Contact Info

You can mail a letter to Elder Wilson in the PARIS FRANCE mission at dearelder.com or through the postal service:

Elder B. Stanton Wilson
49 Rue Marengo
72000 Le Mans
France

The mission home address is:
France-Paris Mission
23, rue du Onze Novembre
78110 Le Vesinet
France

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Elder Tivles

May 19, 2014

Hello Family!
 
Sounds like all is well in Grantsville! Did you hear about Ricky? He's gonna be in one of Alex Boyé's music videos! He sent me a picture of him with Alex. Needless to say, I'm super happy for him. Just in case you didn't know, Alex Boyé has become one of my favorite singers while being out here in France. ha :)
 
This past week we did lots of finding...without the finding. Well, kinda ha. We did find like 12 potential amis, so we're pretty excited to try to get into contact with all of them.
 
Wednesday night we had a huge surprise! There is a new Elder in our appartement now. His name is Elder Tivles, he is from the Pacific Islands (Vanuatu), and he has a HUGE testimony. He speaks English and French and his own islandic language along with 5 or 6 others islandic languages. He is 19 years old and he will be serving in the France Paris Mission. He is currently waiting a visa to go to the Madrid MTC, which he'll be getting in August, I do believe. He's a pretty quiet fellow, but he is hilarious!!
 
This Friday, Elder Snow from the Church History department came and talked to us. He and his wife, along with two others and their wives all spoke. It seemed that they talked a lot about courage and being smart. Each one of their talks were about courage. Needless to say, it was very spiritually uplifting, and I feel like since then, I've built up some more courage. I also had the joyous opportunity to participate in the musical number.. :) we did A Pilgrim's Hymn...which is 8 part harmony. I got to sing 1st tenor!!! I was STOKED! :) singing a cappella, is just so amazing! :) And the spirit was really brought in with the song.
 
Friday night, after the conference with Elder Snow, Elder Wallace and I headed over to the Familly Louima's to teach Jacques, our creole-speaking ami. We taught him the beginning of the Plan of Salvation and talked about prayer. He seemed very grateful of us to be there and he has an amazing desire to learn. It's been so cool teaching him. He was even sick, too. So we offered to give him a blessing, which he accepted. To give the blessing, we had our translator, Sr Jean-Jacques, sit next to Jacques, and translate after each sentence. It was a super cool experience. After the blessing, he thanked us for the blessing and for the time we took to be there to teach him.
 
Saturday was an all finding day, except for the morning. We were invited to come over for the Foi en Dieu activity and do some activity with the primary kids (ages 8-11) to help get them excited about missionary work. We talked about the Story of the Title of Liberty and then helped the kids all make their own title of liberty for the Ninja Missionary program (which is the program to help get the primary kids to invite their friends to church, to listen to the missionaries, and to talk about church). All the kids seemed to love their title of Liberties.
 
For the rest of the day we went out contacting/passing by less active members. One miracle that happened right before we headed back to the appartement, started about an hour before. We contacted these two young adults, who turned out to be a non-practicing catholic and a die-hard protestant. We talked about the book of Mormon and gave them each one, and got one of their numbers. About 40 minutes later, as we were walking to the gare a young, asian girl walked past us reading a book. I kinda saw it and thought it was a Book of Mormon, so right after she passed us, I looked over her shoulder to see if it was familiar, and I saw the picture of Moroni as he's putting the plates in the ground. Elder Wallace and I decided to go chase her down and talk to her, which we did, and found out that the Book of Mormon she had, she found on the ground and wanted to use it to help her learn French. She tried giving it back to us, but we told her that it's hers. The cool thing about all this, this Book of Mormon, was the same one we gave to the non practicing catholic. How did we know? There was a mis-cut on a couple of the pages, so two or three pages stuck out. He must have thrown that book about 5 minutes after we contacted him, and thanks to that, we were able to find another person. We got her number and we'll be seeing her this week to give her a Book of Mormon in Chinese and to explain the Book of Mormon.
 
