Week 35 --- Follow the promptings of the Spirit...No matter what they are.

What a great week!!!!

Tuesday we had our "branch day" all the members that could come met at the church and we cleaned together, had our branch council meeting (which included almost all the members there haha) and then ate a big lunch together. Perks of being a missionary: nobody let's you bring your own food :) Elder Alvarez and I showed up a little early and so I started messing around on the piano which I do whenever we have spare time at the chapel. I've been trying to learn the melodies to a couple hymns just for fun. Well, the relief society president who is also the pianist heard me and so she asked me to play for her on Sunday because she would be gone. Now obviously, I couldn't say no, so I said I could probably do the melodies. I got the list of the songs and seriously every spare second we had I was practicing for that. I had to use both hands to do the melody, but it turned out halfway decent. Note to parents: make your kids learn piano! If they serve outside of the US they WILL need it :) 

Friday, we went and ate at the relief society president's home. Her husband used to be in the branch presidency and high council. They are just a super solid family! Anyway, they've got some money, and so we had a huge meal in their super fancy house. I'm talking amazing steaks, classy looking twice baked potatoes, four different kinds of cheeses, and eclairs for dessert. Did I mention we were there for lunch?! :) Anyway super cool. He was in different community choirs for years, so he and I talked about music a ton and sang some of his old songs together. Apparently I'm a real Dunkerquois (person from dunkerque) because I belted the city anthem with him haha!  But the coolest thing about this lunch was our spiritual thought. Like I said, this family is incredibly solid, and so we were having trouble thinking of something that we could share with them that would really help. I spent the morning flipping through the topical guide trying to find SOMETHING to share with them. On the bus ride over to their house we were still trying to figure it out. All of a sudden, I thought about fasting, but it was gone in another second. When it came time to share the spiritual thought I found myself talking about fasting even though I thought I was going to talk about pondering the scriptures. I turned to a scripture I remembered about fasting and started a discussion. It turns out the hardest thing they deal with is fasting. She works at home for troubled kids and she cooks and eats with the kids, so fasting is hard because the kids ask why she doesn't eat and legally she can't talk about church. And his body doesn't handle skipping meals well. They try to do it the best they can, but when they do it's always just because they have to. I was completely led by the Spirit and gave them encouragement, tips, and promised them miracles. It was a really spiritual experience, and they were so grateful for it.

Now I'll finish up with my funny experience of the week.

There is a couple (Olivier and Virginie) that we are teaching who had a baptismal date, and a lot of potential, but right before I got here they dropped off the face of the earth. We hadn't made contact in weeks. But, this week we were on our way home for dinner and the thought popped into my head, "Go get a Kebab" (delicious Arab mystery meat sandwich). But I didn't want to spend the money, and we were tired and just wanted to get home, but the thought wouldn't leave. So I told Elder Alvarez we were going to get off at a different stop and go get a kebab. Right as we get off the bus guess who walks in front of us? Olivier! He was super happy to see us and we set up an appointment right there. Spiritual promptings come in all kinds of ways, and you never know what blessings will come from following them. Oh and the kebab tasted amazing by the way! :)

Love you all!

Elder Jorgensen

Week 34 --- I No Longer Like Happy Meals . . .

So this week was pretty good. Yesterday we ate at a member's house. He is a really nice old guy named Jean-Paul, but he's not all there. Anyway this is the meal "he" made for us (I had to cook pretty much everything or else it would have burned): a pork chop cooked in a stick of melted butter without seasoning, about a pound each of frozen french fries cooked in oil that I think he leaves in the pot after each time he makes them, and a small can of peas and carrots. Afterward I felt like I was going to have a heart-attack, and I'm pretty sure my cholesterol level doubled. But he loves the missionaries and it was nice spending time with him while he showed us all of his photo albums of past missionaries.

We also taught this potential investigator that was found about a month ago. Her name is Myriam. She is a young mom and she really loves God and wants her kids to grow up with religion in their lives. 

