ski champ, b-day party, no trains, amazing experience

My new companion used to ski and was ranked 7th in the world for his age and then he blew out is knee. Now he is on a mission. We get along really well

The bleu (what they call brand new missionaries, here they are known as "greenies", their they are "blue" haha) in our apartment is so bleu, I hope i wasn't like that but he is really nice.

Our ward had a birthday party because the Cergy ward has been here for 30 years, so that's a big deal. We brought a lot of amis (french word for "friend", but also it's what missionaries in France call thier investigators of the church) there and it was really good. One of our amis is 15 years old, so I got to go to Young Womens (the class for the girls aged 12-18 in the ward) on Sunday. That was just weird. She's getting along really well with the YW in our ward.

yup.

We went porting and a man really wanted to pray with us, so we did. He sat crosslegged on his coffee table and put both arms up in the arm and started singing to the spirits.

We are having a really hard time getting around. Our metro line is under construction and it'll just not have any trains for hours.

Last night we didn't really have anything to do and it was really cold so i was like ummmmmm hey let's go visit a certain less active member of our ward. Turns out the night before she had a mini stroke at the top of the staircase and fell down and broke 6 ribs, an arm, and her sternum. She didn't have an money to go to the doctor so she just sat there and cried and prayed and read the scriptures all day and then we showed up. We gave her a blessing and cried with her for a little while. She was really glad we came. It was the most amazing and spiritual thing that has ever happened to me.

so I dont think ill send memory cards home anymore.  (The one he sent last week arrived here blank and broken and he hadn't backed it up or saved anything on it elsewhere.)

Staying in Cergy

The transfer news is that I'm staying in cergy and elder Webber is going to Le Mans. My next companion is going to be one of the elders from the other cergy equipe, and there is going to be another elder who will be training a noob, so there will still be 4 missionaries here.

 

Our sacrament meetings have been not so spiritual lately, and that is not good for our amis, and i brought that up with the bishop and he was not happy at first, but then he finally saw where i was coming from. When we bring amis to church, they expect to be nourished by the good word of God, not just hear funny stories about people's missions and a brief summary of the books of Moses and Abraham. I really want our ward to start having ami friendly sacrament meetings. So the bishop decided that sacrament talks are going to start to be based on Preach My Gospel, which will also be better for the members.

This week has been good, but our baptisms didn't happen. I still feel at peace about the things that we've done. Its not good to force someone to get baptized or to baptize someone who isn't ready, so we moved back their dates.

 

Besides that no big news. These next couple weeks are going to be great because we've been finding some legit people and since elder flitton and I are going to be companions next transfer we're going to have my amis and his amis.

Hardest, Most Awesome Week

This was one of the hardest weeks and one of the most awesome weeks of my mission. Actually, the hardest and the most awesome.  One of the things that president stresses a lot is obedience. duh. but yeah. So one of our amies that we contacted and then set a rendez-vous with tried to do the bizzou to me right when she walked up to me. (That's the kiss on the the cheek thing). Elders are not allowed to do that. So I did a barrel roll out of the way, not really but I like jumped away. It was mad awkward. I had to explain why I couldn't do it. Elder Webber made fun of me for hours and hours. The next day, we went bat porting (knocking on doors). The first door we knocked on, the lady let us in and we taught the family a lesson and she invited us back. Same with the second door. At the 3rd door we knocked on there was a woman who was baptized ten years ago in Portugal, but then she moved here. She didn't know that there was an LDS church here. So now she is going to come to church with us next week. She has tons of kids who want to be baptized! I know that we had so much success just because I didn't kiss a pretty lady.

We helped reactivate a woman who was in a bad situation and the ward loved it.  Everyone loves her and is taking care of her.

This week I started to realize how big of a deal missionary work is. God trusts a bunch of nerdy 19 (18) year olds to go find his children. That is such a big burden. There are some people who are very, very lost, but I have a testimony that God never gives up on anyone. He sends his missionaries to people who need it and I saw that so many times this week. It is true that missionaries walk under the hand of God.

So they say that the more days you work in the rain on your mission the hotter your wife is going to be. Awesome for me and even more awesome is that my umbrella broke.

There are going to be a lot of changes in my district at this next transfer day. Two elders are going home and I know that a lot are getting transferred. I'm pretty sure that I'll be staying in Cergy and  Elder Webber is leaving. He is district leader so we are getting a new one.

Time is going by so fast! Its halfway through October! I can remember the Halloween dance at SVU last year so well. That's cray!

http://www.templemormonparis.org/

One more thing! I'm doing a presentation at the college here about America. Can you email me a bunch of picture of me (or not) that represent the american life?

