Bonjour ma famille!

This is the beginning of transfer 5!!! What. the. heck.

I can't believe I am almost halfway done with my mission. So not cool! 

But. This transfer, Soeur Bennion and I are staying together here in Tours!! We are going to see so many miracles I am so excited!! We are making big goals for this transfer so I am soups doups excited to accomplish them! She and I get along swimmingly. We are best friends and we are practically the same person it is freaky. We even both have a scar from getting a pencil stabbed into our left hand. Freaky? Extremely! We make a really good team here in Tours and we have so seen so many miracles and will continue to do so!!! 

Yesterday we had THREE amies at church!!! We were sitting in Sunday School and one of our amies, Anna showed up out of the blue!! We had invited her that week but she was pretty wishy washy about coming but it turns out the Elders had ported into her the day before and she said we had already met with her and invited her to church so they insisted she come and she did!! I was so happy and smiling so big I thought I was going to burst! And then our other two amies were Rosalee and her daughter Megane-Grace who is nine came as well. And Megane got up and bore her testimony that Heavenly Father answers prayers. It was amazing!!! It was such a beautiful Sunday! 

Today we went to the Chenonceau Chateau It was so much fun! It was absolutely beautiful and we took SO many pictures! We had some time before our train came back to Tours so we went wandering through the tiny French village next to the Chateau and found a lovely little boulangerie. I am going to miss boulangeries so much! France has the best food for sure. It was a great P-day!! 

So this week we are preparing for Easter! We are having so many FHEs this week with members and our amies I am so excited. I love Easter and Soeur Bennion and I are going to have our own little Easter Egg fight just like back home :)

The best part about being a missionary is sharing my testimony every day. I absolutely love that I get to testify to random strangers about the Love of God and the reality of Christ's Atonement. My own testimony is strengthened each time I share it and I know that true happiness is found in feeling the Spirit and sharing the joy that we have been given! I love being a missionary so much! There are times when I feel very homesick but I just remind myself of why I came out here. I can give the Lord 18 months of my life because I will have an eternity with my family! I love the quote "A missionary leaves her family for 18 months so that others can be with their families for eternity" I have been so blessed to have the gospel in my life and I want others to have the same! I am so grateful to be a missionary here in Tours and I am so grateful for everyone's support and prayers, I cannot tell you how much it means to me! I know that Jesus Christ really did suffer and die for us and because He was resurrected we shall all live again and through His Atonement we can overcome all things in this life. I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have and the opportunity to share it with others here in France! I love you all so much!! à bientôt! soeur hawkes 

 Soeur Foster and I at the Sisters Conference! That was probably the last time I'll see her on the mission!! SO sad. I absoltuely ADORe her!!! It was so fun to catch up with her at the conference.

                                          Soeur Bennion and I get another transfer together!!!

              Alicia toured a castle today called Chenonceau Chateau!  Here are the amazing pictures from it.

This is the pastry I got at the little French boulangerie, it's called Paris Brest and SOO good. 

Bonjour à tous!

We had another wonderful week full of miracles and then general conference to top it off! 

This week we found TWO new amies!! I was soups doups excited.

We met Anna a few weeks ago. We had passed by to share our Easter Message and she told us to come back the next week. So we did. And she let us right in and we had a very powerful lesson with her about the Atonement and Resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. She is from Iraq and Christian and she absolutely loved our message and the Spirit we brought so she invited us to come back again this week! I am really excited to see her again and share the rest of the plan of salvation with her!

Then we met Zarik. We were standing at the bus stop and she was staring intently at our tags. Soeur Bennion saw her Mother Mary necklace and commented how pretty it was. This opened up the conversation and Zarik was asking us question after question about Jesus and our church. We set up a rdv and went to see her! It went really well and we will be seeing her again! Heavenly Father really blessed us to be in the right place at the right time to help His daughters.