It's pretty cool how miracles happen like that. :)
 
Well, thank you for the recipes! I love you all!
Stay Fly
 

-Elder B. Stanton Wilson

More about Elder Tivles from Sister Poznanski:

MOVING STORY - THE MAJESTY OF A WILLING AND HUMBLE HEART
With a heart full of thanksgiving and joy Elder Tivles received his mission call to serve in the France Paris Mission. He comes to us from an archipelago island in the South Pacific Ocean called Vanuatu, so little that one can’t even see it on the map! He is the second missionary from his branch and is proud to be an example to his two younger sisters, younger brother and friends. To attend church, each Sunday his family walks 3 hours each way making it a total 6 hour journey. It is also not rare to see 120 people present, half of them being non members! On his island, the people live off the natural resources that are found there. The couple missionary that helped Elder Tivles prepare for his mission explain, “the living conditions in these villages are very simple, and even primitive compared to the European standard of living but these people are rated as being the happiest people on earth. They do not have material possessions and do not need them.”
When he was set apart, Elder Tivles was particularly impressed by the words “your travel will be long and hard but don’t worry because the Saviour will be by your side.” He arrived in Paris after a trip that was in fact longer than previously planned because of a visa error. He traveled for 32 hours in three seemingly endless parts, Australia, Bangkok and Dubai. In consequence of his visa discrepancy, he was asked to wait for 6 hours in one of these huge airports, in so doing he was lost, had no money nor food and had no idea where to go to pick up his one small suitcase or even where his next flight would be located. While sitting thinking about what he should do it was then that a lady came towards him and asked him to follow her to a restaurant where she invited him to come and eat. Amazed he asked himself “how did she know that I was hungry?” Then she left him as discreetly as she came up to him. Later, another woman gave him 10 dollars that he didn’t even use but that he showed me with profound gratitude, this note for him represents the tender care that our Heavenly Father had for him in that moment. Then desperately looking for the correct direction to go a man offered to bring him to the area where he could find his luggage. This man, noticing that his flight was soon had to leave suddenly only to return a few minutes later having missed his flight. He then offered to show Elder Tivles the way to his departure gate so that he could eventually board the plane.
Elder Tivles’ heart was full of thankfulness and wonder after having seen so often the hand of his Heavenly Father through all of these people that had been like angels to him. He shared with me a simple thought taken from his setting apart, “But I never was afraid because I really felt Christ by my side.” So I decided to share with him this beautiful scripture and promise where the Lord tells his missionaries: “…I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.” -D&C 84:88 He then took his scriptures and underlined carefully these verses, his face lit up with a soft smile.
Upon his arrival at the mission office I noticed the small amount of clothing that he arrived with (things to him which were completely sufficient). We were then able to find a few things to finish packing his luggage such as rain gear, a warm sweater, shoes, accessories and a second suitcase. These things were all in excellent condition, they were either left by missionaries or generously given, things that seemed to just be waiting there to bless another loyal servant of Christ.
The pureness of his soul already has touched the hearts of numerous people, one of which is mine. It is a tender mercy of the Lord at the end of our mission to be able to, today, because of this magnificent meeting, meditate on what is REALLY important.


Steak and Fries Sans Cesse (Without Ceasing)

May 12, 2014

Bonjour!

C'était vraiment bien de vous voir! Je l'aimais beaucoup! :)

So it seems like everyone is doing really well then. Although, Kaysen didn't talk too much. Neither did Sam, but I guess that'll come with some time. ha ;) And yes, it was super hard to say goodbye. Je suis heureux que vous êtes tous fiers de moi. ça me plaît.

This past week was tough but it was good. It was upsetting to not be able to get ahold of like any of our amis. But it built my patience a bit. We still were blessed to find some people to teach. And that was good. We didn't find any new amis, but we have some potentials that we'll be getting in touch with this week.

