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) 😂

Life as a missionary

Wow this week flew by and boy oh boy was it just awesome. So many things happen when you're on the mission.

Let me start with my dear friend Favor. We've been working with her to prepare her to go to the temple, but we thought it would be even better if she had names to take! So, on Tuesday we got together with a member to get started on her family tree! She was able to find a lot and she was so excited. There was such a sweet spirit in the room. We found her sister and grandma that she could bring to the temple to baptize! We ended by sharing the video called The Blessings of Family History which is found on lds.org and it was incredible. The fact that we were able to help our recent convert find family members to baptize at the temple and doing it with a member and having the spirit very strong in the room, felt like a dream. It was one of those times where I can say I was so happy. The member came up to us afterwards to thank us for the amazing experience.  I could tell everyone who had participated had been touched and was radiating with happiness.

Another thing we did for Favor was order the triple combination of the BOM, Pearl of great Price and D&C as well as the Bible. We ordered them for her and we gave them to her when we saw each other Tuesday.  She was absolutely thrilled.  Her reaction was about the same as when Soeur Giles, Soeur Morrison and I gave her chocolate during one of her lessons haha!

We went finding later that night and we had some funny experiences. I stopped this man who looked pretty friendly, LOL. He got right up in my face and yelled words I didn't understand. I don't think he was interested... We think he was from Poland. I definitely wasn’t expecting that to happen. Then as we were about to cross the street to head for the bus stop to go home, I saw this man who obviously looked drunk.  I didn't want to draw our attention to him. So, I kept my head low and didn't look at him as if that would've stopped him from coming over.... psych! he came and started saying weird things to us which then turned into a drunk rapper serenading us LOL.  Although we had weird things happen to us we did find a man who was actually really nice. We gave him a Book of Mormon with a challenge and he was super open to it.  We set up a time to meet on Saturday. Saturday come around and we had a great lesson.  He even had started the 21-day-challenge but afterwards he said it was a nice discussion and he'll keep it as a great memory, but he said he wasn't really believing otherwise he would've met with us again. So that's too bad, but I believe one day he'll come back around.

Later we met with another member, Roxana, because she had just bought a karaoke machine and wanted us to sing with her.... LOL!  I can't sing, but whatever it was just us three and we sang in English a primary song, scripture power. She only wanted to film us 2 minutes because much more than that is way too long... right. But it was actually really fun and we shared the scripture, Ether 12:4, 

"Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.”

I love this scripture because it's ONLY through God that we can have a better world.  It’s through our faith and our hope that we can have that sure base. I WILL NOT let my actions neither my thoughts nor my faith be changed for the things of this world. It is too valuable for me to give up. I know who I follow, and I will do my best to make sure nothing will get in my way of that.

Saturday night we were with an elderly member couple who were very adorable. They had us over for dinner and told us about their conversion story that took place almost 50 years ago. I loved being at their home because it was a house that really had the spirit. They're the kind of elderly couple I'd like to be when I'm their age. Oh, also they're great missionaries, they invited all of three of their neighbors to church!

Just to wrap things up, a member asked me and my companion to help sing in the ward choir because they're practicing for their ward conference the next Sunday. They were short a soprano... there were only 3 girls and 10 guys haha. I don't think people take me seriously when I say I can't sing. But I guess when you're a missionary people ask you to do a lot of things even when you're not necessarily good at it.  But it's great!  You get to help and serve in any way possible.

Anyways I gotta run, I love you all lots and have a great week!

Love Sœur Hunt

"It's feeling like fall"

Doing family history with Favor!!

"Gotta love the creativity in the world"

"Free pears"

Neighborhood bakery

Japanese gardens and flute quartet

A light and an Example

Bonjour tout le monde! (hello everyone) Now as Sœur Franklin says, "The people are great, the city is great, God is great, and I am doing great!" There is always something to do here in Nantes, wait or should I say in St. Nazaire and Rennes too?

