Monday, February 16, 2015

#jesuisboulanger! - Letter 02/16/15

Hey!
So this week was pretty fun, we were running around for Zone Conferences all week :)
To answer your question on the Visitor's Center, we have a shift every Monday night after P Day. It's usually pretty fun, because all the YSA come in before their FHE at the church :) Last week I had an exchange with Elder Martin, from Texas. He's one of the Chinese speaking Elders, so I got to sit and smile during some of our contacts with people while he went off in Chinese haha. He's our District Leader right now, and he's only been out a couple months. I really like working with him, he's a solid kid with a lot of spirit and energy, so I'm pumped to see what he's gonna do with our District between now and the end of my mission.
We did the coolest service project ever this week! We have a less active member named Frère Morah, from Chile, who owns a bakery. So we went over and worked in his bakery making pastries for about 4 hours on Thursday :) We came out of it covered in flour but pretty satisfied. So I can officially tell people that I've worked in a French bakery. The Mulhouse Elders stayed over so Elder Traue could do his legality, so we got to hang out with them again. It was pretty fun, he wants to come out here and kill me after this transfer ;)
We taught our usual English class this week, but Celia (the convert in Versailles) was the only one there, so we did it with the Visitor's Center Elders and just did a Q and A. She had tons of questions on slang, so it was pretty entertaining :) OFII was this week, so we provided the food and got to hang out with Elder Bates and Elder Edmunds for a little bit :) Most of the week we spent buying the food for everyone's Zone Conferences because they were all at St. Merri this week.
Our work this week!
Nestor is a guy from Angola (in Africa) that the Paris Lilas Elders found in their phone, but he lived in our area. So we went and taught him in his apartment near the Notre Dame, and he was super interested! We're gonna stop by again on Tuesday while I'm on exchanges with Elder Faura (Versailles DL) and get him to church this week.
Withold and Nathalie are our 'eterni-gators'. They know everything is true, but smoking is holding both of them back. They opened up to us a lot this week and we gave them some solid plans to quit. They're super sweet, a little older, and they finally came to Sacrament Meeting this week!
Rosario and Gina are two Filipino members that invited us over to dinner with their friend Amy. It was in the apartment of the family that Rosario cleans for, and the dining room looked right onto the Eiffel Tower... it was kinda cool :) We got to watch it light up during the meal and then we taught their friend Amy.
Marco came to church! We taught him after the Ward Luncheon. He was a little hesitant, but he's really excited to learn more :)
Daniel is a guy we found contacting when we only had a couple minutes in between lessons. He is from Romania and just got here to look for work. He speaks English pretty well, but no French. We taught him yesterday and he accepted everything we said. He's coming in tonight after our shift at the VC for another lesson :)
So, it was a pretty eventful week :)
The new office couples came in on Saturday, so I'll find out soon if they're calling me in or not. Our biggest challenge this week was finding a way to do missionary work in the middle of everything else. It's not like at the office when we were just stuck in the office and the APs understood if we didn't do much proselyting. Now, we're expected to be the examples for the whole Zone, and we have to keep everything on a good level while accomplishing everything else. But, it was all worth it :) We found Daniel in the very little time we had, and we were able to teach him :)
 
My favorite scripture this week was when Christ talks about considering the lilies. After everything else, God takes care of the minor details so that we can focus on the big picture. I feel like the Mission is the best example of that, that all of the outside problems are dealt with (largely by the Bureau haha) so that we can give everything to the Work.
I did get my package, thanks so much! It was perfect, we used the candy for English class. I love you guys, have a great week!
Love,
Elder Martin
The "Office" Boys

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