-Sincerely, your favorite brother <3
This week was definitely better than last lol. I know that's not saying much, but it really wasn't that bad!
We started off the week with a rendez-vous with our old investigator, Mambo. I used to meet with him frequently when I was here with Elder Larson, but hadn't seen him since. He wasn't progressing and would get mad at me for forgetting to call him "Sir" everytime that I would address him, so he definitely wasn't my favorite. You could probably guess how excited I was to see him again. This rendez-vous went as I had expected, just like old times. We didn't get anywhere with him and he really just wants us to give him free Liahona magazines so that he can resell them to his people in Africa, as he has been doing for years. Then we went to Iwuy and had a rendez-vous with Sylvain and Aline for the first time in a while! It went really well and they even gave us a referral, their friend, Bruno. They've been really flakey with us recently, so it was a miracle that they were actually home and available at the time of the appointment. They have a wedding date for October 20th, but I'm losing hope on this. Everytime we get them super close to progressing further, something takes them 3 steps back. Not to mention the fact that they don't respond to 80% of our calls/messages anymore... I hope all is well for them. Please pray that this wedding idea progresses into something that actually happens. We could use all the help we can get with them! After that, we got a call from an old investigator that was in the phone named Steven. He was found and talked to 3 years ago by missionaries, so I've never met him in the whole 7 months I've been here. He said that he wanted to come to church and be baptized! We were shook. This never happens, especially in France. This was definitely a highlight to our day. We planned to meet with him the very next day. Then we went to Lille for district meeting.
Wednesday started with a rendez-vous in Douai with Huge. It didn't really go anywhere; he just wanted us to give him a blessing like every other time we've visited him, so that was fun. Side note-- It was really a huge blessing that I was able to remember how to get to all of the people/places we visited this past week without a GPS. I didn't drive the whole time Elder Swensen was here (and I never paid attention while he was driving which isn't super good of me lol), so the last time I drove all of these routes was back in May. God was definitely helping me out with directions. Then we came back and met with Steven at the church. He was really cool. He's 23 years old and first learned about the church from a class in school he had. Our church was listed on a list of "sects/cults" that the students had to research. Well, as luck would have it, he studied ours. Later, he was contacted by the missionaries. By this time, he still wasn't terribly interested in our church, but each experience opened his mind up little by little. Eventually, he discovered David Archuleta on YouTube and fell in love. He searched David Archuleta and found out that he is a member of our church. This spiked his interest like none other. He then proceeded to watch Meet the Mormons and everything and knew that this was the church he wanted to be a part of. He had previously been a member of the Catholic church and actually worked for the Pope and travelled with priests, so he was really high up in their church. Now he's ready to change and wants to be baptized as soon as possible. He even has a car, so there is no need to worry about getting him a ride which is such a relief for us! Then we went up to Mons and had our weekly meeting with Adam.
The next day I was back to Paris to finalize my 2nd year legality. It was nice to get that over with. On the way back, we stopped at the mission office to pick up an old GPS that they had found for us. The GPS was so outdated that we have to update it before we can use it. Well, the Valenciennes church computer doesn't work, so we decided to use theirs. Upon starting the update, we got a notification that said that it would take 2 hours minimum to update. With our train home leaving in 1 hour, that wasn't possible, so we took it with hopes of being able to find another computer to update it on. The rant that I have about this, is that several senior missionaries have told us to just buy a new one with our mission cards for 169 euros, but the senior missionary over finances refuses to allow this, because he found the old one and our mission is "broke." IDK how any of these financial problems occur, but I'm going to ask you guys to also pray for the GPS. I may know my way around our sector, but France is terrible at posting speed limits and there are cameras everywhere. If anything, I need a GPS to keep me from getting a ticket. Following the speed of traffic doesn't work here either, you have no idea how many tickets France is giving out. Everyone speeds 24/7 and seem to not care about being ticketed for whatever reason.
