The Ville of Lille

Sometimes I am so amazed at how perfectly God knows us all. He just knows and understand our souls so perfectly. God answers my prayers in a lot of ways and a big one on my mission has been through music. Every single time I have needed to know that God was aware, out of nowhere a song I needed has come on and I knew that He was listening.

 Last P-day in Paris we went to the Louvre!

 

 

The gorgeous glass pyramid.

 

Liberty leading the people.

 

Ok, so everybody always says Mona Lisa is so overrated and too small and overcrowded.

But, you wanna know why?? Because she's AMAZING and beautiful and you fall in love with her the instant you see her. You can see her in the background behind my head. haha

 

Venus de Milo. GORGEOUS.

 

Last day with Erica in Paris. :( We went to starbucks and ate cookies with our hot chocolate.

We said goodbye in the metro station and I cried like a baby. I am going to miss her SO much.

My best friend. 

 

 Soeur Lefrandt! Love and miss this girl. I may or may not have followed her around

when we were at St. Merri, the church in Paris where we all meet for transfers.

 

My dear dear Soeur Rhondeau. She just returned home to normality! Crazy. I love her! I am just praying she doesn't get married in the next 8 months.

 

Monday night Soeur Anderson and I were on the bus going home. We had found out that I was leaving Paris and I was feeling weird. I was super excited but also really nervous and just uncertain about what the new transfer was going to bring. Then out of nowhere, Bob Marley starts singing out of somebody's i-phone. We were the only other people on the bus, so this i-phone owner just let Bob sing and sing. And as Mr. Marley sang it just made everything ok. "Every little thing is gonna be alright..."

 

And it is. Every little thing is alright. :) I cannot even tell you how much I absolutely love and adore everything about my new area. I am in the beautiful city of Lille. It is in the very, very far northern part of France. We went to a RDV the other day kinda far away and we walked outside afterwards and Marie glanced down the road and non-chalantly said "There's Belgium." WHAT?? BELGIUM!! I live down the street from Belgium. It's not inside our area, but there is a missionary conference in Belgium this month and we get to go! D. Todd Christofferson is coming to speak to us! I am so excited! I decided he is my favorite after the talk he gave last conference titled 'the moral force of women.' But anyways, back to Lille. I am madly in love with this city! It is warm and sunny and the people are SO NICE! I had become so used to Parisians. I love Parisians, but wow! The people up by Belgium are so friendly! I am using so many exclamation points! Sorry! I am just so happy! And, It's also a huge relief to be far away from too many historic sites. I am grateful to have a break from Paris. I haven't had a calm P-day since October! But today I sat around in my pajamas and cleaned and wrote letters and wrote in my journal and it was just so nice and calm.

The beautiful ville of LILLE!! I LOVE it here! I mostly took this picture to show you how

warm and sunny it is. I am not even wearing a sweater! That's amazing.

 

Soeur Elliott and I were talking our first night together and she gave me this

CAT BRACELET as a welcome present. Say it with me: SOUL. FRIENDS.

  

I love Soeur Elliott so much I cannot even tell you.

 

And the members, the members!! One Sunday here. One. And already I feel so welcomed and on a team with all of these kind people. The work is taking off here! We have two wards in our building (which I have never seen the entire time I have been in France) and there are 6 missionaries in each ward! So that means there are 12 of us running around everywhere on Sundays. And it's awesome. One of the new missionaries just came from the MTC and he is Navajo Indian. His grandfather was a navajo code talker during WWII!! (I know because that was the first thing I asked him about when he told me his heritage...) This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I think it is extremely cool that I am rubbing shoulders with someone who rubs shoulders with a code talker.

 

Lorenzo and Christelle! This adorable little family who give

beautiful prayers and laugh at our French sometimes. :)

 

Barbara! The sweetest less active who fed us the most delicious salmon and made the funniest sarcastic jokes. (Which is amazing because French people just don't get sarcasm.)

We visited a sweet older couple this week. Their names are Bernard and Suzanne. The Soeurs knocked on their door a few weeks before I got here. They are so sweet and made us hamburgers to help us feel more at home. Then we had a beautiful lesson about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration. The spirit was so beautiful and strong. We talked about prayer and knowing for yourself and Bernard said he had never prayed before. We asked him to offer a prayer and he seemed less than enthusiastic. But the spirit filled the rrom as we spoke about God being our Loving Heavenly Father and talking to him like you would a dear friend. And then Bernard PRAYED. HE PRAYED! He gave the most beautiful, sincere prayer ever. And my heart filled with joy. And I am so happy to be in this beautiful area, serving these beautiful people.

I love you all so much. Make your prayers meaningful. God is your dear friend and he is just waiting to fulfill your dreams. Just ask.

Ridiculous amounts of loving, Soeur Autumn Bradley

P.S. my new address is thus: 105 Boulevard Montebello D404 59000 Lille France

 

Planners from this transfer! I made the blue one for Soeur Anderson

and then the one with the field for her trainee. The one with the houses is mine.