Week 27

Bonjour!

Alright, I am back on schedule with my emailing. This has been another pretty busy week with a lot of success that we have been able to see. The work in Marseille is really moving forward right now and it's incredible to see that. Hopefully I will be able to see the fruits of all this hard labor.... this is the last week of the transfer so I am not sure where I will be emailing from next week but I sure hope that it is still in Marseille.

So, I will start off where I left off last week. Last monday I was not able to email partially because of the fact that my companion was in Toulouse for the day to fill out some paperwork so that he can be legal in France so I was with Elder Meservy for the day and we didn't do emails because our companions would need to do them anyway so we just decided to wait until they got back and by the time they got back, we had to get to a rendez-vouz and then our day was over. The rendez-vous we had was actually with the lady named Maria who I had talked about in the last email who had just showed up at the church and then we ran into her on the street. The rendez-vous was really really good and she had so many good questions. She is originally Italian but has been here for many years. She has had quite a rough life and has been through a lot but I am so surprised at her faith. A lot of people who have had a lot of struggles become cynical and quite faithless but she is quite the contrary. It was a really good lesson and we even talked about the Word of Wisdom right then and she actually was an Alcoholic many years ago but she actually stopped herself and she doesn't drink anymore. She does, although, have quite a smoking problem but she is ready to work with our stop smoking plan. It was a great rendez-vous and we were able to schedule another one with her for a couple days later.

On Tuesday it was quite a good day and pretty busy. At the beginning of the afternoon we had a rendez-vous with Daniel, who was the investigator from several years ago who showed up at the church. He is a very nice guy but just a little different. At that rendez-vous we were able to engage for baptism on the 12 of February, so we have a lot of work to do to get him comfortable and ready. He had a date a few years ago but didn't end up going through with it so there is obviously something that needs to be worked out. After him we met a member to help us teach a Christian Black Lady from Nigeria but she ended up saying that she didn't have time that day. So we stopped by an investigator who lives not too far away. It had been about two weeks since we had been able to see him because he just wasn't home for our rendez-vous or just didn't answer the door, we have no idea what but he actually happened to be home! It was a miracle. It was such a good rendez-vous and we talked about baptism and he was really interested and wanted to see how church goes before fully committing but it was a great lesson and a miracle that we were able to see him again. After that, we hurried to the church to meet our investigator with a baptismal date of the 29th Amine because he wanted to make us real couscous. Couscous is this Algerian dish and he used to be a chef in Algeria so he wanted to show us how to make the real stuff because what we always eat is not the real couscous... apparently. So we got there and he started and then after a good thirty minutes or so, he proceeds to tell us that it will take 2 hours!!! Yikes, all I could think was if this is really how it should be made, it is not worth it! So he continued to make this long process for couscous and during one of the processes we were able to get a lesson in and we talked about the Word of Wisdom and all of that and he was still prepared to be baptized on the 29th. Finally after about another hour, the couscous was finally finished and he gave us huge portions with tons of the sauce he made that had tons of vegetables and some lamb in it. And then he pulls out this milk stuff that was really thick and he pours himself a glass and so me and my companion decided to pour some. After we said the pray and before I took a bite of the food, I decided to take a sip of this mysterious milk and it was absolutely horrid! It was straight up buttermilk. Gah! If any of you have never tasted plain buttermilk.... I don't advise it.... but you have your free agency. Anyway, the couscous was really good, not sure if it was worth the time but it was still good. We could not finish our giant plates of food. We hurried and cleaned up because we had to hurry home and just before we left he noticed our glasses of buttermilk that were completely full and said, "Aren't you going to finish this." Haha my companion and I kind of looked at each other and took a couple more sips and then hurried out, but first he gave us a ton of left overs and then a full carton of buttermilk... And then we basically had to run home because it was quite late.

