Hello tout le monde!
This last week was crazy busy, so we didn't have too much
time to go out and proselyte, but at the same time was an incredible week. On Tuesday
we had a conference up in Lyon, and President Brown brought up all of the
missionaries who are going home in my group, along with everyone else who was
already coming, which made for a ton of fun, getting to see everyone again have
one last huge conference together. It
was a conference about what the big push in the mission is this transfer, and
it was super inspiring. President Brown really wants the mission this transfer to create a fire, a
spiritual fire and have everyone light it up in their own areas. He said now is
the time to kind of dig deeper and fight back, to make this our best transfer.
He told us he had brought my group up to help spread this fire throughout the
mission, with all of us in our last transfer, to help inspire all the fires
around the mission. We talked a lot about consecration, and about making these
last few weeks the best weeks of our mission, and to help all the other
missionaries do the same. It really helped me remember why I came out here, and
why this is so important to me, why I work like I do, and why I love doing it.
I love the mission so much, I know some of the biggest blessings in my life
have come from it, and I love being able to spread the gospel to everyone.
The rest of the week went really well, after coming back
from the conference, the morning after we had a service project where we had to
dig out and flatten the backyard of a member who wanted to put a pool up. This
included me waging war on a super stubborn tree stump lodged in really rocky
ground, and me winning that war after an hour of battle with my trusty pick. It
was brutal, I was pouring sweat afterwords. We had my last zone training on
Friday, and was phenomenal, talking all about what President Brown had told us,
and sharing the vision for this transfer, I got to bear my testimony and was
again reminded why I love this so much. We all got really fired up and excited
for this transfer to come.
The rest of the week went well, went out contacting one day
and the heavens literally opened, we got thoroughly soaked by pouring rain, but
were happy anyways, it was a fun day. This week was a pretty hard working week,
we didn't have any conferences or big meetings, with the exception of a
district meeting on Friday, so we got the chance to really work in Montpellier.
We found two new Amis this week, one of them is Spanish speaking, and really
neat, he feels like encountering us was a sign from God to him that he needs to
learn, and so he's been listening really well, and wants to learn more. We had
the chance to finally go out and visit the bishop and his family, he works so
much and is so busy this is the first time I've ever been out there, and it was
a great time, his children helped us teach about faith in Jesus Christ, which
was adorable and great.
 |
| With members |
We had the chance to go down to Beziers for the district
meeting Friday, and it was a really well done district meeting. We spoke all about
what we can do as missionaries personally to become more consecrated this
transfer, to change ourselves into what the Lord wants us to be. It made me
really think about what I can do in these last few weeks to change and become
better up until the end. I got really excited about it actually, and it was
increased by what happened Friday night.
The Assistants called us Friday, and told us that because of
a nationwide strike that will be going on with the trains and other things, we
had to cancel the zone conference for our zone this transfer. However, our
mission president told us that he feels strongly that all of these problems
that we're coming across give us a chance to really prove ourselves, and launched
a mission challenge to get one thousand new investigators over the course of
two weeks, more or less the duration of the strike. It's a huge goal for our
mission, but we're all pumped about it, it means more or less one new investigator
per equipe each day, and everyone is really really excited to go out and find
them all.
This week was fantastic, we were able to teach a lot of
people, find new Amis, and generally work really hard this week. With a lot of train
strikes, we haven't been able to do any exchanges, which has given us a lot of
time in Montpellier itself, tell well spent. We saw a man that we're teaching
three times this week, and he came to church!
He comes from Cuba, and really likes the message we're sharing, he says coming
across us was a sign to him from Heavenly Father, he told after church this week
that he really feels like he wants to baptized, something he'd been very
hesitant about before during the week. This of course incited enormous high
fives from my companion and I after he left the church to go home.
We had a very spiritual day Sunday, it was a region wide
conference where general authorities addressed all of Western Europe through a broadcast,
which was really neat and uplifting. My favorite was by Gerald Caussé, who is
the Presiding Bishop, he is from France originally, and so does all his own translations,
so what we heard was not the voice of the translator, but his own voice, making
it that much better. He spoke all about how important it is that we keep ourselves
worthy and clean for the temple. He spoke about how the new temples in Europe
place an even larger responsibility on the members, and how we can all prepare
ourselves more and more to go and take part in temple work. It made me think a
lot about how much I miss the temple, and how often I'm going to try to go when
I get home. Then we went to a member's house and had lunch there, they've been
members for decades, and we're here at the beginning of the Montpellier Ward, right
at the roots, and so it's inspiring to hear them talk about all the changes
that have happened. The best part happened at the end of the day though, me and
my companion had about 15 minutes before we had to be somewhere, and so we
decided to try and talk to one last person. We contacted one woman, and found
out quickly she was very believing, and super nice. We had a long talk, taught
her about the church and the restoration, and were able to pray with her and
fix a follow up rendezvous for this week. It was a big boost for us, we were
really tired, and made the day super sick.
No comments:
Post a Comment