General Conference was ABSOLUTELY amazing and just what I needed!! We weren't able to watch Sunday Afternoon because it broadcasted too late but I just downloaded it so we can listen to it at our apartment! Heavenly Father must surely have been smiling down on me because we were able to watch all of it except the General Women's meeting in English!! I was SO grateful! I was able to receive so many answers to questions and now I've got a great long list of what to do and how to do it! 

I really loved Elder Holland's talk. I loved the story of the sister missionary he shared. I have never had food thrown at me or even spit on but I can definitely relate to being mocked and degraded. however. just as Elder Holland said.

 It is absolutely most definitely worth it. 

As soon as he said that I thought to myself you bet your bottom dollar it is!!! Being a missionary, sharing my beliefs everyday and being the Lord's hands here in France is certainly not easy but it is the best thing I have ever done. I can honestly say that I have never been so happy in my life and I have never felt closer to my Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ. I feel so loved and so blessed everyday out here and I will be eternally grateful to my Heavenly Father for allowing me this amazing opportunity to be His servant.

 

Which leads me to my other favorite talk. President Uchtdorf! I loved that he said we are eternal beings and endings are not our destiny. we can always change and we can always have hope and peace if we strive to have an attitude of gratitude! look for the positive in life!! As I have done that the positive becomes easier and easier to find! Have we not great reason to rejoice? I love that phrase so much! Heavenly Father has given us so much to delight in and we are so blessed even admist trials! I loved his quote 'How much of life do we miss by waiting to see the rainbow before thanking God for the rain?' So. True.

I felt that an overarching theme this weekend was to follow the example of the Savior and to be full of  love for everyone. Elder Scott said to sincerely love those you want to help. I loved his talk. I cannot wait to read and study it because I felt it applied right to me as a missionary as I am trying to help the people around me recognize their need for the gospel and it is through love that it will be possible! Love makes the world go round that is the truth. I am so grateful for General Conference and for all  the answers that I received. I knew that Heavenly Father was speaking right to me and it was so wonderful to feel the Spirit so strongly as we heard President Monson speak. I loved it so much!! 

Quote for the week!

"As we arise each morning, let us determine to respond with love and kindness to whatever might come our way."

love you all!! Avec amour sœur hawkes 

                                    Our last district meeting! Transfer 4 is done? What happened!!

                                                            GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!!

                                              We made cinnamon rolls to celebrate conference! 

Bonjour à tous!

This week was amaazing! We started doing the Easter Contacting just like President advised us to and we were so stoked to see how it would work out!! I just knew we were going to see so many miracles and find so many new amies!! And then we started.

We had anticipated receiving rejection as usual but had hoped and prayed for many many people to say yes! But by the end of the week we had only received ONE. Her name is Christel. And I love her! We knocked on her door and her husband answered, I introduced us and he said let me get my wife she speaks English and shut the door. So I was all sad because clearly my French wasn't good enough. But then his wife came out and I tried again in French and we ended up talking quite a bit and she invited us to come back!!!!!! So we will call her today to set up the time :) :) it was really great!! But she was the only one and I had hoped for more. So Sunday night when we sat down to count numbers I was really discouraged. Surely we hadn't done our part. If only I had more faith we would have seen more miracles! I prayed and prayed for forgiveness and comfort. And this morning as I read President Poznanski's weekly email I received the answer to my prayer. He shared a quote from Elder Scott that says:

 "Even if you have the strongest faith, God will not always reward you immediately according to your desires. Rather, He will respond a piece at a time with what in His eternal plan is best for you. Your continuing exercise of faith will forge strength of character available to you in times of critical need. Such character is not developed in moments of great challenge or temptation. That is when it is used." 

