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.
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.
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