Angers and a trip to Paris

So much to write and i don't know what to say. okay so right after I wrote you about Jessie, she dropped us. We think someone told her we were a cult because she said she didn't want to participate with our "community". she used a french word that basically means community but implies a cult type group. so we texted her back asking if she had heard we were a cult and said we weren't and we could explain it further for her. but if she didn't want to we would respect it. then we said how we know with all our heart that it's the right church and that it could bring her happiness.  it was a perfect text.... but she never replied back. so that's sad. But Emma's improving. we had a soirée familiale (fhe -so dinner with a spiritual thought) with her and the poznanski's (the mission president before president babin). it was nice because it was in English so i actually lead the lesson and it was great! haha now i just need to be able to lead the lesson in french... but we did this cool pyramid cup visual thing for the gospel of Christ. the spirit was so strong and i know that Emma felt it. sadly she couldn't come on Sunday to church because she had a huge project. so that's how my amis are. there are obviously more than just emma. but the never answer us or set up rendez-vous with us. it sucks. last week we had 5 lessons... and that's only because we prayed with 3 people on the street so it counted as a lesson. all we do is contacting, which gets very tiring. 

Actually that brings me to Friday. Friday, the France Paris mission and the mission of Lyon joined together in a day of finding. everyone canceled all their rendez-vous (we had none to cancel) and contacted or ported (door to door) from 9 am to 9 pm. and we had a lunch and dinner break. but besides that it was 10 hours straight of walking. It was really hard. also every 30 minutes we'd stop and pray for our mission and the mission of Lyon. it was super cool, but super exhausting. By the end of the day i was exhausted physically, mentally, and spiritually. a lot of other people had miracles happening all day, but we just had one the last hour of the night. We contacted this girl and she said she used to go to church with her family and such. and then she just asked us "how do you pray?" and we were like "what do we do when we pray?" and she said "no, how do you continue to pray?" it was such a cool question, we started to answer and then she said "actually I don't have time but here's my number, i live just over there, i'm going out of town on the 11th but i want to see you before then to talk more about this. i just want to know how you can continue to be practicing in you religion" it was awesome. usually we ask people for their number, people don't just give it to us...so that was cool. her name's aurore, we might see her tomorrow. i'll keep you updated. also on this day we "had" to buy a mille feuille for lunch. don't know if the second word is spelled right. but we got it because the goal for both missions was to find 1,000 people, and mille is 1,000 in french. so yeah that was cool.

Thursday we went to Paris. so our train was at 6 which meant we got up at 5.... fun. it took us forever to get to the legality place, but we did. after my companion got all her legality stuff done we went to what missionaries call consecration hill. i don't know if i wrote about it in my first email. but the first morning after we arrive they take all the missionaries to consecration hill. its a park in Versailles area and it overlooks Paris. it's beautiful. but we go there and we make goals for our mission. so we were already right there for the legality so we just stopped by it. it was perfect for my companion cause it was a year ago that she was in that same spot. for me it had only been two weeks and a day. it was weird for both of us. her cause it'd been a year. me, because it had only been two weeks when it felt like two months... i was thinking last night and by the time i'm done being trained i'll have almost been out for 6 months which would be 1/3 of my mission already. super weird.  but after consecration hill we went to Paris to really quick get lunch and get some pastry's from soeur Pettingill's favorite boulangerie. coincidentally it was the same two pastrys that she got with her trainer from the same store a year ago for soeur p's legality. haha so everything was perfect! then we had to rush back to the gares to catch our train and go back to Angers.

Last Tuesday we had our zone conference. there were three zones there, Angers, Rennes, and Tour. I saw my companion from the mtc there. she's really struggling with the language since her companions Tahitian and speaks little English. but it was weird seeing her. the mission president and ap's came. Aunt Jane yes i know Elder Davis. we're good friends now. the conference was all on how we can teach better. so the stl's taught about using scriptures. the zl's talked about unity in the companionship while teaching. the ap's talked about commitments. and the mission president talked about having our lessons be less of us talking and more of our amis talking. it was super good. and it was fun to see everyone. i'm sure that you saw photo's on fb from soeur babin of it. yes we did get pizza and it was really good! for those who don't know there is an fb page of my mission called 'France Paris Mission Babin" (https://www.facebook.com/pages/France-Paris-Mission-Babin/1439081099693073). you'll see me on there from time to time. 

This week was a lot better with French. I was really trying and sometimes i didn't think i was improving at all. but during my companionship inventory my companion said how much I've grown in the language, even each day. and then i was able to look back and see that i had improved a lot and that helped me not be discouraged which means that i can continue to grow. French is awesome, the way they say things is so beautiful!

okay, i think that's it for my week. today we may go hiking to this place that overlooks angers that no one knows about. so that'll be fun. so idk how many pictures i'll be sending because while i was in Paris i dropped my camera... it looked fine and everything was still working, but the next time i went to take a photo the picture had this cool blur affect on the edges. kind of like when you focus on one thing and everything else is blurred. well its like that, but its all the time... so i can't take pictures without half of it being blurred... which brings me to what i was going to ask you... Clarissa do you use your camera anymore now that you have my smartphone? cause if you don't you could just send that to me and i can use it. otherwise i'd have to buy a new one and i don't want to spend the money.... okay that's all.

Can't wait to hear more from you all! I will send a letter and postcard home today. I wrote it last week, but i forgot to buy stamps on pday. so i'm buying them today and sending it. so ignore the date i wrote at the top of the letters... cause it's a week late. love you all. i miss you all so much, but i'm so happy to be hear in France doing the lords work. I know without a doubt that this gospel is true and that we can live with our Heavenly Father again. so it doesn't matter if i'm away from you right now, cause i'll be with you all for eternity!

je vous aime beaucoup, toujour! et aussi vous me manquez beaucoup!

~Soeur Farmer

Consecration hill!

The two pastries in paris. ones calles an pistache, chocolat escargo (no snails in it, just the shape of it) the other is a croissant with almond and nutella. super good!

 The mille fieulles

on thursday we were walking around and found a bus stop called "champ du martyrs" which means "field of the martyr". just decided to take a picture with it