And I knew right then that I had done my part, that Heavenly Father was proud of the missionary that I am and that I did have the faith for those miracles but in His design it wasn't time for them yet. So even if we aren't receiving the answers to our prayers that we want or seeing the miracles we expect it isn't necessarily because our faith is too weak or we aren't good enough. We just need to trust the Lord that He has a plan for us and He knows what He is doing :)

 

I am SO SO SO excited for General Conference this weekend!!! We weren't able to watch the General Women's Meeting but they will play that for us this weekend during the Priesthood session. I seriously cannot wait to get that spiritual nourishment!! although it is going to be in French...hopefully with the Lord's help I'll still be able to get out of it what I need despite it being in a foreign language! This week we are going to focus on General Conference and preparing ourselves as well as our amies for it! Soeur Bennion and I decided to write down questions that we would like answers for and to invite our amies to do the same. Soo I would like to invite all of you to write five questions down that you are seeking answers for. And I know that you will receive the answers to your prayers this weekend! Yesterday we had lunch with the Family Devinck and the Elders and it was SO fun and the Elders shared a message about General Conference. It has three parts. 1. Prepare 2. Listen 3. Act So we need to prepare ourselves spiritually to receive the guidance and revelation that Heavenly Father is just waiting to give us. Then we need to listen carefully and attentively to what the Spirit whispers to us throughout the conference and lastly we need to act upon what we learn and apply it in our daily life. When we apply what we learn it shows Heavenly Father how much we appreciate His guidance and it will help us along our path back to Him. I am so grateful for General Conference and for a prophet here on the earth today. I know that the messages we will hear are inspired by Heavenly Father and we will receive the answers we desire and the spiritual nourishment we need! I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who gives us so much!! 

Thank you for everything! I love you all and keep you in my prayers always! 

avec amour soeur hawkes 

Here we are with a chunk of bread. A member in our branch Pierre made the missionaries bread and the elders ripped it in half and gave us a chunk so...yeah it was great :)

Bonjour à tous!

 This was a week of MIRACLES! It was soo great!! We got a new amie, had five RDVs in one day, had zone conference, Soeur Bennion's birthday, played a flute and piano duet in Sacrament Meeting, succeeded in running for trains, and met some really cool people porting! It was a really good week! 

So Friday was Zone Conference in Le Mans and it was SO good. Exactly what I needed! It was so great to see Soeur Denning again and to talk with President and Soeur Poznanski. We got some really great counsel and new ideas for finding such as Easter Contacting! I am so thrilled. Until the end of April we are going to be testifying specifically about the Resurrection of Christ and why that is important to us! Our mission's goal is to have 125 baptisms in two transfers!! I am really excited about this new challenge! It's really cool to see all us missionaries come together on a challenge and I can't wait to get started with the Easter Contacting! Already we have seen miracles from it! 

Also at Zone Conference they shared insights from the conference Elder Christofferson had with the missionaries in Belgium. He talked about keeping our hearts pure and sanctifying ourselves. He said we need to build a barrier between us and the world today in order to stay close to the Spirit. He emphasized the need to repent daily and the enabling power of Christ's Atonement. I am so grateful to know that each day I get a restart to do and be better than I was the day before and to have the grace for all my weaknesses! So Zone Conference was just the spiritual feast I needed and I am so grateful for all the things I learned there! The change from Angers to Tours hasn't exactly  been an easy one but it has definitely been good. It's been a big blessing to me to really come to know for myself how aware God is of us and the fact that He puts us in places for specific reasons.

 Kelsie shared an amazing quote with me today that i absolutely loved!! Elder Neal A Maxwell said  " The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit, millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others, but warm them as well." I have come to know for myself how true that is as I have adjusted to life here in Tours. I do miss Angers but Tours is my new home now and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else :) 

I also found a great quote in my studies this week that I want to share! It's by Elder Perry! 

"We can't predict all the struggles and storms in life  not even the ones just around the corner but as persons of faith and hope we know beyond the shadow of any doubt that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and the best is yet to come." 

No matter what happens in life our Savior has been there before us. He has already experienced everything we will face in this life and He is always to help us through on our paths of struggle. There is always reason for hope when we know that Christ has "risen from the dead with healing in His wings." As I have faced trials here in Tours I have turned to my Savior and I know that Heavenly Father hears and answers my prayers and that Christ is always there to offer us the enabling power of His Atonement. I know that Jesus Christ is mighty to save and I am so grateful for this knowledge and the opportunity to share it with the people here in Tours! 

avec amour soeur hawkes