See you all in a WEEK!

So this week was a crazy week overall. we got a lot of things done so i was happy in the end. 

Tuesday i had an exchange with our district leader, Elder Nelson. He is a stud from tremonton haha. it's so nice talking about all the good old boys that i used to play baseball with and of course just laughing about the silly things that go on in tremonton. we rep the northern part of utah in the mission so hardly anyone understands what our lives are like but we understand each other perfectly. he was the first person i'd heard my whole mission use the word gripe. this reminded me of my mom because she's straight from tremonton herself. it was a fun exchange where we did a lot of walking and a lot of contacting with no success. we taught our ami francois and his son that same evening only to find out that they're going to africa for one month. bummer. too bad i don't have another 6 months here so i could see them a few more times. this guy is legit he has already read halfway through 2nd nephi. he is super interested and i think he's starting to actually believe in god. the book of mormon has that effect on people that's for sure. 

Wednesday was the second to last district meeting for me so i wasn't super sad. i told everyone i was saving that for this week when i'll have my last one. once that was finished we went off and found some less actives which led us to houses that didn't exist and all that good stuff. it wasn't really anything out of the ordinary. overall this week we found 4 less actives though. we were super pumped because that's the new vision of the mission. we are going for reactivating less actives and keeping the recent converts. it's a process bringing people back to church but it's worth it. 

we kind of glided to saturday with some contacting and scattered lessons to people in the road. saturday was a crazy day where we were able to see 4 people. we went less active hunting yet again and came up with 2. it was a nice haul and we got to walk along the river la somme the whole way with people fishing. i almost thought about asking them to try but it looked just as boring as it did before. sorry dad 2 years couldn't make me want to fish in any way. after we saw the less actives it was time to teach blessing once again. we went with fonja who is in the running for favorite member of all time. watch out buff frère caby. when we got to blessing's she was asleep because she though we weren't going to come because of the rain. haha africans are the very best. we taught her and she was just awesome even if she was half asleep.

sunday was a great day as well. i gave a talk about the word of wisdom and everyone seemed to love it. i don't think anyone has ever told anybody that their talked sucked so who really knows if it was good or not. blessing came to church and everything was peachy.

this is the last time i will be blogging as a missionary so i just wanted to thank everyone who has supported me and all that. the mission is the greatest thing ever and i've learned so much. i've grown more than i could have ever hoped and i'm so grateful that the lord has given me this opportunity. i'm going to miss france more than anything as well as all the amazing people. i think i may have to just come back and live here.  life is so good as a missionary and i hope it will be this good back in the real world. thanks mom and dad for being such a good example as well as president and sister poznanski who are now my second pair of parents. i figure it would be could to have some parents in europe just in case i do ever live here. i love you all and see you soon!

