68th P-Day (61st in France)

Hey, everyone! I don't have a ton of time, so I'm going to give you a brief run down of everything!

On Tuesday we got to teach about Baptisms for the Dead to our young adult convert, Aurelien. We taught him at the Visitor's Center with Elder Woods about the importance and purpose of Baptisms for the Dead, because it was to be his first time. It went really well and it was nice to explain everything to him beforehand. Right after, the Sisters at the temple told us that a young adult in our ward, Laura, really needed a priesthood blessing (the older sister of the young girl we blessed last week) and that because Aurelien was with us we could go, because the girl was alone at her apartment. We took Sister Ethington's car and drove off. This was a really cool experience as well and we were really happy to be able to do it all with Aurelien. What a great convert he is! After all of this, we returned and went to the mission office to meet up with the new missionaries and take them street contacting for their first time. This is a definite perk to serving in Versailles. It was so fun to do this and brought back all of the memories that I had. I got to "mother" (as we call it) two Elders for a few hours. Elder Paxman from St. George and Elder Jensen from Washington. They were awesome and I'm so excited for them to be in our mission. Tuesday was definitely a good day! 

Wednesday was good as well! We got to finally do Baptisms for the Dead with Aurelien! This was my first time doing Baptisms in so long, let alone even being in a body of water (swimming and all that stuff isn't allowed), so it felt really refreshing and I was excited. Aurelien opted to baptize me for his own family names that he brought, because he said that I look exactly like how one of his grandpas did at my age. It was a very spiritual experience that I will never forget. When we finished we were able to see all of the departing missionaries, as they exited their temple session with President and Sister Sorensen. It was nice to say bye to some old companions and some other missionaries that I served around. Then we visited some members, the Magnan family, and that went really well too! Two good days in a row! 

The only thing worth mentioning about Thanksgiving is that we had a dinner appointment with a young family in our ward. They are really nice and fed us Raclette. Not super American, but I'm not in America am I? Haha! Anyway, it was a nice way to end a long and slow day and I'm just thankful that someone was willing to let us come over at all. 

Friday we met a cool woman named Lolita while finding! I'm excited to see where she goes and I'm really hopeful! We then ended our day with our first meeting ever with the Ward Mission Leader since I've been here and that was really important. Member work is starting to build up and I love that. We have a lot of people to work with in Versailles!

The next day we went to a baptism in the Chesnay ward for two young girl converts. It went really well besides the fact that they had no cook, so they assigned me the job involuntarily. I had to make cheeseburgers with toasted buns and all the works for 20 people, making enough that everyone can have at least 2. That was stressful and unfortunately took me away from the baptismal service, but made them all happy. Eating afterwards was delightful though! That night we met a solid investigator, Fanta, in downtown Versailles. Too bad that she's a young adult female, because we'll have to hand her off to the Sisters to teach. Either way, I can see her progressing like none other! 

Sunday was really good. It was the Primary program in the ward which is probably my favorite Sunday of the year. We also got a lot of member work in as well. After church, the mom of the two daughters who we had previously given blessings to throughout the past two weeks asked me for a blessing and gave me a pie in return lol! It was a very good blessing and she was very thankful for it. My new nickname in this ward is Joseph Smith now, because apparently I look like him. Out of Ken, Joseph Smith, and Baby Trump I honestly can't tell which one is the worst haha. Maybe I'll let you all decide. Email me what you think lol. At least this ward has fun with me! I love making them happy! ;) We also met with our Jehovah's Witness friends and they were annoying this time around. Never again... They have been officially dropped haha. And then we took a cool guy that we found from Afghanistan to the temple. It was hard to teach him, because he didn't know any French and barely knew any English, but we gave him a Book of Mormon in his language and let the Spirit do the talking. It went so well!

