Week 90

Well my goal this last week was to work hard enough and well enough that God wouldn't want to transfer me.....I did it! But unfortunately God still transferred me... but I'm pretty sure He didn't want to ;)
Haha so this week I was on FIRE!!! We do split contacting quite often (where we contact separately in a plaza thing or something, but still within sight and sound) and for an example of how on fire I am: in 30 minutes of contacting on a Sunday afternoon I taught three people and 2 of them gave me their numbers so we could meet again. Now don't worry, I'm not getting proud ;) I'm very grateful for the success Heavenly Father has been giving me, and I'm only able to do these things because I'm trying really hard to be close to Him and the Spirit :)
We taught a super dope young African family that I contacted last week, and during our lesson he explained how when I went up to them he was not in the mood to be accosted by someone and how he wanted to keep saying no to me, but for some reason he felt "taped down". He told us they couldn't move, and that now they are so happy they are starting to meet with us.
Samra passed her Baptismal interview!!! This coming Saturday (25th) Eddine will be baptizing her! I won't be there to confirm her like she wanted, but she is SO excited to be baptized :) She was just beaming at church this week!
We went to the Furtado's this week and were finally able to teach their friends, Tanya and Carlos. We taught about what our goal was as missionaries and how the Book of Mormon could help them to find true faith in Jesus Christ. They committed to start reading together, and they even asked the Furtado's for a paper copy this weekend (they had downloaded it on their phones) :)
We also saw the Mir family again, and the Meunier's (president Babin's other daughter and son in law), and another family. #4 dinner appointments this week!
This Sunday I got to give a testimony/goodbye talk in church. I almost completely broke down. I love this ward so much! It feels like home... After sacrament meeting there were a couple members almost in tears. Bishop Boisserie came up to me and kept thanking me for all that I did to help the ward and for all that I taught him. Then he gave one of the biggest hugs I've ever gotten! After our weekly missionary meeting frere Vendassi did pretty much the same thing as Bishop. Then frere Furtado did the same thing. And the feeling was mutual for me. I have become the best missionary I've ever been because of my time here in Évry. There were a few sisters that were trying really hard not to hug me. There were a lot of sad members this Sunday.

So unfortunately I won't be staying with Elder Tarbet. That is one of the hardest parts of this transfer. We didn't have a single disagreement the entire transfer, and we worked so well together. To illustrate this point in these 6 weeks we taught at least 236 lessons together. I hadn't taught that many lessons in my entire mission combined!! We have Samra getting baptized and Raphael with a date in July, plus a ton of solid young families we're starting to teach. The Lord truly did bless us and our sector the last 6 weeks.

And the future will be great :) I have received a spiritual confirmation that this transfer is the will of God. I'm going to Namur in Belgium. I'm replacing my old comp Elder Libby who just finished training. So I'll be with Elder Anderson who's in his 3rd transfer. Apparently they've been in a rough patch the last couple weeks (they only taught 1 street lesson this week). So I'm going in there with the intention of turning things around and passing to Elder Anderson all the knowledge I've gotten this last transfer on how to get lessons with people and get them interested to learn more. It'll be a fun adventure, but it's weird to know where I'll be finishing my mission....AHH!!!
Bonne semaine, Je vous aime J

Bronson

Photos
1) Bowling with the district
2) Transfer #14

Week 89

We got stood up for over half of our appointments this week.... It was dumb.
It was super hot for most of this week, we had to go out in short sleeve shirts.
Finally got to see Isabelle again! :) It had been over a month since we last saw her. She has read all the way to 2 Nephi! We committed her to pray for a confirmation that she should be baptized in our church, she said she would do it....go Saint-Esprit go!
One of our new amis, Roland, came to church this Sunday. We've taught him three times and he has kept every reading commitment so far! He's from Cameroon, he speaks English, but he gets by in French as well which makes things a lot easier on us.
Eddine and Samra found a house a couple hours south of Paris. They'll be moving the beginning of July, hopefully Samra will be baptized the 25th (she wants to do it here before she leaves).
I'm not sure what's been going on this last week, but we are on fire with the young families. We have appointments set up with at least 3 new families to teach! It's incredible :)
There are still strikes going on, so that's been annoying, but the rain problem has pretty much been taken care of.
Today we went bowling and got kebabs as a district (thus the shorter email). Attached are pictures of said event as well as a dope rainbow and an awesome street sign (why not alley) 😃
Loves!

Bronson

Week 88

Merci à mon collègue qui a tenu un compte de combien de semaines il est en mission (94) parce que j'avais simplement besoin de soustraire 6 semaines ;) haha

Translation:

Thank you to my colleague who held an account of how many weeks it is on a mission (94) because I just needed to subtract 6 weeks ;)

This Tuesday we had our finding day for the transfer. The ZL's and STL's came in as well so we had 5 solid companionships ready to work hard and see miracles. Unfortunately Satan didn't want us to ucceed...Remember last week when I talked about the crazy rain? Well that's been continuing all this week as well. It got so bad that the Seine has been flooding in locations all over the Paris region, there have been train stations flooded and mud problems. In short it's been a pain in the butt all week. In addition, France recently passed a new work law that allows employers to make people work longer than 35 hours a week(because that's super long...), and makes it easier to fire bad workers... Well the French unions are NOT happy about it. There have been strikes and protests the entire week. This plus the rain has pretty much crippled the Paris area. For example this weekend there wasn't a single train that passed through Évry. So, all this was going down on the day we were supposed to be going all over our area finding new people.... Well as I like to say, SUCK IT SATAN!!! We went ham! The ZL's missed the first third of it because of the transport, but that just gave us more desire to work hard to make up for them. Miracles left and right! By the end of the day we had taught 76 lessons, got over 60 potentials, and about 20 new amis!!!! Just to let you know, before that, the most lessons taught on a finding day was about 55. Dieu est trop puissant!

Thursday we had an amazing Zone Conference focused on using the Book of Mormon more effectively, especially in contacting, and helping our amis understand and accept baptismal invites. Like always, it was a super spiritual experience. Especially when Soeur Babin testified about how much she wanted to be baptized when she was learning about the church (she met the missionaries at 14). She said that the Elders talked a lot about baptism and for most of the learning process she just kept wishing that they would invite her to be baptized. It was such a sweet experience to hear her testify.

We then did exchanges with the Melun elders Thursday to Friday. It was pretty fun and we taught like 20 lessons together just those two days. #stats! Just kidding, they are key indicators that represent a ton of awesome people we got to meet and start teaching :)

Sunday we had an area conference. Elders Christofferson, Randall(70) and Kearon(70) as well as Bishop Caussé and Sister Oscarson spoke with us. Bishop Caussé's talk was so powerful. He talked about the temple, and what we can do to make sure it keeps its priority in our lives especially when a temple is very accessible.

Quick suggestion, if you haven't seen the new bible videos narrated by children...watch them! They are super funny, and really beautiful :)

I love you all, thanks for the prayers!

Bronson

Description of Photos:

France what are you doing?! That is a children's cereal! #tryingtobeamerican

Elder Hoffmann was hungry .....#tahitian

Young Adult activity