France - Week 16 (St. Brieuc)

6-10-13

Hello family and friends,

I hope you are all doing well and are excited for summer to start soon! Sounds like everyone is getting ready to finish school and has a lot of big plans for summer vacation. Enjoy!

It’s crazy to hear about everything you guys are up to. I have friends graduating high school/college, getting married, getting pregnant, getting drafted in the MLB, and going on missions. Keep up the good work everyone, keep working hard for your dreams!

This week wasn't the greatest week I've ever had here in St. Brieuc. But Elder Fish and I worked as hard as possible and we still saw miracles.

 The other day we met a lady on the street who was walking with her granddaughter. We started talking and she kept going off about how there is no way God could be real with all the bad things that are going on in the world. She started getting a little emotional as she explained how she was worried about her family and her grand children who have to grow up in this scary world full of violence, immorality and other trials.

We testified to her that God is real, He loves us, but just as surely as there is a God.. there is a devil and opposition in all things. We shared with her our message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how families and individuals with their lives centered on Christ are better prepared to withstand the trials of today. We also shared with her a cool scripture in the Book of Mormon (Heleman 5:12). Towards the end of our conversation she started to calm down. We asked her if we could leave her and he granddaughter with a prayer right there on the side walk next to the busy road before we left. She immediately said bien sur, allez-y (of course, go ahead!)! It was a really cool experience. That's really our goal as missionaries. We are here to brighten lives and share a message of hope and peace while inviting people to come unto Christ.

We had a couple interesting confrontations with drunk homeless people this week. Drunk homeless men apparently love giving the Mormon missionaries trouble. We get yelled and and flipped off ALL THE TIME (just by people in general). Its most common from guys who drive by us in cars... kind of ridiculous, what did we ever do to them? I feel bad for them! 

Also, this week we had to drop a lot of our investigators. When people stop progressing we have to stop visiting them which is really hard to do. We really do love and care for the people we teach, but when they stop progressing we can't afford to waste their time or our own. Its ok though because Elder Fish and I have been finding lots of new people to teach!

Sorry I didn't take any good pictures this week. I'll try better this week.

Have a great week everyone,

Elder Davis

France - Week 15 (St. Brieuc)

6-3-13

 

Hey everyone!

Another legit week here in the beautiful city of Saint Brieuc. Lots of good things happened, lots of not so good things happened, but overall it was a week full of miracles and progress. Elder Fish and I spent a lot of time doing finding (talking to people on the street, knocking on doors, etc.) since a lot of our lessons no showed us. We actually had a lot of success. We taught a handful of lessons on the street and found some new investigators!

We had a pretty cool experience on Thursday evening. So we had a lesson scheduled with a young 18 year old kid named FX. We taught him earlier in the week for the first time and that lesson went really well so we scheduled the lesson for Thursday. When we got to the place where we were supposed to have the lesson Thursday evening... he wasn't there. We waited about 10 minutes and he still hadn't showed up. We called him twice and he didn't answer. We were about to leave thinking this was just going to be another no-show lesson. Right before we left though, he called us and said he would be there in 5 minutes. We waited... and waited... and waited... about 10 minutes passed and we decided we were going to leave again. Right before we left though, we saw him coming around a corner. Him along with 9 of his friends!!! Elder Fish and I looked at each other like and were both wondering what the heck was going on. When FX got to where we were he said sorry for being late and that he found some friends that want to learn more about Jesus Christ. Elder Fish and I were blown away, we had no idea what to do so we decided to just do what we originally had planned. So we ended up teaching a lesson to 10 people at once! It was amazing. It was super intimidating praying in front of all of them and everything, but overall the lesson went really well. That was such a miracle. If one non-member 18 year old French kid can invite 9 friends to talk to the missionaries, what are the members capable of doing? Refer your friends to the missionaries!

We had a funny experience on Friday evening too. We went to a members house to have a meeting about missionary work (Ward mission leader). He also fed us dinner which we weren't expecting. He fed us this really good Tahitian dinner with chicken in it. Of course, Elder Fish is a vegetarian, but the members didn't know that. We didn't want to tell them at this point either because the dinner was already made any everything. So, Elder Fish and I had to get sneaky. While the members weren't looking, I ate the chicken off of Elder Fish's plate haha. I don't think they noticed either, we were pretty sneaky. That was kind of a weird/funny experience, but hey... you gotta do what you gotta do so you don't offend the members.

Let’s see... What else happened. Other than that, it was a regular busy week full of teaching lessons and finding new people to teach. We have 3 people that want to be baptized very soon, I just hope I'm still in St. Brieuc for their baptisms.

Missionary work is so incredible. I have found people here in St. Brieuc that I know I was specifically sent here to find. I have already found people that have been looking for me just as hard as I've been looking for them. That feeling is amazing. Have you found the people that are looking for you?

Have a good week everyone,

Je vous aime!

Elder Davis

France - Week 14 (St. Brieuc)

5-27-13

Hey family and friends,

This past week was awesome! I feel like I say that every week... but that's because every week IS awesome as a missionary. We saw so many miracles and so many awesome things happen.

