What A Week!

Another good week! The work is moving forward!

FORMATION DE ZONE

This week we had Zone Training in Aix-en-Provence, which is only about thirty minutes away by train. We live in a really beautiful part of France. Out of our entire zone, there isn't one sister's equip (there is only one Sister and she is with her husband as a senior couple) 

Zone training was really cool. We studied a lot about the stripling warriors and how we need to strive to be like them. So, each Zone, at the request of President Roney, made a "Title of Liberty" like Moroni did in the Book of Mormon. It was pretty sweet. 

So, Elder LaPointe and I made our personal Title of Liberties... They're sick!

I also got to see Elder DuPre! He is my Zone Leader now. Pretty sweet :) 

ECHANGE

I had an exchange with Elder Boynton. He is in his second transfer and he is an amazing missionary. Holy cow. He speaks so well and he can get so many people to stop just by making a joke or something like that. 

We saw a lot of miracles of our exchange. One of them being the fact that we were able to find a less active family that would let us in! We taught them and invite them back to church. It was bien passé.

LE CRAZY

I probably met the craziest person I have ever met on my mission this week. Literally, insane. But the scary thing was is that he didn't seem insane at first. Anyway, it is late and we are walking on the Prado (which is just a really big avenue) and we hear someone saying.. "Stop, stop, I'm American... do you have a bible in French?! We turn around and there is this guy that is kind of dirty and sweaty but he is clearly American by his accent. 

So we talk to him and he is like yeah, come over and we can talk more or whatever. He literally told us that he was schizophrenic and that he was also bi-polar. He also seemed like he was on some heavy medication. So, we give him a Book of Mormon and tell him that we will meet him at nine tomorrow, hoping that he doesn't realize that we didn't fix a place to meet him and thinking that he would forget about the rendezvous that we fixed with him.

BUT, he was like: here is my address! And it is literally a door down from where we live. LITERALLY A DOOR. So it is time for us to go home and he is like, I'll walk you home. I was like, “NO, its okay.”, but he is like, “I live on this road...” and I was like noooo... So we walk with him to his door and "drop" him off, thinking that we will never seem him again.

But, we felt bad that we lied to him about a rendezvous so we decided to at least show up and tell him that we had other things that we had to do. Well, we go the next day and we ring the bell and wait...nothing. As we are walking away he opens the door and is like "COME IN, COME IN!" So we step in, and he is in these TINY underwear and he is completely covered in Vaseline. From head to toe. SMEARED in it. What the freak? At this point---I was just praying, “Please, Heavenly Father, don't let anything bad happen because if something bad does happen it will get on the news and the headline will be ‘Two Mormon Missionaries found chopped into little bitty pieces by man completely covered in Vaseline’ And that isn't good publicity for the church.” 

Luckily, we were able to just give him a DVD and pray with him and then leave. I'm sure we will see him again considering he lives right next door to us. 

NOS AMIS

Our amis are doing really well! And we are actually teaching a few new ones.

Hinaiti: She is great, still building her testimony. The papers were accepted by the French government and their marriage will be the 25th of October if everything goes well. The ward is going to throw a surprise wedding. Then she will get baptized the same day. HA! Pretty sick. 

Samuel: He is doing alright. We've been struggling to see him but he is solid. He doesn't understand why he needs to be baptized again since he was baptized by immersion but we are going to teach him with our DMP and it will be really good. I'm sure we will figure things out. 

Odette: new amie given to us by a member! She is Phillipino. There are A BILLION PHILLIPINOS here. I don't know why, but anyway, we teach her in English and she seems to be progressing pretty well. 

LE CHALLENGE 

So, last Sunday we had 6 amis at church between the two equips of elders here in Marseille. Our DMP challenged us to get 10 this next week and if we do, he will take us out to eat anywhere we want... and he means it. 

So, we are going to work like crazy mad men this week! hahaha. 

Anyway...

That is for this week! 

Que Dieu soit avec vous! 

Elder Johnson

Map of the Lyon France Mission
Elder Johnson could end up in any of these areas
except Switzerland.

Elder Johnson has all ready been in Lyon, Bergerac, Talence and now Marseille .