Elder Jacob Ewing

Out and About

jacob — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:19:18 +0000

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

The week that was

jacob — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:10:35 +0000

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

Rolling, rolling, rolling

jacob — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 19:03:35 +0000

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

Ooh la la!

jacob — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:12:06 +0000

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

Pictures…Hooray!

jacob — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:59:38 +0000

What a week!

jacob — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:03:00 +0000

Quoi de neuf ma famille!
     What a week what a week what a week! This week was full of traveling, of finding, and of losing people. BORk! But that’s okay.
     So I guess I ll start off with the bad news and then work my way back up to the good news. Bad News: Christian went on a one month ski trip…he doesn’t answer the phone or anything. Good News: We get to start teaching a part member family from Tahiti! They’re so sweet but they live far away, but they got two sweet kids, so it’s going to be awesome!
     This week I got to do exchanges in Perpignan…it was so sweet! My companion for the day is Scottish and he rocks. He hasn’t spoken in English since like his 2nd transfer and he’s been out for 8 now. Totally dedicated kid. We had fun teaching amis and having mangez vous while the Elders that went back to Carcassonne got Ratéd in the rain. Poor guys.
     Carcassonne is giving us good vibes for this next transfer. We have a lot of sweet potentials that are lined up so we’ll see what comes from that. So like for example…we were bummed out one day so we decided to do some “faith finding”. So we prayed and asked God to show us where to go. We felt that we should go to la Conte which is the uber ghetto quartier in our ville. Let me describe this place really quick…it used to have walls around it until one day the police went in there in force and got attacked from all sides by the people of the quartier. In the past missionaries have gotten stoned or threatened, so we normally try to avoid it. But we felt like we should walk in the direction. So we walked and walked and got to the Ghetto and didn’t feel like stopping so we kept walking until we found a sweet new neighborhood! And in this neighborhood we found 3 potentials! That’s the most I’ve ever gotten in one quartier! The passbacks are for later this week so we’ll see how that goes.
     Last night we had a movie night for Bruno and Serge and some other single guys in the ward. It went really well and they all had a good time. We had burritos and the Frenchies loved them. Side note…it’s amazing how much knock off American food there is here in Europe…we got fake oreos, chettos, doritos, kool aide, etc. It’s sweet but sad too.
     Bruno is doing really well. Except this week. He disappeared for like 4 days with out any contact or anything until Sunday night. It was the first time he missed church in like 5 months, but he promised never to do it again.
     We got a call Saturday night from the Bishopric, and I was scared that church was going to be cancelled again this week, but instead they just wanted us to give talks. My companion did great, and I was super pleased with his French. One of the comments I got was from the Bishop s daughter…I think it was my favorite…”You pronounce your ‘T s’ too much.” Nothing else just that :) I’ve been getting that comment for the past forever and I can’t figure out how to stop pronouncing my ‘T s’…I just like pronouncing all my letters I guess!
     Well family and friends, I hope you all pass a great Martin Luther King day and that you have many more to come…but more importantly HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!!
Love you,
Elder Jacob

Snow Storms and Playing Bishop

jacob — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:48:35 +0000

Hello World!
     So this past week France has been “hammered” by snow. Here in Carcassonne we got blessed with a good 3-4 inches with surrounding villages getting up to 30-40 cm. It has been blowing and snowing so much that my left pinkie has gone permenately numb. But even with all that we had a pretty sweet week.
      Since most of our members live in the outer lying villages with all the snow none of them could make it to church, so the Bishop called us that church was cancelled. Elder Milman and I weren’t too thrilled of the idea because there are still a couple members in Carcassonne. So we called the Bishop back and asked if we could still have a Sacrament Meeting with all the local people. We got the go ahead, and we went for it. We had 12 people there including us (there was one little girl who was so confused on why no one was there), and I got to preside and conduct my first Church meeting. It was kind of interesting…I don’t think I did too many apostate things during the 45 minute reunion so yeah it went well
     After Church we built snowmen in the parking lot with a couple Tahitian members. It was their daughter’s first real snow fall, so we profited by chucking snowballs at her and her parents. Sadly the Islanders had better aim then the two snow boys…shameful day
     Saturday was full of howling winds and snow. It was cold, but I was so happy. I haven’t been this cold in so long, and I was stoked. Contacting and porting didn’t go too well that day…no one was on the streets and everybody just waved us off from their windows. To keep the time rolling we had a nice little snowball fight. Good times.
     Friday we had our first day with the Croix Rouge in Carcassonne. We got to put meal bags together for SDFs and then go deliver them along with soup in the streets. We looked pretty studly in our Croix Rouge jackets and that was just augmented when we started rolling in the CR vans. The turn out wasn’t that great, but we still met a lot of cool people. It was kind of funny…so in interviewing for the CR they told us time and time again that we are not to do prosyleting, the thing is they can’t stop people from asking us questions about why there are two young americans volunteering at the CR. I really like doing service because people are a lot more open to talk about religon than when we’re decked out in ties and shirts. We had a really good long discussion with 2 of the people that we worked with, and they’re both pretty open so we’ll see what happens.
     Other than that the week was pretty calm. Lots of good mangez vous and working in other villages. Bruno is still a stud. Christian on the other hand, well we’re going to have to cassé a little bit. He’s too distracted by everything, so we’re going to have a nice little sit down with him this week.
     Well fam and friends the work keeps moving forward, even if the forward movement is hard to notice.
I love you!!!
Elder Jacob
PS- We’re supposed to get more snow this Wednesday!!! This is the most snow than they’ve gotten in years! Happy times!

