Bonjour à tous!!

Happy Birthday mom!!! I hope you had a wonderful birthday!! It sounded like it was a great party!! We sang to you from France! :)

Soo. Soeur Bennion is leaving for Lille on Wednesday! We'll go to Paris, send her on her way and I shall pick up my new companion Soeur Autumn Bradley. I don't know anything about her yet so I'll get back to you on that next week.

This past week was full of miracles as usual! We worked really hard this week trying our best to strengthen this ville! On Monday night we were coming home from porting and we were on the tram. We ended up talking to a woman, Elanor and gave her a book of Mormon! We were just chatting about prayer and faith in God and she started talking about how she had nightmares every night but if she prayed they weren't too bad. immediately alma 37:37 from the Book of Mormon came to my mind so I opened up and shared it with her. She read it and asked, "What book is this?" I answered it was the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. So we introduced it and she asked if she could have it! It was a really cool miracle and it just built my testimony that Heavenly Father will give me the words that His children need to hear. The Spirit will always give us what to say, we just need to have the courage to open our mouths to share the gospel! 

Then on Thursday we saw our favorite amie, Nancy and her little baby Frank jr. and WE FIXED A BAPTISMAL DATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I seriously cannot express my happiness. I want this SO MUCH for her. I can't wait!!! The only problem is...she is moving into the Lyon Mission boundaries!! haha which is fine, she will be well taken care of I just wasn't finished having her in my life yet! But we still have another week with her so that's good. I love her so much. Her husband is already a member so after she gets baptized, they'll wait a year and get sealed as a family forever in the temple!! I am so happy. I love being a missionary. Being a part of this is the best thing. Being a missionary is like having a front row seat to see the Atonement work in people's lives, it is the most amazing thing to experience. I am so grateful to be a missionary. I am so grateful for all the wonderful things I am learning out here. This transfer will be my happy halfway! It's really strange. I feel like it has gone by so fast but so slow. I can't believe it's halfway done! NOoooooo. haha I'm not done yet. I am so glad I still have so much time to be a servant of the Lord and taking care of the people here in France. I love being a missionary more than anything. I have never had so much happiness in my life until I came here. There is a joy in missionary work that is unlike anything else. I love the gospel. I love the knowledge that I have, that brings me so much peace and the ability to share that with others is an absolute blessing. I'm excited our ward back home is getting so missionary minded!! As missionaries, we NEED the members!!! It is our members that open so many doors for us. The members have a special spirit and their testimonies touch the hearts of our amies every. single. time. Being a part of hastening the Lord's work is a wonderful blessing and I have seen so  many miracles here in France and I know you can too back home as you work with the missionaries there and reach out to others. 

Quote for the week!

"Fill your life with service to others. As you lose your life in the service of Father in Heaven’s children, Satan’s temptations lose power in your life. Because your Father in Heaven loves you profoundly, the Atonement of Jesus Christ makes that strength possible. Isn’t it wonderful? Many of you have felt the burden of poor choices, and each of you can feel the elevating power of the Lord’s forgiveness, mercy, and strength."-Elder Richard G. Scott

I love you all so much!! thank you so much for your support and prayers!!

all my love, soeur hawkes 

 The end of transfer 5!!!!

Yes. it is true. I cooked a wonderful delicious dinner of barbecue chicken, baked potatoes and mushroom beans. I want everyone to know that I can cook!! Just another wonderful thing I have learned on my mission!! I'll admit the chicken was just a tad bit burned but it was still delicious! I am so proud hahah!

Soeur Pajimola and her adorable little girls! She is from the Phillippines and is a less-active we visit each week. I adore her so much. 

"Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God?"

Bonjour à tous!! 

Another week of miracles of course!! This week was really so good. We saw a lot of our amies become progressing and we had exchanges, ate delicious African food and crepes bigger than our faces, and met a really nice American family at church! 

Soo Tuesday, we were out contacting and we stopped a girl about 20 years old named Kathy. And we testified of a loving Heavenly Father who wants to talk with us through prayer. I asked her who God was for her and she was caught off guard a bit. She said, "I want to believe, but I have a lot of doubts"  so we asked about her doubts and she talked about all the bad things that happen in the world to good people and she wanted to believe in a loving Heavenly Father but how was it possible? Oooh it was totally perfect! I told her she could know for herself if she only asked. Then we taught her how to pray and I felt the Spirit soo strong as we testified that she would receive an answer if she asked. I told her of the experience I had when I asked Heavenly Father if He was there and if He loved me. I saw the Spirit touch her heart and she told us she would pray. It was absolutely amazing to feel the Spirit working through us. It is really a neat feeling when I can be an instrument in God's hands. Kathy is His daughter and He loves her and wants her to feel that! So He sent us to tell her and that is the BEST thing about being a missionary! I love when I can be a tool in His hands and I can help His children. It makes everything else totally worth it. 