I'm so grateful for the temple. This week was such a blessing and I saw many miracles come out of the temple. Please go do temple work! It will give you more peace than anything else in the World. Bring new converts, old converts, and life-long members with you. The temple is a blessing for everyone. Take advantage of it and go!

Thanks for all of the Thanksgiving messages. I LOVE YOU ALL

Elder Connor Anderson

67th P-Day (60th in France)

Hey everyone! This week went by really slowly, but that's just how life is sometimes unfortunately. 

Tuesday was kind of awful... I was super drowsy and basically couldn't move at all. I didn't know why, but it definitely wasn't fun; Especially when the whole day is filled with finding. That night we went and found the referral that Elder Neil L. Andersen gave us. He, unfortunately, wasn't interested. 

I wasn't drowsy anymore the next day, but I did have a major sore throat, sore legs, and a fever. This was a complete finding day as well, so that was fun! We did, however, come up with a new finding method-- a temple survey, with candy as a reward for taking it. Old people didn't enjoy this method AT ALL, but college and high school students sure did! We still have a long way to go to perfect this style of finding, but it looks like it could be successful. I'll keep you all updated. Creativity is something I'm trying to involve with everything we do, making the work more enjoyable for us and for others. That night we had our last district meeting of the transfer. I'll put our group photo in my album this week!

On Thursday I self diagnosed myself with Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease. I've heard that adults don't typically get it, but that it's still possible. I guess there's a first time for everything. It would explain why my hands and feet hurt whenever they touched something and why they had red dots all over them. I remember that the Hall baby from last week had it, but I never touched the baby and the symptoms didn't appear until this past Tuesday night, so I'm still confused as to how exactly I contracted it (if that's what it was). With limited resources for my research, all I was able to find on solutions was that there's nothing to cure it... You just have to live with it for a week and then it will go away, so that's exactly what I did. It was terrible, however, in the sense that I couldn't touch anyone. Everytime I handshaked someone I felt terrible. I'm just hoping that it's not contagious if you keep your hands washed haha. 

Anyway, I spent my morning baking an Almond cake with lemon buttercream for a temple Sister's birthday. It was from scratch, cost a whopping 27 Euros, and looked awful. It still tasted good though, so that was a bonus! Catch a pic of this in my album this week! Then we took it to the temple and surprised her with it. After that, we went to an architectural evening at the temple with the architect of the temple who is not a member. It was really cool to hear all about the construction and design process. Obviously we can all tell that a lot of work went into the temple, but it definitely was a lot more than I thought! The event was catered, so after the event we ate with everyone. It was so good and gave us an opportunity to share the gospel with all of the non-members there. One of the families invited us to eat with them after the holidays, so that's exciting! It was a good night for having been such a terrible morning haha!

The next day we met up with Kavish for one last time. It wasn't a good experience. Just a lot of walking in the cold, trying to find a McDonald's for him to eat at. We eventually found one, after walking through 2 1/2 cities for about an hour and a half. Once there, we had no more time to teach him, so we just left. That night, however, we had a dinner appointment with the Meunier family in our ward. They are so awesome! They made an excellent dinner and we had good conversation. I'll include a selfie that we got with the dad in the album. 

We were all over the place on Saturday, but the coolest part was the baptism of a 24 year old girl named Christelle. Her parents are both members and her dad got to baptize her; it was a beautiful experience. Afterwards the Sisters and ward members threw her a surprise birthday party. It was quite the time! Later some Sisters called us, telling us that we needed to get over to a member's house that they were at, because the young daughter was super sick and needed a priesthood blessing (they don't have a dad present at home). Well, she lived quite a ways away and we technically needed a third male present. This left us scrambling to find someone and a way to get there. A temple Elder lent us his car, and we had to beg a member of the bishopric to go, but we ended up making it happen! They were very grateful and even gave us a cake to send us home with. 