We taught a ton of lessons, found new investigators, set a baptismal date and did a bunch of service. We were definitely busy and a busy missionary = a happy missionary.

We've been doing a lot of service for a British couple (Keith and Barb). We normally work for a couple hours, then they feed us and we share a spiritual message. On Tuesday we ripped out a huge hedge in their backyard. That was quite a chore haha. I would suggest to everyone, NOT to plant a hedge in their backyard unless you want it to stay there forever because removing them (at least by hand) is hard work!

Haha, let’s see what else happened this week. On Friday we had 8 lessons planned! 8 lessons in one day for our mission is amazing. In fact, most missionaries in our mission teach about 8 lessons a week here in France. Elder Fish and I were super excited since we had that many planned in one day. However, of the 8 lessons, 7 of them either canceled, no showed or rescheduled during the day. We only had one of our 8 lessons which was really disappointing, but the Lord had something else in mind for us. We ended up finding new investigators, getting new phone numbers, and teaching other lessons during that time. I think that's a concept that applies to all aspects of life. Sometimes what we have planned or what we want doesn't always happen in life (relate that to your job, school, family, sports, etc.), but God is always in control and has a plan. When things don't work out, you just need to keep pushing forward and He'll bless you.

Oh, so another cool miracle happened this week. Elder Fish and I were working hard all day. We were knocking on doors, stopping people on the street, and talking to everyone we could in the hot sun, but nobody wanted to talk to us. No matter what we did, no matter what we said, things weren't going our way. We even had some guy spit at us haha. Anyways, it was about 8:55 at night, and we are supposed to be home by 9. I remember thinking that the night was practically over and that we were going to go home with nothing to show for our hard work that day... But what happened next (despite my bad attitude) was amazing. The streets were pretty much dead since it was getting late at night, until a man walked around a corner. Elder Fish and I decided to go up to him and talk to him. He turned out to be a super cool, believing French guy with a family. He was very receptive to our message, we set up a return appointment with him, and we even said a prayer with him right there on the street.

It’s never too late for miracles to happen! This past week was just full of cool experiences like that. Missionary work is funny, because you can work for hours and hours (even days or weeks) and see no success, but all it takes is one person and then all that hard work feels worth it. 

On Sunday (yesterday) we had a member of the church give a talk. He is from England and only speaks English so I got to go up to the pulpit with him and translate the talk (as he was giving it) from English to French! Translating is pretty tough going from French to English, but going from English to French was crazy! I think I did alright though and plus it was great practice for my French skillz.

I could go on and on. It is impossible to explain all the cool things that happened in a week. Basically, in a nut shell. Life is great, missionary work is very hard and very rewarding and I love Saint Brieuc!

Thank you everyone for the prayers and support. Talk to you next week!

Elder Davis

France - Week 13 (St. Brieuc)

5-20-13

 

 

Hey everyone!

 

 This past week has been pretty crazy with switching companions and everything. Monday we spent most of our P-day (preparation day) cleaning the apartment and elder Adams had to pack all his stuff up. Tuesday we taught some lessons and did some service which gave Elder Adams a chance to say goodbye to some of the members here in Saint Brieuc.

Wednesday and Thursday we were in Rennes. I stayed in Rennes with Elder Lerdahl and Elder Adams went with Elder Nielson to Paris to meet their new companions and go to their new cities. On Thursday I met Elder Fish! He's awesome, we are going to work really well together. He has been on his mission for a year and a couple months so he's pretty experienced. His last couple companions have been native French speakers so he hasn't spoken English for a while. Turns out, he is actually a vegetarian so that'll put our cooking skills to the test ha-ha.

 

Let’s see, what else happened this week. We did a ton of service this week. 3 different service projects for several hours. Service is always fun because it means we can get out of our normal white shirts and ties and put on some shorts and do some physical labor.

Yesterday Elder Fish and I didn't have any lessons planned so after church we decided we were going to hit the road and not come back to our apartment until we found a someone who we could teach. We decided to start by doing some street contacting. After a while of talking to people on the street in the city without any success we decided to go to some neighborhoods just outside the city and knock on some doors. We literally knocked on over 150 doors yesterday, and only 3 of those doors were open for longer than 10 seconds. Not a single person would give us the time of day. It was pretty frustrating because it was raining super hard and it was cold, but we were committed to not go back home until we found someone who would talk to us. I think the most frustrating thing is the people would close the door in our faces before they even really knew why we were there. They were rejecting something they didn’t know anything about. It was definitely a humbling and learning opportunity, but Elder Fish and I were still determined to find someone to teach. We decided to go back to street contacting. Before the night was finished we got to have some really good discussions with some nice people so that was a blessing. I even got some compliments on my French so that was good for the ego ha-ha. We worked for 6 hours straight, until it was time for us to go back home. We went home without finding anyone new to teach. I kind of felt like a fisherman who went all day at the lake with his line in the water without ever getting a single bite. But that’s alright, that’s life as a missionary sometimes. I know there are people here ready to receive the gospel, we just need to find them!

I am looking forward for this week! We have lots of service projects and lessons planned.

Talk to you all next week!

Elder Davis