What can I say about Marseille?

Hello my dear family and friends! This week has been crazy! Full of success and lots of missionary work going on! It is pretty cool. We also got to watch General Conference, which was really cool. I loved it. 

WHAT IS GENERAL CONFERENCE?  Click to find out. 

Listen to the General Conference talks HERE to see what Elder Johnson is talking about. 

A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MARSEILLE

Marseille is HUGE. There is always something going on, always noise, always speed, speed  and speed! I am so surprised at the difference of culture and mentality that can be found by taking a train for six hours. Bordeaux was big but it is spread out and the people walk slow and they talk slow. It's nice and calm. Marseille everyone is just going as fast as they can. I feel like in the United States if you go over to the next state it is generally the same or their is more gradual change but here it is just like BAM! haha

The people here seem really unhappy. They are also not as friendly as the Bordelais but there are more of them so we kind of just have to sift through the people (just like in any city) to find the nice people. Marseille has metros too! Just like Lyon! You can get around really fast here despite the size of the city. They are really loud though so it is kind of hard to talk to people on them.  

I haven't really met a ton of people from the ward yet because of General Conference but the members I have met are really cool. I love members. I admire the members in France. They truly are warriors of the truth! 

NOS AMIS

We have SO MANY AMIS! It is amazing. We taught a ton this week. I will just share the coolest of them. I mean they are all cool but some are super cool.

Hinaiti- She is the girlfriend of a member who was less active. One day she asked Henry (her boyfriend) if she could talk to the missionaries of the church and ever since then she has been taught and he has been reactivated. It is really cool! They are so, so cool. She will get baptized this transfer. The only problem at the moment is that they have to get married before she gets baptized because they are living together. But they are Tahitian so they have to send papers to Tahiti and then wait for them to get back and it is a huge complicated process that is going to take about a month. But as soon as the papers are finished, she will be ready to be baptized! :D So cool.

Samuel-He is Haitian studying here in France. He was almost dropped as an ami a couple of weeks ago but then suddenly he started reading the Book of Mormon and studying and progressing a lot more. I feel like he will be baptized this transfer. He said that he would be baptized before January. He just wants to know the Book of Mormon a little bit better before he makes a decision. Pretty cool! :) 

MON COLLÈGUE

My companion's name is Elder LaPointe! He is from Las Vegas. He is in his third transfer so he has only been out for about three months. He speaks French like a champ though. I was super impressed. He is a really good missionary. He has a French name because his dad is from Quebec but he didn't know how to speak French when he got here. I guess that it is just in his blood or something. 

MON TÉMOIGNAGE

I am so thankful for the opportunity I have to be a missionary. It is hard. There are challenges and sometimes there are things that we just don't understand why they happen. But I am so grateful for everything that I have experienced. The good and the bad. 

I more fully understand why we came to earth and why we were willing to accept the hard stuff. We knew that it would allow us to learn, and to grow. Sometimes, I get really frustrated at myself for not being able to progress as quickly as I would like but when we started watching conference this last Saturday, I really just had a moment of reflection of how much I have changed since the beginning on my mission. 

Six months ago I was in Lyon--I stuck my head into the French broadcast and could only pick up a few words. Sitting in the chapel in Marseille, I understood everything that was being said. So yeah, I can speak the language now. I can pick up more than a few words but I have grown spiritually. I compared my notes of this last conference to the one before and I was shocked at how much more focused my notes were for my amis, my mission, and my self improvement that the last time, where I just wrote down general notes. 

I don't say this to brag about myself or to get attention but I wanted to share this because I learned a powerful lesson of being patient and how little we can actually see. We may not see the progress we make from on a day to day basis, but that is no reason to become discouraged or impatient with ourselves. We need to trust the Lord and most importantly, the perfecting power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. 

I love you. I love the Lord. I love His work.

Que Dieu soit avec vous! 

Elder Johnson 

Bonjour de Marseille!

Hello everyone! I've been transferred to Marseille, which I believe is the biggest city in the mission. I've only been here for a couple of hours but it is really pretty. There are SO many people. Bordeaux was big but it just wasn't the same. 

