Church Tour

This week was GENIAL.  There were some really high ups, and some pretty low downs.  But the ups made it all worth it!  We'll just focus on those, mmk?

Tuesday night we had a church tour with Karine and Christoff... it was amazing.  Haha when they walked in, you should have seen the look on their faces.  They loved it!  They were fascinated to learn about geneology, all the different organizations etc.  Christoff just couldn't contain himself, he kept saying things like, "this is a 'vachement chouette eglise' you have here!" haha.  Loved it.  Our lesson with them on Saturday was also really good.  Christoff had a ton of questions, and Karine answered pretty much all of them, because she had read the brochure on the Plan of Salvation right beforehand.  Anyways we explained to them the Book of Mormon and when we read the promise in Moroni 10 and inviting them to find out for themselves, the spirit was so strong. The two of them were just looking at us with an expression I will never forget… it was seriously surreal, Soeur Tupai just stopped midway through her explanation and blurted out "you two are just great!" haha they were like "what? why?" haha.  They are also hilarious, always joking around, seriously--I just love them.  They are just the cutest young parents ever: Karine makes, sews and knits all of her children's clothes, when we showed up Christoff was outside with Collette looking at the neighbors horses, and Christoff works with antique cars.  They are so "cool" (just like Frère Rulence said last Sunday, haha he came up to us and asked, "what's going on with that cool couple you guys brought over a few weeks ago?" haha)  Karine even came to church for the first time yesterday!  (Christoff couldn't because it was in the middle of Collette's nap).  We are hoping to see some great progression this week too!

We also went to Versailles this Friday for a mission conference.  Elder Snow from the quorum of the seventy, and some other general authorities spoke to us.  It was soooooo good to see some of my missionary friends again, especially my mom, Soeur Kohlert!  She is just the best, we got to catch up and reminice about Rennes.  Oh wow, Rennes seems like such a long time ago.  Exactly a year ago I arrived in France and Soeur Kohlert and I were running around finding Sophie and Fatima, baptizing Lucy, Shaina, Gladys....that was just another lifetime.  Anyways, Soeur Kohlert is such a great example to me...can't believe how lucky I was to be trained by her.  Best news ever---we are going to be practically neighbors next year at BYU (both living at condo row), so excited.

There are also some other exciting developments happening with our amis, but I'm going to hold off until next week to tell you about them.  Let's just say that the walls of Jericho are falling pretty rapidly out here in Arras!

I love you guys!  Talk to you next week.

P.S.  This morning we went to a WWI memorial out in a little town not far from Arras, called Vimy.  It was here that the Canadians won a huge victory against the Germans during the battle of Arras in April 1917.  It was pretty emotional...the land has all these crazy hills and craters, remnants of the miles and miles of trenches.  There were danger signs in front of a lot of these fields, warning that there could still be munitions and bombs in the earth...wow.  We got to see the British and Canadian front lines, 'no-man's land,' the German front line, we even got to go into the subterrain passageways.  The memorial is absolutely incredible.  The marble is sooo white, what got me the most was the sculpture of the woman, looking out from the conquered Vimy ridge...representing mourning Canada.  I can't believe all of that happened right here in Arras... so many heros... 

Another interesting note...Canadians speak French WAY diferently than French people!  Ohlalala our tour guide had an amazing Quebecois accent.  Super fascinating/hard to understand at first.