Letter 03/21/14

Hey!

Yeah the work is really cool right now, Président Poznanski gave us some awesome tools to work with to improve our work last weekend, I'll update you later!

First off, on the Book of Mormon mini, I just want the English one so I can carry it with me haha. I have PLENTY of French stuff, so no worries there. Also, if you could send Peanut Butter, that would be awesome. It's really expensive and not very good here. I'll do my legality in my 8th transfer, so in about 2 and a half months. Hopefully I'll be in Le Mans, but we'll see what happens. 

Anyways, so this week started off pretty normal. We had an exchange with the other Missionaries in our District. We're pretty small, so there's only 4 Elders and 2 Sisters. We didn't teach quite as much this week, but it was still really really good. We were supposed to have a Conference in Angers (Where Logan (Miller) is a Zone Leader right now) on Friday.  We were doing our weekly planning on Thursday and we were also fasting for one of our amis. Then we got a frantic call from Logan's comp, asking if our chapel was under construction or anything. Apparently they had started some reconstruction on their chapel without telling the Missionaries haha. So the whole Conference, with 70 other missionaries from 3 zones, got moved to Le Mans! They told us we had to arrange for places to stay for a few équipes, get transportation passes for 70 people, and get food for everyone at the Conference. And we had until 10 o clock the next morning to do it!  So the weekend got a little hectic. We ran to Subway, the transportation office, cleaned the Church, had Ward Mission Leader meeting, and still taught 2 lessons and found a new ami haha. But, to top it all off, we had 4 Elders staying with us. The first ones were Elders Dalmer and Munns (Stucki's old comp and Mckechnie's old comp serving together and staying in my apartment...weird haha). I took Elder Dalmer to grab food, since Elder Mattson and I hadn't eaten since like 6 o clock the night before, while Munns went with Mattson to buy air mattresses. Then Elder Dalmer and I got to pick up the Assistants from the gare so they could stay with us as well. It was way fun having 6 Elders in our apartment, especially the Assistants haha. This is the second time the two of them have stayed in my apartment in the past two transfers. Anyway, Friday was one big blur of activity, getting 70 Missionaries across town from the gare to our church.

I finally saw Logan, now that I've been here for 6 transfers haha. We spent a ton of time catching up, and we'll probably see each other regularly for a while since we're actually really close to them. I also saw Alicia, the girl from Hillcrest that I knew from before the Mission. That was cool, we got to talk and catch up for a few minutes. 

So during the Conference, Président gave us a challenge for the next 2 transfers. He wants us to baptize 125 people before he finishes his Mission in June. Wow! It will give a really great starting moment for Président Babin when he comes in this Summer haha. Also, we're supposed to schedule an FHE every night the week before Easter with our members, except we're not bringing our amis... They're supposed to bring theirs, so that we can meet them! We presented it to our Ward Council on Saturday, and they said "Look at your list of amis, you already have enough! Why do you want more?" It's true that we're teaching a ton of people right now, but talk about missing the point! They came around though, and it's gonna be awesome.

Blavi is a 19 year old kid from Congo, and he is pretty chill. He lost his dad when he was nine and left home when he was like fourteen. He's just traveled all of Europe and Asia and has been doing his own thing. I found him on exchanges and he got really excited to see us again. He is really believing, but not religious, if that makes sense. There's lots of people like that here, that believe in God and Christ, but refuse to get wrapped up in any particular religion. But he's pretty open and accepted the Book of Mormon and the challenge to read and pray.  

Cidi is from like Nigeria or something, and he studied in the UK for a while. He met the Missionaries there but stopped investigating because he wanted to continue his young, fun life haha. I've met lots of those :) But when we met him the other day, he said he was open to see us again and learn more about the Church. We gave him the Book of Mormon and a Restoration brochure in English, but our rendezvous got cancelled because of the preparation for the Conference. We'll see him again in the next few days. 

Gilbert gave us a huge scare the other day. When we went over, he said he was keeping his religion and this would be the last time we could come over. Oh. We asked if we could just pray together one last time, so we did and we started talking. He's had a hard time understanding the Book of Mormon, and he has a block about praying for help and to know if it's true. Eventually, after a huge silence, he told us that he doesn't want to pay tithing. We never really taught that, but somehow he read about it or something, but with some false info. He said our Church was just based on money and stuff. We explained how not a penny goes into anyone's pockets, that it all goes into building churches and printing materials and stuff like that. He calmed down a bit, and we asked him to really read and pray, without getting blocked on other stuff. We told him that if he does it and still doesn't want us to come, the next time will be our very last meeting. But if he does his part he'll get his answer, for sure.

Lucian we taught on exchange at the University Library. We taught the Plan of Salvation, being sure to focus on the brochures, because there's a big push on that right now. He said that when he gets his answer he'll be baptized (that's actually who we were fasting for).

Jerome. We got a txt from mormon.org saying there was a guy who went online and asked us to come to his house. We went and visited and it turns out he's really a member haha. He got baptized in like 2010 because  the Missionaries were dumb and pressured him into doing it before he was ready (that's really terrible to do to people, it just leads to tons of inactives that don't have a testimony). But he wants to try and come back to the Church and find out if baptism was the right choice or not. He's super shy and doesn't want the pressure of just showing up at church one day and meeting millions of people, but we're getting him there. 

So Président and Soeur Poznanski were both there in our Ward on Sunday, so that was some high pressure haha. I felt a little like a noob because none of our amis showed up, but it's probably because we couldn't see any of them since Wednesday. Next week will be better. She got a video of us singing with the youth, so hopefully that will go on Facebook with all of our Conference photos. 

The weeks are really flying right now, I can't believe the transfer is already half over. I hit my 9 month mark on Wednesday. Blech. Elder Mattson hits his year in a week. So he is where Elder Mckechnie was when he trained me, and Mckechnie now only has less than 5 months left. It's really sketchy! Luckily, I still have loads of time.  I love you all so much, and I really appreciate your prayers! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Martin