Tuesday night we gave a blessing to a struggling German woman who had previously been prostituting herself out for a place to stay. She came to the church and was waiting for members/anyone with the Priesthood to arrive. She was really grateful for the blessing and said that it gave her comfort to know what to do/where to go in life.
The only thing worth mentioning from Wednesday was that we had a really good district meeting.
Thursday was an impromptu exchange with the Zone Leaders in Paris. I was with Elder Durrant this time. Exchanges involved a lot of finding at a place called, "Chateau Rouge," which is essentially a highly African populated area of Paris. We didn't really find much success there, but it was actually quite fun! One of the pics in my album this week is of what I like to call, "Tumble-weave," like tumbleweed, but with weave pieces. The streets of Chateau Rouge are filled with tumble-weaves, so I got a good kick out of that. Then we went to the Paris ward's Bishop's house (the Hall family), and did service with the mom and daughters. We made hundreds of sandwiches for refugee families. They only live a 10 minute walk away from the Arc du Triomphe, so they live in such a cool location in downtown Paris. The Halls, if you couldn't already tell by their last name, are American and awesome. They moved to France right after they were married and only planned to stay a short couple of years, but have already ended up staying well over 20 years here, with the dad serving as Bishop for a good chunk of that time. The thing that's cool about them, is that all of their children were born here and have gone to French schools. They have all of the positive traits of an American family and all of the positive traits of a French family combined into one. After we did the service, she made us burritos and chocolate chip cookies (all with 100% Kirkland ingredients, love my Costco). It was such a good night! I LOVE the Hall family. Now we are all friends on FB and I'll definitely have to see them again when I come back.
On Friday we went to go find a referral that Elder Neil L. Andersen sent us. He didn't open his door, so we left a Book of Mormon with a note in his mailbox and we're hoping that a miracle comes from this! I'll keep you all updated, don't worry. After this we went to Ward Council and boy do I love this ward! They are awesome!
Saturday we had another rendez-vous with our Jehovah's Witness friends. They finally gave Elder Bunker a physical copy of their bible which he's been wanting for a while. They clarified with us that they are not trying to convert us and just want to study the bible with us, so IDK where these weekly meetings will go, but I guess we'll see. We'll probably end up dropping them soon haha. In the meantime, our lessons with them are only for less than 30 minutes each time, so they're not wasting too much of our Saturday mornings. Then we went to Burger King to eat lunch with two members. It was awesome and they are both so nice. A selfie of all of us is in my album this week. The old guy is a member who loves America and Trump and kept saying that I look like a young Trump. I took it offensively (people saying that I look like Ken is 100x better than Trump in my opinion), but at least he was meaning it as a compliment. Now my nickname to him is "Trump Jr." Oh boy haha. The young guy is named Isaac and he's actually preparing to go on a mission right now. He was way fun and we get along really well. It was a good time for everyone. Later this night we did some finding in downtown Versailles and met some cool people. We also got to help some English speaking tourists with directions to places which I love. Two were females from New York. They loved the Book of Mormon musical and actually wanted to stay and chat with us about what a mission is like, so that was cool. Right after them, we helped a Russian guy out who totally was hitting on me the whole time. He immediately asked for my instagram/Facebook after we started pointing him in the direction of the train station. He later professed his love for me, just as Kavish did last week. Oh boy. This is a weekly occurrence at this point lol. He is going to visit the temple when he comes back to France next month, however, so I guess that that's the positive that came out of him meeting me. Who knows, maybe he'll be converted back in Russia. Only time will tell.
Sunday was quite busy. The translation sets are unfortunately working again haha, so I'm back on duty. 2nd hour I was with my ward BFF, Sister Sanna, again. She taught a great lesson to the youth and then wanted to invite Elder Bunker and I over for dinner with the Sister missionaries (because she doesn't have a husband or a male child over 18). Well, because our Mission President has prohibited Elder and Sister combined dinner appointments, this sadly isn't possible. That news broke her heart. Hopefully we can get over to her house with another male member sometime soon! Later that night we had a dinner appointment with a different family in the ward, the Viennes. They are awesome and made a great dinner. I literally love this ward so much!
My spiritual invitation this week is to really study Christ and try to implement his teachings into your life. Service, love, gratitude, etc. There are so many things that we can all improve on in this life, and acquiring Christlike attributes should be some of our top priorities. The more we all strive to be like him, the better of a place the World will become. This is God's Plan for all of us, to become as Christ is. I invite you all to strive for this in your own lives.
I love you all! I hope you all have a great week! Thanks for all of the prayers and messages.
Elder Connor Anderson
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