France Paris Mission 2014-2016

Week 82 Baptism, Bricoman, and Burritos

So Eddine made it. Saturday April 9th he was baptized by Bishop Boisserie. The service was very simple, very crazy, and very spiritual. Samra was there as well as some of their family friends that introduced them to the church. A couple members showed up to support (Eddine didn't want it to be a big spectacle, so we didn't invite a ton of people). Elder Long and I gave talks and instead of talking about baptism and the Holy Ghost like normal, we prayerfully chose topics for our talks. Elder Long talked about good family traditions (prayer, scripture study, fhe, etc.) and I felt impressed to talk about the temple. The spirit was there in abundance (despite their crazy kids running around and screaming haha) :) But the kids were kind of calm for the actual ordinance. They thought it was so cool that their dad was "going swimming" ;) Unfortunately before we could close up the font after the baptism one of them threw a stuffed animal into the font.... We had to fish it out with a broom after!

We stood in the circle the next day as Eddine was confirmed. Samra finally came to church! She was only there for sacrament, but still :)  Eddine got the priesthood the week after, Elder Long ordained him a priest. This last Sunday he blessed the sacrament....with his kids running all over the place! Haha Literally from the beginning of the meeting they were all over the stand, in the congregation, everywhere! Samra is going to be delivering really soon, so she couldn't come help handle them. We're still working on finding out how we're going to handle that problem! ;)

So, Bricoman is the name of a hardware store similar to Home Depot here in France. We've gone there like 4 times the last two weeks as we constructed two dollys to carry Books of Mormon that are painted like Books of Mormon. We worked on it in our apartment and at the church. Luckily we were able to borrow some power tools from members to finish, because doing by hand with nails wasn't working out too well ;) haha But they turned out pretty darn good. Even the painting! The letters were all free handed and the background was spray paint. I'm attaching pictures.

As far as the burritos go.... this week we had two finding days (which is why we made the dollys) one here and one in Melun. The one here went really well, we had the four elders in the district and two young adults the entire day, so we did splits and contacted with the dollys next to a mall. We taught over 25 lessons and got a ton of potentials.  In Melun they had a couple mini-missionaries and some other youth helping out and at the end we had a burrito party for dinner! It was a pretty sick week!

Noël update: I got an email talking about how excited they were for their baptism and to see me again this Saturday. Apparently all the members and other missionaries keep saying that they are going to be the strongest members ever! Haha. They even helped out the missionaries with a finding day in Le Havre. They were talking and testifying about the Book of Mormon as they contacted with the missionaries. 5 more days!!!!

Much loves!
Bronson



























Week 79 - The dunk is going down!

Wednesday we had to pull gare (station in French) duty. Running all around the Paris underground in a suit carrying luggage sucks in case you were wondering ;) But I got to see most of the Soeurs from my MTC district. They just finished their missions......AAAHH!! Now people are starting to call me old haha :) Later that day we taught Eddine and Samra with Bishop Boisserie, and the boys stole our badges like
usual ;)

So Saturday Eddine had his baptismal interview and he passed no problemo. So this coming Saturday Elder Long is going to baptize him and Sunday Daniel Furtado is going to confirm him. He came to the priesthood session of conference, but Samra didn't come at all. We aren't sure what's going on because she wasn't sick....We'll find out this week.

Daniel couldn't make it to any of the sessions sadly. Saturday night he was running late, so he met up with us and Rock after and we all went together to get kebabs...we're tight now... :) haha

One of our amis, Damir, came to the priesthood session. It was great because we got to introduce him to Eddine. They are both from the Comoros islands (between madagascar and Africa), and they already call each other frère! Haha it was pretty dope.

We watched four sessions of conference at the church which made for a very long Sunday... Haha. Well, now that I think about it we only "watched" two sessions on Sunday, I wouldn't say we watched the evening session because the Furtado family came to the church to watch that session.... After the first talk Lara walks into the chapel (she was playing with her siblings while her mom watched it in Portuguese in another room) makes eye contact with me and starts strutting over to us and plops herself down on the bench right next to me. Of course Leonor doesn't want to be left out so she runs over and sits next to her sister, and Samuel just wants to follow them around so he starts running around and playing next to us. I felt like I was back home! I was getting some of their conference candy, having to tell them to be reverent, and answering a billion questions :) haha Seriously this family is making me so trunky! And plus this whole conference was about families and parenthood..... It's a good thing the work is going super well and keeping me busy or else this would be rough ;)

Much loves!

Bronson