Ups and downs

This week was a roller coaster ride.  We had some great days, some dreary days and we had some miracle filled days!!

We've been focusing on unifying the ward members lately so we've spent more time visiting and getting to know them. They really are awesome people and I really admire their strength and faith because it's not easy in a place that isn’t exactly pro religion. There is a lot of influences in their lives that make it hard for them to stay strong, but I guess that’s why we need to build our foundation on Christ so we won't fall ;) Anthoo, they're great! 

Recently, the past couple of weeks, we've been also focusing on doing more finding because our amis have not been answering our calls. So we haven't had a whole ton of success lately, but I believe it's coming soon! We went porting (door knocking) one day for a couple of hours and we had absolutely no success. People either took one glance at us and shut the door, or said they were not at all interested and SLAMMED the door. At least there were people who'd let us talk for at least 10 seconds ;) We got pretty discouraged after a while. We had the hope that if we went until the very last door on the street they'd be interested just how it's normally said, but still they weren't interested. So what we did to cheer ourselves up, we played in the leaves. That always makes me feel better :) 

BUT we did get a text from one of our amis that we had not yet met with. We met her the one day it was crazy hot and we were about to head back when I decided to talk to just one more person. That day we had yet again no success and the last person I talked to turned out to be awesome! She was the one from China who was actually really interested in meeting with us! She has been super busy lately so we haven't been able to meet, but she texted us saying she was still good to meet Saturday and that she was happy to have us over at her house! So we went and we brought a member with us. It turned out  to be a great discussion! She loved it all. She is very smart and made all the connections. We had to start out small and very simple because she had a background history with Buddhism so she doesn't know a whole lot. We gave her a Book if Mormon in Chinese and she was very happy! She's so humble and open to learning that it made it a great experience! 

We left and realized we forgot to invite her to church and to Kylian Giraud’s baptism! So we sent a quick text inviting her and she said that she would come to the baptism and bring her friend! It turns out that she and her friend loved it a lot. They said it felt very homie and very welcoming. They said the members felt like one big family WHICH has been our goal in this ward!! We've been trying very hard to help the atmosphere improve and it has. Our amis have been noticing too! It's working slowly but surely! Thanks for your prayers :)

Speaking of the baptism, it was super great. It all started way back with the wonderful Sœur Giles and Sœur Morrison who decided one day to stop by a less active family who lived very, very far away. They decided to take the time to travel to visit them. Long story short, the family (the Girauds) didn't know there were sister missionaries here. They were very touched to know that someone was thinking of them. The miracle was that Kylian, their oldest son, who is 8 years old had told his parents that he wanted to be baptized! So they invited us to come back and teach him so he could prepare to be baptized. His parents are now working hard to come back in full church attendance. Then we were blessed to see him baptized Sunday afternoon! The spirit was so strong, many people cried including a non member family the Giraud family had invited. The spirit really touched them and they all enjoyed being at our church for the first time! During the program us and the Elders were asked to sing (I told you I don't know why people think I can sing...) and so we prepared the primary song called Baptism. We started singing and since the family was sitting at the very front row I happened to look down at them, which was a bad idea, because I started crying and I couldn't sing. The spirit was so strong. I absolutely LOVED seeing their family so happy and together on Kylian's special day. 

Well, not much else happened, so I'll leave you with this and I hope you have a GREAT spooky Halloween for me! I'll do my best! ;)

I love you all very much, God loves us very much and really does care about how we feel. I can say that this week God showed me that there is still hope even when it doesn't seem to be any left. We just need to do our best to keep the hope and work hard knowing that God knows our efforts and loves us unconditionally. Find the good in things and God will turn your days into sunny miracle filled days :)

Love, 

Sœur Hunt

Kylian's baptism

Playing in the leaves

Tiny park bench.  Just her size!

The closest to Halloween they'll get in France

Wonderful people!

This week was busy! We met a lot of cool people! To start we had district meeting and then as a group with the ZLs and STLs we went and did the Book of Mormon challenge! It was fun!

Afterwards we started our exchanges here in Nantes with the Rennes Sœurs.  I had the wonderful opportunity to be with Sœur Crosby. She's a fire ball! We had a blast together. We had great conversations, exchanged many ideas and prepared ourselves to work even harder with the work! It was great to learn from her.  She's pretty darn awesome!

God knows that I've been practicing a little bit of Spanish lately (not really) so he's put some really cool Spanish people in our path! We met a student from Peru whose name is Juan Pablo (hehe) He's such a tender man. It was an amazing meet. He had a cute accent trying to speak French.  He is here in France to study the language with his cousin. We’re excited to meet with him again! We introduced ourselves in Spanish and it was quite funny. There was another time (last week) I stopped a lady who spoke Spanish.   I started to introduce us in Spanish and well, it didn't matter, lol😂, she saw Jesus Christ on the tag and said, “NO.” Ha-ha! You know what, I tried!

