Week 49 --- We have a new best friend!! :)

So this was transfer week, I'm not one for surprises or big reveals, so I'll just say I'm staying a fourth in Dunkerque with Elder Libby for another transfer. Voilà!

This week was pretty interesting. Tuesday after our district meeting we had a "blitz" all three companionships in the district stayed in St. Omer until the next morning. We all changed companions and went out working. We taught a ton of lessons, got some new investigators, and fixed some appointments for the Elders in St. Omer. It was a total blast being together all day as a district. Best part of the day though, was right when we got into town my pants ripped really bad right along the crotch! Thankfully we went to a French equivalent of Walmart and found some pants that fit me really well, and don't look half bad for about 20 bucks. Worst part is that the pants that ripped were bought a week before :) #AmericanThighs vs. #FrenchPants I can't wait to get back to clothes that aren't made for chicken legs! haha

On Wednesday we taught Mike about the oath and covenant of the priesthood. We're working to get him ready to receive the Melchizedek priesthood. It was a super good lesson aside from the fact that before the lesson started and we were chilling around the conversation turned to Kolob and Heavenly Mother.....We still aren't sure how it happened.  But because Mike is awesome he didn't get freaked out he just accepted the fact that it was new information and we don't have all the answers about these things. It was an interesting conversation J haha

Friday we taught Kevin again, and guess what, he brought a friend! Apparently his friend had met the missionaries before but was never able to fix an appointment. So we taught them both about the First Vision, Book of Mormon, and Prayer. It went pretty well even though it was completely unexpected! Also, before we did our weekly planning on Friday we went to get a coke from a vending machine across the street from our apartment (because we are both coke addicts haha!). So Elder Libby buys his, I buy two (one for planning and one for dinner that night) and apparently with one of the cans I bought a bottle of coke fell out with it!! I payed a dollar for almost a liter of coke! #BlessingsoftheRighteous

Saturday we went out tracting and we knocked on a door and say, "We're the missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ and we're in the neighborhood to pray with families" before we even finished talking this guy was ushering us into his house saying "of course we'll pray with you!" That's incredibly bizarre for France, but what makes it weirder is that they were getting ready to leave because it was his wife's birthday! But they still took some time to talk to us and pray with us. Then, HE invited us to come back and explain more of our message this Friday! It was such a miracle! Plus after that we got 3 passbacks that we are going to visit tonight! It was so cool!

Ok funny story time! Yesterday we went out tracting in a town about 20 minutes from Dunkerque. So, we hop on our bus and guess who else is on it...30 sweaty, loud, Muslim guys. It smelt HORRIBLE!!! Haha. Anyway, we were standing there and then all of a sudden EVERYONE gets off the bus together. So Elder Libby and I are looking around like, "what the heck just happened?" Then the bus driver gives us this "I don't know what's going on either" look. He starts driving then calls out to us asking if we're part of some school thing because of our "uniforms". We walk up to the front and explain that we're missionaries for our church, but he had never heard of Mormons. We keep talking to him about how we got here to France, how we like it, etc. Now this guy is like 24 wearing sick Ray-Ban sunglasses and just talking to us like we're homies. I leave him with our card when we get off the bus (at the end of the line) and we go do our thing. Fast forward a couple hours and we are sitting at the bus stop waiting for the bus when the same guy pulls up! We start talking to him again like before and he says something along the lines of "the Mormons are a pretty impressive movement in the U.S. right?" Now remember how he didn't know us before...? Haha.  We're assuming that during one of his breaks he looked us up. We explained that we are worldwide and continued to talk about the U.S. because everybody here loves America and wants to visit haha! Anyway we get off and he says he'll see us around. Pretty much we're like best friends now. We had him laughing like crazy and everything. It just so happens he mentioned which line he would be driving today...We may or may not be sitting at the bus stop waiting for him tonight J haha jk! 

That's all for this week!

Love you guys!