Fixing Goals

jacob — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:25:39 +0000

Well World, Happy New Year!
     Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you had some sweet parties and ate too much. I ate way too much, but it was all delicious so that’s okay. The members spoiled us horribly and my companion and I were very content.
I learned some fun things this past New Years day…don’t go porting–nobody opens their door. We knocked on doors for probably two hours throughout the day and, I’m not even exagerating, no one opened their door. Oh well, we had fun talking about our goals while we were walking around.
     So what are my goals for this the year 2010? I have some but I accidently left them at the apartment so I couldn’t tell you them to you from off the top of my head. But here are a couple: 1. Read the BOM, D&C, and PofGP before the end of my mission. 2. Spoil my nieces and nephews rotten (Thanks by the way for getting pregnant–it’s a good conversation starter here in France) 3. Pick a major. So those are some of the goals for 2010.
     Two of our amis fixed goals this week. Bruno and Christian both fixed the goal to be baptized the 13 of February. Needless to say we are stoked. Carcassonne has had 1 baptism in like the past 3 years so we’re hoping and praying for these 2 guys. Bruno has stopped drinking alcohol and coffee, so now he just needs to get off the smoking. Christian has been off and on with the missionaries for the past forever so we have just got to keep him fidelle. We had a long lesson on that and we hope this time he’s solid. Yah! I’m happy.
     I had an exchange this week with an Elder Musé, really sweet kid and we have a lot in common. Not only do we both bike and ski, but we both played tuba in high school. We’re going to try and find a couple tubas so we can lay down a sweet polka. I think the highlight of the exchange is when I got to meet Sr Nazaroff. She’s a soeur from Perpignan who got baptised at 87 or 88 years old. She loves missionaries and she loves the Church. She actually called Elder Steenblik last Christmas and since then I’ve wanted to meet her. So last Tuesday my dream got fulfilled.
     Last night we took a road trip with some members to go visit 3 less active families. It went okay…they were more happy to see the members than us, but in the end we got to teach one of the families. For the most part these families are less active because the church is too far away and they don’t want to make the voyage. Kind of a lame reason but that’s just how it is. Sweet people though.
     Well this week holds many a RDV, we’re hoping to find people too this week, because that’s been on the slide in the mission. So if you could pray for us to find people this week that would be sweet.
     Cool. Well I love you all, we’re spending our Preparation Day in Beziers with some Elders, kind of a scketchy ville, but it’s okay one of the Elders is big and black
Love you love you love you!
Elder Jacob

Mangez vous…glorious mangezvous!

jacob — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:10:04 +0000

Hey World!
Well I hope everyone passed a very merry Christmas…it was fun to hear the voices of my family and to have a nice talk…or should I say chat
So this week was like always full of eating. Starting Monday and continuing until Sunday we ate like kings (well hey it almost is the fete des rois). Wednesday was way nice with a totally sweet Zone Conference. My companion and I performed our song and it went great! This morning two of my leaders called me up and said they had the song stuck in their head all weekend long. With the conference we also got to go caroling on ville. It went really and we had a small crowd gathered around us so that felt good.
Thursday and Friday were a blur of Mangez vous…or glorious mangezvous! Every family that we went to had a non-member at their house…unfortunately they didn’t want us to teach…dop! But it did help to build a relationship and while we didn’t get to teach teach we got to talk about the Church with them. We had a member call us the day after to thank us for coming because their friend we talked with was one they had been trying to get to be interested in the Church for 5 years, and the night we passed with them helped open some doors….yah! opening doors!
Saturday we had a sweet miracle. We had fixed a RDV early in the week with a guy in the road, so we called a member and got everything set up. We show up at the church Saturday afternoon and there is our member but with some other guy. Turns out the member thought he should invite a friend just in case the RDV didn’t work out with the other guy, and lo and behold it was a ratezvous but we still got to teach! Unfortunately the man is booked until the end of January but we can still keep in contact with him through the member.
Sunday we got to go out and eat at the Bishop’s house. In this ward I think pretty much every family is living in a house that they’re either remodeling or building themsleves. The Bishop’s house is very rustic but very nice. We had a fun FHE with them and it was nice to get to know the Bishop better.
So voilà the names of the people that we ate with this week…Kerseys, Kontes (2x), Martins, Venaiquers, Viellards, and at Toulouse, oh glorious times.
Well, I’m working on my New Year resolutions, I hope you are too. Bring it on in the Biggest Loser-Team Ewing edition. I’m getting fatten up to slim on down.
Thank you for all the love and support during this holiday season, I hope you re all doing well and are having fun!
Love,
Elder Jacob