Lately with our ami, Happiness, she's fallen off the face of the earth. We thought her phone was weird or something, so we decided to stop by her place before we dropped her for a bit. It's a good thing we did because she was there and happy to see us! Her phone was broken was all! We talked and shared another message and chose a date for her baptism in December! It was awesome!

Another time we were finding, and I stopped a guy who really did not want to talk to me at the moment. Boy I was not expecting it ha-ha, but this is what went down:

Moi: bonjour monseiur ! Excusez-nous, on est les....         (me: Hello sir, excuse me, we are miss…)

Lui: est-ce que je vous ai interpellé ?                                 (him: Did I ask you to talk to me!?)

Moi: ....                                                                                (me: …)

Lui: laissez-moi tranquilles. *walks away*                          (him: Leave me alone!)

Ouch. My feelings were a little bruised but, THATS OK!

Afterwards we met this guy who was super sweet!  He was walking his 9-month-old baby girl.  He was actually from Vannes which is a little further north but still in our zone. He was open to learning more and figure some things out! He told us he has seen Elders in his area a while ago and was looking forward to talking to us again!

We saw the Giraud family again!! They're getting everything ready for their son’s baptism Sunday! We're excited for that!

We met with this guy, Hervé, who actually stopped us on a tram a little while back while we were meeting.  It was like he was preaching to us... which is what he does for a living. He goes proselyting all day, talking to people for 15 minutes about Jesus Christ. So, it went nowhere, and we were only with him for 20 minutes, but it felt like we were with him for an hour... while we were with him some other random people were listening in and trying to add in their perspective about Mohammad and the Koran. So yes, it wasn’t very efficient ha-ha. No one wanted the Book of Mormon and he just wanted to talk so we cut it short and left!

We had a wonderful night with a less active and his girlfriend (who wanted to know about what we believe) with 2 members! We had Raclette and we shared a little message about the Book of Mormon and the members bore their testimonies. It was awesome and fun, and we hope to see them again soon!

We also met with a man who moved here from the Congo 3 years. Soeur Crosby and I met him on the bus and yesterday we taught him! He's such a sweet man! It was awesome! We were able to have a member teach with us and we got the chance to invite him to baptism which he gladly accepted!

2 things I learned this week were 1st: members make a huge difference in a rendezvous (appointment) they can be very powerful! 2nd: when you find/contact constantly you open so many more doors to meeting so many more cool people, making your life so much more enjoyable AND helping so many more people learn more about our Father in Heaven.  It's a pretty lively work which is just so weirdly fun to do 😉

Love you all and please try to share your testimony with someone. Let's not be egotistical and keep the good news to ourselves 😉 if it's hard for you, the thing I recently learned is once you KNOW that the church is true, you won't be afraid to share its message. You won't be afraid to tell people that we are THE church of Jesus Christ. You will not be afraid once you know its truthfulness for yourself. Once you realize that it’s really super-duper important you won’t want to hold back telling people about it. So, if you're not at that point yet, then that's OK! Start by reading the scriptures and praying, I promise it works 😉

Love you all!

Sœur Sarah Hunt

Exchanges with the Rennes Soeurs

Soeur Crosby

"I made yummy crepes)

"dinner prep"

Adventure is out there!

Well we had a week full of spontaneous adventures, great tender mercies with learning experiences of course :)

First our miracle ami Sophie got back in contact with us because we haven't been able to talk to her for the past 2 weeks. She told us to wait at the gare (train station) for her but she never came. Comes next day and she called again from an unknown number telling us to meet up to eat and talk. At this point I'm bracing myself for the worst. We met up and she took us to a petit café and fed us 100% raw meat, which wasn't terrible if you didn't think about the texture in your mouth. The fries saved me. She told us about why she wasn't able to contact us earlier, and all of the crazy things happening in her life. All in all, she's still interested and loves us to death and wants her kids baptized too! Funny thing is that her daughter is in love with my straight hair and wants me to be her “mother in Christ” lol! Problem is that she is 7 and she won’t turn 8 until next year and I go home soon. So, Sophie wanted us to figure out how to baptize them before we leave... uhh; bref (in short) we figured it out and we were all happy go lucky again :)

We were able to see an ami that we haven't seen since the beginning of last transfer.  It was short because we didn't have a lot of time, but we talked about the Book of Mormon and were going to review the restoration with her (because it had been a while) but she remembered everything so well and understood it! I love it when they're like that. She said that when she went to Paris to visit her uncle who is also meeting with missionaries! So, they were able to talk about it :) at the end of the rendezvous she told us that she doesn't like letting religious people visit her unless she feels good about it, so she said she doesn't let the Jehovah's witnesses in. She told us that she loves having us over and she feels really good when we talk.  She said she would love to have us over all the time if she was more available! So yeah, she's cool. The only sad part is that she had to give us back the Book of Mormon because her husband isn't religious and doesn't like it, so if he found it he would throw it away and she would rather it get taken care of and not thrown away. That was a bummer, but it's all good!

