Soeur Sarah Hunt France Paris Mission: The Atlantic Ocean, mechanical elephants and fun people

Well, well, what very fast week we just had. Everything I did this week felt like I did it 3 weeks ago. I guess that's good right? Means we're filling our days ;) Anyways this week was a riot. A week of spontaneous things and adventures.

We had nothing planned on Tuesday so the morning of we decided we would take a 2-hour train ride and desert ourselves to an island. Sadly, the boat trip to the island was not within our budget so we ended up finding along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, a ville called, St. Gilles Croix-de-Vie. We ended up walking for about 3 hours a total of 4 miles, talking to people and admiring the view. We sat down for a breather at one point, so our legs wouldn't turn to dust, and while sitting we tried using our amazing directional skills to figure out where Spain was and then where America would be and figure out how long it would take us to swim back home. It was a great time. The people were so nice even when they rejected us! I blame it on the serenity of the ocean. I thank God for that wonderful opportunity I had to be able to have that experience. It was refreshing.

Wednesday, we had such a miracle! Throwback to me and Sœur Franklin on our very first week together. I remember one of our first finding sessions, we had been walking for a while and stopped lots of people, but no one was receiving us until we stopped the last person before going back home. We stopped this African lady who was a wearing a bright orange boo-boo (traditional African outfit) so we just knew we had to stop her. We did and set a date to meet again. She had told us briefly that she had a family, and that she wants her kids to know who God is because they're coming to the age of asking questions like is God there and who is Jesus Christ. So, we told her that our gospel blesses families and we are here to help people receive their own revelation to their questions. We were so excited to see her again.

Wednesday comes around and we're going to go see her. We get to her place and it's a house FULL of kids! I guess 'family' didn't quite register in my brain when she said it the first time. We were so excited to see them all! She told us that she had made sure everyone was home from school and work to be here to listen to us preach. She said she didn't have enough time to prepare us something to eat so she said next time she would. She was so sweet! As she was gathering all the children together we had a chance to talk to the dad to get to know him and we asked him how many kids he had. He said tiredly, "we have 6 kids. I never thought I'd have this many, but we don't believe in abortions because we're Christian..." we had the opportunity to share the restoration with them and they really liked it. When we talked about the Book of Mormon they said they had one already! She said that she was given one a few months ago from other missionaries like us. It's a sign from God! They're supposed to be meeting with us! Anyways we're going to see them again this coming week and we are excited to see them! What a sweet family.

Another time during one of our finding sessions we decided to be a little more creative and go to a place we've never been to before. While there, we stumbled upon the most random thing I've ever seen on my mission. As we're walking down the street we see a fairly big crowd. They're all just filming and taking pictures of a ginormous elephant machine walking 10 miles an hour. It was a pretty cool invention, it was just so funny. Afterwards I realized that that it was one of the famous sights and things to do here in Nantes called Les Machines de l'île Nantes (Machines on the island of Nantes). They have these GIANT creature machines that people can ride around on. One is a spider, and another is a hummingbird. So that was cool while out finding.

This week we've been focusing on making calls of all the people in our area book (our database of a sort) making it all organized and cleaned out. We were seeing if people were still interested and what not. Many interesting conversations came from it which some ended in people wanting to marry us or confessing their love. What a riot! They don't even know us!! One person we ended up talking to about the difference in our church and the catholic church and we were trying to explain it, but he just kept interrupting us saying he didn't understand and started speaking English thinking that the conversation would go better if he did. But he ended up going off on a tangent which made no sense, but we let it go and told him he's free to come to church whenever he wanted. He ended up coming to church pretty drunk the next day saying the American sisters invited him. Riiiight, but you know what, glad he came haha.

I gave another talk in sacrament that all the other missionaries volunteered me to give...True friends 😉. Anyways it was a pleasure and I really enjoyed speaking. It was a calm Sunday. We didn't end up translating because none of our Nigerian friends came, but we are totally counting on them coming next week!

I really love being a missionary because I get so many opportunities to learn so many things, meet some cool/nice/weird people, broaden my perspective of God's plan and find true happiness by serving others. So sad that soon this will be coming to end, but I tell myself I'm going to go strong until the end.

I love you all and I invite you all to either call someone or write someone a card who needs it in their life right now. You never know who will need to hear from you in this moment.

Avec Amour, (with love)
Sœur Sarah Hunt