Joyeuses Noël !

Joyeuses Noël toute le monde ! 

I cannot believe it is that time of year again! I hope that you are all enjoying this holiday season with friends and family and that it is just as merry and bright as ever! 

This has been one of the greatest weeks of my life, and honestly is probably the most memorable Christmas ever! I might even add, the best Christmas ever! I was reflecting on where I was a year ago from today, and oh la la so much has changed! Being a missionary during Christmas is such an interesting experience! Christmas is such an amazing time of year with the lights, music, movies, traditions, gifts, and you name it! It is often easy to forget the true reason for the season. Jesus Christ! Now, I know that as a missionary that is the only thing I focus on right now, but in so doing my perspectives have changed so much! Christmas isn't Christmas because of the presents; Christmas is Christmas because of family, friends, and the experiences we have grâce au Christ ! (Thanks to Christ) This year the greatest gift I have received is Jesus Christ, because if it wasn't for Him, I wouldn't be here right now having these incredible experiences everywhere I go. I have so much more love and gratitude as a missionary for this season and its true meaning. I couldn't be happier!  (er jollier 😋 )

This week we had so many rendez-vous with members of course, but also some miraculous ones with friends old and new! 

Monday night we started the week off strong by going to les Neville! They are so cute! (Frère Neville is one of the counselors in the Bishopric.) Now, the travel to the house was a bit more complicated than planned. LOL! I've said it once before, but if you know me, you know I am not dué avec le navigation. Normalement, since they live just behind the gare we would just hop off the train and take a little foot path located behind the gare that leads directly to their house, which only takes 5 minutes, but for some reason we decided to use Google maps, which took us to their house in the way that a car would go. 🙄 20 minutes later we get a call from Soeur Neville asking if we were ok. We said we were, but a bit lost. 🤣 Long story short, we made it to their house and had a great time! They have a set of twins that are about 6 months old. (I have lots of experience in that area. 😉) They also have a little girl about 4, and a rambunctious boy about 6! I felt right at home! 😂 It was funny, because as soon as we started the spiritual thought, their son Pierre came up to us, looked right at us and said, "That isn't interesting" and ran away.  Then, as soon as we started the video he came running back saying how interesting it was! 😂 Never underestimate the power of videos!! LOL

Over the course of my mission I have had the amazing opportunity to hear a lot of blessings given in French, but an experience I had this week surpasses them all. We got a contact for a lady about a week ago from the Elders. Her aunt is a member, so although she isn't a member, she is familiar with the church and was looking to get a blessing for her daughter. Honestly, how it all happened was an absolute miracle! We were at the church one night expecting the lady to come with her daughter at some point, but unsure of exactly when. We suddenly received a text saying that she was there. Luckily we had already texted one of the priesthood holders in the ward, Johann, (we work with him and his wife Louise a lot and they are seriously some of my favorite people)  asking if he was available to come. We left the office to greet her and from there went to find Johann. As it was a blessing for health reasons, Johann asked us if there was another priesthood holder in the building, and miraculously there was! Totally unplanned! He was even a member of our stake.

The six of us then gathered together into a room where we explained about what a blessing is and how it works. We asked the mother if she had any prior experiences with blessings, and she recounted an experience she had back in 2005 where she was healed! I can't describe how much the Spirit enveloped the room in that moment. It was incredible to see the impact that experience had on her, even years later. Johann and the other brother then pronounced a blessing of heath on her daughter and it was such a tender blessing. The Spirit in the room absolutely increased! At the close of the blessing I had a burning to testify and share with her experiences I've had with blessings for health and shared my testimony with her. We then had an incredible conversation as we talked more about faith as a motivator to us feeling the power of God. This experience is definitely one I will never forget! The amazing thing to me was the incredible faith of these women.  Although neither were members of our faith, they sought and desired a blessing, motivated by faith in God and His plan. 

We also had a Zone Conference this week...Christmas edition! It was so fun and very refreshing! Before we were spiritually nourished, we got physically nourished - mean first things first, right?! 😂 Maybe a month ago, Krispy Kreme opened in Paris and funny enough, some of the missionaries made an appearance in the New York Times and other forms of press highlighting the opening. On the way to Zone Conference in Versailles, a couple districts decided to make a quick stop to check out the new Krispy Kreme! It was actually pretty good, but dang, just one donut almost sent me into a sugar overload! It has been a second since I've had an American donut! 🤣 And lucky us, the "Hot and Ready" sign was on so we all got free glazed donuts to go, along with the frosted sprinkled ones we bought! Good times! 

