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!