A little awkward, as usual (Katie-Toul)

Hi!! 

Do I sound excited enough? It's funny, looking back at my week I want to say, "Man, what a WEIRD week. What a weird, awkward week." That's the sad thing about French...they don't have a real word for awkward. Poor frenchies. But seriously though, there were countless times where after a small though enormously awkward moment me and Sr. Evans would turn to look at each other and just, well, awkwardly laugh. So here are some of the wonderfully awkward moments of the week:

This thing is a DOG. He's huge.  This member family
has two of them...crazies...

Okay, comme d'habitude (as usual), let me just start with an update on our car situation. A mission couple came this week and switched cars with us because the lease on the old car was up. AHEM. Let's just say...we are driving in style. Totally forgot to take a picture with it before emails, but I'll have one for you next week. AND Heavenly Father knew that I just started getting used to/LIKING the stick shift, so He gave me an auto :) Although something kind of funny that keeps happening that didn't happen too often driving in the States, is we keep getting lost...because of the GPS. A lot of streets in France turn into other streets without really turning or changing. So the GPS will say in his nice, Australian accent: "Turn right on rue de blah" and so I turn right. But what he really means is go straight. So we have ended up going in a lot circles this week, and sometimes multiple circles if we still don't figure it out. But we're learning :)

We started out the week finding this fun/interesting/really cool couple named Catherine and Denis. The first thing they let us know is that no, they are NOT married, and that yes, they are living together. "We are living in sin." Yes...for now. ;) With this Easter Finding thing we're doing, almost all of our lessons are about the Plan of Salvation, which is really interesting because we get to see all of the different point of views. Catherine believes in reincarnation and Denis believes in eternal life, but eternal life where we still have trials and hard things happen (so basically eternal earth life). It's so interesting to listen to their ideas and then slowly unfold for them what God came up with before this life. Catherine is especially cool. She told us that she knows we didn't meet her on the street par hasard (by chance), but that God put us all there on the same street at the same time. I'm excited to see her strengthen the testimony that she already has!

Along with new names, Gerard also gave us 
what he called a"petit brioche" 

 We also had this interesting lesson with Gérard, a long-time ami from the Elders. He is very intelligent and basically knows everything about everything. EXCEPT when we taught him about prophets and dispensations using a cool little diagram thing; he told us he learned something new. He is really into knowing things are true by the Spirit, and he is working on reading the Book of Mormon. He even told us that he already knows it's true! He then proceeded to tell us that because it's a rule that he can't use our first names, he decided to create names for us. Um. Okay? So he gave Sr. Evans the name of Délicate and me the name of Délicieuse. Neither of us are really sure how we feel about it yet....

We did however meet one of the nicest, coolest people ever this week. She lives two floors right underneath us, and her name is Suzelle. We got home with 5 minutes to spare, so we decided to stop in real fast to see if she could come to our Branch Conference we're having in a couple of weeks (we had met her a couple of times in passing already). She said she would love to! She might be working, but pray that she can come! She is from the Mauritius Islands and speaks English and French fluently. She recently moved here with her husband, and her sister-in-law is a member! How cool is that? We like Suzelle.

#frenchpizza

Wasn't General Conference incredible? I just LOVED it. We didn't have any of our amis come, but I think for the most part it was because it was at Nancy, and not even that many members from our Branch came to Nancy to watch it when they could just watch it in the comfort of their homes. But we'll see throughout the week if they (our amis that is) decided that it would be worth it to listen to a few hours of a prophet and his apostles and other inspired men. I just loved it. And especially after kind of a tiring week, general conference was exactly what I needed to boost my energy level. 

OH! I just have a quick word of advice for y'all. Let's say you are craving pizza like a mad person and you realize that it's cheap pizza night at a pizza place right by your house so you consider buying two and then eating them both in the same night. Don't do it! Because chances are, you will probably have a mangez-vous of pizza the very next night. 

I love you all with all my heart!

Soeur Pettingill

Along with a view of his giant dog, the nice member gave me
some dp from Lux, two things I love very much

No, it's not cinnamon rolls, but roasting shamallows over the burner with petit ecolier
 cookies to make s'mores 10 seconds before conference starts...pretty close :)

Toul District--it was supposed to be a mug shot.
Apparently not everyone got the memo.