Elder Wilson vs. Dreaming the Reality

This week was TOUGH.

We had exchanges again with the Elders from Caen though!! It was good for the Caen Elders to get away from each other for a bit. We switched villes this time to be more productive! Haha I was with Elder Withers again. He dies (finishes his mission) this Thursday. We did some good work together.

So...my this letter is gonna be really odd and probably not make any sense. Ha. My thoughts are so crazy right now...I'll tell you why later :D Spoilers (doctor who quote)

So we didn't find any new investigators this week. But we did see Christophe again. He is still progressing!! :) but...he "believes in all religions." But he is making progress! We got him to pray at the end of our last lesson with him!! The spirit was definitely present!

We have been teaching the recent converts (they got baptized before I was here) a lot.

So as I said above, this week was tough. I had some depression this week that I was trying to just get over. It took a while, but I think I know what will help me: Morning Work-outs!!!! I had forgotten how amazing it feels to work out.

After Branch counsel on Saturday, the Branch President, President Martin, came up to me and asked. "Elder Wilson, do you want to improve your French?" I replied "Yes, of course I do!" thinking that he'd say something along the lines of "you need to TALK then." Well...that's not what he said. He said "well, giving a talk in Sacrament meeting will help you improve. Can you do that?" So...I gave a talk yesterday in Sacrament meeting. :) Hehe. It wasn't bad and everyone understood me! :)

Okay now, explanation for the subject and why my thoughts are so crazy right now:

Okay, so transfers are coming up. And "I had a dream last night..." (Mayday Parade quote...for Jaret. :D) that mon pere (my trainer) and I were transferred. And that I was going to train somebody..even though I'm not fully trained...well, this morning, the repertoire was sent out. Now normally, they don't split up a bleu and his trainer until after the bleu has been trained (12 weeks, which is two transfers.) Well...I'm getting a new companion. Elder Lerdahl is going to the Neuf-trois area (basically the ghetto of Paris.) and I'm staying in Cherbourg. My new companion is a native French speaker from the south of France. He's been out for like just over a year.

So...my dream is basically reality...crazy right? I can dream the future!! Haha just kidding.

Hey, do you remember Elder Korban Lehman (OH, NO! NOT ANOTHER CLAM CHOWDER EXPLOSION!)? Well I saw him a two weeks ago in Rennes. Here is a picture he and I took.

Also, here is a picture of Elder Withers and I with our AWESOME ties!! :)

Elder Wilson vs. The Afghane

10/21/13

Hey Mommy, Pa, and Kaysen!

First off, that sounds like a pretty legit camping trip!! I'm a little (A LOT) jealous. :P Let's go to the mountains in 2 years when I get back. :D deal? Deal!

Okay so, this week...was the week of TONS of travel.

Monday: P-day not even over yet, we headed over to Paris to spend the night so we could be on time to my legality stuff on Tuesday. We stayed with the Elders in Paris, Elder Walton and Elder Amico. We had a Raclette Fete (fete=party). When you have raclette, you boil lots of spuds and smash them on your plate, then you melt this cheese called raclette, and put that on your potatoes and eat it all with a bunch of meat (lardons, jambon, salami, etc..). Raclette is an extremely greesy, smelly, and tasty cheese. But...let's just say that the next morning...I woke up sweating greese. :D hehe Oh, and raclette is a Swiss thing (Elder Amico is from Switzerland)

So Tuesday was legality. The AP's did a little training that was pretty great. It was a review of week 2 district meeting, which was on The Spirit of Finding. Then all the bleus went to the OFII building (no idea what it stands for) for our legality. All I had to do was pee in a cup, get weighed, and have my chest X-rayed. So about the Subject for the email. :D Afgahn. Well, when I looked at my papers, the OFII building messed up my nationality and instead of American, they put Afgahn!!! BAHAHA!! I laughed so hard! I took a picture of it...but I'll send it next week. I'm on the dinosaur computer this week. :P To fix the problem, they just crossed out Afgahn and wrote Americain.

Oh...and...I STILL haven't seen the Eiffel Tower yet!! :P

After legality was all done, my comp and I had to jet to get to our train. We went to from Paris to Caen because we had district meeting in Caen the next day. So we spent the night with the Caen Elders!! :D Ha

On the train, we taught someone about the book of Mormon and gave one to them, get her number and gave it to the Caen Sisters. The person was just new to Caen and wanted to find a church for her and her family. It was a cool experience! I don't know what's happened with her now though.

Wednesday was district meeting. It was good. I don't remember what it was on...and it was all in French. When we have meetings in French (all of our meetings), I'll be paying attention really well, getting some good stuff out of what they say, think I'll be understanding...and then right as soon as the meeting is done, I can't remember a word that was said!! Haha...it's rather...sad. :P I do remember how I feel during these meetings though.

