Hey y'all. First off, I must correct a grievous wrong: in my last letter, I spelled my collègue's name wrong. It's actually Elder Preator. My bad.
We had a good week! Elder Preator showed up in Toulouse pretty soon after we got to the gare and we got lunch and things were dandy. We're getting along great, and he's really excited to do the work which helps me a lot!
We visited our Chinese less-active's shoe shop and asked if there was anything we could do for her, so she let us down into the basement where we spent a while collapsing a mountain of cardboard boxes. We were able to clear a path, but we didn't even do half of it. It was pretty fun :)
On Wednesday we went "plant contacting." Backstory: with Elder Peron, I always talked about getting plants for our apartment, but we never did.....UNTIL NOW
Isn't it beautiful?
Basically we just went into plant shops and talked to the people about getting a plant for our apartment and explaining who we are as missionaries. It was fun!
On Thursday we had POWER HOUR which is just one hour of really intense contacting instead of an entire day of kinda wishy-washy contacting. It's really effective and leaves a lot of time to teach lessons, do area book work, or visit members. That's been going well, Elder Preator's been giving me good tips he learned from his MTC teachers or from his trainer. We've been doing some fun (read: hard) role plays for contacting and starting teaching, it's been really helpful.
Friday our plans kinda all fell through, but we did some stuff anyway. Elder Beck (in my district when I first came into the mission and is now in his last transfer) and his new blue Elder Shimazaki (been in the mission for a week) are the 2nd équipe of Elders in the ward, so we got them up to speed on some of the members and how the work is here. We also made tacos! Real Mexican-American tacos, not the kebab burrito things that are called "tacos" here in France.
Saturday we played basketball in the morning for Samedi Sportif with some dudes that we played with last week, it was actually pretty fun! Made a three-pointer, so yeah I'm cool and humble too. We saw a less-active from Togo that afternoon and then went straight to the house of some members who were having their 30th anniversary party. They invited a ton of the ward and a bunch of their non-member friends, so naturally all the missionaries were there as well. It was amazing! :) We met a dude with the most incredible story: He lived as a young man in Palm Springs, California, but he was there illegally. He got caught after a while and despite being a French citizen, was deported to Mexico. He escaped back across the border up to Santa Barbara, but then had some other complications and so he rode a bicycle from there down back to Mexico and just kept riding until the road ended because it hit a mountain range. He starting walking up the mountain and met a man with a pickup truck who offered him a ride. He accepted, but only spoke like 4 words of Spanish so didn't understand where he was going. Ends up getting dropped off at 5 a.m. in the poor sketchy part of Guadalajara and stays there for a while. He takes a Spanish class and learns really quickly, meets some other French dudes, they all go to meet some ladies and one of them becomes this guy's wife. 35 years later, they are living happily ever after just outside of Toulouse. There were some other details I missed, but you get the idea. Interesting people at this party.
Church was good, my companion got asked to play the piano in Primary so we got to spend third hour up there and oh my goodness I've never seen a crazier bunch of kids in my life. It was soooooo funny, I'm just infinitely grateful I wasn't the one trying to teach! Kids are um great.
This spiritual thought is one for YOU to go look up: compare the scripture Moroni 7:46 "If ye have not charity..." with Matthew 5:13, "Ye are the salt of the earth..." There are some wonderful insights to be had in comparing Christ's direct teachings from the New Testament with the Book of Mormon, another witness of Him.
I wish you all happy pondering :)
Elder Jensen
We had a good week! Elder Preator showed up in Toulouse pretty soon after we got to the gare and we got lunch and things were dandy. We're getting along great, and he's really excited to do the work which helps me a lot!
We visited our Chinese less-active's shoe shop and asked if there was anything we could do for her, so she let us down into the basement where we spent a while collapsing a mountain of cardboard boxes. We were able to clear a path, but we didn't even do half of it. It was pretty fun :)
On Wednesday we went "plant contacting." Backstory: with Elder Peron, I always talked about getting plants for our apartment, but we never did.....UNTIL NOW
Isn't it beautiful?
Basically we just went into plant shops and talked to the people about getting a plant for our apartment and explaining who we are as missionaries. It was fun!
On Thursday we had POWER HOUR which is just one hour of really intense contacting instead of an entire day of kinda wishy-washy contacting. It's really effective and leaves a lot of time to teach lessons, do area book work, or visit members. That's been going well, Elder Preator's been giving me good tips he learned from his MTC teachers or from his trainer. We've been doing some fun (read: hard) role plays for contacting and starting teaching, it's been really helpful.
Friday our plans kinda all fell through, but we did some stuff anyway. Elder Beck (in my district when I first came into the mission and is now in his last transfer) and his new blue Elder Shimazaki (been in the mission for a week) are the 2nd équipe of Elders in the ward, so we got them up to speed on some of the members and how the work is here. We also made tacos! Real Mexican-American tacos, not the kebab burrito things that are called "tacos" here in France.
Saturday we played basketball in the morning for Samedi Sportif with some dudes that we played with last week, it was actually pretty fun! Made a three-pointer, so yeah I'm cool and humble too. We saw a less-active from Togo that afternoon and then went straight to the house of some members who were having their 30th anniversary party. They invited a ton of the ward and a bunch of their non-member friends, so naturally all the missionaries were there as well. It was amazing! :) We met a dude with the most incredible story: He lived as a young man in Palm Springs, California, but he was there illegally. He got caught after a while and despite being a French citizen, was deported to Mexico. He escaped back across the border up to Santa Barbara, but then had some other complications and so he rode a bicycle from there down back to Mexico and just kept riding until the road ended because it hit a mountain range. He starting walking up the mountain and met a man with a pickup truck who offered him a ride. He accepted, but only spoke like 4 words of Spanish so didn't understand where he was going. Ends up getting dropped off at 5 a.m. in the poor sketchy part of Guadalajara and stays there for a while. He takes a Spanish class and learns really quickly, meets some other French dudes, they all go to meet some ladies and one of them becomes this guy's wife. 35 years later, they are living happily ever after just outside of Toulouse. There were some other details I missed, but you get the idea. Interesting people at this party.
Church was good, my companion got asked to play the piano in Primary so we got to spend third hour up there and oh my goodness I've never seen a crazier bunch of kids in my life. It was soooooo funny, I'm just infinitely grateful I wasn't the one trying to teach! Kids are um great.
This spiritual thought is one for YOU to go look up: compare the scripture Moroni 7:46 "If ye have not charity..." with Matthew 5:13, "Ye are the salt of the earth..." There are some wonderful insights to be had in comparing Christ's direct teachings from the New Testament with the Book of Mormon, another witness of Him.
I wish you all happy pondering :)
Elder Jensen
江长老
