Elder Jacob Ewing

Hey World!

 

We don’t have a lot of time today, so I’ll head straight into the questions.

 

–Names of the most interesting people you talked to–It was actually yesterday that we finally found somebody interesting.  His name is Hamidu.  After getting ratéd by multiple people we stopped and talked to some guys sitting outside of an apartment building.  Like dab they were black and Muslim, so I was expecting a routine discussion about Momo and the Koran.  It turned out to be a lot better than that in the end.  He actually, okay so we had to wait for his friends to leave, told us about a dream he had a night before (yes it’s true that this will sound like a Liahona story) where he was sitting outside his apartment building and he started talking to some guys and then a blue light came and touched him on his forehead.  So yeah, it was kind of cool.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and then set up a RDV for later in the week.  Sweet Kid.  Right before that though we were set to teach a Chinese kid, but he turned out not to exist.  But since I didn’t know that, I had grabbed a Chinese BOM and took off.  And because he wasn’t there, well, I had a Chinese BOM and no one to give it to…or so it seemed.  First guy I talk to on the tram couldn’t actually talk to me because he didn’t speak French or English, so I gave him a Book of Mormon in Chinese that I had been lugging around (it wasn’t in simplified characters either).  He got a big old grin on his face took it and started flipping through it.  Surely that should have been a moment to pray for the gift of tongues so I could preach the gospel to him, but all I could get out was “Hey!” and then I ran out of Chinese words…I should probably work on that before I get home.

 

–Fun experiences with your companion/district/ward– We went and saw the Messiah this week.  Sooo cool.  It had a balley (sp?) added on to it and it was so well done.  We were up in the nose bleed section so we had a great view.  We were there because a member was singing in the choir, and so during the performance the choir could see all 8 of us chilling up there, and started cracking jokes about us being his bodygaurd…heck no, you better not mess with Monsier Defranchi, he’s our man.  It is kind of funny because the directeur of the Opera building is a JW, so there are quite a few JWs that work there, so we felt good walking around with our plaques on and everybody smiling at us.  It rocks to be SDJ in France.

 

–Evidences of little miracles throughout the week– The Muslim guy.

 

So Elder Faulkner has gotten transferred out to Albi.  My new companion in Elder Borren.  He has served in two of the same villes as me and it should be fun to be killed by him.  I’m way stoked because Elder Futuka and Elder Boehme are back in my Zone.  Elder Futuka will be staying chez moi ce soir and it will be sooo much fun.  He’s coming up from Cannes, so that should be a good time.

 

Sitting at the Gare this morning was kind of weird…I’m one of the oldest missionaries now.  Doh!  At least now I can help people find the right voie in the gare   Missionaries worker harder for the SNCF than the SNCF works for itself.  We’re the only reason they are still afloat.

 

Love you!

Hey World!

 

It’s true that this week was summer solstice, but still it was ever so slightly ridiculous that the temperatures went from a balmy 20 to a oven baked pizza of 35.  Oh well, winter did last a little long this year, so it’s only normal that summer would come on in a full furnace.

 

Voilà la semaine!

 

–Names of the most interesting people you talked to: We talked with a sweet South American atheist the other day.  I was first off shocked that he was South American and than encored shocked by the fact he was atheist.  We fixed a RDV, but because he couldn’t find the chapelle he gave up and went home without even calling.  He is willing to meet with us another time, so we’ll see how that rolls out.  Other than that we talked to a bunch of just normal French people who want to be french and stay french.  I love them because they are so predictable…okay not all the time, we have had two guys on bikes ride past us, and each has let out a random string of gabblededook that no one understood, that was cool.  I have also taken up another profession as a missionary…my new job is bus ticket buyer.  People don’t understand how these little borgs work out, so they look around, see us in the ties and beeline right over to us.  Of course we’re happy to help them out and give them the assistance that they need, but sadly helping them out isn’t enough to make them want to hear the Gospel.

 

–Details about what you discussed: God rocks, you should do what He says.

 

–Fun experiences with your companion/district/ward: We got to donate blood this weekend!!!  It was so cool.  French blood drives are sooo much fun…they treat you like royalty!  (The blood drive was at the chapel to let you know.)  So you walk into the gym and immediately there is a woman there that asks you what you would like to drink, you have 5 choices of beverages.  After that you get to take a fun little survey while drinking another beverage.  After that you meet with a secretary who asks a couple random questions then sends you to see a doctor.  The doctor asks you if you have had multiple partners over the past couple of months (hopefully an easy questions for all the members) and then you go to the buffet.  While waiting for an open chair they feed you well—cookies, cakes, and cheese all delicious, all free.  During the actual donating process the nurses stay there and talk you about everything and nothing.  After they’ve drained you, they send you back to eat a customized french sandwich and more cakes and cookies etc.  So much fun!