14 Days!!

woah woah woah 14 days till paris p-day with the boys. this can't even be true. where did the time go i feel like i need 6 more months here in france. looks like i'll have to come live here to get the full effect. maybe a french wife? that would be the dream of every single missionary in our mission haha! I'll have to give you a nice update from the week Tuesday was my birthday so i got some nice calls from some of my missionary bros. Other than that it was a super weird day. We had to go shopping because everything was closed and we couldn't do it on our p-day. these french people just look for every single opportunity to take work off. i like it. haha just kidding work is what makes the world go round. After our shopping we had the chance to help with an after funeral service at the church. You were right if you thought that there was nothing i'd rather do on my birthday than go to an after funeral get together. it was super awkward because we were told to just supervise and not to talk to anyone about the gospel. that left us all pretty much without anything to do. we are gospel preaching machines so we didn't know what to do. i was able to get in with the kids with some nice pop culture references and then we talked about rap music and i did some advertising for my american rappers préféré. it was a good time that's for sure. I slayed them all with my references to a french rapper named fouiny when i said quoi de neuf fouiny baby. i was the mission le plus stylée they'd ever seen. man i love french it's so funny. After the funeral we treated ourselves to some pizza because it was mardi fou. dominos has this thing where pizza on tuesdays in like 8 euros which is a horrible deal in the states but a really good one here in france. that's what we did on my birthday. we were able to teach some nice people this week. blessing is super hard to get a hold of so i think my chance to see a baptism before i leave has gone. we have a couple cool people that are fairly interested so weston will have a nice time after i leave. we were teaching our ami christain when a couple we ported into came and started talking to us. it was funny because it was the second time we'd just run into them. they are always super busy so we can't really fix anything with them but we seem to just be seeing them all over the place. basically we were just teaching the wife's atheist husband and he was giving us all the same questions and answers that every single person in france gives us so i just took a book or mormon marked alma 32 and told him to read and apply the things inside and all would be well. easy as that right? it was funny because he one of the few that admitted it was his pride that kept him from believing. you've got to admire his honesty. they were cool and that was a super cool night. i wish i could just have nice converstations like that more often it was just so soothing and nice to just talk about scriptures and testimonies and not try to convert anyone haha. it was a feel good night that's for sure Our week 2 district meeting was cool because it was the last big meeting i'd have on my mission. our zone conference is a week after i leave and i decided that staying the amiens and working will have a more lasting effect than going to paris for one day and going to a zone conference. i gave my dying testimony and it was the weirdest thing i've ever done. my thoughts were a little jumbled but i hope that people liked it haha. i also got to see elder bananier who had to leave to take care of his mother who lives in paris. it was nice to see him and i hope that his mother can do better before august because that's his deadline. he's such a great guy. this week was pretty normal but i'll try and write the blog entry to end all blog entries next week for the grand finale! So i was just sitting and i was very intent on my e mails and i noticed out of the corner of my eye that a little girl was looking at my screen so i turned to look at her and it turned out it was blessing's kid! Blessing hasn't been answering her phone and it's been so hard to get a hold of her so i was super surprised and i just said, Melissa? when she realized it was me she screamed and ran to find her mom. We looked up front and saw blessing and her son. Her son pointed at us and said, "hey look it's the missionaries!!" Blessing was super occupied with what she was doing so she didn't even notice her daughter and son pulling on her shirt saying it's the missionaries it's the missionaries. we just got finished talking to her and she said that she was in paris figuring things out for her legality and that she wanted to come to church on sunday but she tried to call and our phone didn't work. even if she doesn't get baptized while i'm here that's such a great thing to see and it just proves that the lord will continue to bless us. we will see her on saturday haha! how great!!

Woah! What an amazing week!

what a week! 

This week was so crazy and things don't seem like they'll be cooling down at all. We had tons of lessons and we have been working our butts off out here in Amiens. the week started with some heart breaking news from octavien who told us that he was going on vacation for 1 month and a half. it was super sad to hear but hopefully the missionaries will be able to pick him back up when he gets back.

 

On thursday i was picked to go to paris with another elder who lives with us. he had his passport stolen so it was up to me to go with him and try to direct him around paris. i don't know why they chose me because i've never served there and i don't know how to get around at all. we were able to get him set to get a new passport. the bad thing was that it took so long so we had a few hours in paris. we weren't too far from the arc de triomphe so we headed over there and met 2 member families which was funny.

 

saturday was a great day. we had a lesson with blessing and we brought with us fanja who is a killer member. she is so legit and so nice. she brought blessing to church 2 weeks ago and was totally testifying and sharing all the experiences she has had in the church. so we went there and we taught her and her family about the plan of salvation. she loved it so much and she was just so into the lesson. before we had talked tentively about setting a date but it wasn't anything serious. we hadn't even thought of a date! after the lesson she was just expressing how  much she loved the church and the restoration. i felt like it was the right time so i just asked her to be baptized on the 19th of july. luckily the 19th of july is a saturday. she just started laughing and buried her hands in her face it was really weird. fonja elder weston and i just looked at each other it was kind of awkward. fonja asked what was wrong and she just said she wasn't clean enough to be ready to be baptized so we pulled out the scripture in moroni 8:25-26 and she totally understood that she didn't need to be perfect to be baptized. so she accepted the date and it was such a cool lesson. 