Friday was pretty relaxed compared to the previous days. At night, we had a dinner appointment with the Kabongos in Mons. We definitely ate well! After this, we made a late night stop to the new American family, the Fontana's, house in Mons. She made us some homemade enchiladas and other things to take home and eat later. She has been giving us food every week, what a Queen. We love her.
Saturday involved another lesson with Sylvain and Aline that didn't happen. So sad. On the positive side of things, we met with Felisa later that day up in Mons. It went well and we FINALLY thought of a family that could bring her to church (because all of the others refuse to do so) and it's the American Fontana family. Their presence in this ward has literally blessed us so much. They agreed to bring Felisa and she was thrilled. Now we're one step closer to getting her baptized! After this, we drove to Orchies to meet up with a crazy sister that lives in our boundaries but goes to church in Lille, Sister Merabet. She has given me multiple referrals every transfer that I've been here, which I'm grateful for, but they've all been terrible. Every single one has gotten mad at us for going over and visiting them, because apparently they had all told her that they were not interested in our church one bit. For example, one referral she gave us was apparently so uninterested and annoyed by her that they blocked her phone number. She proceeded to look up their family on the internet and found a gravesite in their family. From there, she was able to find their address and all of their personal information. She literally stalked this family to refer them to us and didn't tell us about any of the backstory. We almost went over before other missionaries warned us about what had actually happened. Had we gone, we probably would've had the cops called on us. She was to be giving us a referral again this day, so I was not excited. Luckily, this one was more receptive than any other one that she had ever given us. That's still not saying much, because he was still not super interested, but at least he'd hear us talk about it. We met with them over dinner at a terrible Chinese restaurant that Sister Merabet loves, but it wasn't an awful experience like the other ones were, so I was grateful for that. She also proceeded to roast us on not keeping in touch with any of her referrals and said that we should make them our priority in our missionary work, and that we're being bad missionaries for not doing so. Sorry that literally all of them told us to not contact them again, Sister Merabet. Geez. She's crazy haha. Glad she likes doing member missionary work, but she definitely needs a lesson on how it's done correctly and how to take "no" as an answer.
Sunday was probably the highlight of the week. Steven and Felisa came to church! 1st and 2nd hour were incredible. Our lesson in 2nd hour was about eternal marriage in the temple, which was great because Steven is gay and we didn't want to have to teach that principle to him without a member being able to help us explain it to him. He took it really well and said that an eternal family is what he desires for himself, so I feel like he'll continue to progress. I was nervous to see how he'd react to it, but he took it well and is still planning on progressing towards baptism. Felisa also really enjoyed it and made even more Latina friends who are in the ward which is awesome. They were all able to speak Spanish to each other and she seemed right at home. One of the Latina women in our ward (who is in-active) kept coming up to me and calling me Ken. Lol, it will never stop. Then she proceeded to tell the rest of the ward that Ken the Barbie is in the ward. Oh boy. The good news with her is that she invited us over to eat and watch conference with her and the rest of her in-active family next week, so I'm looking forward to that. Then we took the sacrament to Sister Giulit. She was so cute and made us a dinner quiche and a dessert tarte. I love her!
Today I got a haircut. You're welcome, mother.
I know that I asked you all for a lot of prayers for different things throughout this email, but they really do mean so much to me. I've seen the power of prayer work so much in my life and especially since I've been here in France. It's incredible. Prayers can literally change every situation. God is always there to turn to and He wants you to talk to Him. He will help you out every single time. It may not always be how you think He will help, but He always does it somehow. Now is the perfect time to start/continue praying. With General Conference just around the corner, I invite you all to pray for inspiration and guidance with what's to come. Prepare yourselves spiritually and it will be your favorite conference yet. For those of you who are not members of the church, I invite you to simply pray. Pray for anything, it doesn't matter. God will be so happy to hear from you and I know that you'll feel peace and joy from doing so.
Thanks for all the love! I love you all! :)
Elder Connor Anderson
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