Salut la famille!
Missionary life is going just splendid this week. finally feeling better and the weather is really beautiful now. Couldnt ask for a whole lot more! We had a pretty good week and some exciting stuff happened. We had a rdv with claude lorche the older lady... oh boy. We took an older couple to go teach with us. But she was a little stubborn... like taking romeo to the vet stubborn. Anyways she basically read to us from the encyclopedia about mormons. In there it says that we are a polygamist cult haha. so she didnt like that. We wont see her again.
Fely is doing well. We taught him the first part of the plan of salvation. Pre earth life the creation and adam and eve. He had some good questions and some crazy ones. Like where eden is and what kind of fruit they ate haha. But he is doing well. he is back in paris for the week to finally see his family again so we are excited for him.
Tuesday night we took a train to paris and i got to stay the night in the antony appartment! It was so good to be back there. Then early the next morning i had to go finish up my legality for my french visa! But now it is all done! I have a sweet french legality card now. Then we went to St. merri to wait for mission council with all the zone leaders and prez.
Oliverson is a zone leader back in bruxelles now! So jealous haha. I got to hang out with him all day. Mission counicl was good. we learned about following the feelings we have from the spirit to contact people. It was super good. We will give a training to our zone on that tomorrow coupled with our interviews with prez.
We also got a call from marko this week. He is back in rennes and so we saw him. And he wants to be baptized the 31st of august. So we taught him and fixed the date and he seemed super ready to go. but then he kinda got mad at a member that we had with us and then didnt come to church... So the date is kinda in limbo. Not sure how serious he is about being baptized. We shall see.
On saturday we were just waiting at a bus stop after a lesson just talking and then a lady came up to us with her son. She asked if we were from the church of jesus christ and we said, uh yeah? Then she said that her son who is eight was taught and baptized by the missionaries in guadalupe in march. They have been in rennes for a month and have been looking for the church but couldnt find it. They just happened to be in the area and saw us and were super happy to find us. We asked if she was a member and she just said not yet haha. We were able to teach them sunday night and the mom wants to be baptized! she wants to take her time though and said maybe in october. Hopefully we can speed it up. She knows the church is true already. It was just super cool to see how the lord works to guide us. She had been searching and her son just told her to put her trust in god and he would help them find the missionaries. SO cool. I'm super excited to teach this family!
Hope you all have a great week and know that i love and miss you tons. Four months from today! loves!
Playing football on Pday...at mission council with oliverson and withers.
So great to see that smiling face!
I cant believe that it is already the start of a new transfer. Transfer 14.... Im such an old missionary haha. Its weird. I was in bruxelles a year ago. And got my call almost two ago haha. Its getting exciting that home is so close. But scary at the same time. I have so little time left to work. I will be staying here in rennes with elder b for another transfer. Woot! It should be good. Hopefully we can get some baptisms out here! Things are still going pretty well. We were able to see fely a couple times and he is doing well. A little skeptical but he is praying a lot for his answer. We were able to teach a family that we met a couple weeks ago. They really like the family proclamation and said we can come back. But they are going on vacation till september...All french people leave for the whole month of august. So it should be interesting. This week we made some sausage and elder b said it was done and that i was going to burn it... i thought otherwise. But i just agreed to avoid conflict haha. And what do you know? I got a minor case of food poisoning haha. At least we think thats what it was. It could have also been the massive amount of french cheese we decided to eat that day? But im over it now. But i should be back ready to go tomorrow. We met a super cool old lady named claude lorche. She is a super quirky old lady. I like her a lot. We taught her twice and will see her tonight. She is really curious about our beliefs. She was raised catholic which has kinda destroyed her faith in God... long story. So we are helping her to realize that she is a daughter of God. But we have to pass her to the sisters... we have to pass any women that we find to them. Oh well.
I always write a miracle that happened during the day at the end of each journal entry. There's always a small one. Thanks for all your support and prayers! Hope you have a good week. Give everyone a big bisous for me! haha. Loves!
Poutine...A Canadian specialty my comp made. And our cheese & bread buffet...
This was a pretty good week. we were certainly very blessed! It has cooled down a ton recently so im grateful for that! This last Tuesday we had the baptism of Annick Gautier. It was amazing! Seriously the best baptism that i have been too. She is a very nervous and shy person, so the only people that she allowed at the baptism were me and my comp, the sisters and the ward mission leader. It was a really spiritual meeting. We did the confirmation right after too. very cool. Wednesday we had a lesson with some jehovas witnesses. they just tried to bible bash. But i wouldnt take that haha. lets just say i took them down haha. we wont be seeing them again... We also met with a man named Fely who came to church last week. He is from south africa. he is here with his brother(who won the nobel peace prize in 1981) for health reasons while his family is in paris. This week we saw him twice and taught him about the restoration and the book of mormon. he really enjoys the lessons and is super sincere in his search. Thursday we went to paris for a leadership training from Pres. and Sister P. It was so good! really uplifting and answered a ton of my questions. thats where the facebook pics are from haha. glad you liked the song! That night we went back to Rennes because the elders in Brest needed a place to stay for the night. The next day we went back to Paris and then Versailles for exchanges with the assistants. They were pretty good. We came back to Rennes on saturday afternoon and saw a man named Mr. Henry and his wife Bijoux. they are really searching for the truth. we have taught them the restoration and they want to keep seeing us. That night we saw the other man named igor who came to church last week. He came again this week and we taught him a few times. He is super cool and sincere too!
Sunday night we passed by a 20 yr old guy who we had run into a few times. He was finally home and we were able to teach him about God.
One thing that really impressed me this week was how sincere all of the people are that we are teaching. They all have a real desire to follow jesus christ and find the truth.
Things realy picked up this week and we were so blessed to have so many opportunities to testify and teach.
Thank you all for the support and prayers! Talk soon.
Elder Thomas
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)