We met and talked to two refugees that moved here from Africa a few years ago. We taught them, and they liked it, but we think they were more interested in having shelter at the church, food and money for education. So that's a problem that we will work out. Hopefully they will still be interested in our message even if they don’t quite get everything they want :/ Luke 4:4 And Jesus answered him, saying, it is written, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

We were going to stop by a less active’s house, but when we messaged her many times asking if it was still good for us to come over, she never responded. It takes an hour to get to her place and I didn't want to waste time if it wasn't going to work out. But then the thought came into my mind. By the trial of your faith will you then see the blessings. Kind of cheesy but I went with it. So, we went, and she was there! Her name is Marina and she was happy to see us. She just hadn’t seen our reminder messages. We met with her and her husband who doesn't exactly like who we are.  He still believes but goes to a different church.  She has a great relationship with the members of the ward and hopes to have us over again to eat a real African dish ha-ha.

Favor was been able to get her temple recommend yesterday! Emanuel and Joseph and Maxwell (all African members) were able to make appointments to get their recommends and receive the priesthood so they too can go to the temple! The ward is preparing to go to the temple the 17th of November and we're so excited!!!

So other than all that it was a great week and I look forward to another one coming up! Stay warm, stay fresh! I love you!

Love

Soeur Sarah Hunt

Our raw meat dinner!

Looking at our apartment building from a cross the soccer field

Looking out across the soccer field from our apartment.

Playing soccer in the pouring rain.

Spirit

Oh la vache! (holy cow!) I can't believe another transfer has come and gone so quickly! Someone get my companion a walker because she's coming to the end of her life on the mission in about 6 weeks! As for me life is treating me very well! Sœur Franklin and I will stay together in Nantes for another! :)

Life over here has been going well and we plan to keep it up and work until the end!

So, let's start with going over to a wonderful older member couple’s house to get to know them and get them excited for general conference! They were very accommodating and very sweet. They teased a lot. They lived a city outside of Nantes, so we had to take a different kind of bus to come and go.  On the way back, we were stopped by this man who kept looking at us. He told us he had seen us around Centre Ville (Downtown) and this time he finally had time to stop us. He told us he had friends just like us serving missions around the world with the same badge, a part of the same church. I had to clarify hehe.  Anyways he said that because of Jesus Christ he's a new person and has a better life so now he goes around stopping people randomly preaching about Jesus Christ for like 15 minutes or less. We set up a time to meet with him again and it was cool!  At the end he shook our hands and told Sœur Franklin he loved her. So that was pretty funny.

You CANNOT convert anyone or even be close to it without the spirit. The spirit is the one that touches the heart. The spirit impresses on their minds the importance of the message. Not us!  So, when we met with our African family on Wednesday, it was such a great lesson. Best one I've had in a long time. I remember going in with the goal of helping them to really feel the spirit and inviting them to baptism and coming to general conference. We talked about the plan of salvation. They loved everything we said. When we got to the part about Christ's atonement we shared a video called "Il Vit" (He lives) which talks about his death and crucifixion. While bearing my testimony I got choked up and I knew for a fact that the spirit in the room was very tangible. I knew they felt it. We promised them the blessings they can have by being baptized by proper authority. We told them that the doctrine of Jesus Christ will add on to their faith with much more peace and joy in their family for eternity. I cannot even describe how much love was in the room. It was such a joy to be there in that moment sharing the beautiful message. We invited them to baptism and they said they would think about it. We offered them to come to general conference explain it to them and inviting them to come with questions and prepare to receive answers to their questions.

General Conference was absolutely amazing! I loved it so much. They're all so inspiring and I felt the spirit so strong that I couldn't help but tear up at some parts. I really loved hearing from Elder Oaks, Elder Holland. Then Sister Craig and Sister Franco from the General Women's session. They were the people that I was touched most by. But I LOVED all of them so much. By far one of my favorite conferences. I was reassured that "Your talents ARE enough in the sight of God" by sister Michelle Craig. I learned that we need to "seek, cherish, and make PEACE" by elder Holland. This world needs it especially at this time. I was especially touched by the missionary choir. It was so powerful, and It just made me think about how blessed and how happy I am to be one of them, a missionary in the France Paris Mission. I am so, so happy to be serving my Lord and Savior full time and helping him accomplish the greatest work in history. I couldn't ask for anything better at this moment in time.