 

The mission is so awesome and i'm so sad to be reaching the end. i'm trying my best to make it last though!

Goodbye Poznanski's

this was a sad sad week for everyone in the france paris mission. all the zones had the chance to have their farewell conferences with the poznanskis. they are legends and have done so much for this mission. i can't even thank them for all the advice they've given me and for all the great things they taught me. if i were to make a list of all the times they've helped me it would take up a whole blog page. it was a sad day and a real tear jerker for sure, but thanks to facebook they aren't gone forever. there's one benefit of social networking. 

 

Other than the zone conferences we had a bit of a rough week. it seems that all of our amis are gone somewhere or were just busy this week. we met one guy named octavien and we have really high hopes for him. he's 18 and from rwanda. He's could be some priesthood to help the branch and also a perspective missionary. that's the only one i'm mission from my list so i'm putting lots of eggs in the octavien basket. i guess i should explain "my list". i have a list of types of people i want to baptize. for example, i wanted to baptize a french man and woman and also a guy from congo so i've done those 3. i wanted to baptize a muslim as well which was done. now i just have baptize a future missionary left. so there's my list. Blessing was busy this past week which was sad but we will get her this week and it will be ok.

 

It was a pretty slow week as far as the work was concerned but this week will pick up that's for sure. 

 

it was a good week this week that's for sure. we had a surprise visit from the elders in bourge so i had the chance to talk with elder johnson and have a little high school reunion. it was great. haha. i had a long exchange with an elder named elder lehman. i've nicknamed him the lemur, like the little monkey. he is a nice dude from granstville. there was a strike for trains so we were forced to stay together for longer than we should have. we taught some really good lessons together and found a lot of people so it was all good.

 

Blessing is really progressing and she made some big steps this week. we were able to have our super awesome member named fanja take her to church. fonja totally deserves a cake so we're going to bake one for her this week. So thanks to fonja she came to church and she loved it. she was talking to us the in the hall and told us she realizes that it's a big engagement to be a member and that she needs to pray really hard for the strength to be able to do all that is asked of her. she needs to learn french first but she speaks italien so it will all turn out ok. everyone is smooth in that sense.

 

there's always got to be some type of opposition so this week it was hearing about the death of my grandmother. to lose my last 2 grandparents in 5 months was very hard but i kept working and we found 2 new people to teach after i heard the news. So it's just another proof that if you keep working you will always be blessed. i'm just glad they left me such a good example and raised some good kids as well. 

 

this week i felt like i got a lot closer to the members because we had a great linger longer. they actually called it a linger longer in french and it sounded funny with the accents and everything. i was able to really get close to all of them i felt. sometimes it's hard to break into those really tight friendships but it was all good and the goal was accomplished. i feel like your last ward or branch will always be one that you cherish. hopefully i can stay in contact with all of them! all is well here in amiens and we will be wishing the poznanski's off with their final zone conference this week. it's crazy but i guess that's how fast 2 years goes. 

 

 

Icing on the Cake

This week was a crazy one here in France. We went to Paris for our week 2 district meeting and I had the dream to finally go to the top of the eiffel tower. at the start it looked like we were definitely going to be able to go. then some stuff happened and i didn't get to go and let's just say i was soooo sad. i think it's just not in the cards for me. 

 

We started working as soon as we got back from paris and went to do some porting in a small bat. the 2nd door we knocked there was an african lady who let us pray with her and she was SOOOOOO pregnant! we talked with her and her man and they told us that she was actually supposed to have the baby that day but the doctors decided to wait. they think it was a sign from God. I'm not going to aruge with that.

