Hello all! Things are starting to slow down and be a bit more normal this week. My understanding of French is still nowhere near perfect, but especially my comprehension skills are growing by leaps and bounds! Luckily I was not called upon to translate at church this week, so I got to practice a lot then. There's not quite as much to say in this email, so just a few quick thoughts.
I've talked a little bit before about the ward here, but I'm still impressed by how strong and kind the members here are. I love having dinners and lunches with the members because we get to know them so much better than just at church! All the members are really involved with the missionaries, and they are so good at inviting us over, participating in lessons, etc. The ward here is really multicultural as well- a lot of people speak both English and French, at various levels of fluency for both, as well as a bunch of other languages. This week we got to visit with the families Granal (French and English), Ranier (French and English), and Taie (French and Tahitian), as well as with Mami Simone (Cambodian and French). They are all so loving and amazing! I love this ward.
We are also having some good progress with our amis. We are meeting new people to teach all the time, and the people we've been teaching for a little while keep coming back! We've especially seen progress this week with a young African woman named Soroya. She has been searching for her path for a while now, and is definitely feeling the Spirit with us. She hasn't yet committed to be baptized, but she is keeping her commitments to read the scriptures and pray, and she came to church yesterday! That was definitely a miracle. It's really hard to get our amis to come to church- they are usually pretty busy, they generally don't have cars, and buses to the chapel come about once every hour on Sundays. But we keep hoping!
We keep having new adventures with our apartment! This week it wasn't the chaudière that was the problem (we have a new one now), it was the door to the bathroom. In France the "bathroom" is generally divided into two rooms, the "toilet" with the actual toilet and the "salle de bains", with a sink, bathtub, washing machine, etc. The door to our salle de bains has been broken for a while now, at least since before Sr. Liard got here in April. The latch isn't connected to the handle, and the handle is actually off the door. What we have at this point is a piece of duct tape placed over the latch to keep the door from closing and latching. Normally you can pull on the piece of tape to push the latch in enough to open the door. Well, you can probably guess what happened next- the piece of tape broke, and Sr. George got stuck in there! We tried all sorts of methods to try to jimmy it open, and then called the senior couple. They had no clue either. Eventually we tried to break it open by chiseling out the wood by the door, but we had no proper tools for that. This was all quite a while after bedtime, and eventually a neighbor came and yelled at us so we stopped the banging. We managed to pass some pillows and blankets to Sr. George through the next window, and she slept in there that night! The next morning Sr. VanAuker was able to figure out how to pop open the latch, and we got her out in time for them to catch their train to Brest for exchanges! Definitely a miracle that we were able to get her out in good time, and although we were all really tired the next day, we managed to still all work hard the next day.
Today we had the AMAZING opportunity to go and tour Mount St. Michel. It is the most gorgeous abbey, all built on a rock on the edge of the ocean. It's definitely a tourist trap, but I don't even care, it's so beautiful! With the kind of visa we have, and because it's a national monument, we were able to go and visit the abbey for free! We only had to pay for the bus there and back. I took so many pictures- I LOVE cool old places like that! Best part? We got to wear pants! Hooray for pants!
Wow! I think that's about it for this week! As always, I love hearing from home- stories, pictures, etc. are such wonderful blessings. Thanks so much for all your support- love you all! Gros bisous!
Sœur Rogers
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