The French Life

Hello family! I am alive and doing well here in the lovely country of France! Last Tuesday, I arrived safely in France, but the plane ride was so long. I got about two hours of sleep and it was hard to not look at other people’s screens around me because as a missionary, we are not allowed to watch any movies. So for most of the time, I stared at the flight tracker and watched how slowly the plane on the tracker was moving as we flew across the country and over the Atlantic Ocean. When we arrived at the Paris airport, we kind of got delayed going through customs because Sœur Schade lost her passport on the plane! It took about maybe 45 minutes until we found it. This is an interesting story, so we stayed on the plane for about 25 minutes looking everywhere for her passport and no luck. We got off the plane and waited with her at customs (by we, it was me and Elder Banton, our travel leader). The agent with us went to catch up with the rest of the missionaries who had passed customs to make sure that none of them had two passports with one of them being Sœur Schade's. While she left, me, Sœur Schade, and Elder Banton got on our knees at the airport on the sidelines of the customs checkpoint and we said a prayer together hoping we would find the missing passport. That was probably one of the coolest moments I had when I first got into France. Five minutes passed and the agent came back with the missing passport! Turns out, one of the elders sitting next to Sœur Schade accidentally took it! In the moment, we were all so grateful that she was able to still come to France with us! After that little fiasco happened, we all met up with the other missionaries and met the mission president who then took us to the mission home in Paris. On the way there, I was so tired and I fell asleep in the back of the car. It was about a 30 minute drive to the mission home and we had to walk up two flights of stairs and I was out of energy at the top. Right when I walked into the mission office this one sister missionary caught my eye and literally my day was made. I met this cute sister missionary named Sœur Nielsen who I just happen to have a long history with........MY COUSIN WAS WAITING FOR ME TO ARRIVE AT THE MISSION HOME!!!!!! No words can describe as to how I felt in that moment seeing my cute missionary cousin! I forgot about how tired I was and I had enough energy to go throughout the rest of the day! It was so hard not to call her by her first name, it would just come out. I was just so happy! We all ate food and Sœur Nielsen took me out for an hour to do some contacting and it felt like I was dreaming while I was contacting with my cousin! We ended up getting 2 numbers from people we met on the street and then my cousin took me to get my first French pastry in France! BEST FIRST DAY IN FRANCE EVER! On Wednesday I said goodbye to my MTC district and my wonderful MTC companion and got assigned to my trainer and my first ville in France which is...TOURS! It is such a lovely city here and the people are nice! I've had about 7 lessons with amies (investigators of the church) and my trainer and I have a baptism scheduled for next Wednesday! I haven't even been in this area for a week and I already have 1 baptism down, it's so exciting! Speaking of my trainer, she is absolutely amazing! her name is Sœur Bishop and she hails from Maryland! She's been out for more than a year so she is an expert in helping me with my French. I can speak French better now than I did at the MTC, but the challenge now is understanding what the French people say because they speak so darn fast! The branch that I'm in has about 12-20 people total, but Sœur Bishop and I will help make this branch grow bigger over the next 13 weeks we are here! I love being a missionary and France has been amazing overall! I love and miss you all! The pics posted are of my last few days at the MTC and when I arrived in my first ville. - Sœur Hopkinson