ORLÉANS

Holy Cow! I’m so happy to be here! I thought I’d never make it to the Paris area! This place is AMAZING. The ward is so tender and incredible. The people we talk to everyday are so nice (even when rejecting us). God has really blessed me so much! He’s also blessed me with an awesome companion!

Voici, (here is) Sœur Rudolph:

From: Wyoming

Talent: everything

Something she loves: store bought cakes

Life Ambition: to go cross country skiing in Norway

Fun Fact: loves climbing pine trees

This is going to be FUN!!! Bring it on! Ha

This last week feels like it was actually two weeks ago. So much to do in a day with such little time, but its amazing work and I wouldn’t want it any other way!

Recap before transfers. It was incredibly hard to say goodbye to my friends in Nantes, Favor and Ruth. They made us another goodbye dinner which was the exact same thing as last time, but this time they put "less" chili pepper in it. LOL, even the size of a spec of dust is too much for me!! Favor wanted me to finish this time so that’s why she put less spice in it. Just for the record I DID FINISH IT the last time and the second time haha. I just had an ulcer afterwards. Other than the spice, it was yummy African food. It was so sweet of them to do that for us though. I hope to come back and visit them!

Then we moved on to transfers and I said goodbye to the wonderful Sœur Franklin. She will be missed.  I really enjoyed being her companion :) We learned lots together and experienced so much!

Sœur Rudolph et moi (and I) have had so many great things happen to us together so far. First person we met was an African man who was super intrigued in learning more! Until we found out he was actually interested in basically just being our boyfriend. Well, he has a Book of Mormon and then he'll wait until Elders come 👍🏻

We had ward conference on Sunday and the members are literally so awesome! Maybe I’ve already said that, but I don’t mind saying it again! I introduced myself in front of basically two wards because the Blois ward was combined with us. We had great food afterwards. Soeur Rudolph and I packed our plates and got really full. Then while we were sitting outside the gym a member came up to us and asked us if we got food. We said of course, it was delicious! She asked if we had gotten the hot meal. We got a little confused. She saw the look of confusion and began explaining how there was the cold meal with all the salads and appetizers and then there's the actual meal and then the dessert.... well. You would think that for as long as I have been in France, I’d be used to how many meals the people here have, but apparently not. Someday I’ll get used to the mission ha-ha.

En tout cas, (in any case,) I don’t have a whole lot of time, so I’ll run for now, but hey there's next week! Love you all tons and I hope you have a great week!

Don’t forget to start Light the World! Service is starting this Saturday! Find something you can do light up the world a bit. It needs it :)

Love you all

Bisous, (kisses)

Soeur Hunt

Soeur Rudolph!!

Thanksgiving dinner!

Our apartment in Orleans

Our little Christmas tree 

Study room

Sitting room

Kitchen

My study area

Two views from our study room

Cathedral in Orleans

Joan of Arc home 

Downtown Orleans

Great to see Soeur Morrison again!

ÇA PIQUE!

Bonjour tout le monde! J'espère que vous avez passé une super bonne semaine ! Can you believe it! Another transfer has flown by! This week went by kind of slow actually, but you learn from everything am I right? We did a lot of porting and a lot of our rendezvous fell through which kind of stank, but ça va!

I don't have much time (because I procrastinated) so I'm just going to do a quick little run through of my week!

The Bigelows, our senior couple, came over to Nantes to inspect our apartment because they also heard we don’t have any heat and we're dying (don't worry mom I'm still alive and well) and brought us KFC which was super nice of them!

Favor came to our rendezvous to help us teach and she ended up bringing Ruth (who is progressing towards baptism and will hopefully be baptized in a couple weeks!), but our actual ami who we were supposed to teach never came. So, we thought maybe we would teach Favor and Ruth a short little lesson so as not to waste their time coming all the way out. We asked Ruth if she had time to just stick around and have a little discussion before they left (we also already had a rendezvous set for Friday evening with Ruth). This is the dialogue that went down between Favor and Ruth:

Ruth: no, is ok, we can talk Friday...

Favor: *smacks Ruth’s arm hard*

Ruth: ok we can talk tonight.

They're such a funny friendship I love being around them so much! They have become such great friends to me. We ended up talking about prayer and faith and read in Enos. Ruth told us she wanted to learn how to pray and read the scriptures really well before she was baptized. She even moved up her date! She’s progressing so well!

We went finding/were going to go porting (because our rendezvous fell through) and we ended up stopping this lady who talked to us for an hour and a half! It was good, but man French people can really talk.  She loves Christ and the Bible and accepted the Book of Mormon very happily! She made the connection that the book of Mormon is another guide that explains the Bible because she believes that the Bible doesn't hold everything. So that was cool!! Too bad she didn't give us her number, but we hope to have her come to church sometime!