 

All of that added up to a great experience, but to add even more all the nurses and personelle were surprised at how friendly everybody was.  They told us time and again that they have never seen a group of people from so many countries act like such a big family.  Heck yah!  LDS are the biggest family.  In the end the church left a very good impression on them.

After donating blood we went and played american football with the Institute.  I got some sweet battle scars…Frenchies don’t understand the meaning of pulling your flag.

 

–Evidences of little miracles throughout the week: We actually got teach a lot of lessons, and we met people who were excited to meet us.  And Mattieu fixed a date.

 

Here’s a shout out to Amy.  Girl, it is amazing you worked 27 hours of labor to give us Ben Jr. I hope all your many other pregnancies will be a lot easier.  Hopefully not a ‘third times the charm” like my mom.

 

Well I love you all!

 

Elder Jacob Ewing

Hey World!

 

How about that World Cup this past week?!  It was a pretty sad time for the Frenchies, especially today when France got steamrolled by South Africa (Shout out to Joe and Elder Cummingham).  Just when we thought the French would have turned off their TVs with France losing, it still seems like every house we go to the WC is on with all the other countries playing.  Good times the WC.

 

Voici la liste de cette semaine:

 

–Names of the most interesting people you talked to—Hmm, this week who did we get.  Oh yeah, yesterday while we were in the tram there was this kid eyeing my plaque.  Right when I was about to start talking to him, he blurted out “Why Latter Day Saints?”  We had a nice conversation after that about the Church.  Turns out that he had read about the Church on Wikipedia and was way interested to know more.  Go Wikipedia!  Sadly he isn’t in our quartier so we had to hand him over to the other Elders.  After that we got to talk to a sweet inter-racial couple.  She is Catholic and he is Muslim.  I didn’t really expect to have a good long conversation with them, but it turned into a nice long interaction about the Book of Mormon.  Sadly they don’t live in our quartier either.  On top of all that we got to talk with one of our amis about quantum physiques.  It was ridiculous n’importe quoi!  Whatever though he still wants to know if God exists.

 

–Details about what you discussed– See above

 

–Fun experiences with your companion/district/ward– We had our Zone Meeting this past yesterday (hence for why emails are late) and the coolest part was singing “The Spirit of God.” Normally I hate singing it because people sing it like a funeral march.  Thankfully I had my good old friend Elder Blosil on the piano and he kept the time going up near a 100, so the song clipped right along.  Diriging it was fun too, especially getting into it with both arms…got to do whatever keeps people awake, huh?!  Besides that I had a fun interview with President.  This past week I got to do a little design work for him on a project.  I only had Word to work with but he still liked what got put together.  (Look for it soon on the southern French sidewalks near you!)  He is also letting our District go see ‘Le Messie’ next Thursday!!!!  And Le Tour de France at the end of Juillet!!!  Bourdeaux is sooo spoiled, but I love it.  Today we went and got to play some beach volleyball.  Bourdeaux is sooo sweet because they have sport courts everywhere.  It’s sweet!  So we got to play all this afternoon with some awesome people.

 

–Evidences of little miracles throughout the week– Yesterday we got 5 SNAPs (coordonées) from people.  Considering that these past few weeks we’ve only been pulling in about 3, we were stoked.  And for the most part they’re in our quartier!  We met this sweet Argentinian (sp? somebody from Argentina) who didn’t believe in God, but wanted to.  Ridiculous South Americans…even in France they’re open.  Other than that BRUNO GOT BAPTISED THIS WEEKEND!!!  President called Elder Mayer during our interviews to confirm and holy cow it finally happened!  People can change.  En plus we had 3 baptisms in our Zone which was so cool.  So I guess the miracle is that we are going into summer a lot stronger than we did last year.

 

–What was the best thing that happened in the week– France lost in the World Cup!  Okay, no not really, but it was funny because the Institute kids were trashing on Amérique, and I was there supporting her, but no they all said that France was going to come out on top, but oh wait how many points does La France have?…1…From a match nulle.  In reality though it was probably have a good interview with President.  I was worried with our numbers that he would be getting on me, but no, he stayed chilled and let me know to just keep working and don’t worry about the numbers.  (That was a very stressed point yesterday; work hard, stick to it, and don’t worry about the immediate numbers.)  So yah, best thing this week was having sweet leaders.