Well, we had our sweet African family attend the Saturday evening session. I feel like it was specifically for them. They had many great speakers. It talked a lot about the LDM/BOM (Livre de Mormon/Book of Mormon) and Joseph Smith and baptism. I especially loved hearing Elder Uchtdorf who said with such power from the spirit. "Come. Come back. Join us. We need you. We cannot accomplish these marvelous things without you." I want my amis to join us. I want them so bad to taste the same joy and peace that I have right now. I hope they reflect and consider what they learned and felt and come join us.

So, I look forward to this new transfer full of waiting miracles to come to pass and more people to invite to come into Christ. I love this gospel and like many others I know; I'm so grateful for the tools we have, the prophets who guide us to keep us on the straight and narrow path so that we can have the best life possible and be closer to our heavenly father.

Love you so much and I hope you all are doing well. I would love to talk to you whenever you get the chance. Have a good week.

Avec amour (with love)

Sœur Sarah Hunt

 

"Scripture power!!"

"France seriously has a thing for cats!"

Brussels sprouts season is back ❤!!!! (another of her meals with her favorite vegetable)

"Funniest thing ever!😂"

Beautiful cathedral.  I love the lighting inside.

Many, many things

This week flew by in a flash! It literally felt like half of this week was two weeks ago! It was all so much fun, and I was able to see some great miracles!

Last Monday (which seems like 2 weeks ago, no joke) we saw the Giraud family again and they're just the sweetest family ever. We had a great time. We were trying to pick movies for them to show during their son’s baptism because they have friends coming who will not be members! It was really spiritual for the mother and she cried a little bit. At the end their cat ran out of the house and we had to track it down for 15 minutes before we captured it again! Muahahaha

Tuesday, we had zone conference and it was really fun. By far the most entertaining conference I've had on the mission ha-ha! It’s always nice to see old friends and to catch up! We talked a lot about faith and diligence. I was spiritually edified during that conference :)

At one point during this week we were finding in the hot sun and were tired and hot and had been out for a few hours, so we were pretty done. We hadn't been having much, if any success, but then I just decided to follow what president told us about diligence and to just do one more before you quit and so I decided to talk to one more person before we went to wait for the bus. And lo and behold, it was this super cute Chinese girl named Eva who was very nice and wanted to know more! She is a miracle and we are so happy to have met her. We're going to meet with her Saturday!

An old ami called us who we had decided not to teach because she has too many health and memory problems. She wanted us to come see her so we visited her for like 15 minutes. We tried to teach a little bit and basically, she said she can't read the Book of Mormon because it's too small, she told us she was a Buddhist Muslim Catholic baptized Evangelist and didn't want to change.  She even included how recently, she fell asleep while urinating in a pot. One of the most interesting conversations I've ever had in my mission so far.

Now the miracle of the week! We got a referral from the Elders in Anger. This girl is named Sophie and she moved here from Liberia a long time ago. She has a crazy inspirational long-life story. Long story short, we called her, and she was so happy to hear from us. We set a time to see each other the next day and she had us over for a BBQ.  She even invited 2 friends to see us too! We taught her and her adorably cute kids. She was kind of busy coming in and out of our lesson, but the kids were so in tune with the lesson! We set a baptismal date with them for the end of October and they were so down! The kids understood our message so well and plainly. At one point one kid asked about the church just right down the street from them and Sophie’s son responded saying, "Oh no, no that's a false church." THEY get it! He treated the Book of Mormon with such tender care. He thought it was so precious! She made us really yummy, still mooing, steak to finish up the night and it was so awesome!

On Sunday our DMP (Ward Mission Leader) was released and now we have an awesome member whose name is Arthur! He’s going to help us a lot.  He's been DMP before so I’m excited to work with him!

We had ward conference and there was a ward meal after. A frère (brother) in the ward lectured Soeur Franklin and I on the fact that humans don't have gizzards, so we need to make sure we chew our food at least 20 times or something like that so we can digest our food... I guess it was his way of telling us we were eating fast? French people like to take their time to eat, meanwhile we missionaries were on a tight schedule! Ha-ha.

Last night we had a soirée (party) with the Nigerians! Favor and Emmanuel came, and we had a ping pong tournament. It was way fun.  Emmanuel is so good at ping pong or as he says, table tennis, and he crushed all of us. We look forward to holding another Nigerian night!

Anyways gotta run! Love you all and have a blessed week!

Love,

Sœur Hunt

P.S. We had P-day today (Tuesday) because for our district P-day we went to an Escape Room which was really fun!!

"TOO CUTE!!" Sister missionary legos!!

Our miracle ami, Sophie and her family

Beautiful France

In the Escape Room

 Out of the escape room

Fall and Halloween decorating

"Mes collegues!!" (my colleagues) 😂