January 11, 2016
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| We went to La Defense today to look at some clothes. |
Saw lots of miracles, no one died, lots of people got closer to Heaven.
This week I'll focus the happenings on people:
J. continues to progress, and we have seen such cool blessings seeing him. Sometimes when we find an investigator with no work, then they find work, they stop seeing us, but J chose to keep meeting us and in addition he switched shifts so he could come to church on Sunday morning! That's not the only challenge, though. J has some difficult family problems, which could result in him losing his life if he converts and goes back to his country....aeegh we don't want that. So we teach a little at a time, and we hope his family will come to France soon so they can all be safe.
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| This is about 2/3 of our FHE young adults group with our investigator K. |
Friday morning my contacting alarm was going off in my head, so we decided to contact along the ponds in Torcy. We found a really nice guy JM. We contacted him as he sat on a bench, just admiring the nature and all the birds. There was a lady throwing baguettes to the birds, that created a feeding madhouse, and we had a good laugh over that with him. We'll try visiting the same bench next week to teach him. He recently had someone in his family pass away so we'd love to go back and help him feel the comfort of the Gospel.
Elder Trotter and I helped sort out transfers on Wednesday and we met the nicest lady as we waited at Gare de l'Est. She told me to sit down right next to her, in English, and went on to tell me that our group just looked like good-hearted people. An old French Lady contacted me! That rarely happens...ever. But we gave her the Book of Mormon, and she accepted, even though there was little room in her bag to stuff it in before she left to catch her train to Germany. Wow...
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| The Cheese. L to R : Comté, Reblochon, and Vieux Gouda |
Thursday night we met a true fromagier, or cheese man. We came out from the RER around 20h30, which meant half an hour till curfew. We walked by town square and see...a real french market, COOL. They had cheese sellers, fruit sellers, and an African lady selling authentic African food. I had to stop by the cheese stand. I introduced myself to the man selling and he was happy to tell me all I wanted to know about the different types of cheese. I bought Reblochon, Vieux Gouda, and Comté, wow we really ate some high quality cheese that night. I felt royal. We also told the fromagier a little bit about the church, and that we were Mormon. He had never met Mormons before so I think he got a good first impression!
While doing a pass by one night we decided to stop by D and N, a couple we had found while Christmas caroling a couple weeks before. In fact they're the only ones that let us in when we sang our Christmas Carols. That doesn't always happen...but this time I think these two used their agency correctly. We talked to them about the temple, and gave them a couple websites to learn more.
This week has gone really well. I feel like some of the times I feel the most stress and pressure, the most relieving and the best moments are bound to come shortly after. This week felt like a huge roller coaster and I would have forgotten all the amazing if I wouldn't have looked back. One of these amazing happened with an old investigator Y. Since the first week I arrived, twelve weeks ago, we haven't seen him because of his busy new schedule. I called him up and he said he'd be home the following night. I felt like my day wasn't going very well before that because a couple of our investigators had cancelled and I had a huge headache, I felt like I was the only one making choices and everyone else had a lackadaisical attitude. In the end, we ended up teaching Y and he said he still wants to be baptized! We just gotta keep working with him and I'm confident he'll make the right choice. As bad as I felt earlier in the day we kept going and look what God granted us! It's amazing...if we want to see success and happiness we have to be willing to take the risk to feel failure and sadness as well; man this week was hard but it was so rewarding at the same time.
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In parting this week, I wanted to thank my comp Elder Bigelow for his service and the amazing transfers we spent together. You're home now but know that you are such a solid guy and I wish you all the best back in Syracuse. I'll thank Elder Hirst and Anziano Hogan for their work too, you guys motivate me a lot. I know this gospel is true. That means that having faith in Jesus and his atonement, repenting, being baptized, following the Holy Spirit and working till the end Works. And we NEED hardship to know JOY...take the risk of willingly accepting hardship, and joy will come. Love to everyone back home and love to the French people too!
Love Elder Jones
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