Friday we taught Christophe again! And he kept his engagements!! I never thought it'd be this cool to have a progressing ami!! Christophe is such a cool dude! He's in a Reggae band!! He's a super chill dude.

Saturday, we went out to Rennes for stake conference. The Bellessa couple drove us, so that was nice. :)

So this past week, we were only in Cherbourg for 2 full days.. :P we still somehow ended up teaching the most lessons we've ever taught. The Lord truly blesses us! I love it!

Oh and to pay for all our trips, for train tickets, we just use our blue card, which is like mission funds I think? For food, we have MSF (Monthly Spending Funds?) we get about 180 euros per month I think. The price of things over here are usually more expensive. Speaking of which, for my birthday or Christmas or whatevs, could you send me Peanut Butter? :D and maple extract? Thanks :)

Well, that was my week :) Love ya'll!

Je t'aime beaucoup!

-Elder B. Stanton Wilson

Exchange and Mangez-Vous (Dinner Appointments)!

10/14/13

Ma Famille!!

That sounds like a pretty awesome week!! :) I'm jealous about the yellow vans and the backpacking trip. Get me some yellow vans, too. Please? :D About the Roller Coaster, that sounds just like Poppy. Haha :) (Jesse and Kaysen spent a whole day building a K'nex roller coaster, thinking they would use it as part of a science project. They ended up not using it after all!)

This week we had exchanges with the Caen Elders again, this time in Cherbourg, though. I was with Elder Withers. It was his last exchange before he dies. It was AWESOME!! We taught 3 lessons together in this exchange. Elder Withers served in Cherbourg about a year ago so he knew tons of people that we could go see. There were some that weren't in our area book that we went to go see. It was way cool! It was a GREAT exchange!

We had two mangez-vous (dinner appointments) this week! It was delicious! The first mangez-vous was with the Branch President and his wife. We had a vegetable lasagna, some sea food (salmon, shrimp, and calamari (calamari is actually pretty good), a salad, and, of course, cheese with pain. It was really good! The next mangez-vous was with another family in the ward. We had pasta with REALLY good sauce, and then apple crisp for dessert. All of the food from both families were AMAZING!!

This past week we had an awesome miracle! We went out contacting for a couple minutes after doing some passbacks (when porting, some people will say to come back another day because they're too busy at the moment. So we call them "passbacks" because we pass them back.) and like the third guy we contacted stopped (only about 30% of the people here will stop and listen. And then,  usually they just say they're not interested). Well, I don't know exactly what was said (because I am still learning French...haha) but we set up a rendez-vous with this man. His name is Christophe and he's about in his late 20's, early 30's. So the day came for our rendez-vous (we just decided to meet at the church for the rendez-vous) and usually, when we set up lessons from contacting, the people fruge us (when someone fruges you, they don't show up to the rendez-vous.).. But he came!! And we have ANOTHER rendez-vous with him this week!! :)

So this week, I get to do my legality stuff. I have no idea what I'll be doing for it. We do our legality stuff in Paris, so my comp and I are off to Paris tonight, and staying the night with some Elders from Paris so that we can be at the training for my legality on time. We then have a district meeting in Caen on Wednesday, so after my legality stuff is over, we're going to Caen and spending the night with the Caen Elders.

So these pictures are: 

What I usually eat in the morning. It's a cereal that's like granola, but different. And it also has chocolate in it. I cut up a banana in it.

The Hotel I stayed in the first night I arrived in France. We got to stay in a hotel before we met our trainers. It was a pretty legit hotel!

The sunset from our appartement the first night I arrived in Cherbourg. Cherbourg is very beautiful. I really am loving it.

The work is going slow here, but it's going. It's crazy to see all the miracles that God gives. I'm so thankful to be here!

This church is definitely true.

I wish you all a good week this next week! :)

-Elder B. Stanton Wilson

What We Do on P-Day

10/7/13

Hey famille!!

Poppy, happy birthday 2 days ago!! You're old now! Is that like 44? dang? pa! ;)

On P-day, nous faisons nos etudes, ensuite nous faisons les cours (we do the shopping). After shopping for food and stuff for the next week, we head on home for lunch (usually une baguette avec le frommage.) and then we head to the church to email. If we need to do laundry, we also do our laundry. :) and then we chill until dinner. We'll either go into Centreville (the main part of town) and go into some stores just to look, or buy a patisserie, or make some dessert. Quelque chose comme ça. (Something like this.) Then we'll eat dinner and then go out contacting for an hour and a half. We then go to Soirée Familiale (family home evening) at the church. And it usually ends around 21 heures (hours) so we go back home. And that is P day. :)

This week, we had exchanges in Caen with our zone leaders. It was SO awesome!! I was with Elder Christensen; he's a chill guy. We ended up teaching one lesson that day.