I don't have a whole lot to say this week other than I was sad to leave Talence so quickly. I loved the ward SO much. Three months is just enough time to really start knowing the ward and for them to start loving you a lot. I will definitely have to go back to Talence one of these days. J 

That is one thing that is hardest about the mission... is becoming so attached to people wherever you are and then just getting moved like that. You think I would be used to it by now but it never gets easier.... it's too bad. 

I love you all! I'll tell you more next week! :D 

Que Dieu soit avec vous! 

Elder Johnson

Transfer Day- heading for Marseille

Elder Cameron Johnson is being transferred to the city of Marseille. I don't expect to get a letter from him today.  Hopefully tomorrow.  I am sure he will miss all of his amis and Elder Karras but will find happiness and enjoy his new area like he always does.

MIRACLES OUT THE WAHZOO!

Hey everyone! This week was super awesome! I can't believe that this is calls week! Second transfer is Talence is practically over! It will be interesting to see what happens this next transfer, since Elder Karras and I have both been here for the same amount of time. Anyway!

UN ECHANGE 

This week I went on an exchange with Elder Lythgoe! Elder Lythgoe is still in his first transfer, so he is super blue and super cool. I was talking to him and turns out that he knows Cecil and Nancy Black (his great aunt and uncle)! haha. Apparently Cecil was his keyboarding teacher. LOL Too funny. 

(Blue= Green, meaning new or fairly new missionary)

On our exchange we saw some pretty cool miracles. I think that Heavenly Father blesses blues with really nice people in their paths to build their faith and make them excited to talk to people. 

Throughout the day we were pretty busy so we didn't have a TON of time to talk to people but when we did, the people were SO nice and they gave us their numbers! It was super awesome. After each contact Elder Lythgoe was like "Are your contacts like this everyday?" HAHA. NO! It was a fun exchange. 

MIRACLES OUT THE WAHZOO!

We have found these building to porte that are just super fruitful and full of so many college students it isn't even funny. They are really nice and always open to talk... anyway! 

(Porte= going door to door, knocking and hoping that the person inside will let you in. J)

So we are on floor seven of the building and we porte into this woman who doesn't open the door and she says "Who are you?!" And Elder Karras said "We talk about Jesus!" and then she opened the door and we are able to teach a lesson at the door! It was really cool. I don't know if we will see her again but it was still cool.

One floor lower, we get let into an apartment and teach another lesson! We are going to see them again too. Their names are Ralph and Remmie. They are brother and sister and are originally from Lebanon. They are Christians too which wasn't expected at all because they are from a Middle Eastern country. At the end of the rendezvous they asked if it was easier for us to speak in English because they speak English fluently... what the? It was really funny. I'm excited to teach them again. Young people and families are the most fun to teach. 

Another cool miracle that we had yesterday was that we were just walking to the church to print some stuff off and these two guys passed us and then like 30 seconds after they passed one of them asked "What is that thing?" and he pointed at our plaques/name tags. We explained it to him and his brother what we do and why we are here. We asked them if learning more interested them and they were like "YES! That would be awesome!" haha. GAH! So cool. 

NOS AMIS

Famille Inampudi is doing really well. We are kind of stumped with them though because when we asked them to pray to know if our message is true and they are like "We know your  message is true... your message is for unbelievers and we are already believing!" So, they won't pray to know if our message is true. I mean... we could have worse problems with our amis... hahaha. 

They are still super busy but they came to church and we are seeing them twice this week :) Super happy about that

We found Dina in our area book and she is pretty cool. She was taught by the missionaries when she was 27 years old and is still in contact with one of the original missionaries. She is 60 now. It is pretty crazy. 

She is pretty open but she is mad at God for all of the bad things that have happened in her life, which is pretty normal. But, she said she wants to "believe like she used to." So, we will see.

We have so many potential amis at the moment it is crazy. I'm sure we will have at least four or five new amis by the time we have all of our rendezvous. J Our hard work is paying off! 

FUN(NY) THINGS

We have a member in our ward that we visited right before working in her area of town. We had her pray with us so that we could have success in finding someone to teach the gospel to. So we work the whole afternoon in her area and nothing. People were nice but nothing happened.

On Sunday without even saying hi she comes up and says "ALORS, est-ce qu'il y a nouvelle?!" (SO, any news?!) And we say "No, but everyone was nice!" and as soon as she heard that she went "PFFFFT", through her hands up in the air and walked off... LOL NICE. 

