baptisms & the bard.

bonjour! it was a lovely week this week... especially since i got to talk to you yesterday! how wonderful it was to hear all of your voices. it was so fun to speak french with roland and actually understand everything he was saying! you all sounded great and it did me good to get to talk to you.

on tuesday, we went to see soeur davillé, a recent convert. i remember Soeur England telling me all about her, so i was excited to meet her. She is a sweetheart! We sang two hymns (she loves the hymns) and talked about the sons of Mosiah. We read Mosiah 29:3 with her and talked about "every member a missionary". It went really well. In the closing prayer, she prayed for every single office of the priesthood from the prophet all the way down to the deacons. It was very sweet and endearing. Love her.

tuesday was also our first shift in the Visitor's Center. i can't believe i'm a visitor's center sister! it was actually quite fun. each companionship in Paris and the surrounding cities has a four hour shift once a week. we stay in the visitor's center and give tours for two hours while another companionship is out contacting and inviting people to the center, then we switch for the next two hours. It was so weird how we kept running into Americans during our contacting session... it's definitely tourist season. They're EVERYWHERE. I'm not used to hearing so much English in public! That will take some getting used to.

we had our first rendez-vous with Mona on thursday. She was just passed to us from the Elders and we love her! She's from Egypt- she tells us she's our "Egyptian mother". She's so sweet! She wants to be baptized but she's afraid of how that would be received in her country, which is understandable. We'll keep working with her. At the beginning of the lesson, we were getting to know each other when she asked what the word "Atonement" means. So, we watched "Finding Faith in Christ"- she loved it. We had a really good discussion about the Atonement, then set up a rendez-vous for Saturday morning.

We had a rendez-vous with Philomene, one of our baptismal dates, on friday. It was my first time meeting her... she is so great! She's from the Congo and she is VERY passionate about the gospel. She told us about what she had read this week in the Book of Mormon and gave us a very animated account of Nephi's vision. :) She's awesome and just ready to go! We're looking at the 29th for her baptism. Can't wait! We talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ with her... I mad a little drawing to help explain it. She loved the drawing and asked if she could keep it so she could look at it and remember "the good pathway".

We saw Mona again on Saturday- we ended up teaching the last half of the Plan of Salvation. She had previously thought that heaven and hell were here on earth, determined by your actions. We talked about the Resurrection, judgement, and the three kingdoms of glory. She loved the idea that people can still be taught and accept the gospel in the spirit world. we're really excited about her!

Edinton's friend, Anbu, came to church on Sunday. Edinton wasn't able to make it, but Anbu promised he'd fill him in on what he missed :) We had a lesson with him and a member, Soeur Cornet, after church. We watched "The Restoration" and explained the coming about of the Book of Mormon and why it's important. He was so very accepting and happy. We gave him a Book of Mormon in Tamel, his native language, at the end of the lesson and committed him to read it and pray about it. He enthousiastically agreed- he told us he had already started reading the English copy we gave him last week with his dictionary. So sweet! We're really excited about them. We're going to set a baptismal date on sunday!

We had a perfect Parisian p-day today. We wandered around the Latin Quarter and got paninis for lunch. An accordionist started playing "La Vie en Rose" in the middle of the square and I seriously almost burst into tears, it was so dang perfect. How can you get more Parisian than that? After lunch, we went to the infamous Shakespeare and Company. I have been wanting to go to that bookstore for YEARS! It was on the very top of my list of bookstores i want to see before i die. It was absolutely perfect. i was in total heaven, as you can imagine. I felt like Belle when the Beast shows her the library. ("I've never seen so many books in my whole life!") it was magical. later on, we went and got organic gelato made with fresh fruit. It was delicious... and they shaped the ice cream like a rose in my cone! like i said, today was practically perfect in every way.

if you can't already tell, i am so very happy. i love missionary life. i love parisian life. i love my life. and i love YOU!

avec tout mon amour,
la petite missionnaire.

photos.

one of the greatest days ever.

i'm pretty sure this is what heaven looks like.

can i live here?

a cherry center surrounded by chocolate petals. yum.