March 2011 - Perigueux





Perigueux

1 March 2011

This week has been a quick one, with a district meeting, an exhange to Brive and... another 3 of our investigators 'engaged' which is the french word they use for committed, to baptism!! France is kicking. Two of the engagés are cousins from Africa. That date is set for a few weeks and I reckon they'll be ready, and the other is a 45year old lady we've been teaching for some time now, like since my first day, and she said she'd prepare and then she came to church for the first time Sunday, which was an absolute miracle!  But she didnt like it, because there are some devil children, one of which was sitting in front of her and crawling around her legs and making a complete racquet, so apparently the sacrament meeting doesnt have the same tranquility as catholic mass :( So, the goal is just to get her back to church again and progressing, but I love her greatly, so she'd better!!

Jonathan, ready for Baptism

Jonathan's baptism will go ahead on Friday, even though he was sick and missed church this Sunday (which is the only church thing he missed all week) so that normally would postpone him because there's a mission rule that it's neccesary for an investigator to attend 3 meetings before baptism, but because he's well and truely ready, we got special permission. So all is well!!

Even though Jonathan wasn't at church, we still managed to bring 11 other investigators. Yeah! that wasn't a typo - ELEVEN.  I think in total there were 15 non members but there are certain requirements that have to be met to be an investigator,  for instance, a mother who came with one of our investigators didn't count, well not yet anyways ;) so yes, quick math, 11 amis (french for friend which they use instead of investigators) out of a total of 70 in the mission makes 15.7ish percent. So it was a blessing, though the trick is trying to get them there again, like last week another companionship scored 10 at church but this week only one of them came again, so this is only the begining, and boy! it's hard work organising all that.

And who said french missions were hard??? well actually it is hard but im happy that theres some fruit ripening at least.

This week I get to go to Toulouse again, all the new 'blue' missionaries in missions, get to go back to President's house for some more pep talks, food and just to see how we're going.So that willl be exciting, but this week's soo busy that it's kinda bad timing.  We could really use an extra day like that to teach and find a little more.  I was shattered, because we had a first rendez-vous with a semi-pro basketballer and now we have to try and rearange that, and by we, I mean my companion :)

7 March 2011



Jonathan's baptism in Perigueux.

So this week there was a baptism, and a confirmation but only six 'amis' at church and a conference for the 'blue' ie new missionaries. Plus, the sacrament bread in this branch is actually baked by the Branch President, OH MY GOODNESS! wow its amazing, ohh la la!

I had to go to Toulouse, via Bordeaux, this week for that conference, so for two nights I got to stay with the zone leaders, then went to the conference.  It was kinda short; but it was really really nice to get to see the people from my intake again, swap stories, hilarious times, be spiritually up lifted etc etc.

Here is the hilarious story of the week: Elder Bennallack was Bised!! ie the French, how they greet each other with that cheek to cheek thing with the kissing sound! yeah! on the train to Toulouse there were these girls who weren't too interested in the work of missionaries, but loved talking to my companion especially.  Anyways, as they were leaving, BAM! recieved the bise.  It was literally shocking, and afterwards I was speechless, so maybe it was a good thing that I was on the way to the Mission President's home, for the repentance process... but yeah, it was funny :p

Yesterday, ie Sunday was a slow day with ALL of our rendez-vous' falling through, but we stuck to it and between 8 and 8:50 pm, BAM! two miracles.  One will be a new investigator from Congo and the other was just recontacted with an old investigator.. two miracles.

15 March 2011

This week was transfer week, I'm still here in Perigueux, with my trainer, well see how much work we can manage this transfer.

 

The almost eaten baguette & cheese be a hungary Elder!!



Jonathan is going amazing, blessed the sacrament yesterday - hes the man! He's hilarious and really has a good head for the gospel.   We've had some good chats, but its funny, I forget that hes a new convert sometimes.  He's been called as a ward missionary, well branch missionary, which is great.  He is a fantastic person to teach other investigators with, he's truely been converted by the spirit :)

We were talking with him about how we have to try and squeeze in a baptism (of two cousins from Guyane or how over you spell it, French South African) in a few weeks because of Stake Conference and General Conference, and he says "General Conference, whats that??" So we told him that each 6 months the Prophet and the Apostles speak to the world and it's broadcast and translated 'live' for us.  He was SOOO excited to hear that the prophet will speak in a few weeks.  We must be the worst missionaries ever!  How did we baptise someone and not tell him sometime in our teaching process, that theres a thing called General Conference?!

Then we told him that then all the talks are published in the Liahona, not the actual Liahona but the magazine, and because he just finished 1st Nephi, he said, "Of couse because the Liahona is like a guide." Love him, and yes dad, we taught him every lesson.  Well, he was found when I was on an exchange and he was taught once then, but appart from that, I've been there with him.  Love him.