On Wednesday, in the morning we saw Maria again and talked about the Restoration more in depth and she told us about how her boyfriend was glad that she was talking with us because he thinks it would be really good for her. He has actually worked with missionaries in Switzerland before. So we were relieved to hear that so that we hopefully won't have another Stephanie type problem. At the end of the rendez-vous we talked about baptism and then tried to engage her but she said she needed time and needed to think about it, which we understood. After her, we saw Serge in the afternoon and had a good missionary work lesson with him, saw Angelo, a less active member who told us some very weird storied and then we didn't have too much until the evening with Jeorge and his family. We went with Frere Fidalgo and it was a really good lesson and Frere Fidalgo talked a lot about his conversion and everything. It went really well but we started to feel like we haven't been really going anywhere with the family or the lessons so we decided that we needed to refocus and really work on how we can teach this that will cause him to really really want to make this as a life decision and not just something for right now.

On Thursday, we had scheduled a rendez-vous with Jacque for the morning but he wasn't there. It was frustrating because at our last rendez-vous he was actually the one who asked us when we were going to come back and then he wasn't even there. In the afternoon we had a lesson with Brigitte where we talked about the 10 commandments and she didn't have a problem with any of them. After that we didn't have too much and so we contacted and passed some people and then we were on the way to stop by Jeorge's house and we happened to run into him on the street and he seemed very worried. His kids were all sick and he was running to go get something and to wait for him at the house and he would be right back. So we went to the house and waited for him and he got back and told us about all the bizarre things that had been happening to his family.The kids were getting sick, the computer had just randomly broken and just one thing after another. He told us how he knew Satan was unhappy that he was starting to turn his life around and that he was doing anything to try to stop Jeorge. We had a talk with him and then hurried to go to a member's house to eat. Oh and I forgot to mention that Amine called us and told us that he can't get baptized because he is in debt 17000 euros to someone and they want the money in 10 days and so he would most likely be leaving Marseille. So that was definitely a bummer. When we got home that night something really weird happened too. It snowed! It snowed in Marseille, which is very uncommon. We looked out the window and all of this snow was coming down. It was crazy!!

Friday we had a zone conference in Aix and we left our apartment and there was snow on all of the cars and ice on the sidewalks, it was so cool. On our way to Aix we went through these areas that were blanketed in snow. The conference was really good as usual and we learned a lot of really good techniques and things to implement in our lessons. After the reunion we had another rendez-vous with Maria and it was so good. The spirit was there and she had so many good questions to ask and she was marking things in the Book of Mormon. She told us that she would definitely be at church on Sunday.

On Saturday we were pretty busy. In the morning we met a Romanian man to give him a Book of Mormon and then we had lesson with Alexandre. It was kind of a miracle because we hadn't seen Alexandre since a couple days after Christmas and then this last week we saw him in the metro 2 times and set up a rendez-vous. He is ready to really start making some changes in his life, which is really good because he needs to. After that we hurried home and made some pancakes for the ward party. We went to the church and played a couple games with members and then we taught Herve, one of the less active members. In the evening we had a lesson with Jeorge and his family. We got there and more of his kids were sick and he was too. We ended up having a good lesson that was really powerful but he told us that they were going to try to come to church the next day but that he didn't think they would be able to with so many people sick.

On Sunday we ended up having three people at church. Daniel, Brigitte, and Maria. After church we ended up teaching Brigitte and talked about the Word of Wisdom which she was already following anyway. We talked about baptism and she is finally engaged for baptism for the 12th of february!!! We are so excited! After Brigitte we taught Maria again in the evening with a member from the ward, and they seemed to really get along, which was realy good. We tried to engage her for baptism but she told us that she needed more time to really know. Which is very understandable but she is definitely on the right path. She always has so many questions which is really good to find someone who is so engaged in trying to understand and comprehend fully.

We had another really great week and it was incredible to see that at the end of the week before, we had two people engaged for baptism, the end of this last week, we again have two more engaged for baptism but they are two completely different people. The Lord is really blessing us by putting people in our path who are ready and prepared. We truly are blessed. I hope that everyone is doing well and thank you so much for everything that you do. I love you all very much. Have a great week!

Elder Kirkpatrick