Friday night comes around and we went to Favor and Ruth's house and this time we brought a member Sœur Carré to get to know them and just have a good time! We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the spirit was very strong. Everyone shared amazing experiences and it was so wonderful. Favor ended up making us traditional African meal for dinner which was super nice of her. In Africa (or Nigeria) they eat everything with chili pepper. So, I’ll just say, it was a rough night and I’m pretty sure my stomach was developing an ulcer while I slept that night.

Anyways that's my week and it was super fun. It's the end of transfers and I found out I'm leaving Nantes and will be going to Orléans serving as an STL (Sister Training Leader). I'm super excited to meet new people and serve the Sisters of the zone.  I'm super sad to leave the wonderful people I've grown so connected with here. They are amazing, and I hope to see them again later in the future!

Love you all lots and take care especially with this crazy cold coming in!

Love,

Sœur Sarah Hunt

P.S. our onion rings were actually giant squid :)

Spiced it up with Favor, Ruth and Soeur Carré 

"The cat was kind of interested!"

Sarah's sister missionary legos. so fun!

I always love her cathedral photos!!

Oh the contrast!

This week went pretty quickly. It started out with a great fiery zone conference in Rennes. I was asked to give a short little review of what we learned last zone conference. This is what I get when I know the zone leaders, @Elder McDougal haha. It was good though, the spirit was very strong and Sœur Franklin gave a great goodbye testimony. Life is moving very quickly and I can't keep up!

After zone conference we stayed in Rennes for a 2nd exchange. It was fun. I was with Sœur Pischer again and we had a great opportunity to visit an American family!!! They're from Ohio and have been living here for the past 3 or so months for work. The dad is very smart. He's working on his Ph.D. right now in the French language. So he's working at a university translating from French to English doctoral vocabulary for the students that want to be doctors. That's pretty cool.  It was such a stark contrast being with them and teaching them to any other French family. I didn't have to worry about speaking I just had to talk and have fun and get to know them! Then in the end, again I didn't have to worry about how things are said or how I was going to say it, but it went really well and the family is so, so awesome. The mom doesn't really speak French (little bit) but she still teaches with the missionaries and then they just translate for her to everyone. They’re so willing to do missionary work and help people be blessed by the gospel! So fun! It was a breath of fresh air haha. You need one every once in a while. So glad I was able to meet them!

We also saw the Giraud family again, twice. They're very generous in having us over and taking care of us. They fed us chicken and turkey stomachs, haha. Yum. We also played Telestration with them. It was quite hilarious to see all of us missionaries trying to Google translate the words that we were supposed to draw and guess. It was very fun and they're such a sweet family. So glad they're back in full activation in the church again, I don't know where I'd be without them.

We went finding, well, porting for a couple hours closer to our church because our President said he wanted us to maybe focus more on being closer to our church when we find. So we've been working on that. A lot of people didn't answer and some people weren't interested but they were nice about it. I remember saying out loud not quite serious but then at the same time being serious, I said, “Nobody is receiving us and we can't do it without you! Please help us!” So, then we went to a different neighborhood and the first door we knocked on was an older lady in her 60s and she was so sweet. She listened to us as we introduced ourselves. She said that she had been wondering what that church was for a while! We introduced the Book of Mormon and gave it to her and she said she'd read it and talk to her husband about it! We also told her that she was welcome to come to church whenever she wants. After we introduced ourselves and the Book, she asked us to come inside so she could show us her jewelry collection that she makes! She was so, so cute and we just got talking about life. We hope to go back and see her again soon and talk more! God answered my prayer!

We have some pretty sticking amis now! We were able to see Junior again. He asks great questions and is actually excited to read the scriptures after we explained it more in detail last rendezvous. Super sweet guy. We gave him the plan of salvation pamphlet and he was very excited to read it and talk about it next rendezvous because he said he's been having many questions about it lately!

We saw Ruth and Favor again and they're just so fun. We also taught the plan of salvation and it went really well! Ruth understood it well and it was just a fun time :)

Lisa is a new ami to us but old at the same time. She's talked with missionaries in the past, but had lost contact. She has a boyfriend who is a member in the St. Nazaire branch. Speaking of which, there was a baptism from their branch and so Lisa came with the boyfriend’s family! She has great support from that family. She's been reading and praying over the phone with the family and she's helping her boyfriend stay motivated and concentrate on preparing for his mission. So we went and saw her and she was happy to see us again! Lots more to go, but super awesome! Lots of potential!

