Preachin in the Hood

Hello everyone! Last week was honestly been a blur and it's a little difficult to remember all that happened since time flies by so fast! It's exciting to think that it's been just about a month since I arrived here in France! I love my mission, I love this gospel, and I absolutely love being a missionary everyday!

Last Wednesday, Soeur Bishop and I travelled to Paris for zone conference and we talked about the new standards for the mission since we barely got a new mission president. We had lunch together and then were each interviewed by the mission president himself. President Sorenson is a pretty cool guy, he has a cute family and it turns out that he has a daughter serving a mission in Norway so they're definitely happy to be in the same time zone as her. I was able to see my amazing cousin, Soeur Nielsen, for a few minutes before I had to catch a train back to Tours! She's doing great and I always love meetings in Paris because I know it gives me a chance to catch up with her for a few minutes and see how she's doing.

Thursday and Friday were pretty much slow moving days, Saturday was absolutely hilarious. One of the members in the branch named Felix came with us to do some contacting before he leaves for his mission tomorrow! Felix is serving his mission in Tahiti and he goes to the Auckland, New Zealand MTC! We all went to visit an inactive member but they didn't answer so we went outside to contact people we saw. We walked for a bit and then we stopped and prayed for inspiration to find anyone who would be interested in listening to us and the message we wanted to share. We looked around and saw a man sitting on a bench so we went to him and introduced ourselves. The neighborhood we were in was a little ghetto but it was out in the open and it helped that we had Felix with us because behind this guy was a group or gang hanging around listening to music and smoking. We talked for about 5 minutes and it turns out that this guy was a part of this gang because a lot of them came to the bench to see what was going on and we had an audience of about 7-9 people listening to us. I was extremely thankful that Felix was there because one of the gang members was totally hitting on me and my companion. He spoke little English but he was trying to find a way to tell me what he thinks of me and Soeur Bishop and what he ended up saying is "I am loving you" and kept saying how beautiful we were and he even asked about marrying us...yea that was our ticket to leave so we prayed with them and left to catch a tram but as we were walking away one of the gang members runs up to us asking for our contact information and said that he actually wanted to learn more about the church! This all caught us by surprise so we gave him our card and set up another rendezvous with him! I look back at that situation and it makes Soeur Bishop and I just laugh because without Felix things would have gone so differently.

On Sunday towards the end of the day we had to walk to the gare (train station) and buy train tickets. It was pouring rain so my comp and I were enjoying our time out in the rain, we were so drenched! We actually ended up meeting a nice guy along the way who just moved to Tours from Paris. He saw that Soeur Bishop and I were soaking wet and he offered us his jackets but we told him we were fine haha! He started asking us a bunch of questions and he eventually came to ask about our mission badges so we told him about what our church was about and all the happiness it provides. He was super interested and asked for our contact info so that we can meet again! Rainy adventure days gave us a miracle for a new amie! I'm so happy to be serving a mission here in France!

Congrats to Karynn on getting her mission call to the Dominican Republic. I'm so excited for her to start her mission adventure in November!

I love and miss you all!

-Soeur Hopkinson