An Awesome Week

Hello family and friends! This week was awesome! We have had an terrific week! And it was all because we worked super hard and trusted God.

Being crazy on the train with Elder Acheson

Church building where our branch meets 

NOS AMIS

Our amis are doing great! First off, Jean Luc is so awesome. He has really turned around and he is so ready to be baptized this Saturday! :) I'm excited. He is excited. We are all excited! He reads his scriptures and prays everyday. He also said every time he reads the Book of Mormon, he feels God's love for him. It is always wonderful to teach him. He has such genuine questions and concerns. We taught him about missionary work this last week and he asked if he could be a missionary, and we said, yeah. And he said "Oh good! That is something I want to do!" 

The Cathedral in Perigueux

So I have good news and I have bad news with Yin. Yin is doing so good! He feels good when he comes to church, he reads and prays and I think he sees himself being a member in the future. With that said, Yin is moving to Bordeaux because he finally found an internship. When he told me it was bittersweet. Bitter obviously because he is moving to Bordeaux and I won't be a part of his learning experience anymore but so sweet because he has been praying to find a job for such a long time! It really isn't even that bitter, just because I know he will be able to continue to draw closer to Christ. I'm just feeling kind of selfish and want to be a part of it with him. 

Saying goodbye to Yin

Other than that, we don't have any amis at the moment. We have been searching super hard. Talking to everyone! Even the really old, French ladies that just look at us like we are aliens before continuing on their way. 

Finally getting rid of the old broken fridge. 

LES MIRACLES

This week has been FULL of miracles. It really has been. We have received a lot of numbers from people. More numbers this week than my last transfer combined! Yeah, pretty awesome. One of the miracles that we had was when I was on exchange with the other Elder Johnson from Bergerac. We set the goal to get 12 conversations during our exchange (usually you can get around 5 or 6 a day), so we were going to go crazy. We told ourselves that we wouldn't go back into the apartment until we had all of our conversations. At the beginning of the day, we had a great start but as the day went on, it started raining and got dark. We visited a member really quick so that we could pray with them so that we could get our goal. After we prayed with them, we had about 30 minutes until we had to go into the apartment, it was still raining, and there was literally no one in the streets. We literally RAN around looking for people to talk to. The first person we talked to was literally a drug dealer... and we ran away because they were scary and I thought about Marseille when we started to approach him. #thankyouHOLYGHOST 

People seemed to just be so mean, but we didn't get discourage and just kept running around looking for people. Eventually we got two conversations and we needed one more conversation with ten minutes to go! We said a prayer and then ran around the dark, wet streets of Perigueux until finally we found someone and he was super nice and talked to us! WE DID IT. We were so happy. As soon as we got into the apartment we knelt down in prayer and thanked Heavenly Father for our success. 

Elder Johnson and Elder Johnson out on exchanges

One of the miracles that we had on the exchange was when we contacted this woman who looked a little Arabic but we contacted her anyway. When we started talking to her she all of a sudden, in English, says "I LIKE!" Pointing to our plaques. She is from the Philippines and she has been in France for a few years now. She went to the church in Paris but lost contact when she came here. SO COOL!

Passing (Contacting)

UNE DRÔLE HISTOIRE

So! Funny story! We contacted this man and he said then all of the sudden he started speaking in English. As we are talking to him, I asked him how he spoke English so well and he then said that he had lived in England for 50 years and that is how he spoke so well. Anyway! He then tells us that he was the butler for Prince Philip! LOL. I'm not sure how true it was but he seemed to know quite a bit about it... maybe it was real! He didn't live in Buckingham because you have to be British to be the butler there but he was the butler somewhere else. 

He also said " I can guess your birthday!" And I was like, okay, this guy is crazy but then he says, I just need to shake your hand... he shakes my hand and then says "You were born in August, weren't you?!" And I said, ”Yes!” Then he said, "I think you were born August 5th" I said, “Nope but close!” Then he said the 2nd of August. So close. He then asked me what my birthday was... and I told him the third. I was still super impressed! lol 

Anyway! It was great! I laughed so hard afterwards. 

The soeurs (sister missionaries) in our zone.

That was our week! It is starting to get a little bit warmer! 

Je vous aime!

Que Dieu vous bénisse!

Elder Johnson  

The cathedral in Bergerac