Merry Christmas!

jacob — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 02:39:23 +0000

Hello World!
     What a week! We had high winds, snow storms, and bone biting cold, but just like the postal service we were out and about doing the work. Thankfully we had a couple RDVs during the week so we didn’t have spend all day out in the weather. I’ve been loving it though…we had a “massive” snow storm on Wednesday and my companion and I couldn’t help but dance in it. We ran through the streets yelling “Merry Christmas”, and did a little street sledding.
     Things were going great up until our RDV. It was the first time that Bruno had prayed during a RDV and the only thing that he asked for was that the snow would stop. And what do you know…the snow stopped and by the time we left the RDV it was starting to melt and disappear. Thankfully it didn’t all disappear.
     Bruno has been doing great. He came to every activity this week at Church. Members know him and are going out of their way to say hi so that’s a good sign. We’re going to try and reengage him to stop smoking and fix a date for baptism this week. He’s ready up until the Word of Wisdom, but heck that’s an important part of the Gospel too. So we’ll hope–and pray–for good things.
     Caroline got a little stressed out with the holidays and told she needed a break until after all the holidays. Kind of lame but what can we do? We still have 3 times a week contact with her because she lives right next door to a member. She still might come to FHE but she’s not up with being taught right now.
     Cyril is doing okay too. It’s kind of an interesting situation because he’s 15 and he likes Church but he’s not really presséd to get a testimony. He’s kind of caught up in the social mode of things right now. We’ll see what we can do.
     Church was great. We have two eternelle amis. Both have been coming to Chruch every Sunday for the past 5 years. The problem is that they’re in their comùfortable groove and not ready to get out of it…darn it. Oh well, we love them still.
     We had an amawing Ward Social on Saturday. Tons of amis, tons of food, tons of sweet singing by missionaries. My companion and I wrote a song the night before to perform for the talent show. We took the melody from Buddy Holly’s “Learning the Game” and put these words with it:
Stomachs filled full
   par les membres chez eux
Oh glorious mangez-vous
Yes I want more
Oui j’en veux encore
Oh glorious mangez-vous
Can we share a pensez spiritual avec vous?
Oui ca marche, heck yes we got another mangez-vous!
Filling so good
parce que on est rempli bien
Oh glorious mangez-vous
     It was filled with ohhing and ahhhing and random french food being shouted out, it was really quite enjoyable. We were the hit of the night and the next day at church we were showered with gifts and mangez-vouses…oh glorious mangez-vous.
     The ward here is tons of fun and we have a very strong FHE program that we can invite amis too. I’m so glad that the members are willing to put it on because that gives us a good place to invite new amis (when we find them) to to meet members. Tonight we’re in charge and we’re going to reinact the Christmas Story…should be fun.
     Hey, here’s a fun fact…The Christmas Card the First Presidency sent out this year has a very pretty picture on the front of it…you might think that it was done by just another Church Artist and you can just go to SLC to see it. Well actually the picture used on this year’s card is only in its orginal form in Carcassone! Yeah, we felt special when we opened our cards.
     Cool I wish you all a very merry Christmas.
Love you,
Elder Jacob

Falling snow and tender mercy

jacob — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:00:38 +0000

Hello World!

Well it is snowing! It’s not sticking but at least it’s snowing. My companion and I were thinking about heading up to the castle today but we are thinking about just sitting at home and writing letters now.

Well Carcassone has turned out to be a big blessing for me. Right from our kitchen window I can see the Pyrénées encore. So stoked for that because it has been a year since the last time I could see them. Also from our window we have a great view of the castle. Our landlord is sooo sweet too. He has been an ami de l’eglise for the past 20 years and has known every mission president since forever ago. We pray with him each morning in his office and he goes off on how much he loves us but will never join the church. Oh well, he’s still sweet.