Elder Bronson Jorgensen

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Photos 1 and 2:

We go crazy while we're working . . . :)

Photos 3 and 4:

Me in front of Cathedral

 Photos 5 and 6:

More of us being cute :)

 Photos 7 and 8:

Creepy pics of the cathedral

 Photos 9 and 10:

Us being cute in a tiny little town

Photos 11, 12, 13, 14:

Super cute red house we saw while porting . . . It's not significant at all I just thought it was cute haha :)

 Photos 15, 16, 17:

#Macdoswag

 Photos 18, 19, 20:

Dunkerque cathedral on a stormy night.

Me and Jean-Paul :).  He loves playing on the iPad haha!

District Transfer Photos

Week 48 --- I found my calling in life ;)

Bonjour tout le monde!     (To save you the trouble of copying and pasting that into google translate, that means hello everybody) ☺

What a great week we've had! First thing I'd like to talk about is Kevin. We met with him on Wednesday and we had Mike there as well to help us teach. We taught the restoration and introduced the Book of Mormon a little bit. It went super well! Mike was explaining principles and testifying like a regular missionary (we're trying to work that image into his head haha!) Kevin seemed to understand all of it, and was open to finding out if it's true. He even gave a kneeling prayer at the end of the lesson! (He finished "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen." But we'll work on that later   ) As a side note, who would ever imagine four 19-year-old guys (one from Haiti one from France and two from America) sitting together talking about Jesus? We definitely are a peculiar people!

We taught Anna yesterday. She was doing a TON better! We chitchatted for a bit and then went over the First Vision, Book of Mormon, and Priesthood Restoration again. She understood it really well although believing it is a whole different story. We gave her a soft baptismal invite, but she kind of dodged the question by saying she already follows Jesus Christ by serving others, and the lesson turned to other subjects. It was pretty disappointing. She has said that she's just really interested in the history of religion, not in the actual practice of it, but it seemed that she was feeling something different than just curiosity. We hope our next lesson on the plan of salvation will spark something more especially because of what just happened in her life.

This Friday we had Zone Conference and interviews with President and Sister Babin. Can I just say that I love those two SOOOOOO much! They care so much about us, and they are both so funny. We had great trainings, and the Spirit was so strong there. #OutpouringOfRevelation

President Babin sat with our district at lunch and he told us about the progress of the temple in Versailles. He said it should be done in April and the dedication around September (hopefully before I come home!!!) He also told us about a theft that occurred recently. I believe I mentioned a couple weeks ago that about 70-80 missionaries didn't get iPads because the mission office got broken into before all were distributed. Anyway this zone conference President was supposed
to be bringing the iPads for all those who hadn't got any (Elder Libby being one of them). Well...because they got to their hotel too late before the conference before ours, they had to park outside the hotel rather than in the garage. Apparently it was a sketchy neighborhood
and even though everything was covered well someone broke into their van, stole around 15 iPads, President's phone, Sister Babin's scriptures, all the mail that was sent to the mission home for the missionaries in our zone, and some other stuff. It was crazy!  President isn't having luck with these iPads haha!  #ProbablyShouldn'tBeLaughingAboutThat    

So just a note, if you sent me mail using the mission address within the last 2 months I don't have it and never will.

This Thursday was Elder Libby's year mark, and we celebrated it with our very own gay date! There's this cool restaurant in Dunkerque we pass all the time and we've always wanted to try it, so Thursday we caved and went there. They had a lot of seafood, but since neither of us are huge fans of seafood we got pretty much the best tasting burger in the world! It was delicious! It was funny because of the 5 groups that were eating when we were there, 3 were speaking English! Haha There was a group of Asian business men all talking english, a group of British guys, and us.

Love you all,

Elder Jorgensen

Week 47 --- Probably the best week I've ever had in my life!!!