 

Well, this week I need to give a shout out to Joe and Mom for doing a half century (next year I’ll be riding in the saddle), to Studilliam for going to his first movie, to Dad for Father’s Day and for all the things he had us do in life that we didn’t appreciate at the time, but now we understand why he had us do them and for that we thank him infinitely, to BenMark and Amy who will be soon or have already had their first kid Benhammer (pronounced like Benhur, but with the word ‘hammer’), and to this internet place that has cheap internet, and Corée du Nord who got slaughtered by Portugal.

 

Cool.  Well I love you all and I hope you all have a great week!  GOOD LUCK AMY WITH GOING THROUGH LABOR PAINS!!!  Hope you bring home the largest grandkid to date.

–

Elder Jacob Ewing

Hey World!

 

So it’s true that last week’s email was a little short.  To keep that from happening again my mother has graciously sent me an awesome birthday card and also a list of things to talk about this week. Voici the list with answers.

 

–Names of the most interesting people you talked to:  1) Grange is a crazy sweet guy who has gambled everywhere and is now being looked for by the police.  To help us understand that, he looked over his shoulder every 5 seconds and kept saying that the police were looking for him.  2) Sweet Porte à porte kid…he was interested to know about God but not right now because the World Cup is going on.  He gave us a booklet about the World Cup and we gave him a fiche on the Plan du Salut.  3) Any number of the Muslims we talked to this week…especially the “Yeah, I’m a practicing Muslim, but I don’t believe in any prophets.”  Yah!  4) we got a new kid and his girlfriend, they were pretty sweet.

 

–Details about what you discussed: 1)  If you’re gambling and you’re winning a lot take your girl and get out of there or else the House is going to come crashing down on you.  2)  The USA might win the WC, so we should follow the matches.  3)  In fact Muslims do believe in prophets unless you were this particular gentleman we were talking to.  4)  Prayer is sweet and so are the scriptures.  Missionaries are amazing and you should be impressed with our scriptural knowledge…our amis were.

 

–Fun experiences with your companion/district/ward:  It was Stake conference this weekend, but it was a rebroadcast, so I didn’t get to see anyone from Pau.  I did get to see Jeremy that I met in Pau (when I was Bleu) who is from Brive.  And pretty much our whole zone was there so that made me happy…we did sweet magic tricks.  We had district meeting, so we got to have a sleep over with Angoulême…that was cool. Oh yeah, went laser tagging last week as a district, but only half of us showed up.

 

–Evidences of little miracles throughout the week:  We offered this woman help and she looks at us skeptically and then she told us to come back next week to teach her about “Mormons”.  I haven’t gotten hit by a tram yet.  I have yet to get sick from a kebab.  We got to teach 5 Muslims and an Evangelist girl about the Restoration…they liked us well enough that they came and ate a kebab with us for my birthday.

 

And answers to the following questions:

 

–Are you volunteering with the Red Cross there?   Not yet…we are trying to find it, and all those social service places close down for the summer, so we’re not even sure if we’ll be able to.

 

–Do the members feed you? It’s like Cannes…in three weeks I’ve eaten at one member’s house.  Oh well, life s like that sometimes.

 

–What’s the Bishop like?  He’s an ex TJ.  Reserved but if you get him in the right mood he might make a joke or two.

 

–How’s the ward mission leader? Crazy awesome sweet.  He is a 70+ year old, one of the first members in Bordeaux, going deaf brother.  Very active, very fun.

 

–Do you go on splits with the members? No…they do teach with us…when our amis are there.

–Are there many priests in the ward that you can take on splits? Yes, but they are all preparing for the BAC (finals but like final final final exams in France…pretty much your life depends on how well you do on them) so they are kind of busy.  There is one who is really motivated.

 

–Have you got a list of less-actives that you can visit? Nope, comme dab.  We’ve passed almost all of them that live in our area and none of them are really open to let us in.

 

–What was the best thing that happened in the week?  USA vs. Angleterre 1-1!!!  We didn’t lose our first round in the WC!!!  That was cool, but also that birthday card Mom sent me was pretty sweet too.

 

Honestly I think that I’ll just keep using this model to write emails, so that should be fun and make mom happy.

 

I love you all…I’ve been told that another Ewing baby might be born this week so I want pictures!

 

Elder Jacob