The ward here is totally sweet. I went through the normal “Do you know Bobby/Dallas/etc?” and “Isn’t it really cold in Alaska” greetings. The ward is made up of a lot of strong families so that’s good. We have pas mal de less active work to do here so that should be a fun experience. The Bishop is a very direct and straight forward guy and is big on getting members involved in missionary work, but he’s just lacking the backing of members there. Our DMP is totally sweet and his wife too. They’re Tahitian Military so we eat well And to keep up with traditions we have a English speaking family in the ward from England. Still working on names, but they’ll come. We do have a great member here and we’re teaching a lot of his friends so that’s going well. And I’m back in a ward with a sweet building so that’s great.

In other teaching news we have 3 strong amis. We have Caroline that started being taught in November. She has trouble with smoking but she’s down to 2 cigarettes a day. Also we have Bruno who’s been taught since July. He is very Catholic but loves our Church. We need to talk about the praying to Mary and the Pope but it’ll come. After that we have Cyril who is 15. I’ve met him once and he’s cool and so are his parents so hopefully we can start teaching the whole family soon.

Things are going well with the companion and we are having a good time working together. We are hoping to see miracles and to get the members fired up so yeah, we’ve got some work to do This new companion is Elder Eric Milman from Utah. He’s almost fresh out of the MTC so I get to have lots of fun teaching French. Totally sweet, we work well together, and we get along great. He’s 6′ 2″ so ever so slightly taller than me but that’s okay.

As you know we walk a ton here, especially in my last ville, and soooo my shoes have taken a nice beating. I haven’t really had a desire to buy new shoes and had been hoping to find some somewhere along the line. Being transferred and moving into a new apartment I did the normal cleaning/look throughs, and what do you think?–the first cupboard I opened there was a pair of pretty new French shoes in my size waiting for me. It was sweet.

Well love you all, have a merry Christmas!

Love,

Elder Jacob

Food Collection and Missionary Work

jacob — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:15:57 +0000

Hey World,

So this week for our service hours we went out and did a food collection in front of a store (Leader Price) for 4 hours. We thought it would be a nice breather to take, but it turns out we were wrong. Even dressed in civilian clothes with no plaques people blew past us without listening, threw out sarcastic remarks, or gave us their life stories on why they couldn’t donate a can of tuna. But at the same time we made some great friends. We met a sweet couple from Italy that loaded us up with food, an Arab Woman who came out with two bulging bags and gave them both to us and then walked away with a box of aluminum foil, and then another woman who forgot to buy stuff and so went back into the store and came out with a bag of food.

In all we collect 4 grocery carts and talked with probably 300 people through out the process. I got to discuss “Mormon beliefs” with an evangelist–that was interesting (he refused to believe that there were people in South America in 600 BC, I didn’t have the heart to tell him there were more in like 2000 BC). One of our other co-volunteers just went through a divorce so we got to talk with her a little too.

My companion and I wrote down a list of excuses that we heard Saturday night’s food collection and then compared them to what we hear everyday.

n. 1 – I don’t have time/I don’t have time

n. 2 — I already gave at another store/I already believe so I don’t need you

n. 3 — I have a neighbor who’s a freeloader/Somebody else did something bad so I don’t want to participate

n. 4 — Do you know why I’m not going to donate? Here let me tell you…/Do you know why I m not interested? Here let me tell you…

n. 5 – I’m not interested/I’ not interested

etc.

Good old French people

Friday night we did a Fireside on the history of the church. We had been advertising it and talking with a DMB about it for the past month or more but then at the start of this week we went and talked to our DMB to see what he had done. (Let me clarify something really quick, we made it very clear that it was his responsibility to organize and make this Fireside). All that he had done was he copied and pasted a page from James E. Talmage s “The Great Apostasy”. BORK! To a very long story short what we ended up doing was me breaking about 50 rules temporarily (I got permission later on in the day) to make a power point presentation. It went off okay we had one ami who showed up and a couple members, but we learned a ton about fireside planning from this experience.

Yesterday we went and visited the neighbors of a couple of our members. They are refugees from Armenia. Really sweet family, but not really engaged or enthused about religion. We still got to share our message.

Wednesday we had a Zone Conference and I was soooo hoping that since it was the day before Thanksgiving that President would do something special for us, but that didn’t happen. So it was a pretty calm conference with us just talking about what we were going to do for Thanksgiving…I think our equipe totally won out on all sides.

For Thanksgiving this year we got invited over twice (we moved one of them to Sunday to make them both) and we had the Shockney (Indiana Family) call us up and drop us off a huge bag a food…she couldn’t stand the idea of us being in France so far from our families that she just had to give us something. That right there with them totally made me almost cry, and yeah it was really nice. So all in all we ate chicken (turkeys aren’t ready till Christmas here), real mashed potatoes and not the purée that they normally make, homemade eggnog, pumpkin pie made from a real pumpkin, and chestnut gravy. We ate like kings! I love the members here.

So all in all it was a good week with all the fetes and service going on. This week is transfer week so we’ll see what happens at this point.

Love you all!

Elder Jacob