Elder Jacob Ewing

Hello World!
     So I just signed up for a new email address, but then I closed the window and I lost it all, so somewhere in cyberspace there is an new account on it…if you find it let me know.
     How about the week, huh?  She was there and she happened.  Pretty much this week was full of unplanned service with a little bit of planned service.  This week was full of travel and service.
     One morning right when we were headed out for the day our landlord called us.  Thinking it was just to say a prayer we ignored it (horrible us, but a prayer turns into 45 minutes of him talking to us).  Then while we were praying he called again, so this time I answered.  He started babbling about a bad back and a washing machine and then told us to get down to his office.  So we ran on over and what do you know he needs our help replacing a washer in another one of his apartments.  In a blink of an eye we piled into his car and off we went to look for a washing machine.  We found one at his house and after arguing with a French mechanic guy he let us borrow his truck to haul it to the apartment.  After pretending to be a NASCAR guy and sliding all over the road we made it safe and sound to the person’s apartment.  Thankfully the person had an elevator because as in all moving situations the person lived on the top floor.  After playing jigsaw puzzles we got the new washer iinstalled and took the old one out.  Taking it up the stairs turned into a torrent of dirty water swirling down my legs.  The woman hadn’t bothered emptying the water so there I was soaked in every sense of the word in nasty washing water.  Thankfully for her she didn’t have capret in her house, so the clean up didn’t take too long.  She was kind enough to invite us to stay to eat and so we got to talk a little bit.  She isn’t interested in the Gospel, but she did invite us back to eat another day.
     We did our regular Red Cross run this week and had a really good time.  We talked with an Irish woman and two Canadians who know the church.  They told us that it was the first time that they’d seen missionaries not wearing suits (we were wearing our Red Cross coats).  They’re from Vancouver and they know tons of members there.
     Saturday night we got to do some other random service.  We went with a member family to go visit some people who haven’t been to church in the last while.  We got there and they were working on laying a foundation so we took the opportunity to throw in a little bit of service time.  You should have seen it…there I was in shirt and tie using a jackhammer to break up dead rock, beating stuff out from rocks, and laying down that iron rod stuff.  It was quite the fun way to serve.
     This week we found/talked to 1, 2, 3, 4 less actives from our ward.  One was during the Red Cross time.  She came up and talked with us a bit (she also called me a blue because I mispronounced a word :P) Another one we met contacting but he didn’t bother to tell us he was a member until the first RDV, and then the other two are two less actives that live together but aren’t married.  We have RDVs fixed with 3 of the 4 and we’re hoping for good times.
     Well this was the third straight week of not finding new people to teach.  We still teaching Bruno and Caroline, but they’re not doing anything right now, so I’ve been going back and forth about whether or not to take a break with them for awhile and see where they are later on.

     I had my interview with President this week.  We talked a lot about Carcassonne.  He told me a good 3 times during the interview to not worry about the numbers coming out of Carcassonne and just focus on strengthing the ward and doing my best finding and teaching.  Phew…not an easy task, but we’ll see what happens.  I spent a good hour and a half talking with our DMP and our RS President.  We’re all at a loss of ideas when it comes to strengthening the Ward.  We have Ward Counsel this week so we’ll hope that helps liven things up.
     Well, I love you, and I soon as I figure out this email thing I’ll let you know.
Love you!
Elder Jacob