Sunday was good! To start, church had a full crowd. Bishop Causse (who is the presiding Bishop of the whole Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) was in attendance because his children are in our ward, and he was even one of the speakers. IDK if I told you all, but the translation sets are working again for visitors. This was quite the meeting to translate. Bishop Causse's talk was so good. On a more close to home level, a family from Draper was there and the mom works at Kauri Sue (by where I used to live)! Such a cool connection. I love Latter Day Saint tourists haha. I also got dinner appointments with many members for this week, which I love. Gotta get those ward connections going!

Today we found out about transfers! I'm staying another 6 weeks here in the great place that is Versailles. I could not be more excited to spend Christmas here; there's no better place to be! 

As for my spiritual topic this week, I encourage you all to go to a baptism. As a missionary, they really are one of our favorite things to go to/help participate with. The importance and significance of a baptism is bigger than we sometimes think. Study the importance of baptisms and really think about how necessary they are. I promise that you will be going to the next baptism you're invited to afterwards. They really are more than just a social gathering of people, with refreshments afterwards. It's a person who is covenanting with God, being cleansed from all of their sin, and showing that they desire to follow Christ. Baptisms really are something so beautiful, that we have the opportunity to have on this Earth thanks to the Priesthood and the authority of God. Study baptisms and go to one!

Love,

Elder Connor Anderson

66th P-Day (59th in France)

This week went by pretty quickly! 

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

65th P-Day (58th in France)

Hey, everyone! I don't have a lot of time to write today, so I'll have to keep this one a little shorter. 

This week was actually pretty spooky, but I'm even more excited for what's to come today. 

Last Monday was pretty fun. We went to Paris for our P-day, which was awesome! It's such a cool place and there's really so much to do. Especially because I have compiled a list throughout my mission thus far of trendy restaurants in France that I want to eat at, and the majority tend to be in Paris. This time, I chose to go to the Maison du Poutine and get some of the best poutine I've ever had, sorry Canada. I'll put a picture of it in the album, but my photography skills really don't do it any justice. We also went to Paris's Chinatown which was interesting, but not anywhere close to as cool as Chinatown in San Francisco and New York. On the way back we walked straight into an incident of domestic violence at the train station which was terrifying. I'm still hoping that the woman is alive and wondering where the police were, but that is a story for another time.

The next day was a little slower paced. I baked some Halloween cupcakes that my mom sent me for our neighbors. They were so good and turned out perfectly. These cupcakes actually included multiple colors of food dye, which made them harder to make (separating batters, etc.), but I also accidentally ran my hand through my hair multiple times during the baking process, causing the dye to stain my hair red/pink! I didn't even notice until later that day when we went to the Sister's apartment and they saw it from their balcony. They took a pic, which I will include in my album. The only solution the Sisters and us could think of was to dye it. I was pretty upset, seeing as how my hair has been through so much this year, and not wanting to have to fiddle with it anymore. But, to get rid of the pink I obliged. That night, Elder Bunker did my hair. Again, I worried about it-- especially with it not being professionally done. The color, once again, turned out way too dark. It was a black/grey/green. Perfect for Halloween the next day, but not perfect for life in general! Luckily, I came prepared with my knowledge from when Elder Crane had to darken my hair and it had turned out too dark then as well. I immediately went into the kitchen and whipped up my hand soap/baking soda hair mask. I lathered it on for a solid hour and a half, which completely destroyed my hair, but lightened the color to a nice light brown that looks natural. I just want to take this time to wish my hair a public apology. 2018 was not kind to it. But now it looks good and I'm constantly treating it with moroccan and keratin oils to keep it healthy.