Then later that night we went on exchanges with the stls. SO fun. I love Soeur Finneran. She is an amazing missionary, teacher and listener. We went to see an old amie Cecile. The sisters before us met her but were never really able to teach her much. So Soeur Finneran and I went and talked with her about eternal marriage and forever families and how we can have that through the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. She LOVED it. and she accepted a soft invitation to baptism! It was aaamazing. I love her! She has three kids and her youngest is about 11 and he's learning English and chinese! They are all Catholic, really believing, but she is recently divorced and really open to our message. I am so excited to see her again this week and invite her to church! Being a missionary is so much fun. I love teaching people about the gospel and seeing the light come into their eyes. I love being an answer to their prayers and I love helping them feel God's love. Being a missionary is the best thing I have ever done and I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for allowing me to be here! 

thanks for all your support and prayers! I love you all sooo much!! 

avec amour soeur hawkes :) 

Tours is so beautiful! 

                                             We went running around Tours for P Day last week!

                           Exchanges! Soeur Finneran is on the one in orange and soeur linton was with Soeur bennion   

                                        On the train on our way to Bourges for district meeting!

Bonjour à tous! 

It was SO wonderful to talk with you yesterday!!! oh my gosh it made me SO happy!!! except everyone looks so grown up!! haha stop growing!!!! You guys sound like you are doing wonderful and it really was the best talking with you. Feeling your love and support and encouragement really gave me that boost that I need to keep going and talking with you reminded me why I decided to come to France. I wanted this! I wanted to leave you guys for 18 months, to a foreign land where I didn't know anything or anyone. I wanted it, because of the happiness that we have in our family. Because I saw the blessings that have come to us because of the gospel and I wanted it for other people. So thanks for that :) Also I am SOOO happy to hear the news about Aunt Rhonda! I was telling the Family Kehli all about it and they were really touched too. Heavenly Father is taking such good care of our family. :) Just stay safe with Jeff's driving! haha jk I'm sure he is a really really good driver!! Tell Zach to write me a bloomin letter! I want to hear about his life. I'm sorry I didn't really get to talk with everyone super in depth about the details of their lives, there just wasn't enough time for everything! Just know that I love you and pray for everyone one of you every day!! 

So Mother's Day here yesterday was really great. Soeur Bennion and I talked with both our families and hung out with the Family Kehli and our amies Rosalie and Megan-Grace came too! So that was really fun just to spend the day with them. I absolutely adore these people so much! I never ever want to leave Tours!!

Thursday we were in Angers (my bleue ville!!) for zone conference and had interviews with President. It was amazing! I love zone conferences so much. They are always just in time to give me exactly what I need. I always get the answers to my questions and the strength to keep going! So I had my interview with President which went really great. I love him so much and I am so sad he is leaving in just two months!!! But we talked and he said something that really really scared me. He said, "you have progressed so much and you are ready to train. So prepare for that." AHHH!!!! Instant fear. but also excitement. haha so now I REALLY have to improve my French and figure out this whole missionary thing! I remember my MTC teacher told me that there never came a point on his mission where he felt that he was the missionary that he wanted to be. I didn't really understand what he was talking about until I got out here in the field. But not I do because I am always improving and there is forever and always something to work on. I am constantly striving to do better than the day before. And it can be exhausting at times but that daily struggle of becoming better just makes the Atonement of Christ more and more of a reality to me, When I first came to Tours, I felt my guilt weighing me down at the end of the day when I felt I hadn't measured up to being the missionary I wanted to be. But now I've come to understand more than ever, in a very real, very personal way that the Atonement of Christ is something to rely on every single day. I have learned that guilt and discouragement because of my weaknesses is not something God wants me to feel! He wants us to recognize how we can improve but along with that recognition of our weaknesses He offers us the hope of His Son that through Him, we can overcome our weaknesses and become stronger and better. Heavenly Father sent us here to be happy! So why should we spend time being sad about all the things we've done wrong? If we really have faith in Christ then we know that through Him we can have fresh start everyday and that truth can bring us so much hope and happiness that we never have to let anything else in the world bring us down! 

Petit Miracle!

