Week 30 - April 28 (Tuesday) - Evry

Last week in Evry!

Bonjour mes fréres et seours!  

(Hello my Brother's and Sister's)
 

This week was super good.

Monday was my birthday so the other missionaries in the apartment took me to go get a kebab. After that we went and played basketball and soccer with the elders from Melun. Pretty good birthday, and super lucky that it landed right on a P-day!

This week we taught Charly a lot. He has been progressing super well. He always asks us if he can go contacting and teach lessons with us. He is only 24 years old so he could easily be able to serve a mission next year. We set up a family home evening with the bishop and Charly also and it went super well. Seeing Charly progress as good as he is makes me feel like I am doing a good job out here. 

This Saturday I found out where I am going to be transferred. I am going to serve in a place called Nantes in the west of France. The missionaries that I talked to about it said that they loved it, so I am pretty pumped. 

I also met my new comp at the mission conference that we had on the 27th. His name is Elder McBride from Canada. He seems like a pretty cool dude.

Mom I forgot my camera again so I won't be able to send pictures until next week!! (Boo)

love all you guys! 

Love, Elder Carson

Week 29 - JAXON'S BIRTHDAY, April 20 - Evry

Second to Last week in Evry!

Monday: Today we had the Elder's from Melun come and play the Evry elders in soccer. Before the mission I didn't like soccer at all, but it's kind of growin' on me. The FHE was pretty good also. A less active member that we found showed up and he was hittin' it off with the members.

Tuesday: Today we taught Charly the restoration again and taught him about the priesthood because he received the priesthood last Sunday. I was pretty surprised how fast people can get the priesthood after the baptism. But he is doing really well and is still reading everything but the Book of Mormon. he told us that he started another book Preach my Gospel right after he finished True To The Faith! ha

Wednesday: Today we talked to a Muslim dude in the park about the restoration. He didn't try to bash us at all either which was super weird.. He said he was interested to hear more and we set up an appointment for the next day. First time setting up an appointment with a Muslim dude on my mission!

Thursday: Today we went less active finding in a place called Le Ferté Allais and the 3 less actives we were trying to find were so far away from each other so we had to walk like an hour to each one. We found all three of the houses, but they weren't there.

After that we couldn't make any appointments so we just contacted the rest of the night.

Friday: Today we set an appointment with a referral from one of the members in Antony, but he didn't show up...

After that we taught Jean-Louis. It went well but he said he hasn't stopped drinking coffee yet. He said it is too hard for him... I am kind of getting frustrated with him because he thinks the only thing we can do about the coffee addiction is pray. He is from an evangelic background so he thinks that praying really loud all day every day will make the addiction go away, so he will just pray and then do the same sin over and over again.

I went pretty hard on him about repentance, but at the end he said again, "pray for me, that is all we can do..". Super frustrating

Saturday: Today we got frooged 3 times. (Frooged is a word that the mission uses to mean that the guy didn't show up)

But we ended up being able to do some service for a less active member. He is building a fence for his chickens, so we helped him clean out the part in the backyard where he was going to put the fence in, and started putting up the fence. I will take a picture of it next week and show it to you guys, it looks pretty good already.

Sunday: Today I had to give a talk in church. I decided to tell the story that Gordan B. Hinckley shared a while back when the two kids put the 2 silver dollars in the farmers boots and talked about charity along with the story. It went really well. I was preparing it every day this week an hour a day during language study and it payed off. I am probably gonna keep it for every other ward here that I have to give a talk in. ha

Thanks everyone for all of the birthday letters! I love you guys and miss you!

love, Elder Carson

Week 28 - April 13 - Evry

Une semain en Evry

(A Week in Evry)

 

Monday: Today we played some basketball and then went to FHE and learned about the proofs of the Book of Mormon. A member that came made us all a ton of crepes while we were listening to a member teach. Pretty good day.

Tuesday: Today we taught Charly in the park and it went pretty well. He is almost finished with the book "True to the Faith" and said that he cried a couple of times when he read it. I don't know how he even got the book but it was super random. It's good that he is reading stuff like that, but I want him to read the Book of Mormon! He will be a super solid member.

Wednesday: Today we found out that our most golden investigator moved. Since conference we have been trying to get a hold of him so we finally went to his house and one of his buddies answered the door and told us he moved out! We were both super down. Hopefully we can get a hold of him again.

Thursday: Today 3 of our investigators didn't show up to our appointments so we had to go contacting and porting for a strait 5 hours until Hubert at 6:30. in the lesson with Hubert, we taught him the word of wisdom and he said that he is not going to give up coffee because it helps him sleep. Super confusing.

Friday: Today we had zone conference and they announced that we will all be receiving Ipads on the 28th of April! Super pumped. Ipads are gonna be so nice for missionary work.

Saturday: Today I went on an exchange with Elder Rivas. He is a super cool dude from Belgium who speaks french and barely any English so I got to speak to him the whole exchange in French. During the exchange we taught a 9 year old girl. Her dad isn't a member but her mom is, so that is why we were able to teach her. She was really excited to be baptised and it was a cool experience for me as well.

Sunday: Sunday we only had Jean-Louis who came to church, but it was good because he told us that he had stopped drinking coffee and wine and feels super good now. 

After church I went on split's with Elder Jacobson because they had two appointment's set for the same time and we taught his investigator Willie. It went pretty well.

Love all you guys!

love, Jax

 The District Missionaries

 Jaxon on split's with the other Missionaries!

Week 27 - April 6 - Evry

le semain du conference general

 

This week has been pretty sweet other than the fact that my comp is sick with the flu. I have had to sit in the apartment studying a couple of the days and went on splits with the other missionaries so I could go work, but the days I was in the apartment were probably the longest days of my life. I read for probably 8 hours in the two days that I had to stay inside. My brain was dead.

This week we finally got a baptismal date for our golden investigator Nilson for the 9th of May. He is progressing really well.  We haven't met with our newly baptised investigator Charly this week because he keeps saying that he is busy. But it kind of scares me because he doesn't even have a job so I wonder if he is just rubbin' us off.. We'll see what happen's next week.

Jean-Louis is still my favorite dude here in France, but he is regressing since we last met with him at his house and found the alcohol and coffee.. We haven't had the chance to teach him this week either..

Our other progressing investigator Hubert is not doing very well either..haha,  he still just looks at us when he prays and doesn't start with god or heavenly father and ends with just "amen" with the same two phrases in between."help us get on the right path" and "keep us going strong so we can obtain eternal glory" every single time.. We teach him the right way to pray every time and give him simple examples but he won't change! haha I don't know what to do..

We also met this old less active lady from Wyoming named Betty while trying to get to a member's house and she just came from shopping, so we helped her with her bags and went to her house and she fed us some food and we shared part of the 121st section of the doctrine and covenants. She was super grateful that we came to help her. We invited her to come to general conference and told her that we would be there every Saturday to help her with her groceries. It was a miracle.

Conference this week was so sweet. I have never been into conference this much in my whole life. Conference was literally all day in France because they show all the sessions except for the Sunday morning session in one day. It was so sweet. Our investigator's showed up including Betty and they all loved it except for our 24 year old recent convert Charly.  He stayed for one session, fell asleep in it, and then left. Super frustrating.

They set up a TV in another room so the missionaries could watch it in English, so it made me like the member's a little more.

I am super grateful to have a living prophet and apostles who are ordained of God and sent to help us in this dispensation.

Love all you guys! I will send the picture I forgot last week from the baptism.

love, Elder Carson

Our brotha's Alan (on the right) and Charly. Don't worry Alan really had a great time.