So this week we had exchanges with our district leader. His name is Elder Gaule and he's from London. Super cool guy! So all four of us were eating dinner together and Elder Guale suggested we do a food challenge. The challenge was eat an entire happy meal (burger fries drink and dessert) in the shortest amount of time possible. Elder Guale (who eats like a freaking shark!) finished it all in 1min 9sec. I was second at 1min 30sec and Elder Nord (Elder Guale's companion) finished in 1min 54sec. Elder Alvarez just sat and laughed at us :) That was probably the second most disgusting meal I've had in France, right behind Jean-Paul's :) haha

Love you!

Elder Jorgensen

Week 33 --- Sick:(

So this week was pretty uneventful. I was really sick all week, so we weren't able to do much work. I was able to give my talk in Sacrament meeting, and it went really well. The Spirit was strongly felt, by myself, and I'm pretty sure many others. It was scary though because when we started the first hour the only people there were the branch president, his wife, and us! haha. Eventually five other members showed up, but for the first hour it was pretty awkward...

Anyway sorry, I don't have any more to say. Next week you'll get a nice long email :)

Love,

Elder Jorgensen

Week 32 --- Dunkerque!!

So I'm here in Dunkerque now! My area is SOOOO tiny. It's significantly smaller than St. George. I'm with Elder Alvarez from Guatemala. He's a convert of about a year and a half. It's been interesting so far because he doesn't speak a lot of English, and his French isn't the greatest either, but we're working on both of those. :) The branch here in Dunkerque has about 18 members that come regularly. It is the weirdest feeling being in Priesthood and not even filling up a little room, but there is a lot of faith in these members. Oh and I get to give a talk next Sunday because it's the missionary's turn. I'll be speaking every 4 or 5 weeks for the next couple transfers. It's really exciting here though because the week before I got here they baptized someone and yesterday I stood in the circle and confirmed him. His name is Mike and he's a 19 year old pro soccer player from Haiti. So the story for this week was quite an adventure. When I got here we had just received a media referral that hadn't been checked out yet. So Elder Alvarez and I go to check it out. We took a bus as far as it went towards the city this person lived in (about 30 minutes) then we have to walk for legitimately an hour and 15 minutes on a road through the middle of fields. We passed maybe 4 houses. finally get to the town where this guy lives, and... he moved :( but it was an interesting trip though. (The walk back felt a lot longer haha)

Love you all! 

Elder Jorgensen


View from my apartment

Last photo with Elder and Sister Fitt

Up close photo of safflower fields from our "adventure".

Photos

Photo 1 and 2- district photo. Numbers mean how many transfers you have been out

Photo 3 and 4- Picture Elder Smith took on the train ride to Paris. They are called safflower fields and they are so cool. They look like seas of yellow. Picture does not do it justice.

Week 31 --- Bye Bye La Rochelle

So this week our P-Day is on Tuesday because we had a conference yesterday in Paris.  It was a conference for iPads. It was with Elder Patrick Kearon and Elder Brent H. Neilson of the First Quorum of the Seventy. They introduced iPads to our mission. We were supposed to get them yesterday but there was a miscommunication and they did not get shipped out in time. But it was very interesting, We thought that we were just going to get taught how to use iPads but instead they told us what is expected of us as far as emails and using the internet and not playing games. They did not give us any specific ways to use the iPads but told us to pray and find out how to best use them to increase the work in France. They told us that it is up to us to teach them the best way to find new amis here in France using iPads.  It was really cool to see how much they trusted us. We basically have a normal iPad, the only difference is that our mission president can see anything that we download. I am excited to get them.

Also this week is transfers. Elder Smith is going to be a trainer here in La Rochelle, and I'm going to be serving in Dunkerque. It is the city furthest north in the mission. 