She is a little special. hahaha

We also went to Arcachon, which is a HUGE sand dune! The biggest in all of Europe. It was GIANT. The photos don't do it justice. Look up "La dune du Pilat" on google just to see how big it is. It was so much fun. 

Anyway! That is it for this week! Hope I stay in Talence! We will see :) Love you!

Que Dieu Vous Bénisse 

Elder Johnson

ALORS ON CHERCHE

Hi everyone! Another week of adventures has already passed! :) Pretty crazy. I wonder if the time passes as fast as it passes for you as it does for me. 

This week was pretty great. Talence is doing well. 

CONFÉRENCE DE ZONE 

We had zone conference this week, which went hyper cool, as always. This one was a little special because it was a multi-zone conference. Montpellier, Toulouse, Talence and Bordeaux zones were all there. That is like a third of the mission! 

At this conference we watched and discussed Elder Ballard's visit to Genève and how we are going to implement the things that he taught us. One of the loudest messages I heard from the conference was to talk to everyone that we could. President Roney told us that at the conference, all of the Mission Presidents and Area 70s were staying in the same hotel, do they just spoke amongst themselves and enjoyed it or whatever. They were only there for one night. Elder Ballard found THREE referrals for the missionaries during his stay in the hotel. THREE. haha. He is a beast. 

All he did to do that was talk to people. Keep in mind he is an Apostle of the Lord so he is inspired out the wahzoo but still! How impressive is that. We never know how just a few simple words can change a life. It was a good testimony building conference.  

EGLISE NÉO APOSTOLIQUE 

So, we went to the church of one of our amis this Wednesday. It was an experience. I think the name of the church in English is the New Apostolic Church but I'm not sure. Anyway! We went with him to their Wednesday night meeting and it was really interesting. I could tell that the people there were good people who practice their faith. They were really nice to us afterwards as well. They said that they appreciated what we do and that they found it refreshing to talk to young people openly about faith and God. The only thing that we found really odd was at the very end of the service we all sang "HOSANNA!" Really loud. Other than that it was pretty normal. 

Our ami said that he really appreciated us coming and that he wants to come to our church to see how things go down. We will see. 

NOS AMIS

So! We were able to meet with the Inampudi Family (Indian Family) that we met this last week. The rendezvous went really well. We get there and they tell us "Ah! We have been excited all day waiting for you to get here!" We talk a little bit as Sheila prepares dinner. Once dinner is ready we put in "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration" and watch it as we eat. The food was really good--kind of spicy but good. When I first took a few bites I was like, eh, this isn't spicy but it was a building heat and by the time I had finished my plate I was sweating... hahaha. They told me "Eat a spoonful of yogurt! That will help!" After quenching the fire in my mouth we were able to focus on the movie and start answering questions. 

They had such good questions. Right after they were just asking questions left and right and finally Sheila got to the point to when she said: "Joseph Smith was worried about his salvation and he found out how he could have it. What do we have to do to have it?" Hashtag: the question every missionary in the world wants to hear. With that, we were able to talk about the steps in the gospel and baptism. Shortly after explaining how things work, we invited them to be baptized when they knew that the message we share is true and they accepted! No date yet, but I'm sure it will be soon. :D 

They are such a cool family. Every time I think about them I almost get overwhelmed with emotion at how gracious Heaven Father was in leading us to them. He really does love His children. 

The Inampudi Family came to church the next day and they really liked it. We had to translate for them but they still seemed to enjoy it. All of the members tried super hard to speak English to them (which was really funny---most of them speak really well). They felt really well received. We hope to see them again sometime this next week. The problem is, is that Krishna (the dad) is super busy with work and isn't available all the time. But he said if he even has 30 minutes that he will call us and that he wants to come to the ward activity at the end of the week. Hyper sick! 

MES ETUDES

I was reading in 2 Nephi 31 this week and I am always impressed with the simplicity of the gospel. God doesn't want things to be super hard to understand and I feel that often times I complicate things when really they aren't that complicated. 

When we are exhausted, when we feel like we can't go any further, Christ is there we can continue to press on happily. When we do, we will get the prize :) 

2 Nephi 31:19 And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of Christ with unshaken faith in him, relying wholly upon the merits of him who is mighty to save.

 20 Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.

I love you all!

Que Dieu Vous Bénisse! 

Elder Johnson