We did a lot of traveling at the beginning of the week because we had district meeting in Saint Nazaire and right after headed to Rennes for exchanges. I had the amazing pleasure to work with Sœur Pischer. She actually came to France with me and she's awesome! That night we set up the stand for the 21 day Livre de Mormon challenge. The Rennes elders were on exchanges too with the APs so there were 8 of us total in downtown Rennes with tons of books talking to everyone about the challenge. It was tons of fun and the highlight was when a Romanian man playing the accordion stopped us as we were all walking down the street carrying the stuff and asked us who we were. He said he wanted to come to church and then because we were Americans he started playing Hotel California on the accordion just for us. It was hilarious! It was awesome sharing the book with people and some of them even accepted to take the challenge! Then afterward we ate Poutine which for those of you who don't know is a Canadian specialty that is fries with gravy and other stuff on it. And it was pretty delicious.

The members were so sweet this week. Soeur Front couldn't figure out how to unlock her tablet so we went over to help her and she was so happy when we figured it out. (It was all a matter of pressing "suivant" (next)) Then another member wanted us to stop by her house because she had made a "gâteau" (cake), turns out it was actually banana bread and mmm it was so good. 

I visited the Giraud family on Thursday and boy are they just the most amazing family ever. I'm sorry but I don't remember if I ever mentioned them in the past, but I'll say it again. They are a less active family and we've been teaching their son Kylian, their oldest of 8 years. Then 2 adorable younger daughters Kristen and Gaell, and a 4 month old cat named Oops (that they just adopted). Teaching Kylian is a dream, he is so attentive and funny and smart. We are preparing him for his baptism the 28th of October and his grandpa will be baptizing him. Afterwards we ate dinner with them, mussels! They were good and man we laughed the entire meal. Seriously love all of them so much! And they came to church yesterday, hooray! 

Also this week's random discovery in Nantes...a quartet of four men playing the flute in a Japanese themed park. It was pretty cool. It's so peaceful, you know I wouldn't mind being Budist... I mean, like the meditating and finding inner peace part without forgetting God and all...  Hahaha it was great and they were actually really good!
Then yesterday during finding we were walking around and nobody really wanted to talk to us. Then we stopped this family and they actually stopped to listen to us! The mom said they were Catholic non practicing. We explained about the Book of Mormon and the 21 day challenge and how it's helped us. We weren't sure how they were going to react. We offered to give it to them and there was a pause when the parents were kinda hesitating when all of a sudden their little boy took it from me and was like "je veux le lire ! (I will read it)" The dad was so surprised and was like, "Tu vas le lire, toi? (You're going to read it? You?)" And he was like yes of course we're going to read it together! Then Sœur Franklin shared how reading together with her family helped strengthen them and bring them together and they were like OK we will try it! They were just in Nantes for vacation but they were super sweet and it was just a special moment when the little boy took the Book of Mormon. Kids are so much closer to the Spirit! We have lots to learn from little kids. 

At church in relief society they shared a quote from Elder Wirthlin's talk, The Virtue of Kindness. Sœur Franklin showed the talk in English to Favor and Tessy and they loved what it said and started reading more of it. Here's one of my favorite parts from it: 

"The Church is not a place where perfect people gather to say perfect things, or have perfect thoughts, or have perfect feelings. The Church is a place where imperfect people gather to provide encouragement, support, and service to each other as we press on in our journey to return to our Heavenly Father."

It's very true, because we are all part of this adventure together in building the kingdom of God. We cannot get through life on our own, no matter how strong you think you are. We need support from others and especially our Father in Heaven. Church should be a place where we feel safe and loved, separated from the world. Because like we all know, we are different from the world. 

Love you all! Have a good week!
Love Sœur Hunt 

PS all rights reserved to my dear companion (for the 98%)

21 Day Book of Mormon Challenge!

Exchanges in Rennes (Soeur Hunt is in yellow)

Poutin, a Canadian specialty dish

Rennes is so pretty

Beautiful Nantes

A Nantes floating home

"Hello my babies" (Sarah's favorite macaroons.)  She'll be thrilled when we take her to Gourmandise Bakery & Cafe, an authentic French cafe here in Salt Lake.  It's as close as you can get without being there. 

FROM LAST WEEKS EMAIL.  Les Machines de l'île Nantes (Machines on the island of Nantes)