Well I don't have a ton of time today because I still need to pack, but I want to share a cool experience that we had this week. So last Friday night we were out knocking doors (well kind of... we were ringing apartments but same thing) and we were not getting let in anywhere. So we decided that we needed to pray and ask where we needed to go. So we prayed and after the prayer we decided to go to a building in the distance. We went in because the door was open. We went up a couple of floors and started knocking. The second door that we knocked on was a lady named Nathalie she let us right in. She told us how she had always seen the missionaries in the street but they never talked to her. She could not believe that we knocked on her door to talk to her. She told us she believes that it is a sign and she needs to meet with us. We set up an appointment for this Thursday and invited her to church. When she saw the address she almost fell out of her chair. She said she has walked by our church a couple of times and felt the a strong desire to go in. She said she has always wanted to come visit. It was another cool experience with prayer. Elder Smith has an appointment with her this week.

Love you all. More next week.

Elder Jorgensen

Photo 1 and 2- district photo. Numbers mean how many transfers you have been out

Photo 3 and 4- Picture Elder Smith took on the train ride to Paris. They are called safflower fields and they are so cool. They look like seas of yellow. Picture does not do it justice.

Week 30 --- Melchizedek is Jesus who is also God....?

Like always, funny/interesting story alluded to in subject line will be explained at the end. :)

So this week there were a couple cool stories I would like to share with you.

Number 1. We were out contacting/tracting and we didn't have any solid ideas of where we should go, but then Elder Smith decided that we should head down towards where one of our amis lives. On the way I saw an apartment building neither of us had ever noticed. I felt like we should go try it, and the very first door we rang an older lady answered and at first was not interested, but after talking for a little bit she let us in. We talked with her for a while about her family, how awesome La Rochelle weather is (which it really is. Seriously perfect beach weather!), and her faith. She was super nice and we left her with a prayer for which she was very grateful. We aren't teaching her, but she really needed a nice visit, and it was a good little experience for us as well.

Number 2. Saturday night none of our plans worked out, so we decided to go visit a less active member who has NEVER been home...He still wasn't home haha! But we were out in the area, so we started looking for a street to tract. We stumbled upon a little side street behind a huge building with a couple little homes. We started knocking those doors, and at one a young black man with huge dreadlocks we start talking and then he says, "I speak English so you can talk in English." Turns out he's from Nigeria and moved to France 11 years ago when he was picked up by a French choreographer. He is a dancer, singer, and actor. He was super welcoming and let us in to pray with him. He is Muslim, but doesn't have any strong beliefs. He knows there's a God, but isn't sure what religion is right. He has a lot of Christian friends that he's read the Bible with, so he's super open. He's married to a non-believing French woman and they have three young boys. We prayed with him and he was super happy about it, and he said he felt a strong peace and happiness, so we were able to testify of the Holy Ghost. He told us he would love to have us come over again, and gave us his number. It was such a cool miracle!

Now it's time...

Last week we met these two ladies on the street and when we contacted them they said that they had just been talking about Christ! We set up a rendez-vous with them and the husband of one of them. We show up to the rendez-vous and it turns out the husband is an old ami of Elder Godfrey. He studies the bible ALL THE TIME and runs his own prayer group and bible study class. He knows his bible incredibly well... So we get there and it turns into a bible bash and he kicked our butts! But we left them with a Restoration pamphlet and set up another rendez-vous. He read the pamphlet, and he studied... We show up there and jumps right into how the Priesthood isn't the Priesthood, it's just the power of God because Melchizedek was Jesus and Jesus and Heavenly Father are the same person. If I didn't have the truth I would have been convinced with the scriptures he used! Haha But fortunately we had the Spirit, and you can prove in the Bible that God and Jesus are different, and we did with the scriptures he used. I stumped him multiple times, but he would just quickly jump to another scripture. At the end we decided that the next time we would each have 15 minutes to explain the priesthood to each other without interruption. We will be meeting him in 4 hours and we will take the uninterrupted time not to bible bash, but to teach the Book of Mormon and finding out truth for ourselves. #cunningbutharmless! We seriously feel like Alma and Amulek contending against Zeezrom. We're pretty boss!

Love you all very much!

Elder Jorgensen