Echos of Eternity

This week was...you guessed it...AWESOME.  Even though we lost a lot
of missionary work time (two days in Paris for legality and zone
meeting, ward conference, and sickness Sunday night), we still taught
a TON of lessons and made two new friends!

Monday night we met with Aude, she is the daughter of the Riem couple
in our ward.  She is a fascinating young woman.  On the outside she
looks really rough around the edges, baggy, dark clothes and
dreadlocks in her red hair, but as soon as she opens her mouth to
speak you could say she was a princess.  She has such a soft, refined
voice...the most beautiful French I've ever heard.  And her eyes are
so soft, literally windows into the soul.  She is a pretty lost 26
year-old, but I couldn't help thinking about the word "potential" when
I looked into her eyes... Every soul is so precious to our Heavenly
Father, and everyone, even if they try to hide it, has divine
potential.

Tuesday we went to Paris!!  But we spent the whole time in the Prefecture...

Wednesday we went to Paris!!  It was for a zone meeting... Elder
Peterson, who went to American Heritage, is in my district now!  How
cool is that?

Thursday was just GENIAL.  We taught a bunch of lessons.  We made a
new friend, her name is Hélène, and she is...wow, amazing.  So, we are
teaching the little boy named Damien, and he lives super far away,
takes over a hour to get to his house...So it's hard to time it just
right.  We had gotten there early a week ago, so we decided to do a
little porte-a-porte in his little neighborhood.  We were rejected by
a couple people, but mostly there was nobody home.  Then the last door
we knocked on a teenage girl answered and quickly went to get her
mother.  Hélène came to the door and said..."Are you...the, what are
they called again?  Mormons?"  Growing up she had known a member of
the church, who moved away like 20 years ago.  She told us she was
Agnostic, but that she'd be happy to let us come back the next week.
So, on Thursday we stopped by right before our appointment with Damien
and she was there, expecting us.  She sat us down and said, "ok, I'm
listening to you!"  haha.  We got her talking about her beliefs,
because, frankly we were interested in what exactly an Agnostic was.
And.she.has.INCREDIBLE.faith in God.  I was so touched.  She said that
she has seen so many answers to prayers that she could never deny his
existence.  She just didn't know who He was really or take part in any
religion.  We told her that we believe that God is our Heavenly Father
and that He has created a plan for us.  We asked her what she thought
about the three questions, Where do we come from?  Why are we here?
And what happens after death?  Her answers stunned soeur Tupai and
I... it was almost exactly the Plan of Salvation..we discussed the PDS
a little bit, left her with the brochure and are going back next week,
and she's inviting a friend! It was really a touching experience for
us because just that morning we had read in Preach My Gospel, that we
are not teaching people anything new...these are truths that they knew
before...echos of eternity.

The weekend was also just amazing.  We saw Charlotte again...this time
she accepted the book of Mormon, and started devouring it
immediately...never seen anything like it!  We had an exceptional
lesson with Karine and Christoff, watching Monson's talk on "love"
from the last conference.  Christoff said, "what I understand is that
you guys are like the Catholics, but you go even further."  He also
told us, obviously very pleased with himself, that they had "dowloaded
the Bible"...haha this is all very new for him!  It's really fun to
watch how excited he is getting.

Ward conference was just amazing.  We had three amis and their
families there!  All of them surprises (they had all said "maybe")
Things are really starting to pick up here!  Love it love it love it.