Animals Love the Gospel and a Successful Finding Day

Another week has passed on my lovely mission here in France and what a wonderful week it was! Every morning Soeur Bishop and I wake up, meet up with Bradley, and go for a run at the park and do a small workout to start our day. One morning as we finished running, Bradley and I saw a cat so we both went over to pet it for about 3 minutes. Soeur Bishop was heading over to the gazebo where we do our workouts at so we followed her and the cat stayed where it was. We started doing our workouts and normally, I like to practice my French and go over my parts in lessons with Bradley and Soeur Bishop so that they can help me fix my mistakes. As I was speaking in French about the Plan of Salvation, the cat comes over and sits down right in front of me as if it was interested in what I was saying.

After our workouts, this cat actually followed us home and now in the morning, it likes to hang out with us at the gazebo as I practice my French speaking. Later on in the week, as we were doing some door-to-door contacting, a dog came up to us and kept pawing us to pet him, so we waited for the owner to ask if we could pet his dog and then started to have a conversation with the man. He told us that he was believing but he wasn't interested in learning more about the church. He did tell us that what we do is very good work and that he respects the fact that we sacrifice a year and a half of our lives to serve the Lord. We gave him our card in case he changes his mind and wanted to learn more. As he left, his dog did not want to follow him, so the man called it a few times and then he had to come and pick the dog up since it loved us so much!

It doesn't end there with the animal conversions. We were walking across a bridge and we talked about how funny it was that animals were taking interest more than the people were. About halfway across the bridge, we noticed that there were 4 swans swimming under the bridge. We decided to give our animal conversion theory a test and we started singing "Come, Come Ye Saints". Sure enough the swans started to come in our direction and we all just died of laughter! I guess that's how Noah must've felt when he gathered all the animals onto the ark. Don't worry though we've found actual people who are interested in the gospel which leads me to my next story.

Last Tuesday, we had a finding day here in Tours! The elders in the district came to our ville and for the whole day, they helped us find new people to teach for this transfer. For two hours, we went porting and our equipe found 4 new amies. Elders Dunoskovic and Ellsworth found 2  new amies and Elders Griffith and Lloyd found 1 new amie. SUPER successful finding day! This week, we will be visiting our new amies and I'm so excited to get to know them better and teach them the happiness of the gospel!

Spiritual Thought:

"It matters very little what people think of us or who others say we are. What matters very much is what we think of Him and who we say Jesus is" -Neal A. Maxwell.

I love this quote! Each day as Soeur Bishop, Bradley, and I go out and about to meet and teach people, the message we tell them is about Jesus Christ and how He is our Savior and that He loves us so much.

To wrap up this email, I testify that Jesus Christ is the perfect example in my life. He came to the Earth and provided a way for us to return to our Heavenly Father. He loves everyone and I know that He lives. One video I encourage you all to look up is "Because of Him" my absolute favorite video. Because of Him we have second chances. Because of Him we can live with our Heavenly Father once more. Because of Him I can be with my family for all eternity. I wear His name over my heart each and every day. I love being a representative of Christ here in France. He is my Savior, my big brother, and I love Him with all my heart. These things I say in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.

I love and miss you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Soeur Hopkinson