View of Perigueux from the bridge..

One story that I like this week, there's this big tower, we nick-named it the 'Tower of Babel', it's all housing.  We had some spare time, so we planned to do some door knocking, tracting or what ever they call it in English, and our third or fourth one in, some ripped as shirtless african guy with a naked baby let us in.  We talked to him for a little bit, his wife was out but we talked a bit about God etc.   He was muslim, by belief but not by religion if that makes sense. We were just about to finish when his wife came home, so we finished up, invited his wife to join us for the prayer and then after the prayer he says "you need a drink!" Love Africans.  So when he was gone, his wife says, "ahh, saint des dernier jours (LDS) I didnt know they had that here, I knew of that church back in the Ivory Coast".  It turns our she was an investigator there, had a baptisimal date, got cold feet, and didn't turn up on the day of the baptism!!! Shattering for the missionaries in the Ivory Coast, but hopefully we can start teaching her. We will see..

So that's the miracle of the week!

22 March 2011

I have a scary story.  Firstly today, we taught our ami (for my sake here, we call investigators 'amis' or friends, so I'll be referring to them as such for the next 2 years) so yes, our ami from the Ivory Coast, the one who apparently had a baptismal date.  It turns out she met the missionaries one Saturday, and they wanted to baptise her the following Satarday like 7 days later.  No wonder she bailed on it!  So today we tauight her, with our branch missionary Jonathan ;) the Restoration, and more importantly the Joseph Smith story, because she had never heard of it before.

oh la la! (yes that's said here, and normally its in like a 'oh my goodness! can you believe so and so just did that silly thing?' etc etc) but yes.. interesting.

We need to find more 'amis' so were contacting a little more, and I eat lots! The foods good, very good, and we play lots of basketball, in fact we have 'Samedi Sportif', ie Sporting Saturday, and we contacted a guy who's in fact a semi-pro here in France.  He asked us if we play bacause he's played with the missionaries in England before.  He came to our Samedi Sportif, good times!  He also has a Book of Mormon now, hopefully we can score a lesson with him sometime.

29 March 2011

More of Perigueux, France

The weather here is starting to fine up.   The mission rule is if its 23 degrees celcius, jackets can come off.  This week we had maybe four days straight of that, jackets were off.  To be honest, I think we had a lot more success contacting people without the jackets, in fact the first day in the first hour, three people actually stopped us.  I dunno, maybe we look more friendly with just the white shirts, or they were impressed with my muscly arms... probably the latter.

This week was pretty intense!! Lots of high dramas, looks like Satan's taken a liking to this hot weather and is 'smashing' some of our investigators with baptisimal dates and even some of our recent converts.  During the week weve received some crazy crazy phone calls, messages, and well a few of them have told us that the Mormon church isn't their thing.. So we've sorted out alot of it, had a nice day of fasting, and there's only one investigator with a date that we want to see today.  She sounded like she's having a hard time, so hopefully all goes well.

Besides that absolute emotional rollercoaster of a week, not too much out of the ordinary has happened. One companionship in the district had an absolute shocker of a week, like only about 4 lessons, and their contacting was practically fruitless, not to mention if any of those fruits will be good ones. So this week, we're doing an exchange with them, and then next week the Zone Leaders are doing exchanges with them. Also this week, because it was already arranged, they are doing an exchange with us because my companion, Elder Smith is the District Leader, so a busy week exchange wise.  I'll be running the 'ville' for two days this week which will be nice.  In the district, theres our ville, Brive, and Bergerac. President and Sister Carter, before they finish up in July, are going to every Branch or Ward Sacrament Meeting and meeting with the companionships..

Dad asked, what things am I finding hard? Well, my bed is too hard, either that or my back still isn't good from when I stuffed it somehow before the mish, because my lower back is sore all the time - but I'll live, and this last week especially has been soo hard to get up, my body is drained, we walk easy 10 kilometers every day.  Yesterday would have been even more, in fact this week we had a lot of lessons fall through so we did alot of contacting, wow, drains the body, especially after a huge basketball week last week. This Pday were taking it real easy

 I have a good companion so I can't complain, we will see how it goes when one of us is transferred. Though thats not for 4 weeks.

An emotional rollercoaster of a week, I'm purposely not going into massive detail, but at several times my heart dropped out of my stomach and onto the floor, not as a sadness, but just disappointed for the people we love.  But most is well now, and my french feels like it's better.  I still make a million mistakes though, but most people can understand me

Oh, and 4 months ago today i was set apart,

Bonne Semaine