Soeur Hurd in Lyon: So 'Aix'-cited to be here!

I'm going down to Aix-en-Provence! Yes, unfortunately I will be
leaving the promised land of Lyon and heading back to the south. I
guess my blood is just meant for the sun because except for Lyon, my
whole mission has been down here. I will admit, I was sooo sad to
leave. The Ecully ward is amazing and I've had so much fun here. I've
come to love the ward members and amis here so much and will
definitely miss them. Luckily I had kind of felt the last couple weeks
that I would be leaving so I didn't unpack that much when we came to
the new apartment, and I started to take more pictures with members
and others. Also, Elder Thueson who has been ZL in the ward as long as
I've been here is coming down to be ZL in the ward in Aix, so we're
just bringing the party in Ecully with us. The past month I've heard
the phrase twice over our pulpit "Ecully un jour, Ecully toujours,"
which means Ecully one day, Ecully always. So true!

Aix is so lovely. I'm excited to be back in the sunshine. I've done a
few exchanges here and I've been to the chapel for conferences. It's
niiiice. 🤑 Soeur Skalka, my new companion, is adorable! I've done
exchanges with her before and she's the cutest little sister. She did
however just inform me that we have no amis. Well, that sounds
familiar...so yeah I think it's going to be a lot like Cannes haha.
But we're going to work hard and find families and contact and Porte
all day if we have to! Some of my greatest memories of the mission are
the hard times like that.

The best thing about this: we're STLs over the sisters in Cannes so
I'll get to go back and do exchanges there!! I've often thought I
never got to say goodbye to some people there when I left and now I
have a chance to see them again. It's such a wonderful ward and who
can forget Mami Gentil! Also, remember our huge miracle man in Cannes
named Anthony? He's the guy that, after almost three months of no
success at all and never teaching lessons, contacted us asking us
about the church and if he could have the lessons. Soeur Holmgren and
I were finally able to teach a lesson together and he even chose a
baptismal date. Well, after I left he was still awesome but had some
opposition from his family so couldn't be baptized for a while. Well
he was officially baptized the last week of January!! This seems so
lame, but he is the first person of anyone I've ever taught on my
mission to be baptized. I'm so happy for him and everyone tells me
he's so awesome. I hope I'll be able to see him again!!

Last Monday we had an exchange with the St. Etienne sisters here in
Ecully. I was with Soeur Goreeba who is originally from île de la
réunion but has lived in Paris the past couple years. She's adorable!
It was sooo fun spending time with her and we saw some cool miracles.
One of them: after porting we went to go pass an inactive family that
I had never seen or heard about but just had their address on the
list. We arrived and rang up and the dad let us in. We figured he
would be alone so we would just schedule another rdv, but the whole
family ended up being there! There were four beautiful children and
sooo cute. We talked about Jesus and went through photos of him and
talked about ways we can be like him. The family is from Nigeria so it
was nice to speak English as well. They do family prayer every night
as a family, but I know the children would love to meet other kids
their age from the primary! We scheduled a rdv for later to do a
family night with them. Hopefully I'll get some news from Soeur Grant
about them in the next couple weeks.

We also had a really great rdv with Marsha on Thursday. We arrived and
we had planned on doing our lesson and then dinner afterwards. (Plug
for Marsha's cooking btw--she's so legit. She taught for the Paul
Bocuse cooking school in Lyon which is a HUGE deal and she's about to
start doing a cooking workshop at the ritz in Paris). Anyways we got
there and she said she invited a friend for dinner too so he was going
to show up. He came and he was a young guy Luca that worked at the
university near by and he sat down with us for a little, and instead
of doing some work in the other room until dinner like she suggested,
he stayed with us during the lesson! We taught the second half of the
plan of salvation after reviewing what we had talked about before, and
Marsha loved it. She kept nudging Luca, who's also Catholic, and
saying, "doesn't that make so much more sense?" When talking about pre
mortal life. "Genial!" When talking about baptisms for the dead. She
was eating it up and bearing testimony and she's not even a member
yet! Luca was asking really great questions as well and Soeur grant
and I both felt that we were supposed to teach that lesson that day
for a reason. We don't know if he'll be interested in taking the
discussions later but we definitely piqued his interest.

Saturday we had a cool experience as well. We had a rdv with Maman
Helene fall through so we had just the right amount of time to go
visit Soeur Cara, the relief society president in our ward. The past
two months she's REALLY been struggling with poor health and no one
can figure out what's wrong. She's one of those people that always
seems to be grumpy or stressed about something (at least during ward
council), so I've always been slightly intimidated by her and felt
like she hated the missionaries. Well we decided to go see her and we
knew it would only work out if the buses were coming at certain times,
because she lives far and Saturdays the buses are rare and her stop is
frequented much less. Well we arrived at the gare and the bus going to
her neighborhood was supposed to come right before, but it was late.
So we were able to get on right away! We ended up having a wonderful
rdv with her that left each of us feeling uplifted. I've often felt
around her that I was never doing enough, but this time every person
she asked about, we had helped or seen recently in some way. Much
better note to leave on. Then as we left me the bus going back to Lyon
was right there so we were able to make it back in time for our other
rdv. I was so grateful for the Lord's tender mercies, helping us out
so that we could help out his children who needed us that day.

Alas, I conclude my email with the obituary for Soeur Allison Hurd. My
friend and confidante the past year, my trainer, my hero. We said
goodbye this morning at the office and it was sad. I feel like it was
just a few short months ago when I found out she was my trainer, and
now, a year later, she has honorably finished her mission and leaves
me to keep the Hurd legacy going alone. The mission will be so weird
without her! I guess now it's time to start a real mission, right? We
were so spoiled for a year. I am jealous that you all will get to see
her now! She has truly become my best friend and I'm excited for the
closeness that our whole family will feel as a result of it. Pray she
gets into BYU so we can live and hang out together!!

Final news: ELDER CHRISTOFFERSON IS COMING TO OUR
MISSION😄😄😄😄😄😄😄 I know I shouldn't have favorite apostles
but...I'll work on that. IM SO EXCITED. March 15.

Je vous aime !

Soeur Melissa Hurd