la.la.liv

Family, 

Bonjour mes chères. I hope you are all doing well. This week was great! I have to admit, the past few weeks I have had a bit of a 'french-people-are-cold-and-heartless' streak, and found my desire to talk to them waning, especially in the more French french french areas. And then. And then on Monday night we stopped by a woman whom we dubbed "Dior glasses lady" whom we had ported into a few weeks ago and told us to stop by another time. So we took the train to Fontainbleau and we trudged up to her door sopping wet and rang the sonnerie. She opened the door and welcomed us into her home, while handing me her little dog named Haribo. She lives in a home in Fontainbleau that looks like it could be featured in Vogue, and she has this awesome raspy French smoker voice. We went into her kitchen and she sat down with us and talked and listened to us so sincerely. She told us about her husband who had recently passed away and her family and the things that she loves about life, and talked to us about her relationship with God. She apologized for much of the French population, who she said she imagines isn't always the kindest to us, and then told us that she "is trying to bring a little bit of the American neighbor love" into French culture by taking her neighbors food from her garden. Then when we were leaving, instead of giving us the usual two kisses on the cheek, she said "I know in America you like to give hugs. Can I give you a hug?" And then she hugged us with a real hug and I felt like she was my grandma. I could have cried. She is not interested in coming to church or in learning that much about the gospel but she said "Come by whenever you want or if you ever need anything, stop by." Like I said, I could have cried. So the moral of this long story is this : French people can be open and kind and loving even to Mormon missionaries! And it was a nice humbling experience realizing that I was not being very loving towards a certain percentage of the population here. 

Then on the flip side of that we had a pretty crazy rdv yesterday when some Témoins de Jéhovah who let us in. They were nice at first and then BAM they came down on us with n'importe quoi, and articles about repressed Mormons and we just tried to testify of what we know and be kind. And then at the end we asked if we could leave them with a prayer and they moved away from us and scoffed as if we were parasites. Sigh. It was quite the experience.

On Tuesday it snowed like crazy and all the trains were cancelled or late and so we did a whole lot of wandering around looking for addresses. Wednesday we visited Soeur Egoshkin, a woman who is from Russia in our ward. She is in her late twenties and has two little kids and is my best friend in the ward. We love her. She recently started coming back to church, and she joined the church in Russia when she was 14 and was the first member of ten in her little Branch. We taught Madame Dumas twice this week and she is doing so well! Her daughter also started listening to the lessons and it is so amazing. She is a student studying architecture and is only there on the weekends, but we taught the Plan of Salvation this week and it went really well. That is my favorite lesson to teach. There is always a really tangible feeling of love and truth in those lessons.

On Friday we had the Elder Richards conference and it was ah-ma-zing. I was blown away by it. He and his wife were the loveliest people, and were so insightful. He started out by talking about knowing who we ARE and who we WERE. Our divine heritage and potential as children of God. Sometimes as a missionary it gets hard because people talk about numbers numbers numbers and I start to lose sight of what I know deep inside of me is the real reason I am here. The real reason I am here is to help people understand who they are and who they were. That we are children of God, and that there is a point to this all changes everything. There are eternal implications to our lives, and when we live it knowing that, life carries more beauty and more meaning. And baptism and accepting covenants is part of that. 

So life in Melun is good, and we found a few people last week who we are going to start teaching this week. Oh also! We got the news that we can email anybody, not just family on email now! That will be great, especially because my letter writing skills are plummeting. So yeah, emails are open to anyone. I haven't heard if I have more time or not, but I will keep you updated. We are heading to Fontainbleau today to walk around the chateau and jardins. We are packing these last few Pdays for Soeur Johnson! Fontainbleau is my fave town in our area. 

I love you! Beaucoup beaucoup. 

Bisous, 

Liv