The presentation went really well. Although, the students were appalled when I talked about guns...and hunting...haha...and for some reason, fishing too. It was so funny to see how they reacted to normal american things. That was all during the first part. The second part was very spiritual, where we talked about values, namely the attributes listed in PMG Chapitre 6 except for hope. :) At the end we showed them a bible video, the one where Christ is teaching part of the Sermon on the Mount and he talks about service. We then challenged them to doing an act of service each day for the next week and to reflect back and think of how they felt while they were doing the service and how that effected their day. I am very sure that at least 5 of the students are trying to do the challenge.

This past week we went over the the Famille Rochet's house and ate chez-eux. They gave us each at steak that was bigger than my head, and fries sans cesse (without ceasing)...and then after that, they gave us 7 or 8 different types of cheese AND then for desert, we did a chocolate fondu...let's just say, there wasn't any time to work out the next morning because of the bathroom usage. :D haha

We have an ami that speaks only haitian creole. And this past week we were able to teach him for the second time (okay, so we did see one of our amis...haha...). The way that we teach him is we speak to his family or someone else comes with us that speaks creole, and we teach in french, and then the familly or the person translates in creole. This last lesson, we decided to re-teach what we taught the first time because the first lesson was seriously a hasmat disaster. The lesson went super well this time...and Jacques, the ami, said that he liked in his head what he learned that day. It was super cool! The spirit was so strong! We got him to pray, too. Even though there is that language barrier, the spirit was still there.

Isn't so amazing how we can still feel the spirit even though we don't understand what's being said? The spirit testifies of truth, so no matter what language we say it in, if the person accepts the spirit, he can feel the truth of what we say.

This gospel is true, this church is the same that Christ established two thousand years ago. The Book of Mormon is true, and Joseph Smith was a prophet.

I'm so blessed to be out here in France.

I love you all! Continuez bien!

-Elder B. Stanton Wilson

P.s. Mommy, could you please send me the café rio recipes? The lime rice, the pork, the tomatilla dressing? Etc... :) Thank you I love you!

Zone Conference - Who's Mickey?

May 6, 2014

Hey all!

So our P day has been changed to today because yesterday we had interviews with the president...so guess where we get to go today? Chateau de Versailles!!! J'ai hâte!!

About the Polish guy, I thought I explained that he was a member IN Poland...ha. Guess not. He was just passing through because he's a truck driver.

As for the zone conference, We got to sit in the back, our trains were retarded. (literally, they left en retard. Comme 20 minutes. Et, en plus, ils se sont arrêté beaucoup en route...donc c'était pas ma faut. On a planifié d'être là 20 minutes avant la réunion.) Who's Mickey? (Note: Mickey is a homeless guy who often attends the missionary meetings and ends up in the pictures that are posted on facebook. He always sits in the back.)

Info for this mother's day, we'll be skyping this sunday at 7 PM France time. So like 11ish your time I think? So I hope that works for you...if not tant pis. :D haha

Maddie and Liz are super cool!! Haha, I'm glad Kaysen already has some friends in High school...even though he's not there yet.

This past week was good. We worked really hard to get do everything we could to find new amis, plan for the presentation (which isn't a big deal. We're just establishing that basically with good values, you can be successful and have fun.), teach amis, and try to find out where some less actives live. Less active hunting is pretty cool. We've found tons of amis doing that. :)

This past week we met with a guy named Roland. In the first lesson, the spirit was so strong that we felt impressed to give him a baptismal date. He'll be getting baptised the 25 Mai. :) I'm pretty stoked! We're trying to meet him more often to help him get prepared for that.

Sadly, our ami Wang went back to China. We were able to give him some pamphlets to study, and also gave him an extra Book of Mormon, because he told us that his parents want to learn about God and Christ, too. I miss Wang, but I'm grateful for the friendship that was made. I learned tons from him in just those short couple of visits. For example, you can recieve a testimony of anything as long as you try with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. Wang did that with Prayer, and was able to gain a testimony of the power of prayer, and on top of that, he now believes in God and Christ, and understands that God answers prayers!