Thursday was amazing!!! We had an exchange with our zone leaders Elder Powelson and Schafer. Elder Schafer and I were together and we saw miracles! We were following weird promptings like:  --Running across the street and stopping a lady about to walk in the crosswalk (her name was Bibiche and we followed her onto the bus and I taught her the restoration and got her number) --Seeing a guy sitting on the bench and while we were walking over he gets up and starts walking so we follow him until he walks into his house so we knock on the house next-door (we tried to pretend we weren't following him) then we knock on his door (David was a cool young guy whose mom is Catholic and dad is an evangelical minister. We talked about the restoration and Book of Mormon, he was super interested and very grateful for the book.) --Walking with the other elders to catch a bus and Elder Schafer and I stopped to talk to a young guy (Kevin has a strong belief in Jesus Christ and was interested to learn more about us) --Talking to a young man waiting at a bus stop right before we needed to go in for the night who seemed absorbed in himself (Valentin believes in God but because his parents aren't believing he doesn't have a religious background. Turns out he would love to learn more about who God and Christ are). To top it all off, all of this occurred while it was pouring rain and I didn't have an umbrella!    But those miracles more than made up for the fact that I was soaking wet! All in all, it was one of the most miraculous and amazing days I've had as a missionary!!

So Sunday was almost as great as Thursday! You remember Kevin right, well we invited Kevin to come to church the other day and guess what he showed up at 8:50 (Church starts at nine by the way). He stayed for all three hours and in the end he said he really liked it. In addition, President Duez's two daughters (who both served missions) and their children were there as well and so we had about 25 people at church. Two days before, we got a call from President Duez and he asked us to give a talk during sacrament meeting. Elder Libby and I waited until the last minute and then decided I would do it. As I prayed to know what I should talk about I got the distinct impression that I should talk about the forgiving power of the atonement. As I prepared and then gave that talk, I felt the Spirit of the Lord come upon me very strongly. There were very few people that didn't seem physically touched by the Spirit which was in that meeting. I am very grateful that the Lord chose me to be an instrument in delivering His Spirit to His children. I truly do know that the atonement gives us each the opportunity to try again, to improve ourselves, and to be made pure like our Father in Heaven is pure. That evening we went to visit Khadija, who was a passback that Elder Libby and Elder Wells found. She was very interested in the Book of Mormon even though she is Muslim. We don't think that she is practicing but in any case, she was really excited to have us come back. We taught her about what a missionary is and what we're doing. Then we talked about our families, her daughter, her work, and schooling (she is working on finishing her masters degree in marketing). Then we were able to teach the entire restoration. She asked a ton of really great questions, took notes, highlighted things in the brochure, etc. It was one of the most amazing lessons I have ever given. We invited her to continue meeting with us and she accepted and was very enthusiastic. She is from Chad and has a five-year-old daughter who is the cutest little girl! The lesson may have been a little long though because her daughter was able to watch all of Rio while we were there haha! (We finished at the same time as the movie and her daughter, Samira, thought that was the coolest thing ever! :) After that we went and passed by Anna to see how she was doing we were able to talk with her a little bit and then shared with her the "Because of Him" video. She really enjoyed it and it was a nice little break for her from all the stress she's been having. It was a super great Sunday and I'm excited to see all those new investigators and potentials we found this last week.

I love you all very much, have a great week!

Elder Bronson Jorgensen

I got super soaked that night! Also we found this graffiti at the end
of our night which describes what we got that night! Haha

This African lady is wearing a camo head covering, Native American/African (we aren't sure which haha) pattern top, and a New York City skyline skirt.  #FrenchFashion!!!  

They are doing work on the sculpture of Jean Bart and the city spray-painted this on the site. It's pretty good if you ask me! :)

Week 46 --- No clever subject just an awesome week!