On Sunday we were asked to be apart of the ward choir. It turns out that us missionaries ARE the ward choir. LOL so I hope we get more volunteers soon.

Last week of the transfer, bring it on!

Love you lots and prayers coming your way! Because we know God answers prayers! Maybe not all the time when we want it but He does. And I love Him for answering me.


Love you all!

Sœur Hunt

The heart of downtown Nantes

Zone Conference

She made Quinoa with chicken, zucchini and of course 

her favorite, Brussel sprouts

Street band

Street band and the fun barefoot man jammin and climbing the fountain

Happy late Halloween

How's everyone doing? Can someone please tell me how on earth it is already November?? I seriously cannot believe how fast the time is flying by! Crazy stuff. Well anyway, I know you are all dying to know how I spent the week of Halloween here in Nantes.

First for p-day last week we visited a little coastal town called Pornic with a member family. They we excited to show us around and spend more time with us. It was fun!

We made sure to make the best of Halloween! We ended up making little nature leafy things that a member gave us and told us to do something with them for fun.  So, well, we did! We drew little faces on them and surprise attacked a few members. It was super fun! This was a little difficult because lots of members live in apartment buildings where you must ring an intercom in order to enter so it was a fun little adventure. We figured it out and they loved them! They sent us pictures of what they did with them. Some set them up as decorations in their home. So, it was fun to see what they ended up doing with them.  I'm glad they liked it.

We went finding later the same day in the evening.  I was not expecting to see so many people dressed up in costumes (Halloween isn't that big of a deal here) and even some stores giving out candy to little kids! The biggest surprise of all was meeting one super sweet lady named Melanie. We were totally not expecting her to listen to us, but she actually listened and said she'd love to have us over.  She feels like having faith helps her be positive and happy despite all the troubles in the world. We also met a more hesitant woman who was unsure of us at first but as we testified, she became more willing to learn more. It was cool to see how the Spirit softened her heart just in a quick conversation that was less than 5 minutes. That night we came home and carved a pumpkin!

The adorable member from the Dominican Republic who only speaks Spanish asked for us to come over this week as well. We had a hilarious conversation with Google translate and decided we were going to help her practice her French. She is so funny and such a sweetheart.

We also were able to teach Ruth with Favor as a member present. It was such a good lesson! Ruth is going through some rough stuff, but Favor was able to testify that relying on Jesus Christ and accepting the gospel would bless her and help her overcome her challenges. She has such a strong testimony and is a great friend and example to Ruth (and me too!). Favor is such a boss with missionary work, I'm glad she's on our team now.

This Friday we taught a Nigerian Catholic Bonne Sœur (nun)! It was incredible. She was so nice and listened to what we had to say even if she disagreed with some of it. Initially she refused to take the Book of Mormon but in the end took it because it was a nice gesture and she even said she'd read it in her free time. I love meeting and talking to people of all different faiths and seeing how we can find common ground. It's so cool!

We also were finally able to teach Eliane who came to church a few weeks ago. She loves Jesus and had a lot of stories to tell so we didn't get through the entire lesson. She has been to many churches but doesn't know if we can find the true one. However, we definitely got her thinking about whether a restoration is possible, and she is interested in coming back to keep discussing it.

This brings us to church yesterday! So, we didn't think we would have any amis at church because Ruth said she wouldn't be able to come. But then she walked in with Favor! I told you she’s a boss and I’m pretty sure she helped Ruth come. It was a nice surprise. Then randomly during the last 10 minutes of Sunday school this lady I'd never seen before walked in and sat down. We are having class in English, so I moved next to her and was like do you understand English and she was like yeah, yeah (even though she is a francophone primarily). So, I waited for class to end and then started talking to her. Long story short, she just moved here from Angers and was looking for a church to go to and ended up at ours! She had to be home by 12 so left before relief society or anything but it was cool to meet her, and she said she'd come next week!

Anyways, I love seeing how the spirit changes lives and softens hearts. I love seeing how when we first start talking to people, they're very closed off and defensive, but in the end,  they come out and feel like they'd be willing to try something new. Our gospel really does change lives. It changes mine every day. I love you all and I hope you have a fun week!

Love
Soeur Sarah Hunt

Our little Halloween lanterns we gave as 

surprises to members

"We wish you a happy autumn! We love you. 

Kisses.

The Sister Missionaries"

"His name is Jacques O' lantern

"It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown"

The Fortineaus took us to the 

city of Pornic

The following photos are of the beautiful city of Pornic

"Irony at it's finest"

Another one of Sarah's dinners