After our nostalgic sugar high, we made our way to the chapel in Versailles for one of the greatest Zone Conferences ever! It wasn't like past ones I have grown accustomed to. We began with a devotional from the Munns where we talked about symbols of Christmas. I loved it! We talked about the meaning of the candy cane, the significant of Bethlehem, etc. - I'll include more specifics in my pensée spirituelle. 😉 After the devotional we enjoyed some fun activity rotations! We had fun making cards, creating clothespin missionary ornaments for the Christmas Tree in the mission home, and even LINE DANCING! YES! I DANCED! 

We have a senior couple in our mission, the Austins, who were actually part of the folk dancing department back at BYU! They were called on a European Mission to teach different dances, traditional and cultural, from all over the world to the young adults and missionaries in Europe! It was soooo much fun and definitely left me feeling super refreshed! I miss dancing!!

In between each activity there were also musical numbers, which included my équipe along with the équipe of the Lille Soeurs performing the musical number we sand for our stake Christmas activity! It was such a great time!

Also! I saw both of my blues: Soeur Letourneau et Soeur Thurgood! They both looked so good! I felt like such a proud mama! 😂 

Sooooo, with me being a dancer I felt very inspired by the line dancing we did - which yes, was one of the greatest things ever - and decided we needed to also include line dancing in our English lesson!  So, yes, we line danced in English class! 🤣🤠 It was so fun! Soeur Smith and I decided to have a little holiday party for Christmas and everyone loved it! We also taught "Cotton Eye Joe" and "Rockin Around the Christmas Tree" to our class! We in turn learned some traditional French dances from those in our class! They taught us the "Turtle Dance," which comes from Senegal and consists of our hands being placed on our knees as we move our knees in and out and rock side to side slightly, while also craning our necks in that same direction - like a turtle! 😂 We also learned an oriental folk dance! Well, to be honest I mostly watched since I can't really move like that, but it was beautiful! 

#Miracles

We also had some rendez-vous this week which I definitely count as total miracles! Do you remember Samy? He was a reference from the Elders who we had a hard time getting in contact with, but he showed up to the Stake Christmas activity and then to church the next day! Well, we had a rendez-vous with him this week and taught about The Book of Mormon and it was incredible! We had Louise join us (Johann's wife) and she made all the difference! Samy was a bit fermé at the beginning, but it was so incredible to see him open up more and more as the lesson progressed. He was asking such good questions about how he could personally apply what we were talking about and we had a really good conversation. Louise was incredible as she was able to easily connect with him. We invited him to read 3 Nephi 11, and we are planning on a rendez-vous next week, so fingers crossed! 

And miracle #2! We were finishing up our calls from RRT, (contacts we find through references from Facebook) when we got a call from someone we didn't know. We answered, and this sweet person called us with the most excitement I've ever heard a French person have on the phone just to wish us a Merry Christmas! So darn cute! Turns out the call was an ami from way back when! We scheduled a rendez-vous with him for later in the week... and he came! We had Eléa (the stake President's daughter who just got back from her mission) there with us and we simply talked about the role of the bergers (shepherds) in the crèche and why they are so significant. It was a really good conversation, buuuut Luc (that is his name) turned out to be a bit if a talker. 😂 Every time we tried to close out the rendez-vous he would just keep talking and sharing life stories, which were cool - buuuuut we didn't have as much time as was needed to hear them all. LOL. BUT, that is okay, we scheduled another rendez-vous so we could hear them all the next time. 😉