So this week was full of fun and interesting times.  So let me lay them out for you.
     Actually I don’t have that much time…sorry, I spent too long looking at classes, but here are the highlights.
     We went to an Evangelist church Tuesday night at the invitation of a man that we met in the road.  It was a very interesting experience.  It wasn’t the screaming, tongues speaking, devil chasing, hand clap church that I was expecting.  Rather the Pastor talked about things that really matter in people’s lives….Don’t chase the things of the world rather the things of God.  The people there were very nice to us and the Pastor invited us back to talk about our church with him next week.
     The Red Cross went well again this week.  One thing I love is while we’re not supposed to proselyte, people are always asking us why two Americans would come to France to volunteer at the CR.  We’ve talked with several people about the church, and have even met people who talked to the missionaries 15 years ago, and still have good memories of them.  We also got invited by one of our co-volunteers to come speak in her Orthodox Community about our Church.  We haven’t fixed a date yet but it’s in the works.
     We also got to help a Brother in our ward move a ton of wood.  Like tons and tons.  It felt good to work like men again, and we’re scheduled to go back again this week.  They are a really nice family but unfortunately one of their sons is very less active.  He started serving a mission but only made it 3 months before he came home.  We’re trying to just fellowship right now but it’s going slowly.

There’s more, but no time.

Love you all,

Elder Jacob

Hello World!
     Well what was good this week?  Lots  of fun fun fun reunions.  We ran around to Perpigan to Toulouse and out to Limoux for a little bit of work.  So in the end the week turned into lots of travel.  Hey let’s talk the week though.
     Tuesday we had a really good district meeting.  Our new District Leader is Elder Gibbs; a missionary I knew from my Cannes days.  It was really good to see him again, and especially as my District Leader.  The ride home we were hoping for a tranquile time, but our train decided to break down at La Port Nouvelle for an hour.  So we had a good time sitting and studying for an extra hour in the train.  I was really thankful that it wasn’t summer, at least we didn’t cook in the train.  Thankfully we ended up getting home after a cancelled train in Narbonne and a couple other delays.
     Wednesday we went and visited our neighbor in the hospital.  Turns out our propriétaire told us wrong in saying that she had cancer…she only had a blood clot….can I say only in the situation?  She’s doing well and was happy to see us.  She talked to us for like an hour and caught us up on what’s going on in hospital life.  Unfortunately she s very TJ, so we can never get around to teaching her real doctrine.
     Thursday we took off to go to Limoux; a tiny village to the south of Carcassonne.  The last time it went really well and talked to some great people, but this time around we got nothing too exciting other than some angry muslims and an old deaf man.  It made for an interesting day but not really fruitful.  We also had our Conseil de Paroisse that night…and yeah,  it was kind of interesting.  Turns out Carcassonne was supposed to be closed this transfer, but the stake president asked that it be kept open.  Thankfully it wasn’t because of the missionaries, but because of the members.  So now it’s up to the ward and us to get things moving.  In the end though we had some good discussions and we’ll see what goes down in the next couple of weeks.
     Friday we had our Zone Conference and it went well.  We had a 70 interregion there.  I gave my first talk ever in Zone Conference.  I had fun, talked about bikes and the gospel and how they go together.  There was one part that made me laugh…our mission president compared our mission to the earthquake in Haiti.  That meaning that we celebrate everytime that we have a baptism, just like them celebrating after they pull a person out from under the rubble.  So we are neither hunters nor fishers in mission rather rubble diggers ;)  But seriously it’s true that we do spend a lot of time looking and digging to find people to teach and baptize.  That’s why I’m here though is to learn humility and patience.
     Saturday and Sunday rolled out okay.  We continued teaching Diego.  He’s doing well…he read pas mal in the Book of Mormon.  He’s kind of hung up on the fact that God uses violence to teach people.  We used a couple scriptures already but he isn’t satisfied.  We also have kept teaching Issac and Kelly…after 2 and half weeks together she’s already pregnant :p  I think we’re going to have to hit up the Word of Wisdom soon to save the baby from all the smoke she’s taking in at this point.
     Sunday during the combined meeting our Bishop laid into the ward for not having enough spirituality in their lives.  It basically came down to doing the small and simple things in our lives to keep our spiritual lives chugging along.  It’s so true and never really thought about it before my mission, but we have to read the scriptures everyday, we have to pray multiple times in the day, and we have to share what we’ve learned in our lives to keep our flames burning.  J’espère qu’on a appris quelque chose de lui.
     We’ve had to move Bruno s baptismal date.  He’s still hung up on Catholic saints and smoking, so we’re going to have to wait a little bit.  He’s still happy and coming to church so that’s good.
     Funny thing too…our Bishop let slip what villes are closing at the end of this transfer.  Now my companion and I have got some good knowledge but sadly we can’t share what is going down.  Thankfully we’re not on the list yet.
     Our mission is losing missionaries left and right, not from finishing their missions, but from injuries.  We’ve had three go home in the past month with another possibly gone at the end of this month.  I’m still in good health and so are the other 69 missionaries in the south of France.  The few the humble the France Toulouse Missionaries!
Love you guys!
Elder Jacob