Halloween was good! We had a meeting with a Jehovah's Witness companionship which went nowhere, because all of our purposes are the same with each other: converting. They, however, really enjoyed our time together and want to meet with us weekly now. Oh my. I personally think it's because they can't get other people to meet with them and just want something to fill their time. Later, my frosting turned out terribly, so I decided to just draw on my cupcakes with a sort of icing. I made some Halloween designs on them before delivering them. One of them was supposed to be a witch's hat, but my whole district thinks that it looked more like a Satanic symbol, so I hope that our neighbors understand what it was actually meant to be. They were all really excited and happy to receive cupcakes, so I guess that the hair catastrophe was worth it. I love good neighbor relations! We ended the night with district meeting, but before and after we took public transport. What did I do on the bus you ask? I handed out candy of course! It was definitely one of the highlights of my mission thus far, as silly as that sounds. It was so cool to see so many people light up and smile as they got to pick a candy out of my giant bowl. Especially the bus drivers and the old people. This is what a mission is all about-- making others happy! It was so fun and I honestly wish that everyday was an excuse to hand out free candy to people. As I exited the buses, everyone would yell, "au revoir," at the same time and wave bye to me. It was so cute. Many knew that I was American just by handing out free candy, because apparently French people don't really do that, so they were LIVING for it. I'm now planning on doing this in December with candy canes and an attached church invitation. I'll keep you all updated. 

Thursday was a series of unsuccessful in-active member visits attempts, so that wasn't very fun. We ended the night by giving some of the temple sisters blessings, which was a cool experience. Oddly enough, this was my first time giving a blessing in English! I've given a few in French before on my mission (which is not super easy lol), but never in English, so it was a neat experience. Definitely ended the day on a high note. 

The next day was interesting. We met with our Indian investigator, Kavish, at a mall for lunch/a lesson. It started off well, but took a quick turn when he started get touchy with me. I texted the temple Sisters to call us and tell us that we needed to leave and go to the temple for an emergency, and they totally came through! I love working with the temple sisters! Anyway, we're thinking about handing Kavish over to the sisters, because we know he won't be touching/flirting with them haha! 

Saturday started with another meeting with a Jehovah's Witness companionship. It was quick and to the point which I appreciated. Then we went to the church and Elder Crockett skype called me into Steven's baptism (our investigator in my last area). It was so cool to see the ward and to see Steven. It was definitely a good time! Later that night we went Book of Mormon contacting with our district which was awesome! 

Sunday was good! Our church's translation set is officially broken for good, so no more translating is necessary until the church purchases a new set. We also had an old investigator, Daley, show up to church. He's awesome and has so many questions, so I can definitely see him progressing. The only problem is that he lives in London and Paris, so he's only available to meet like once a month. Here's to hoping we can get him far! After church I finally set up a dinner appointment with a family in the ward, the Meuniers. They're a young couple that seem really cool. Her parents are the old Paris mission President and Wife, The Babins, whom are legends with the missionaries here, and his parents are a senior couple in the temple. I'm excited to work with them and get to know them! I love working with members! Later that night, we visited an in-active family's house. Only the mom was home, so we shared a quick message with her and set up a dinner appointment for next week, so that's exciting. We ended the night at the temple and I FINALLY got to talk to Sister Maya Ethington for a prolonged period of time. It was so nice and refreshing. 

The next morning Kavish decided to profess his love for me over messenger. I was shook. Let's hope that he's still interested in our message once it's the Sisters who are teaching him. We then had a really great meeting with a recent 19 year old convert, Aurelien. He's so cool and actually taught us some stuff. He also just got his temple recommend, which means that I'll get to go do baptisms with him! Yes!

Today I was FINALLY able to go to the temple. It's been over a year and three months since I last went. It was amazing, especially to do it all in French. T'was quite the experience. And on top of that, I got to do it with my high school friend, Sister Maya Ethington. After the temple we all went to Marie Antoinette's house and village where she pretended to be a peasant. It was beautiful and so, so cool! Pics will be in album.

I encourage you all, member or not, to visit a temple ASAP. There's nothing like the peace you feel there.

Love you all! Till next week!

Elder Connor Anderson

Marie Antoinette's House

Halloween cupcakes for the neighbors

Steven's Baptism in Valenciennes

Trip to the Paris Temple