I survived another week! 😊 life is crazy, but beautiful.
So I realized that I haven't really explained much about where I'm serving. I'm living in one of the suburbs Lyon, which is either the second or third largest city in France (if you count the suburbs, it's bigger, if you don't, Marseille is). So I'm living a very big city existence. We use buses and metros to get literally everywhere, and we walk a lot. Or run, if we're trying to catch a bus. Missionary life. I've learned that getting caught in metro doors is to be avoided at almost all costs because they're pretty hard to force open, getting caught in bus doors is painful but not nearly as hard to get out of, and the doors at the checking stations to get into the metro don't hurt, but have alarms. Pro tips. The diversity in this city is incredible, like, lots of Africans and middle easterners, and lots of languages! I still use English a lot, though the broken English that Nigerians speak is a bit hard for me to understand... I'll get there.
So on Saturdays, we have this activity we do where we play sports with all our various friends so they can get to know each other better and also see that we're real people too. It was great, this random French teenager volunteered to be our goalie, and he literally scored a goal by kicking the ball from our goal into theirs. Whoa. I hadn't played any sports since I was forced to in gym class... 4 years ago? But soccer is actually pretty fun, even though I'm not particularly good. I had fun anyways, but I'm still sore... ouch.
So I watched an older elder give a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday, and was like, whoa, that looks stressful. I can barely give a ten minute talk in English, much less French. Then I was approached after sacrament meeting... yup, I'm speaking next week. Pray for me, this is gonna be a stretch...
Manon is doing great, she's so cool! She's made so many changes in her life, and she looks so much happier now. Her dad isn't particularly uh... in favor? But she's 18, and he's willing to support her, he just wants to understand what she's doing. So we'll be meeting with him this week too.
So yeah! Life is insane but I'm having a lot of fun learning and growing. And people understand me... most of the time. And I understand them... most of the time. I'll get there.
Also! We had the cutest miracle yesterday. We'd just spent a lot of time inside, and we were going a little crazy. So we're walking home, and we talked to a guy on the street, and we were starting to walk away when I asked him what these cute little flowers were that grow literally everywhere. He gave like, some name I'd never heard of, then suddenly said, "do you want some?" And said, "wait here." And he pulled some out, then went inside and grabbed a pot and some soil, and then gave them to us. Guess what? The next guy we ran into commented on me having "violets." I thought they might be, still not sure, but I love them whatever they are. I have little purple flowers in my apartment now. I actually went by the name "Violette" for my last semester of college because another girl in the French house was also named Rachel, so it just made me really happy. Little ways God cheers us up when it's been a long day 😊
Anyways, I love you all, and hope you're doing well!
SÅ“ur Cate
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