 

Thursday we had a mangez vous planned with the senior couple in our area. we decided we would go contacting on the way there. we had been contacting and we were going to be late for the rdv with them so we decided to speed up a little. my comp saw a family and wanted to contact them just as soon as i saw a lady with 3 little kids. i told him no way! we are totally contacting that lady. luckily we chose the right family out of the 2. the lady we chose to contact is named blessing from nigeria. she'd been living in italy for 14 years before she decided to come to france. she said that all the time she was in italy her sister told her she needed to find our church and she never could. she ran into a lot of témoigne jehavoh but she didn't ever find the missionaries. she was very very happy to find us. we set up a rdv for the next day. We went and taught her very quickly because the bus was going to come and it was the last bus of the night. if we had missed that bus we would have had to hitchhike like me and elder barr did. so we taught her in 10 mintues and in the 10 minutes she'd agreed to be baptized and was so happy to have the book of mormon. we walked to the bus stop and the bus was a little late so she pulled out her phone and called her sister. i talked to her sister for a little bit and her sister told me that i needed to baptize her. she said she'd talked to blessing on wednesday night(we met her on thursday) and after that she prayed that she'd meet the missionaries. i don't think it's just chance. it's super funny that her name is blessing as well. how fitting!

 

i returned to lille this week and it was sooo nice. i got to see karim and we talked for a little while. his situation is difficult and he is doing everything he can to get to church and continue to be a good member. sitting in the chapelle i was so nostalgic. it just made me think of all the good moments i had in lille and also everywhere on my mission. it was like a weird type of flash back. i thought of elder thomas and i baptizing ludovic, teaching with phillip canty and emmanuel while i was with elder foley in tour, i thought of chantel and all the changes she made in her life, i thought of the time where i got to see ludovic receive the mechisedek preisthood as well as fabrice and una, then i thought of all the good examples in lille and all the people we helped together. it was a weird feeling. maybe it's the feeling i'll get once i step back onto the baseball field or something. we'll see! overall i've been so blessed as a missionary it's incredible

 

We made a cake this week for a nigerian recent convert in our branch. she made us think at first that she hated the cake but she really loved it. being with elder barr has turned me into a not so bad chef. man i miss elder barr soooo much! luckily we only have to be away from one another for a few more weeks. this sunday was just some icing on the cake if you will! 

All is well that ends well!

well this was a very slow week.

 

it seemed that early in the week every single one of our amis were in paris. they were just all gone. we thought that vacation was over but i guess it wasn't haha. 

 

while i was on an exchange with a missionary from Arras we were walking on this street and found a thug life basketball player named thomas. he was pretty legit and had a tattoo that said, "2pac" on his neck. oh la vache! we taught him a little on a bench and prayed with him. he said he wants to re find his faith but the whole while i was thinking he just wanted to play basketball because that's how the whole convo started. i was totally nice when he invited me to a street basketball game the next day. we are going to play basketball today so i hope he's there to ball with us. 

 

thursday arnaud told us that he was leaning toward budhism as his religion so that was just a punch in the stomach. he agreed to recieve all the lessons so we are hoping that something will change between now and then. 

 

friday we made the trip out to versailles to see our 70's. it was crazy because they were like an hour late so we just sat and socialized and all that which was good. the fact that they were so late left them with only like an hour to talk and there were 6 people who needed to talk. i was surprised at how much they could fit in in one hour. i felt super good after. it was a nice little spiritual booster. 

 

Saturday we got to go to lille to do a little stake activity. Sadly enough i didn't get to see my buff dmp. he is not yet a high priest so i was a little sad about that. it's been a while since i've seen someone as buff as that. we did a thing where we went out and found less actives and i got to go with the bishop of Arras who is a super cool guy and he caught me up on all the b ball news. there was a super bad wreck so we missed our train and it was the last train of the night. we slept in lille which wasn't the best and because of that we had to take an early train and i didn't have my razor so i went to church with a nice beard. at the end of church a sweet thing happened. a cool guy 22 year old guy came to church. elder barr and i talked with him and he told us that he bought a book of mormon on amazon and has been reading it and loving it so much. we fixed a rdv with him and all was well. it was the only way that the week could have ended well and you know what they say, all is well that ends well! this week looks like it will be a good one and hopefully elder barr and i will be able to stay together for another transfer.