Soeur Ethington | Week 33

It is officially freezing here in Paris, and because of this I have been pretty sick this past week. It's hard being sick as a missionary because you want to go outside and do missionary work, but sometimes you've just gotta take care of yourself too! I am grateful I get to spend half of every day in the warm Visitors' Center surrounded by amazing people who give you blankets and soup if you're sick. 

There is a new initiative in the VC for online teaching. Salt Lake City has been recording our interaction data for mormon.org without our knowledge, and they sent us a report this past week. Our Visitors' Center is doing amazing and we're actually more successful (percentage-wise) than most other VCs in the world! This was exciting news and motivated us to work even harder online. This past week, Soeur Ackroyd and I have started online teaching a man who lives in the UK named Christopher. He has a lot of big questions and does not feel ready to start meeting with local missionaries just yet, so we have the blessing of teaching him online. I am so grateful for the chance we have to teach so many people across the world by using tools such as mormon.org! 

Miracle of the week: Janet

A few days ago, a woman walked into the Visitors' Center. She introduced herself as Janet and immediately asked, "how do I join your church?" The sisters who were on shift (not us, unfortunately) started teaching her about our message. Janet said she wanted to meet with the missionaries, which is awesome because she happens to live in the Antony sector! Soeur Ackroyd and I met her yesterday when she came to church, and we love her already. 

After a rocky sacrament meeting where the talks were about deep doctrinal topics and our hymns were "The Millenium" and "O My Father," we taught her about the Restoration. At the end of the lesson, we invited her to be baptized, to which she responded that she was already baptized into the Catholic church. For those of you who have served missions, you know that this is a pretty tricky topic to navigate, so I was suddenly very nervous. I said a silent prayer to God to guide me, and I carefully explained to her why she would have to be baptized a second time. It took a few minutes, but she finally understood. I was praying that she wouldn't be angry or confused, and my prayer was answered when she exclaimed, "oh, what a blessing! I get to be  baptized TWICE!" Anyway, Janet is precious and we set a baptismal date with her for the 24th of November. 

Thank you for all the love and prayers! 

A bientot, 

S. Ethington

You know you have the best amis in the mission when they bake you raspberry tarts...
Merci la famille Papelier! 

The Eiffel tower the other morning on the way to District Council.
Boy, it never gets old. 

Us with Elaine S. Dalton, Soeur Woods, and the architect of the Paris Temple (Ian Wood)

Me with S. Eddington, serving in Evry. I always laugh at how close our names are. 

Our WONDERFUL Relief Society in the Antony ward.
I love all these women with my whole heart. 

L'arc de Triomphe. We went around the super sketchy roundabout again and didn't die
 ("par la grâce de Dieu," as our African amis would say).
Heavenly Father protects His missionaries!