First off, sorry if I don't respond to your emails this week. I've had to pre-write all of my emails Sunday night, because my district is having a district P-day in some Germanic villes. One of which being a ville that Disney's Beauty and the Beast is supposedly set in, so that's pretty cool. Stay tuned for pictures of that next week. Anyway, I won't have wifi all day today, and will therefore have no time to respond to lots of emails. I promise I'll respond next week though, so don't worry!
This week was filled with events, so get ready!
On Tuesday I made Leslie Lawson's cookies (again) for that wealthy young woman, Isabelle, who lives in Epinal. Our goal with doing this was to get her to invite us back over to thank us for the cookies because she hasn't contacted us in a while. This is a valuable life lesson for everyone. For example, to those of you who have a crush that doesn't notice you, bake cookies for them... Then they definitely will. It's that simple. We also took some cookies to Jacques and his daughter. They were really grateful and super nice to us. The cookies actually turned out to be a success, because Isabelle messaged me on Facebook that night and invited us over for dinner on Saturday night.
Wednesday we had a really good district meeting in Nancy (I love my district, tbh) and then a Family Home Evening with the people in our Branch that night. Both of the Alhins in the Branch made crepes and gaufrettes for everyone and Elder Payne and I prepared the spiritual message. It went really well and I really think the Branch likes us a lot. Wednesday was honestly just a really good day.
The next day we taught our investigator, Jose, the Plan of Salvation. I used the puzzle depiction that my sister had sent me during the lesson and it went really well. This guy is progressing fast! I'm so happy.
Friday we went to Bobby and Salome's to return their container to them and set up another rendez-vous, because they have been ignoring us over messenger. When we showed up, we were shook. Salome let us in and was really nice, as per usual... But upon entering, we saw Bobby literally completely naked on his couch with one of Salome's co-workers on the ground, watching tv. It was so awkward and we were just like, "okay, we don't have a lot of time, but is there a time we can come back?" And surprisingly, they don't hate us and they're fine with us coming back. They have stopped coming to church though, and they ignore us now, so I don't know if we're going to continue visiting with them after this next visit.
Then we came back and Isabelle messaged me, canceling our dinner for Saturday. NO! I was so excited to have dinner in a French mansion with a really cool family haha, but it's fine. She said she's going on a vacation to the south of France for 2 weeks, but she'll have us over when she gets back. I really hope I don't get transferred out of Epinal this next transfer, or else I'll never see her again! Pray for me. After that, we had a second rendez-vous with Eva (the Armanian woman) and her son. They were really nice and fed us. To our surprise, she knows both of the Serbian families who are inactive in our Branch and was 100% positive that they are Muslim and not Mormon, so we showed her our records. Seems like they're embarrassed to be Mormon and tell everyone that they're Muslim... Hmmm... Anyway, she actually hates Afrodita (the Serbian woman who loves me haha) and says that Afrodita was her neighbor years ago. Eva had cancer and would ask Afrodita for help with things and Afrodita would always lie and never go over. She also got Afrodita a job, working as a maid, from which she was soon fired from for using the rich people's houses as her own lounging pad and wearing all of their clothes haha. That's Afrodita for you. But we ended up having a really good lesson with Eva, but she still thinks that we're a little culty, so if anyone has some advice on that it'd be much appreciated.
On Saturday we went to the Cuche's house for service. The whole family was in a bad mood, because their son, Emmanuel, got invited to play piano for an Irish children's choir in Disneyland Paris for St. Patrick's Day. Maria really wants to attend, because she's Irish and she's never been to Disneyland Paris. She also wants to see her son perform. The kids also really want to go. The dad, however, refused because of the cost. They were arguing for quite some time. Eventually, Maria decided to go behind her husband's back and in-directly ask his rich Parisian uncle to pay for all 9 of them to go to Disneyland and pay for the Disneyland hotel, to which he agreed. What a woman. After that the arguing stopped and the family was happy as ever. She definitely knows how to get her way haha, especially with a free trip to Disney! ;) After service, we got a text, asking us to give the Sacrament talks on Sunday. Because of this, we came back and wrote our talks. Let me tell ya, writing a talk in French is hard... Especially when Google Translate isn't always right haha.
Sunday was great! We woke up and got ready early, because Alhin was coming to pick us up and take us to our investigator, Jose's, house to take him to church. I felt bad for Jose, because after we arrived at church no one really talked to him and he sat alone. Right before sacrament, Sylvie and her family came and everyone was talking to them. It was great to see them, but I felt worse for Jose because of this. Then I gave my sacrament talk. Because I had written mine out, I had to worry about pronunciation and stuff like that. When I don't write anything out and I just speak from the head, I pronounce everything correctly, because I only use the limited vocabulary I know. So long story short, pre-writing my talk was good in terms of length-- I took over 15 minutes of time... But bad for the congregation to understand. Afterwards, they all came up to me and said that my talk was really good from the few parts that they could actually understand and that I was speaking "too fast" to keep up with lol.
Then all of our investigators stayed for the 2nd hour, so that was nice. Sylvie asked why we don't have any crosses anywhere, so that was fun to explain. Although, because of this question, me and Elder Payne looked around. Our church doesn't even have 1 depiction of Christ ANYWHERE. That's not good. I promise we're Christian, Sylvie haha. Alhin drove Jose back home afterwards, while me, Elder Payne, and Frere Courage gave Soeur LaForge a blessing. Then me and Elder Payne went home with Sylvie and her kids. After we got to Sylvie's house, we ate Raclette. She literally went all out. She had like 15 different meats, tons of different vegetables, and sauces. You name it, she had it. She also prepared a huge brownie cake, which was really yummy. We had planned to watch a church film with them and share a spiritual message, but we got carried away with a full-on game night! We played Uno, Sorry, and a bunch of other French games. it was really fun. Then she gave us a lot of different things to take back home. She really takes care of us. What a good investigator. She also said that she wants to take us and her family to Paris to see the temple in the next month or two!!! I could not be more excited for that, I just hope I don't leave before this happens. I really just need to stay one more transfer. For both Isabelle and Sylvie. Me and Elder Payne also haven't told Sylvie that I'll probably be transferred because she'd be devastated. Everyone, please pray that I stay here just one more transfer haha.
This week really was good and we can finally see a lot of the fruits of our labors. I'm hoping I stay just one more transfer to really see some big success here. The Branch finally trusts the missionaries and they know that we're actually working now. It's amazing. Everything is going good. This has definitely strengthened my testimony that if you work hard and give something your all, that God will show you success. It might not be immediate success, as it definitely wasn't in my case, but it will come eventually. I've been here since September and I'm finally seeing progress. I couldn't be happier and I know that God really has played a role in this.
Thanks to everyone who writes/thinks/prays about me. It really means a lot. I hope you all take care and have a great week. Love you all!
Elder Connor Anderson
Playing UNO with Sylvie & her family
Some of the things Sylvie gave us
Our investigator, Jose
Me & Roxy (Sylvie's dog)
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