September 22, 2014

hey there people! we ahd a good week! we went to Orleans and Bourges to do exchanges, its so cool to be a ZoneLeader, i remember going on exchanges and jsut thinking "Zone leaders are coming? sick miracles are going to happen!" and its true, but its not cause were good missionaries, its cause you have that attitude, the "im going to get something done" attitude, and that makes the biggest difference in the work. if you believe you can achieve! :P haha my zone leaders call that 'AP swag', the knowledge that you are going to see miracles and blessings, but not being prideful, its the fact that you know stuff is going to happen cause God lets it happen, we have no control! but this is His work, and he wants it to progress, but you have to be humble enough to realize that its all up to him, and if youre doing your best, and you realize that youre still useless in comparison, thats when you see the blessings. ill tell you about one cool little experience: so there was this ladyy who taught at Oxford, french literature, so i was like, 'cool my brother in law aaron does that' and she was like "cool! i know youre mormon, i know what youre about, ive read your book. ive had a ton of mormon students in the past" and seh was super closed, but just by being friendly and sharing her faith and us sharing our faith really opened her up! then she was like "okay well im not changing religions, have a good night!" and i was like "holla-holla-hold-up. were not here to convert you, were here to pray with you, and strengthen your faith in Christ, cause He is central in EVERYTHING we do, would that bother you if we prayed with you?" and she was like "that wouldnt bother me at all. ill get the key(we were behind the gate)" and then we talked for about 25 minutes and it was really cool, her friend from denmark was there too(they were about 70 years old) and it was a good chat. they are quite simply amazing! and then we offered to help her do yard work and she was like "this is the family house, i live in tours" and i was like "me too! we can help you here and in tours" and she was super excited! she took both our number and bourges' number, it was super cool. great experience! ---SeedPlanted---

ive gained a strong testimony about being an example member. there have been so many experiences that i have had recently where people were super impressed by mormons in the past, the way they handle themselves, their beliefs and all that. i wish i hadd been a better example, but you live and learn, right?

we had stake conference this week and we had to get up and transport a piano from the church to the massive conference center, and so we(elder Cramer and I, and the Alençon missionaries, and the Bourges missionaris, they were staying in our apartment for conference) loaded it up in the back of a truck, then we piled in the back and headed over to the conference center, and Elder Shaver was jamming on the piano the whole time it was freaking hilarious and it was alot of fun! :P then we put the piano in an elevator with a 9000 KG capacity, that was cool. its made for cars!

then yeah, heres a voice recording to go along with this decently lengthy email!

the pictures are:

 Amoako, Juliana, and Rachel (people i found in Melun and who are now active members)

 Setphane Heno, a kid from Melun who is leaving on his mission in 2 weeks to Tahiti, and who i love, hes sweet, his parents said me and my family can stay in their house when i come back to paris, theres also a family called the Lopez family who live closer to the train station and who said the same thing, so yeah, we have our options mom and dad)

 Also i hit my year mark! so elder Cramer bought me a raspberry tart :)

and this is a castle we saw on our way from Orléans to Bourges.