 

Conference Weekend Pictures

184 missionaries in the France Paris mission.  This is the board in the mission presidents office to help keep track of them! 

Brussels photos

I thought I posted these last week.  Elder Guymon had (got) to go to Belgium last week to sign legality papers.  While there he got to see his MTC district, his MTC companion, ride a fast train, eat Belgian waffles, and see parts of Brussels.  He really liked it and wished he could stay longer! 

metros, Conference, new suit, tomatoes

This week has been really messed up. Pretty much everything we do relies on the metros and this week 9 different people jumped in front of trains to kill themselves.  When that happens the whole line shuts down. Its pretty eerie, but also annoying. Its also really sad.  I wish that the people who jump had the gospel in there lives and knew the plan of salvation. If I didn't know about the plan of salvation, I know that the world would seem very glum. But its also selfish to kill yourself buy jumping infront of a metro because it ruins everyone else's life for like 5-6 hours. I wish that those people would have heard this General Conference.

 

I didn't eat anything that weird this week. Well, goat cheese pizza, but that's pretty normal.

We went to a couples house and they were watching "Legend of the Seeker" in French. Soo distracting!

The weeks are going by so fast now. Its crazy.

A girl who we found and taught, who was going to get baptized on the 20th, moved to England. She is going to get baptized there she says.

It rains everyday, so people don't really want to stop and talk to us on the street so we have to go porting, stereotypical missionary work.

We went to a thrift store to look at ties and I bought an awesome suit for 20 euros, which is good because prez said that we have to wear a suit until next conference.

Conference was sweet! We brought the man we baptized and he LOVED it. He told me that in 50 years I'm going to be an apostle. haha. He said that the prophet is full of wisdom and that he knows that God prepared him. Conference on Saturday was super hard to get to because someone jumped. We had to take buses and trams and we were pretty late.

We're making a lot of goals for these next two weeks because either Elder Webber is leaving or I am, either way we're splitting up. We want to baptize someone before then.

People in France watch "Once Upon a Time".

Hey Bradley, you neeeeed to play soccer all 4 years in high school and then go play at SVU. I wish I would have.  Are you going to serve a mission when you're 18?  Missions are awesome!

 

My feet are better.

 

FRENCH PEOPLE LOVE TOMATOES. Its pretty gross, but I eat them. I didn't know that we had a white baby rooster. 

 

Everyone has to get Belgium legality stuff done just in case they get transferred there. General Conference is like the Superbowl for missionaries. 

 

I think that I'm probably going to train an 18 year old, but the MTC is going to be outta control.

Brussels, Shakira, hot baptismal water, escargot

So this week I went on an exchange to Chartres and while I was there we got a call that said that I was going to Belgium the next day to do more legality stuff.  So we had to change the train tickets and go into Paris, then we went to Brussels which was pretty fun. The train we took went like a zillion miles per hour. We got to Brussels in like an hour and a half.  We had lunch (a sandwich called a "met triad" and a waffle) and then walked around in this crazy plaza surrounded by a lot of old buildings that where super tricked out. They were setting up a stage, because that night Shakira was going to perform. I WANTED TO STAY!! but then we had to go and sign some papers.

Our baptism was AWESOME! We brought a ton of amis and they all thought it was cool. So while I was filling up the font, the water was freezing cold, so I called the bishop and asked him how to make it hot. Then I pushed some buttons and made it hot. 2 hours later, when they got in the font, it was like boiling hot. I felt so bad, but it was ok. He said that he was baptized of water and fire at the same time. haha.

 

So twice this week we had a rendez-vous with someone who just wanted to bible bash. It is amazing how people have no logic. I didn't really know how to defend the book of Mormon so I just bore my testimony.  I really didnt want to lose and have those people think that they are better than us, so I just bore testimony and then we left. They said that all they need is a bible and that you dont need to add to it and its perfect. It's amazing how much they didn't know about the Bible and also its so cool to see how true the Book of Mormon is; Nephi tells about people like that.

 

I'm pretty excited about General Conference but we have to go to Versailles again and because of the time difference we're not going to see all of them live. I'm pretty sad about that.

 

Yeah I've eaten escargot... its like eating a hard lougie.

In France, some people, after they shake hands, touch their hearts. and I have accidentally started doing that sometimes.

We dont do anything fun on pdays.  We just clean.

I wish I would have done more missionary work with my friends, and went out with the missionaries more when I was younger.   I know that when I get home I'm going to be helping them out so much.