Hey World!

So this week was full of stuff, so let me try to tell you all of it in a way that will make sense.

Our neighbor has cancer.  She s this sweet Spanish TJ who brings us food and goodies all the time…and TJ stuff, but she s sweet none the less.  So yeah she has cancer in the uterus and lungs.  We stopped by the hospital and took her flowers.  She was happy to see us and said that we were the only people to bring her flowers…not even her kids!  Atleast that s what I think she said…she speaks half in spanish and half in french and she speaks ridiculously fast so we only understand about a third of what she says.  So if you could keep Concheta (Con sheet a) in your prayers that would be great.

This week we also ran out to a smaller town named Limoux.  It was a fun time.  Nobody had ever heard of us, but even with that people weren t totally interested…that is except for one person.  We found a really sweet woman who is catholic but loves reading the scriptures, so we showed her the Book of Mormon.  She was way happy to know that there s more than the Bible because she knows the Bible can t be everything from God.  We re going to try and pass her again some time during the week.

We were up at the Bishop s house yesterday.  He lives about an hour outside of Carcassonne, and so when we go there it s a day afair.  But being the wonderfully effective missionaries we are we ported his little village inbetween lunch and the Soirée Familial.  The only success we had was finding a less active that no one knew exsisted.  She s english, she got baptised into the church 15 years ago and then fell away shortly afterward.  She is now studying with the TJs though and doesn t want us to teach her, so we gave her the Bishop s phone number and gave the bishop her address…who knows maybe something will come of it.

I think I told you that a few weeks ago that we started doing service at the Red Cross, and that we found a Less Active in doing that.  So this is where our drama for the week starts.  We fix a RDV with him and during the RDV he unloads all his problems going on right now, he seems real and it seems like he wants to come back to church, so we fixed more RDVs for this week.  So during our RCM on Sunday we talk about him, and a member form the Bishopric starts laying into us for wasting our time with him.  Is it a waste of time to teach a home less active member with issues?  I don t know I ll have to talk to President.

We had a fun little pick me up this week.  We had gone a couple days where we didn t get a single phone number or address.  I was getting frustrated and I think people could tell because their responses to us got more and more sarcastic.  Thankfully God doesn t leave us hanging.  We kept talking and eventually found a guy from Nice who was open to talk.  Turns out he s study us for a while and is interested in our doctrine and knows quite a bit of our history.  Well he didn t give us his phone number or anything, but we got to teach him, and it was nice to teach an open person.

This week I have felt pushed to learn Spanish.  I don t know how many Spanish people I ran into this week (20 or 30) and the only thing I can say is Jesus and Prophet.  It gets their attention, but we can t really progress past that.  So I might have to be like Joe and learn a couple languages on my  mission.

Speaking of speaking different languages…my companion and I have discovered the joy of teaching people who don t really speak French…they listedn intently to what you re saying.  Like one of our amis this week speaks spanish but not a lot of french, so all through the lesson he was asking good questions, and like actually contributed to the lesson.  It was cool.

Well all in all a good week.  Bruno is keeping his date still, so in like 2 and half weeks he s going in the water!  Cool!

I love you all!

Elder Jacob