ma soeur le missionnaire.

Exactly one week ago today my sister Olivia embarked on an eighteen-month assignment to serve as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the France Paris Mission. We'll be posting her weekly reports home over on her blog, and I think you should read it not only because she is my best friend and I'm biased, but because she's also one of the wisest women I know. Her capacity for soul-swelling insight has been a refuge to me my whole life long, a constant reserve of bon mot and savoir faire that never fails to shape and move me. The people of Paris are the luckiest. 

The whole year and a half thing can some mornings feel far too long and more than I'd like, but I'm glad and grateful for this weekly dose of wisdom that is if anything only magnified by her work and calling. 

http://soeur-rhondeau.blogspot.com

On Sunday I went to watch  talk that Elder Bednar gave entitled The Character of Christ. He said that the defining element of Christ's character is that in the midst of struggle, while most people would turn in, Christ turns out. He turns out in compassion and love even when things are tough. This is now going to be a lifetime goal for me—to turn out, when we have the tendency to want to turn in. To help others and focus on the good. Learning about Christ and how to be like him is such a privilege and I need to remember that and really take what I have learned and make it real. Life is all about turning—changing, and turning to goodness and truth and God in order to become better, so that we can better love others.

city of superlatives.

If you know me in real life, you know I'm an easy read. My face is all-access emotion; I live near the surface, if I feel anything beyond the earliest morning's apathy, you'll see it. So it's a really good thing that I only ever had to lie over the phone last week, that when John said see you in ten I replied yes thank goodness can't wait and he couldn't tell I was counting hours, not days. Because there's nothing quite like catching a red-eye and showing up in New York that very next morning. 

He was speechless, as in words no sentence putting together cannot. It was the best thing I've ever done, at least until the rest of the weekend happened—and as for that, I'm still searching for synonyms that go beyond magic. The only thing better than those four days? He's coming home today. As we speak, on a plane, coming. home.

Oh yeah. World: meet the boy I love. Boy I love: world. Good. Okay. Here we go.

1. red-eye sunrise from 17F. 2. the text I sent at 7:15 that morning.

3. bagels for breakfast at a bench on broadway. 4. recreating childhood photos.

5. this storm got the better of us. and by better, I mean best.

6/7. columbia campus tour with my fave alum. 8. taking one for the team at magnolia bakery.

9. learned all about automats at the NYPL's current lunch hour exhibit, which besides being so superbly well done made me a) want to be Doris Day in That Touch of Mink, b) consider a future kitchen with a wall of automat options, and c) hum this all day long.

10/11. library lions, NY state motto. stole it for my own. 12/13. favorites from the met.

14. secretly I only walk through the greek and roman rooms to steal ideas for my jewelry box. I am a gold girl and nobody does signet rings like the ancients.

15/16/17. top of the met. 18/19. sunday in the park with john. 20/21/22. subway shots

23. from the airtrain, which makes me feel probably irrationally futuristic but I'll save that spiel for the ode I will someday write to public transportation, my true city love.

24/25. final portraits from the same time zone; on the streets and JFK.

PS: this blog's been the slow boat to china of late; 

find me on instagram for the everyday-up-to-date.

xoxo E.