So after Zone Conference Soeur Bennion and I had some time before I train back to Tours so we went contacting all over Angers!! It was so fun to be there again and to show S.Bennion everything and we talked to a lot of really cool people. We were praying really hard that we would be able to find someone that was interested in our message and we left brochures and strong testimonies with a lot of people but no coordonnees. But then we were on the train ride back to Tours and a really nice woman sat next to the Blois sisters and they all sat and talked the whole train ride. Eventually they waved me over,(I had been sitting down farther in the train) and it turns out this woman, Julia lives in Tours! And the sisters had given her the Book of Mormon and explained it and Julia wanted to know more! So we exchanged infor and we will be seeing her later this week! I am so excited and it was such a tender mercy from Heavenly Father. 

I love you all so much more than you know! Thank you so much to everyone for your prayers and support!! Have a great week!!

avec amour soeur hawkes :) 

So we went to Soeur Taylor's last week....we weeded her garden. It had weeds up to our knees and we found lots of snails and spiders!! It took forever and we were shoveling and digging in the dirt for hours. Then we put together a lawn mower that you had to plug in and tried to mow her grass, we finally just took shears to it. It was sooo much fun and when we left Soeur Taylor thanked us so much and expressed how much we had brightened her day! YAY. It was a fun time. 

                                                                      Eatin snails!! haha 

"The Gospel is not weight; it is wings. It carries us."

Bonjour à tous!! 

This week was full of adventures and miracles!! 

On Thursday, it was the holiday for work. So there wasn't a soul working. which means no public transportation. So we decided to walk to all of our appointments! It was actually pretty fun until it started pouring rain. Then we couldn't stop laughing as our makeup dripped down our faces and our boots filled with puddles of water. We ended up walking about 1 1/2 hours in the rain to our amies Nancy and Frank. We showed up at their door, soaking wet and all they said was, 'where's your umbrella?' haha we had left early that morning when the sky was clear and blue so obviously didn't think about it! But we had a great rdv with them and walked the hours home to curl up in a blanket and get warm again! It was a great day.

Tuesday we met with Chantal, a woman we had met Easter Contacting. We taught with a member, Ghislaine whom I absoltuely adore. Her testimony is so strong and she brought the spirit so quickly so strongly during our lesson with Chantal. We were able to commit her to baptism that day and I know it's because of the amazing spirit that Ghislaine brought. We really do need members in order for this work to progress!!

This week I studied a lot about gratitude. Trying to implement it more into my life, because I've noticed that each time I look for the things to be grateful for in my life rather than at the things I feel I am lacking,  it helps me feel lighter and opens my eyes to God's love. I read a talk called Gratitude: A Path to Happiness and it was amazing!! She asked a question that pierced me. She asked, "Adversity compels us to go to our knees, but does gratitude for adversity do that as well?"

I sat and thought long and hard about that question. And honestly in some many cases I'd have to say no to that. As humans I think it isn't our natural tendency to be grateful when we are struggling. But it's through our struggles that we come to know our Heavenly Father and to really feel of His love and peace. I know that it has been through my struggles that the Atonement of Christ has become more than just a story but an actual reality and a source of power that I can access everyday. Today in studies I read 3 Nephi 8-11. I absolutely loved it. My favorite was in 9:13-14 the Savior said, "O all ye that are spared, will ye not now return unto me and repent that I may heal you? If ye will come unto me ye shall have eternal life. Mine arm of mercy is extended towards you and whosoever will come I will receive." And of course the entire chapter 11. I felt the love of the Savior for me personally and I knew that He is waiting for each of us with open arms to accept His sacrifice and come unto Him. I love the Book of Mormon so much. It has helped my testimony of Christ grow so much. I know that Jesus Christ really atoned for all of our sins and that He truly is our Savior through personal prayer and study of the Book of Mormon. I am so grateful for the scriptures that we have and the peace we can find there. Each time I feel stressed or worried or homesick I just open my Book of Mormon and suddenly I know somehow it will all work out. It brings a peace I can't find anywhere else. I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon and the Spirit I can feel reading it! 

thanks to all for your prayers and support! I love you soo much!

avec amour soeur hawkes

p.s. we have no details about when we'll call on Mother's Day, our branch president is trying to figure something out for us and will let us know thursday night...so I will probably email you fridayor saturday to let you know the plan! I am SO excited!!! 

Lenaig came to see me in Tours!! 

                                      We got soaked walking home from church on Sunday.

 This is Ghislaine!! She's from Tahiti and she's a member. She is SO amazing and I absolutely adore her!! We took this after we taught Chantal and committed her to baptism!!

      I have never been so soaked from rain in my life. Every piece of me was dripping wet. LOVE IT!

                                               So much for our makeup..

       We hung out with Ghislaine and her husband and taught them how to make cinnamon rolls! It was so       
         complicated trying to translate everything into French ahah

                                                        Lenaig came to see me in Tours!!