office telling them and we made our way out to the right gare. We exchanged our tickets and waited for 2 hours in Calais Frétun doing some studies. About 20 minutes before our train got into the station we remembered that we needed to eat lunch before the appointment because we wouldn't be able to eat before the meeting, so we ran to grab sandwiches in the little cafe in the gare. The sweet young lady working there was making them fresh and so very slowly. It was excruciating to watch the time tick closer to our train’s departure and she's still making our sandwiches. We got them and ran to our train just in time. I would've been so angry and sad if we had missed the second train. We were already going to be late for her OFII appointment because our train options were 1hr. early or 1hr. late. So were not too late for the moment just 1hr. Instead of meeting at the church building. They gave us directions on how to go straight to OFII. There were no struggles on getting there, in fact I think I'm starting to get the hang of navigating Paris. It's literally a maze down there in the metros.

We met up with the Soeurs from Toul after OFII which ended really fast, faster than usual. Our trains going back to Calais were not until Friday afternoon at 12h52 because all the train Thursday night were full because everyone is trying to go back home before the grèves (strike) the following day. So, we had from 15h Thursday until Friday afternoon in Paris!!! We did some street contacting in between some really beautiful sight seeing. We saw Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower!!! We met some cool people from New York and Oregon and French people ha-ha. It's hard to find people who are not tourists in Paris. Paris is so beautiful. I've been waiting for so long to finally see all these amazing sights! I wanted to see more, but I just kept telling myself I'll either serve here or I'm coming back! Paris is a lot like New York City except classier. Super fun!

We ended up spending the night in the STLs apartment. We watched a 30-minute film the church just produced called Days of Harmony and one other A Day for the Eternities about the perspective of Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer in the process of translating the Book of Mormon. It was a fun time. We ate popcorn and a baguette, what more can you ask for!?

The next morning, we did all our studies before we left the apartment and went to get some Asian Food Yummy (that was the name of the restaurant) before we caught our train. Our train only went until Hazebrouck and then we would take a bus the rest of the way to Calais. But because of the good old grèves (strike) our bus was canceled, and we had to wait in Hazebrouck for 3 hours. So, we ended up watching more mini films and did some studies. We explored the place a bit and shared the gospel with some goats.

On Sunday we visited Serge again. And again, he's the highlight of my Sunday. He's so cute so kind and his testimony is very strong. He's in such pain but he still ends up finding ways to serve. I thought to myself that I'd want to do that too when I’m old but then I thought of myself in his position and I think that I'd probably not be as good as he because I wouldn't have the motivation for helping other when I can't even help myself. Soeur Skouson and I were talking about this and we concluded that you can tell a lot about a person's character when they do something even when they're struggling or lacking something themselves. I hope to be able to obtain his ability of service and love for others just like him.

Anyways hope you have a great week and I love you all lots!

Soeur Hunt