The week started off with Zone Conference in Nancy. During this, our apartment was to have a new dryer installed because our old one broke, so we gave our apartment keys to Alhin. What a nice man! Zone Conference was honestly pretty boring and took up the whole day. There was a portion during it, where President displayed multiple pictures of each of us on the projector and the other missionaries in our zone had to guess who it was. I was the first one. They grabbed pictures of me from forever ago, but luckily they weren't too bad. Everyone guessed that it was me with just the first picture (me in my tiger costume) because of "my eyes" haha. Upon our late arrival back, Alhin picked us up and gave us our keys back. Our new dryer is beautiful and works like a charm.
The next day me and Elder Payne decided to hit up an in-active man from Serbia and his family. For some odd reason a lot of Serbians are members over here (i.e. The Serbian woman we meet with frequently, Afrodita), but they are just great! Upon walking all the way to their house to just say "bonjour", they opened the door and immediately let us in! They had us sit down and the women of the household started feeding us like crazy. Cake and everything. The actual member on our records is the grandpa and he wasn't home yet, so we were being treated to the company of his kids and grandkids. Most of them had really bad French, even though they've already lived here for 5 years, so we had to communicate mostly through their youngest son, Simon, who was young enough when they immigrated here to go to school and actually learn the language haha. He also knew good English, so that was cool. His girlfriend was also present during some of this. She's Atheist, but me and Elder Payne are hoping that we can get her interested enough to become a new investigator. She's also from England so we can speak to her in English which is nice. Literally the whole family is so kind to us and they love the missionaries... I just don't think they care enough about actually being members themselves. Simon also showed us a very dangerous community in Epinal on Google Maps, and guess what? It's the ghetto where we have done most of our finding!!! He says that Christians are killed when they go there and it's very highly populated with Muslims. So I guess we'll have to find some new places to work in now haha. Some of our investigators are up there though, so we'll still have to go every now and then. Pray for us haha! We ended up staying at their house for hours as they kept feeding us food. They then gave us a huge bag of food to take back with us and Simon drove us home. I love Serbians with a passion. They treat us so well!
Me and Elder Payne found some serious success the next day! While contacting all over Epinal, we were walking through mountain road. To the side was a really big house with a really big yard. Usually missionaries don't contact people in big houses because they're not "humble" and are "rude". But, being the person I am who loves expensive things, decided that we better knock on their door. Elder Payne was hesitant, but it definitely paid off in the end! The wife answered the door and was really chill. Then the husband came in. Husbands are always the scary ones, lemme tell ya. We taught both of them a full lesson of the Book of Mormon right on their doorstep. They responded with the typical questions and asked us what missionary life is like. The husband eventually asked us to bear our testimonies with him of our church and Jesus Christ. That literally never happens, so that was cool. Then we gave them a brochure, our number, and our Facebooks. We talked with them for over an hour that day and it just felt right. We have decided that if they don't contact us within the next week, we're going to go back with a treat and thank them for their niceness. We also decided that there are pros and cons to working with people in big houses. Pros: The people are 99% of the time already Christian, so that belief in Jesus is already established. Their living environment is typically safer for us too and drugs are not constantly being done. They also have less of a hard time with tithing when it gets to that point. Missionaries also haven't contacted them before, so those people are a nice, new teaching pool. Cons: Generally less humble and firm in their own beliefs. They haven't contacted us yet, but we're still hopeful that they'll come through. What a nice couple!
That night we had our weekly mangez-vous with Alhin. Elder Payne told Alhin how everyone we meet only talks to me (which is true, especially the crazy people) and his response was so sad! He said, "everyone loved my brother more than me, so I know how you feel, Elder Payne. He smiled more, he was more outgoing, etc." But at least Elder Payne and Alhin were able to bond over that. He also cooked us really good food that night, so that was nice.