This past week, Elder Wallace had legality, so while I waited for his legality stuff to get done, I got to talk to some of the other missionaries that I've known since the MTC. It was pretty cool to see the changes they've gone through and how much they've grown on their mission. Missions really do change people.

We'll be giving the presentation tomorrow, so I'll let you know how it went this Sunday via skype!

Well, that's all I have for you this week. I love you all. :) Have a great week.

-Elder B. Stanton Wilson

Service: Shoveling Gravel

April 28, 2014

Hello Family!!
 
Thank you so much for all the pictures!! To explain how we got this opportunity, well, the Professeur told us that he's done this in the past. And he still had our number. I'm pretty excited to do this presentation, I'm also a little nervous, too. ha. But, it'll turn out well. If you have any tips on how we can do a good presentation, don't hesitate to let me know. Also, if you have any finding (as in for missionary finding) ideas, I'd love to recieve those as well :)
 
This past week started pretty well and ended pretty crazy. Tuesday, we had district meeting, but we actually had to leave early so we could get to our rdv's on time. We had 4 rdv's that day!! It was so tiring! And super cool :)
 
We got an opportunity this past week to do service! We moved about 5 tons of gravel/sand. More people in the ward were supposed to come, but it ended up being just the missionaries for the first hour, and then a Brother and his son came to help out. We ended up finishing it all in about 2 - 2 1/2 hours. Doing all that shoveling back home came in handy on the mission! Who woulda thought that? :)
 
Friday, Elder Dussere went to Marsaille to take an exam so he can get into the university he wants to get into after his mission, so Elder Wallace, Elder Johnson, and I were in a trio for about a day and a half. It was super fun! Except for the fact that all of our lessons but one fell through. But that lesson was super cool! It was with an ami named Emilienne. She is super accepting. We just need to get her to come to church. Ha. C'est la vie avec tous nos amis! (ha, that rhymes!!)
 
This past week we met with a new ami named Wang, from China! He will be leaving this next weekend to China and won't be returning, but I have never seen a bigger change in anyone than in him. We've had two lessons with him, in which the first, he didn't know who God was, nor did he really believe in a God, and had never said a prayer in his life. The second lesson, the first thing he said was "I've prayed like three times each day since the last time we met. I do have a problem though, which way should I pray? My roommate told me to pray with my hands together, not my arms crossed." And then off that we taught him according to his needs. We were going to try to get him baptized this week before he leaves, but it's too soon for him. We'll be seeing him this week a couple more times, and I'm hoping to get his email to stay in contact. Seriously, Wang is SO cool!!
 
I don't really have much more to say. This week we have legality for Elder Wallace, though. So finding is going to be a challenge for us this week. Our focus in finding this week will be to talk to everyone at every chance we have, because of the time we'll be missing from District meeting, legality, and planning the presentation.
 
I love you all so much! I'm sorry I don't have more to say. I'll let you know when I am informed about mother's day.
 

-Elder B. Stanton Wilson

The American Dream

April 24, 2014

Hey, so I recieved permission to send you an email to ask you a question,
 
Elder Wallace and I recieved a call from an english teacher that teaches at a university here in Cergy (called Essec). The Professor asked us if we could speak to his class (completely in English) about "the American Dream" (not the Great Gatsby, but the real american dream). The first half of the class, we'll be sharing hobbies, interests, etc. with the class (basically establish how normal "Mormons" are). The second half, we'll be talking about "Mormon Values" because the Prof said that these values coinside with the Amercian Dream. He gave us permission to bring Books of Mormon, contact cards, etc. for those who'd like to learn more after.
 
So my question is, could you send me pictures of my past life? Soccer photos, music stuff photos (guitar, piano, show choir, band [you can send the falling photos] etc.), fishing, hunting (the couple times I went hehe), scouts, swimming, football, cross country, senior class president, etc?
 
We will be doing the presentation the 7th of Mai and need to prepare well for it, so please, it would be a great help if you would send those photos within the next few days. You could just send the photos by email. :)
 
Thank you so much and have a great day! :) I love you!
 

-Elder B. Stanton Wilson