So there is a first for everything! At home I tend to burn things when I cook - yeah, I'm kinda known for it in my family... but don't worry! I've gotten way better! And now it's pretty 50/50 like any normal person. 😉 And I might add that while on the mission I've done pretty good for myself! Not as many things burned and no fires started! Ok....correction - actually, only one fire started. Yea, my bad. But don't worry it wasn't anything too serious. 😜 On Saturday the Lille Soeurs, the Elders, and us decided to make some cookies for our wards. Because it's Christmas, and since the secret of getting to the member's hearts around here is through giving them American cookies - we did just that! We made them ginger snaps, chocolate chip, and snickerdoodle cookies! It was a blast! Soeur Smith and I were the last ones to bake our cookies as we were going back and forth from the church to our apartment because we had some rendez-vous throughout the day, including one with a friend referred from the Saint-Omer Elders. He is actually pretty cool, and we had a good discussion with him about the Restoration! Anyway, we go to take out our batch of cookies, but as soon as we opened the oven we were greeted with a fire coming from the parchment paper! Ahhh! I closed the door so fast! All I know how to do is stop drop and roll! And I don't think that works in this situation unless I'm in the oven with the fire - C'est la principle of out of sight, out of mind! One of the Elders came running in and he and Sœur Smith took the sheet out of the oven while Elder Applegate ran to get the fire extinguisher. Elder Lantz quickly crumpled up the paper in his hands and just like that the fire was out! We all stood there shocked, worried if he had been burned, but luckily he was fine. Elder Applegate came in just then, standing there holding the fire extinguisher, ready if needed. 🤣 Elder Lantz seemed a bit shocked as well, as he had planned to throw the paper under the water, but surprised it extinguished so easily when he crumpled it up. It was just chaos and we all were a bit stunned, but in the end no cookies were harmed in the process, nor missionaries, nor anything else! No creatures stirring! 😉

Alright my friends this is a very long update buuuuut I'm ALMOST done! Hang in there! 

Of course I also celebrated Noël ! Whoop Whoop! On Christmas Eve at church, one of our favorite couples, who live in Belgium, surprised us with Belgian treats! Gaufres, chocolate, and macarons! Yup! You'd never know it but almost everything is made in Belgium! This couple is seriously my favorite! The Fraikins have had us over a few times and they have always made us homemade Belgian fries! They have a fry maker in their house, and they are just the cutest! We of course got some other treats from other members too. It was so sweet of everyone! That night we spent Christmas Eve at chez Boutoille! President Boutoille is the second counselor in the mission presidency and he is one of the coolest people ever! He speaks English fluently and changes between both languages so often that I can't keep up! 😂 We went over and they had all their family there. (Which, if you remember, my whole ward is related to each other in some way, as everyone is an actual direct cousin - so naturally most of the ward was there too. LOL) We had Frère Boutoille on our team and we played Jeopardy based on random facts! And let me just say, I was able to move my team into second place by knowing that there are 7 rings of Saturn for 500! It was fun! We then made and decorated a bunch of cookies to give to neighbors and friends. Before enjoying a wonderful dinner, we read the Christmas story in the various évangiles (gospels). I felt so much joy being there and simply watching everyone be together! Before we knew it, it was 22h00 and we had to be home by 22h30! We ate so late that we didn't have time to sing carols or have dessert with everyone, but that's OK! Our Bishop and his family gave us a super sweet gift and we enjoyed such a wonderful night with everyone! 

Then the real adventure began... Louise was the designated driver and I was the designated navigator. To paint a better picture of why this might not have been the best plan, Louise had barely gotten her driver's license, (it works a bit differently in France) and back home I am known for not being too great with navigation. We were an excellent combo! 🤣 Long story short - we got home right as the clock struck midnight, so we didn't turn into pumpkins but I can say I saw just about all of Lille...and her night life! 😂 We then got a message from Louise, an hour later, saying that she had gotten home safely - after missing two exits. 🤣 

On Christmas Day we went to the other giant family in the ward, the Duez's, (the Stake President) where we saw the other half of the ward! LOL! We had lunch with them and it was really nice and tranquille. It was great! Such a great holiday!

Spiritual Thought

Well, you finally made it to the end! 🙌 

During our zone conference we talked about the candy cane, the shepherds crook, and the role of the shepherd where the conversation continued unplanned at the Bouteille.

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." 

( Luke 2:8-11) 

Our Savior, the King of Kings, came into the world in the humblest of circumstances. The first to greet this sacred child were the shepherds, the humblest of people. Those shepherds were divinely and specifically prepared for that blessed moment. It is no coincidence and absolutely symbolic that The Good Shepherd was greeted first by other shepherds. I hope you will ponder on the role of the shepherds, both on that sacred night, and the role of our ultimate shepherd in your life. 

Love you all! Joyeuses Noël ! À bientôt !

- Soeur Hansen 🥰