The next day was really good as well! First, I made Alhin some cookies to thank him for everything he does (including the dryer) and we dropped them off on his porch. Then we went out finding in some ghetto apartment complexes. The first person who opened their door for us was so nice. She allowed us to teach her the whole first lesson and she actually invited us back another time #NewInvestigator. The next woman we talked to was really rude and bible-bashed with Elder Payne for like 45 minutes straight haha. At least people in that apartment were willing to talk to us? After all that, Elder Payne was a little frustrated so I decided to treat the both of us to a sit-down restaraunt. My funds this month are really high, so I convinced Elder Payne to go there with me by saying that I'd pay. This ended up being a huge blessing. First of all, the food itself was delicious. It was literally an authentic American 50's diner, with Grease playing on the TV. I'll attach pics below. Second, our waitress was really kind and tried to accomodate us by speaking some broken English. To thank her, we gave her a tip. IDK if they give tips in France, but she acted really surprised and thankful. She also told us that she's seen us in her apartment complex before and she invited us back to talk. HOW NICE!? And the story only gets better....
The next day we did some service for the Cuche family. Maria was taking down Christmas and I couldn't believe a blind woman was trying to do that all by herself?! What a trooper! She def needs pre-lit garland and Christmas trees. It would make her life so much easier. Brother Cuche also talked about his mission a little with us. He said the majority of missionaries were going home early at the time and he was a Zone Leader, so he had to deal with a lot of it. He said later on, one of the guys he sent home called him and said, "nobody came to the airport to pick me up but my mom, thanks for the example you showed me of real, genuine love and kindness". Brother Cuche told us about this with tears in his eyes and it was really hard for him to say. I've never seen him cry before, so that was emotional for all of us. After that, they fed us a really good lunch and we chatted with their kids. Then they drove us to the gare and we came home to do district meeting over skype. It was a good day too.
Sunday was really good too. We had a lot more people at church than ever before, to the point where we had to bless the water twice!!! This never happens here, so that was pretty cool... Even if most of them were just "visitors". After church we had a mangez-vous with a family in the Branch. They served us a lot of food and it was really good. Honestly, the people in this Branch aren't half bad haha. After that we decided to hit up the woman in the apartment who we taught the lesson to. We couldn't find her, so we decided to hit up that cool, young waitress, Salome. Salome immediately welcomed us in. Me and Elder Payne were hesitant at first because she opened the door wearing just a bath robe and we thought that she was home alone. To our surprise, she lives with her boyfriend. We ended up giving them a full lesson and the boyfriend said that he loves talking religion with others and wants us to come back 3x a week! What?! That's incredible! What a blessing!!!! He just said that he's fine with us preaching everything to him, except "fornication", so that's going to be difficult. Hopefully they both come in clutch and progress quite a bit! It would be so cool if these two were baptized. They are both so nice and I feel really good about them. That restaurant was such a good decision to go to the other night, I'm telling ya.
Today we went shopping for "Soldes", which is basically France's month-long "Black Friday." It's when they get rid of all the clothes that are "so last year" (this is France, remember), and put everything on sale for like 50-70% off. One of the stores that Elder Payne decided to go to only has two employees and they're both really funny everytime we go. They invited us to grab lunch and coffee with them on Wednesday, so we're going to take them up on that offer (sans the coffee, obviously). The guy is gay and the woman is really attractive, so this should be an interesting experience to say the least. But nontheless, they are good potentials.
This week was really good for me and Elder Payne. We have finally started to see some results from our labors. Thanks for the prayers, everyone. They really mean a lot. I know that everytime I have a good week, it's because of my prayers and all the prayers back home. The power of prayer is so important to remember. I know that if you pray for help and put in your all, God will show you success with whatever you're facing. That's exactly what happened this week for me and I couldn't be more thrilled.
Thanks for all the emails and love as well. I always appreciate it. Till next week, everyone! Love and miss you all!
Love, Elder Connor Anderson
My food at the restaurant
Me with the kids in the ward on the way to the mangez-vous!
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