Captain Moroni and Other Superheroes

Another email, emails are the best!!

Dear Family,

Ok, so this week I'm having a bit of some challenges uploading pictures, but I wanted to be sure that I wasn't neglecting to share all of the wonderful pictures of the week. 

Yes, I finally did get out to see the Jardin du Luxembourg--which is a cute hangout for all of the families in Paris. They had a massive park, with a huge playground, several games of soccer going on, tennis matches, older men playing the french version of the italian game of booles and, yes, several chess tournaments. It was so fun to walk around and see all the different groups of people gathering together focusing in on their game. That was a real taste of french culture at its finest.

And then, we decided to take a couple of stops down the metro line to see the Arc de Triomphe and we finally climbed to the top! Get this- its free with a passeport and visa! It was the most beautiful sight looking all around us at the rest of Paris and so worth it. We are so super blessed to being serving where we are!

And to explain the pictures. The Family Girard (who we spent Christmas with) is moving out of our ward this week to go to Nantes, so we took a couple of pictures with them and their girls. (Notice how their daughter Inos is sooo excited to smile for the picture...haha. We got her to warm up after a minute.)

This week we were so swamped with our schedule and found ourselves on trajet for most of the day taking a bus from one place to the next. And we had the chance to visit several families in our ward and get to know them better. One of the nights, we visited the Family Tchikaya. They have three kids and two of them are teenagers. We talked about heros and super-powers. (Yes, I promise that we weren't preaching false doctrine). And we talked about the story of Captain Moroni who was so strong and firm in his beliefs. I started elaborating on the story of him tearing off a peice of clothe to create the title of liberty. Soeur Walker will tell you that I was just getting so into telling the story, I'm not sure wear all of my elaborate french vocabulary words started formulating. Words like "drapeau", "vetement", "bataille" and others were just flying out of my mouth. It was so fun making the scriptures come to life for them.One of the kids even commented that he didn't know this story was in the Book of Mormon. Now, he does.

This week, we went and visited a few less active members. We invited Soeur Levrot to come along with us for the rdv and she met us at the church with her catholic friend to go teach! We walked through the rain and showed up to this member's apartment and I think she was so pleasantly suprised to see we'd brought a little company. We had a wonderful visit and it was so fun watching these three women just go on talking to each other. It goes to show that no matter what our religious denomination, activity in the church or current life situations may be, we are children of God. We have a lot more things in common than we have different.

It's a beautiful week in Paris. And it is such a wonderful blessing. I mean, who really gets to say that? I love this work and these people so much. They mean so much to me and I really feel like they are becoming a part of who I am and what I do. Heaven must be much like that.

Sincerely,

Soeur Hopkins

xoxo,

Melissa