This week started out with an exchange in Calais with my district leader Elder Wells. He's a pretty cool guy, and we taught 5 lessons together and got him 2 pass backs. To put that in perspective, we usually feel successful if we teach 9 lessons a week! It was a super cool exchange :)

Thursday was simply incredible as well. We taught Anna the miracle investigator the Restoration. She totally accepted it and said that she wanted to find the truth of our message herself. Then she invited herself to church! She is totally prepared and tomorrow we're going to teach her with a super cool member her age (early 60's). Then we taught Sister Jordan a really cool lesson about Joseph Smith with
Jean-Paul. That evening we had a dinner appointment with the member
we're going to teach with, Sister Foutrein. Her husband isn't a member, but he was really nice and we had a great meal together (salmon and spinach Lasagna). It was amazing! Also, she took a pair of Elder Libby's pants to patch up a tear; agreed to teach Anna with us; AND gave us the location of two new neighborhoods where she thought we should go tracting! She is such an incredible lady :)

Sunday night we went out porting in one of the neighborhoods Sister Foutrein gave us. Talk about inspired! We were able to teach two really cool lessons and scheduled appointments with 4 other families, 3 of which are young families. It was a miracle night!

It's amazing how many little miracle and tender mercies we see as missionaries, and I know that God has His hand in all of them :)

Love you guys! Have a great week!

Elder Bronson Jorgensen

PHOTOS

Elder Wells and I in front of a church in Calais.

Week 45 --- Fasting totally works!!!

This was a FANTASTIC week! We were able to teach all of the less actives and recent converts we work with. They were such great lessons and Elder Libby and I are teaching really well together.

So super cool story for the week:  On Monday night Elder Libby got something on his suit, so we dropped it off at the dry cleaners and they said we could pick it up Saturday. So Saturday rolls around and we start our fast right after lunch and as always we fast for the work in addition to anything else we are fasting for. We go to pick up his suit a couple hours later-planning on taking the bus home right after-and even though the sign said they would be open, they were closed. So we just start contacting back to our apartment like normal. Then I try to contact this middle aged lady, but apparently she didn't hear or notice me. I start walking but then I felt like I should turn around and Elder Libby did too. As we turn around this lady did too, she saw us, gave a funny look then said hello. We start talking to her and she was incredibly open. She told us she has a lot of faith, was raised by nuns, but now doesn't attend church very often. We gave her a very brief overview of the restoration, and taught her about how we pray.  I asked if we could offer a prayer right then and she agreed and asked that I pray for her daughter, who is going through some difficulties right now. After the prayer she thanked us and said that the prayer and our conversation did a lot of good for her. We asked her if we could share more of our message with her and she said, "Of course! Why don't you come to my house next week?" She then gave us her address, home number, and cell number and we set an appointment for this coming Thursday. It was such a miracle! She was so nice, and the Spirit definitely was felt by all of us!

Now it's time for the funny story of the week courtesy of the missionary life. We were walking around one day because we were early for an appointment and we decided to pass the time contacting. We walk past this lady who was facing the other way, but she turned as we were walking next to her. Upon seeing us she says, "Are you guys training to be pilots?" Then she sticks her arms out and pretends to be an airplane (sound effects and everything haha!). This lady was probably 25, smoking, and wearing an American flag shirt. We explain that we're missionaries and that we help people grow their faith in Christ.  Surprisingly she starts having a gospel discussion with us. It's at this point that I notice the open can of tequila on the bench next to where she's standing. But we talk and it wasn't a completely bad discussion. Deciding that she wasn't going to be our next new investigator, we decided we'd at least get a lesson out of this, so we ask if we can pray with her. At this moment she lights up another cigarette and then says, "I can't pray while I'm smoking, but I will when I finish this one" haha! So she starts walking with us and she explains that the next day her dog is going to get "fixed". Elder Libby and I then look at her dog who had been chilling nearby (we have since decided that he had an infection of some sort because his you know whats were MASSIVE!!!). Haha .   Finally she finishes her cigarette, we sit down on a bench and offer a prayer. We kept our eyes half-open during it because this lady was a little crazy ;) I notice that during the prayer she scoots up and leans against Elder Libby. I'm trying to contain the laughter during the rest of the prayer. We get up to leave after the prayer and she shakes our hands. When she shook mine she used both hands and didn't really shake mine at all (it felt like we were holding hands) during all this she's staring into my eyes and giving me the "I'm about to kiss you" look. I finally get my hand back and we just take off :) hahah It was super hilarious, and the best part is that she lives in our neighborhood and so we are now on constant alert! :)

Anyway, I love what I'm doing here. It's the best thing anyone could ever do!