The next day (Wednesday) we went to Paris for a zone conference. Our goal for these next two transfers is for every équipe (companionship) to bring a family into the Fold of Christ, whether that's baptizing a partial-member family or anything like that.

We worked super hard the whole week. We're really struggling to find people to teach. Every night we go porting and frapper (hit) tons of ports with no success. It's kind of discouraging. Although, I don't let it get me down. I know that as long as I do my best, the Lord will help me. And I also know that if I ask for help, He will help me.

Conference Generale was a huge blessing for me. I LOVED it! I watched half of the first session en français and the rest en anglais. But, we haven't had the opportunity to watch the Sunday sessions at all yet. I'm really excited to read the talks that were given that day.

I loved what Elder Uchtdorf said; "doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith." That is such a powerful statement.

As for pictures, you'll have to wait until next week. This week I'm on the dinosaur computer (its running windows 2000 at like half speed...) but next week, you'll get some AWESOME pictures!! :)

I love you all!!

-Elder Wilsôn

I'm Loving the Work Here

9/30/13

Hey ma famille!!

It's cool that tout est bien!! :) (all is well)

So this week, we had some awesome miracles!! Elder Lerdahl and I have been working SUPER hard to find new amis (friends)...but it seems like nobody is interested. Port after port. Person after person. It was starting to get really discouraging for both of us. But then, on our way to Ruenne last week for a Zone meeting and District meeting, we received a call from a guy named Ashim. Ashim is a refugee (oh by the way, there are TONS of refugee's here.) from Sierra Leone. He speaks English but is trying to learn French. So, in this call, Ashim said "I have been looking for a church to go to and a friend gave me this number. I want to go to your church EVERY week." It was CRAZY cool! So we set up a rendez-vous (appointment) to show him where our church was and to find more about him and find out his beliefs. We shared the message of the Restoration with him, and he just LOVED everything. He asked great questions, too. It was an amazing rendez-vous! He told us about some crazy trials he had...and as a result of leaving his previous religion, he got stabbed!! He showed us the scar. It was LEGIT! We'll be meeting with him more.

And here is the other miracle:

A week from Sunday, we were contacting people in the street, and we contacted this one guy that was SUPER nice. He said he believed in God and Christ, but that because of the corruption in the Catholic church, he doesn't want to have much to do with church/religion. We tried to set up a rendez-vous but he said "it has to be natural, like when you meet a woman. If we meet again, we'll set up a rendez-vous, if not, then it wasn't meant to be." Well, during last week, we went contacting. And just as we were gonna start porting, we ran into him again!! So we said bonjour (hello). The first thing he said was "Okay, you can pass by my house." and gave us his name, address, and phone number!! :D Pretty cool right?! " :)

So I'm doing really well. Although, would you send me some recipes for desserts. Also, would you look up some recipes for a fruit/vegatable shake for the morning? I wanna try some new things. My comp is pretty good at making sure we eat healthy. He's been having this shake every morning that has pineapple juice, an apple, carrots, and spinach. He says it tastes good and that he feels more energetic because of the veggies. So I just wanna get some different ideas for some shakes like that that I can do. :D Thanks.

This week, we'll be doing exchanges with the Elders over in Caen (which is about an hour-ish away from Cherbourg). I'm pretty stoked! My first exchanges! We also have a zone conference in Paris. I'm stoked to go back to Paris for a day!! :)

Oh so far, I've had 4 types of cheese. Le chevre, Camembert, Caprice des Dieux (the whim of Gods), et Roquefort. Caprice is my favorite thus far. I tried some new patisseries. One is like a brownie with chocolate fondant. Oh my. It was SO good!! I'm digging this food.

About worrying about weight, it depends on how you eat. My comp and I eat healthy. Some Elders gain 10+ pounds because they eat TONS of rubbish. I did gain some weight in the MTC, so I'm trying to get that off now. I wanna drop about 15 pounds by the time I get home. I gained like 15-20 pounds in the MTC. So I weight about 80-81 kg. I wanna be 75-77 kg. :) It's gonna happen!

I'm loving the work here. I know this is where the Lord wants me. I know that this church is true. Je sais que Joseph Smith ete un vrai prophete. Je sais que Dieu nous aime et nous sommes ses enfants. Je sais que le livre de Mormon est vrai. (I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. I know that God loves us and we are his children. I know the Book of Mormon is true.)

Dieu soit avec toi jusqu'au revoir! (God be with you till we meet again!)

Je vous aime beaucoup!! (I love you very much.)

-Elder Wilson