The work is still going super slowly here. We werent able to see marko last week at all and he didnt come to church so we have to move his baptism at least a week later. We will see with him... And bertrand kinda fell off the face of the planet. Gotta love it when that happens. So that was kinda hard. But we worked really hard this week and overcame some big trials. I certainly spent a lot of time on my knees :) Yesterday at church two men that we had contacted, randomly came to church. So that was a big surprise yesterday. One of them named igor... hehe... asked what you have to do to be baptized in our church. So he seems interested. Other than that we were just doing a lot of contacting and porting. Hopefully things will pick up soon.
But there was a really cool miracle last night that is still in progress. We got a call from the bishop last night saying that there was a woman who has been coming to church for a while that wants to be baptized. Ive met her and talked to her and i thought that she was a member. But i guess not! She was contacted by sister poznanski when she was on her mission thirty years ago. And she finally decided to be baptized! So we called sister p and told her the good news. The lady wants our ward mission leader to baptize her but he leaves town on wednesday. So we are going to have the baptism tuesday night! Sister P was so excited to get that news! So it is super cool that i get to be here while this is happening. Pretty sweet.
I'm super grateful for my mission and evertything that i have learned. I still have time to learn and grow. Im going to make the most of my time left to just serve the lord and my brothers and sisters here in france. and Belgium maybe haha. Love you guys tons! Thanks for all of your prayers and support! Have a great week and ill talk to you soon. LOVES
Well first of all, this week was oodles better than last week! In my first week here in Rennes, we were walking home and there were two french businessmen in front of us and they turned around and were just staring at us. So we said hi and one of them recognized us as mormons and was pretty excited to meet us. He told us to promise to call him. Well, this last week we were able to meet with him at the church. It was an amazing lesson. He is catholic and practicing but he told us that he doesnt agree with some of the beliefs. He is searching for the true church of christ. He has already searched in protestant and evangelical churches too. We taught him the restoration lesson and he loved it. He read a little in a brochure about joseph smith and got super excited. he was like oh thats just like me! He was searchign for the truth! We invited him to pray to know if this was the true church and i believe he received his answer because he called us super excited a few days later and said he needed to meet with us to discuss his praying experience. We will see him tomorrow. It has been a killer waiting to see him! Its just awesome because he is a classic french business man. And that never happens! Also we met with a guy named marko who had been taught a while ago. We set a baptismal date with him for the third of august! He is pretty cool and is really preparing to be baptized. He is from yugoslavia. We also found a couple other potential people and a few people let us in while we were tracting.
Heavenly father really heard our prayers this week and blessed us with the abuility to find these people. It was amazing. Im just so excited for the business man. His name is bertrand.
That was pretty much the our week! Thank you so much for your prayers and for thinking of us here. It helped! Now we just have to keep it up and keep working hard! Love you tons. Less than five short months now... Im going to make them count. Loves!
A Bientôt!
Xavier and I, door to our Apt. & me with Elder Wood at St. Meri's in Paris.
Well... this week was a tough one. Really tough. But we are doing alright and are ready for another week. It seems like every time we have a really bad or hard week the next one is better. So we are hoping that the trend will continue. Tuesday we gave a training to the zone and it went pretty well. Then we went to a city called Brest to do exchanges. It is a cool city that is the furthest west that you can go in France. We had to take a three hour tgv to get there. It was pouring rain so we didnt get to really see the beach. But it was a good exchange.
The rest of the week was spent contacting and porting. We had a couple of lessons fixed but they fell through. We went the whole week without finding any investigators or teaching any lessons. That is the first time that has happened in my mission. We only got one phone number too. People were just shutting us down and rejecting us all week. We were laughed at, mocked, yelled at, sworn at and spit on. But we just kept going trying to keep our heads up. We must have something important to do here in rennes with so much opposition. Im proud to have a testimony of this gospel and that i had the opportunity to turn the other cheek and just testify of gods love to these people, even when they were tearing us apart.
I cant lie and say it was a great week. It was pretty terrible to be honest haha. But im not discouraged. It is difficult. And we are a little down. But we wont give up that easily. If anything it has given me an even greater desire to go out and testify to these people. I know that good things are in store. I refuse to believe that the trials will continue much longer. We will just continue to go out and work hard trying to follow the spirit. I just pray that we will be guided to find these families that need the gospel.
Thank you to everyone for your prayers and your encouragement. It really carries me in the tough times. Have a great week! Loves!
Elder Thomas
This is a gift that a sweet old lady gave to me...(yes, it's a crocodile foot)
Hey mom!!! Woooooo! Rennes! This week has been pretty good. rennes is pretty cool too. I actually havent seen a ton of it yet. We have been pretty busy with other random things that we havent had a ton of time to just contact in the city. My Zone is called the rennes zone. We are in the region of france called Bretagne or brittany. You should look up some stuff about that. They are pretty proud out here of being from this region. Its actually really cool. They will tell you they are from bretagne like its a different country haha. I am definitely finally going to get some real french culture. My past areas have been pretty full of african people and arabs. But here it is purely french. Which also means that it is a bit harder. This zone has had a reputation for being the hardest one work wise. It is struggling a bit to be honest. But we are going to get it going! Im excited to turn this zone around and back in the right direction. My comps name is elder richer brulé. He is from canada and yes he has mad french skills because he grew up in a french speaking family. So thats good.
So basically this week went down like this... We didnt have a ton of actual missionary work time. Tuesday i said goodbye to xavier which was a heartbreaker. Wednesday i spent most of the day at the church in st merri seeing all of the missionaries and waiting for one that was supposed to come with me to rennes. He is in a different city in the zone. So that took a while. Then the train ride is fairly long to rennes. The next morning we had to get up early to go right back to paris for mission council. But it was super good. We didnt get home till like eight though because we missed our train because president decided to go a little longer than he'd planned. Friday we had a ton of planning to do for the transfer and our regular weekly planning. Then we ate at the family grenal's house. They are members and super cool. She made the best pastries ive ever had! We were dying! Then saturday we did service for a member and then watched the work of salvation broadcast! It was so good! Honestly just super amazing. SO proud to be a part of this work. The ward is really cool here and love the missionaries! It is the biggest ward in our mission too i think. After church a family hooked us up with lunch, they cooked for us and another sister gave us cake! Here goes my six months to sexy... Darn those generous missionary loving members! Haha. That was pretty much the week. There arent a ton of investigators here so we have to build it up from scratch. But im excited to just get to work. Im doing well. it is refreshing to be in a new area. It should be awesome! Love you tons. Talk to you next week. Loves!!!
Elder Thomas
