Hello Family!
This past week was a miracle week!! It was very difficult, but so worth
everything.
The tone was first set last monday en faisant du Coeur-à-coeur (President
Babin said that calling it Port-à-port is pessimistic, we should call it
coeur-à-coeur which means heart to heart.) le soir. We "coeur'd" our way around
this small town JUST outside of La Rochelle called Périgny. We ended up
"coeur-ing" into this guy named José. He is from the Martinique and he is
NORMAL!!! (inside joke with the Elders from Nantes. To explain, they have an ami
named José...who has quite some problems/addictions that the Elders are helping
with...and he kind of calls them 4+ times a day and asks rather bizarre
questions. He's an interesting fellow.) So anyways, our José from the Martinique
was rather skeptical of us and what we were doing, but agreed to pray with us.
After the prayer, we asked him if we could share with him our message unique
about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, so he agreed and allowed us to come back
the next afternoon. We passed by and he opened right up and let us in. We shared
with him the Rétablissement until after the First Vision and invited him to pray
about the First Vision. We also invited him to baptism. He told us that he isn't
ready to be baptized and he assured him that we will help him prepare to be
ready, we also assured him that he won't be baptized this week or next, but that
over time, as he comes to know this is true, he'll be prepared to be baptized.
He accepted the "soft invite." We are definitely blessed to have been led to
José.
Tuesday, before we went to José's we passed by Waka (remember her?) because
we hadn't seen her for quite some time. Well, I'll just say that Waka is so open
that she's closed...the lesson didn't go super well. She asked us first if there
is a modernized version of the Book of Mormon, and we just kind of gave her a
blank stare, not really understanding what she was asking. Then she brought out
her bible, which happens to be a modernized version of the bible. She said it's
easier for her to read. Cool thing, Waka believes that the Book of Mormon is the
word of God, but then she also stated that she wants to know if there are more
books like that from other people and then she started talking about how every
religion is good and is of God...we shared with her Ephesians 4:5 (in her
modernized Bible) and asked her what her thoughts were. She answered that she
didn't know. She then said that maybe it means that we need to become as one
through our faith with God, then she added that it can mean anything though and
we can't know what it really means because we are not the writer. That's the
first time either of us have recieved an answer like that to such a franche
scripture...we both just felt like the best thing to do would be to close the
lesson with a prayer and leave in hopes that maybe someday, another set of
missionaries will be able to help her.
Wednesday we had district meeting. It went kind of short. It was great!!
That reminds me of a quote Elder Fitt shared with us a while ago, that is
"Brevity is charm. That which is good, if short, is doubly good. That which is
bad, if short, is not so bad." Think of that in the sense of duration of
talks/meetings/etc. Although, despite the meeting itself being short, the meal
was rather strange. An équipe brought cereal, another brought beef stroganouf,
we brought kool-aid (something that one cannot find in Europe), another brought
a green salad, and there was dessert as well. Cereal and noodles are definitely
a weird combo together.
Friday a miracle happened as we were walking to go to a less active members
house to pass by. As we were walking, a potential ami that had contacted us on a
bus (haha, that rhymes!) named Mehdi crossed paths with us. He asked us if we
had time to talk right now, so we found a bench and started to talk. We found
out about his beliefs and did some How To Begin Teaching (see chapter 10 of
Preach My Gospel. Kaysen, get familiar with that, you'll use it with everyone
you meet!!) Mehdi is one of our younger amis, he's 27. He is also in a
Country/Folk band. After we got to know him a little bit better, he asked us
some questions about us and what we'll do after our missions. I told him I'm
going to study music and that I have a voice scholarship. He asked if I could
play him something the next time we meet and I told him if he brings his guitar,
I'll show him a couple of songs. I feel super blessed to be able to have this
occasion to do that. It's not very often that I get to play music. It's my
dream, you know, to help someone get interested in the Gospel through music. We
set up a follow up rdv with him for this week.
Saturday in doing some more Coeur-à-coeur we found a guy named Thierry who
is from Calais, which is up north, even further north than Cherbourg. He let us
in to pray with him and agreed to let us come back to share our unique message
about Christ and the family unit. He'll be leaving back to Calais this Thursday,
so maybe while he's there, he could possibly meet with the Elders up there. That
would definitely be a tender mercy for them.
Sunday, after church, we felt like we needed to pass by a non active member
named Mehdi. We've had no luck getting in contact with him for about the past
six weeks, but we felt like we needed to pass by him again. So we did. And he
was there!! Mehdi has some changes to make in his life, we shared with him Alma
7:11-13 and that really set the tone. The spirit was so strong and all that
could be felt was His love. We let Mehdi know that we love him and that we're
all waiting for him to come to church. And that the bishop can help him through
the repentance process, and above all, that Christ and Heavenly Father are there
for him. We set up another rdv with him for this Friday, we'll come by with the
Ward Mission Leader so that Mehdi has a friend at church this sunday.
This week, we were truly blessed by the Lord. You know, Elder Smith said
something the other night that really hit me hard. It was saturday night and he
talked about how amazing the feeling was when we prayed with Thierry, I stated
that I didn't really feel that same way. And he described why he felt that way.
He said, "It feels good to play in a basketball game for me, and I'd love to
play basketball, or even watch an NBA game. For you, you'd love to play music or
soccer. These things all end though. But what we are doing now is eternal." That
is so true. A song ends, a concert ends, a game ends, a sport season ends,
school ends, and even a mission ends. But this work is Eternal. What we do here
will have an Eternal effect.
So you may be wondering about the toilet thing for this week. Well, one
night this week, after I was done pee-ing, I went to open up the bathroom door,
as I moved my leg, it hit the toilet seat...and broke the hinge...so there is
another one of Elder Wilson's Toilette Adventures. We have a new toilette seat
now, just FYI. :) I may send you pictures next week, don't worry, the toilette
is very clean. I am a professional toilette cleaner. :D
Well, I hope this next week goes well. This is our last week of the
Transfer. We'll find out the deets this Saturday.
I love you all!!
-Elder B. Stanton Wilson
No comments:
Post a Comment