What a time to be in Tours!

I love Tours! I absolutely love it here! I wouldn't mind staying here for another transfer. Last week was somewhat of a hectic week, but in the end it turned out to be amazing!

Last Monday was a very relaxing P-Day. We've been hanging out with the elders for the last four weeks and Soeur Bishop, Bradley, and I finally had a P-Day to ourselves where we could just do what we wanted to do. So basically we cleaned the apartment, went grocery shopping, and then slept for a while. Don't worry we went out though and explored through the Centre Ville of Tours which was so cool!

I'll say it again, I LOVE TOURS! After our relaxing P-Day, we had to dress up and go to a member's house for family night. We talked about the importance of learning because today is actually the first day of school here in France! This family has two daughters and they are so much fun to talk to. They like to laugh at my broken French which is ok because I do look goofy trying to speak the language.

I'm learning a lot when it comes to French and the language is coming to me little by little. Right now I can think and say the sentence right the first time...only if I think long and hard. I'm pretty sure I told our amie in a lesson last week how to be forgiven of our peaches, not our sins because the French words for them are very similar to each other and I spoke super fast. Aside from the fact that my French is still  embarrassing, we had our second baptism on Saturday! V_____ was finally baptized! He was supposed to be baptized on August 30 but we had to push his date because he still had to be interviewed by our DL. Elder Griffith came down to Tours on Friday to interview V_____, Soeur Bishop and I sat in the chapel anxiously waiting to see if V_____ passed the interview or not. 40 minutes later, Elder Griffith and V_____ finally come out of the room and give us the wonderful news that V_____ could be baptized! We were all so excited but then Soeur Bishop and I realized that we had to call people and basically let the whole branch know that there was a baptism the next day so we spent most of Friday night planning for the baptism and making sure that there were talks, music, and someone who could baptize V_____.

I was so stressed that night, this guy has been through a lot these last three months and we wanted to make sure that his baptism was perfect. We were able to send out the good news with the help of the Relief Society president and the first counselor of the branch. Saturday came and it was so perfect! Most of the branch was able to come and watch V_____ be baptized, one of our amies was able to see what baptism was, and best of all V_____ was super happy! When he came out of the water he said "I feel like I should dance now!" I guess the baptismal font in our church building is a place for dancing or dabbing! Later on V_____ told us that when he came out of the water, he didn't expect to feel so good! The Spirit was so strong at the baptism, even our amie felt something special! To see the change in V_____ was so amazing. He made so many changes in his life to get where he is today and he is so much happier than he used to be when I first met him. I can testify that this gospel is life changing and it can bring so much happiness into the lives of people who don't know what it is. I love my calling as a missionary and I'm so blessed to be in France serving the people of Tours! I love and miss you all!

-Soeur Hopkinson