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

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Parables: A Lesson in Taking Good Notes in Seminary

August 25, 2014

Hello family!

This week went pretty well. It was a little long, but it was still pretty great.

Good news!! This week nobody was sick! Yay!! Although, not too much happened this week...sorta.

We taught Raphael with a member this week and talked about making decisions, because he's been taught everything...he just needs to make a decision. We'll that's what we thought. He opened up quite a bit and told us some of his concerns. Apparently, he's still having troubles with the Book of Mormon. He has studied TONS of history, and apparently nowhere else is there any record of people in Jeruselam going to the America's. But his biggest concern is the Divinity. He was born Catholic, so he believes in the trinity...he has troubles understanding how God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost can be three different beings, to him, that sounds like multiple gods. So we found out that we have some great work to do. I'm just super glad that he opened up that much. Also, his smoking hasn't gotten worse, but it's been hard for him.

We taught the Swanepoel's twice last week. On Tuesday, we talked about tithing. Cool miracle with that, they were definitely prepared!! The night before they read in the bible about tithing. They accepted everything very well. And we went over the Word of Wisdom again with them because they drink coffee. They committed to stop, so they're on the way of stopping. It's easy for Bokke, but for Georget, she really enjoys her coffee. It was always a family thing that she did growing up, and so it's tough for her to break the habit. But she said she'll work on it.

Then Saturday, we taught them with the bishop and his wife. Elder Smith and I got to do a Tour de France to get to the Swanepoel's home. The Fitt couple wasn't available to come with us, so we ended up taking a 45 minute train to Niort, then a 45 minute bus to Fontenay. We talked about the 10 commandments and obedience. They accepted everything very well. Then after the bishop and his wife took Elder Smith and I to McDo. Haha! It was pretty great. They then dropped us off at Luçon so we could take a train from there back to La Rochelle. I think that was the most I've been around my area during my whole mission.

Speaking of areas, fun fact, the La Rochelle ward is 3,000 square miles! Not kilometers, but miles. WOW!! :)

Saturday night we went to visit Anne. She told us that she was too tired...and we just kinda looked at her like we weren't going to take that for an answer...then she let us know that she had been drinking and drank too much. And she was holding a cigarette behind her, trying to hide it from us...so I guess we have some work with her to do. I hope we can be the missionaries Father in Heaven would have us be so that we can help her out.

Sunday, a visiting member brought a non member to church!! And she is super interested in learning about the "mormon" church. She lives about 1 hour away from La Rochelle. She really enjoyed church though and the Word of Wisdom in Amis' class didn't scare her away either!! In fact, she's willing to stop drinking tea and coffee!! I feel so blessed to be here right now.

After church, the Fitt's had invited us over because...it was ELDER SMITH'S BIRTHDAY!!! He's 20 now, dang he's old. I think he might kick the bucket soon!! ;) I made him buttermilk pancakes for breakfast that morning (just for dad, POOF, he's pancakes!) Sister Fitt made Chicken Parmesan with Marinara sauce. And a salad with choices of Ranch or Italian dressings!!!!! (Unheard of in France!!) And for desert, a no-bake cheese cake that was SO good!!! I definitely profited from Elder Smith's birfday. He said that his birthday was one of the best he's ever had, too! (He received a SUPER gift from his family but the thing that was the best for him was that his father had asked almost every family in the ward to write something to him, and they put all of that in the package with quite a bit of other stuff.) It was really cool to see Elder Smith that happy. I felt happy just seeing how happy he was, it was a nice change.

Sunday right after church (before we got to the Fitt's apartment) I was asked to give a talk in church of "La force des paraboles dans les écritures, en particulier, celles du Christ." (Vous avez tout compris?) Or in English: "The strength of Parables in the scriptures, in particular, those of Christ." Luckily, I'll be giving the talk on the 14th so I have time to prepare. So I'm going to be reading Christ's parables for the next little while to be able to do this talk. I'm so thankful for seminary and the notes that I took in my scriptures!! I definitely will profit from them for life. I was reading over the Parable of the Sower in Matt 13 this morning, and the notes I took will definitely help me with this talk.

Later, we taught this guy named Mbata, who is basically an eternal investigator (he's met with missionaries back even when he lived in the Congo...he's been in France since about 2006), but he does have potential. We talked to him about baptism and authority and he asked some questions to us to make sure he understood everything. One of the things he asked us was how is the baptism done. So we explained that it is done by immersion, meaning going all the way under water, then coming back up. He then asked, "Will I be naked?" Elder Smith and I had to use our poker faces there...bahaha!!! We let him know that he would be wearing all white clothes, and that he would not be naked. It was pretty funny.

And that's the week. :)

Thank you so much for the Sheet music!! I'm very glad you liked the letter.

I love you all!!

-Elder B. Stanton Wilson

P.s.

Kaysen to get the music from the iPod to the computer, first you need to put the iPod in the computer, then after that, pull up the files like you would for a USB drive (it can't be done through iTunes). Then you need to make hidden folders/files shown (you can search on the microsoft website on how to do that). Then copy the folder iPod_control onto the computer and voila, you have the music on the computer. I can't believe I still remember all that. Oh là là!

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