I love you all so much!

Elder Bronson Jorgensen


There were jellyfish in the port next to our apartment this week!

Week 44 --- Elder Libby...what a stud!!

So this week has been super awesome! On Monday we went and saw Sister Jordan. I thought it went super awesome. Elder Alvarez said goodbye and what not, then we did the same for Mike, the recent convert, and Miguel a less active we work with.

Wednesday morning, we went into Paris and I picked up my new companion, Elder Libby. I can't explain how cool this guy is! We have the same taste in movies (we'll quote a super obscure movie and we always get the reference haha), similar sense of humor, and we even kind of look alike (sort of). Haha. But in all seriousness he's a super hard worker, he got along so well with the members, and I'm incredibly excited about our transfer together!

On Thursday, we were out contacting and we talked to this lady named Elizabeth. She used to believe in God, because of serious trials she's faced the last 40 years she has lost her faith. We talked to her for about 20 minutes, testified of God's love, explained Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and encouraged her to learn more. She said that she had tried to find answers in many churches and this would be the last one she would try (Obviously we weren't too worried about that ;) ). She actually lives in Reims where Elder Libby was just the day before, so we were able to get her in contact with the missionaries there. It was a really cool experience.

We also got Miguel to come to church this Sunday! Elder Libby and I saw him on Saturday and shared a good lesson on his duty as a priesthood holder, and he showed up the next day!

Fun little side note, Elder Libby has now got me hooked on the Joseph Smith Papers Project. A documentary thing that KJZZ did with the church. Every night after we plan, we close the shutters, get a bowl of cereal, turn off the lights, and have our little movie night. :) They are actually really interesting!

Well I love all you guys! Shoot me an email/letter with pictures because I'd love to hear what's new in all of your lives :)

Have a great week!

Elder Bronson Jorgensen

PICTURES:

Elder Libby is from Kaysville and is one transfer older than me in the mission. The other picture is me, Elder Alvarez, and Mike the recent convert.

Week 43 --- Round 3 of Dunkerque

So as you can tell from the subject, I'm staying in Dunkerque, and my new companion's name is Elder Libby. None of the Elders in my district know him, neither does Elder Smith (who by the way is going to be a district leader in Luxembourg. I love that guy! We still keep in touch fairly often). I'm not sure what to expect but I'm really excited for this transfer rather than nervous. Elder Alvarez is going to a town just outside Paris called Meaux (pronounced mo). All the members say it's a super rich, and nice area, so Elder Alvarez is pretty excited.

This week was really good. We were able to see all the recent converts and less actives we're working with. I gave a couple of blessings to some members that needed them. I still can't get over how powerful an experience it is to give a blessing and be guided by the Holy Ghost to say the things that are needed for the people. Yesterday was one of those times. We went to visit a less active who is going through some difficulties right now, and out of the blue she asked me to give her a blessing. It was really powerful and afterward she was so grateful and she had a new light in her eyes. In addition her almost 12 year old son was there and I feel like that we made an impression on him.

We also went tracting with Jean-Paul this Saturday . . . That was interesting....Haha!  He walks with a cane and is really slow, so we didn't talk to too many people, but he was super excited about it and because someone recognized Jean-Paul they talked to us for a couple minutes and accepted a brochure.

This past Tuesday was Bastille Day (pretty much French 4th of July).  We stood out on our balcony and saw some pretty cool fireworks and heard the music (it was funny because more than half the songs were American! Like footloose, what a feeling, and celebrate.) the only problem was they kept going until 1:00 and we can hear everything through our windows.... suffice it to say we were really tired the next morning :)

Not too much else for this week. Love you all!

Elder Bronson Jorgensen


Our last district meeting picture