Monday, June 2, 2014

Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory!

Bonjour!  Happy Birthday to Clay yesterday!  I can't believe it's officially June.  It doesn't seem possible...time goes so fast.  Mondays are always great because I receive your letters and see pictures of you.  Thanks so much and know that I miss you all and am happy to hear that you're all doing great!  This past week was another great week and we were able to teach quite a few people and meet some new people too.  To start off I want to talk about Fred.

Fred is the man that we met on the bus a few weeks ago and were able to teach him later that weekend.  He has been in classes but said he'd come to church on Sunday because he wanted to see how everything worked. Yesterday when we arrived at the church Fred was there and talking with some members.  We went down to start Priesthood and the topic of the lesson was geneology, indexing and baptisms for the dead.  The whole time I was praying and hoping that he was able to understand why we do it.  Here in France there was a documentary on the church and how we do baptisms for the dead but actually use the dead.  To say the least it scared people and gave them the wrong idea.  Thankfully that wasn't the case and the lesson was well taught.  Fred had tons of questions at the end but one of them was about the temple trip in a month and how could he sign up to go!  Maybe we can make that a goal to go for baptisms.  That'd be really cool!  The next two hours of church were great and Fred said that he loved it and wanted to talk more. He is reading the Book of Mormon and we will see him later this week.  I have a testimony that the Lord watches over our amis at church and makes it possible for them to always feel the spirit.

We went to see Sebastian this past week as well.  When we stopped by it was unexpected and Sebastian was not home but his wife, Cedre, and Sebastian's brother and sister and her boyfriend were all there. We were able to talk to all of them and it was great.  The sister's boyfriend, Dylan, is 19 and asked if he could take our number because he would love to introduce us to his friends. Tonight we are going back to have dinner and teach Sebastian and Cedre.

We also taught two young people, just a few years older than us, who had requested a visit from mormon.org.  We went in and asked them why they were interested and what they expected of us and they replied that they are very fascinated by our church and want to know the message.  We started to teach them about the restoration and they asked lots of questions.  They had so many on every subject.  We left them with a Book of Mormon and hope to hear from them this week!

We meet a family with 3 boys ages 11, 15 and 17.  They are not active but as we were heading out to do contacting their name came to mind.  When we got to their home we didn't have the code to get into the door so we called the phone number we had for them and the mom was so excited to see us!  We went in and gave them a spiritual thought and she explained how happy she was to have us there and that she really needed the visit.  She was sure the Lord had guided us there.  She asked us to bless the house before we left and than asked if we could come back occasionally so her sons can see us and hopefully come back to church.  We hope and  pray that this will be the time for this family to come back into the gospel.

Here are some highlights from the week:
Frere Malasse came to church this Sunday.  He's the member that is inactive but wants to go to the temple again.

Wilhem got the Priesthood yesterday!

On Transfer Day we ended up helping a few sisters with luggage and clogged up the public bus with 6 tons of luggage!  WOW!  (picture below...doesn't do it justice)

Said "goodbye" to Soeur Anderson and Elder Whatcott who were going home.

Had 17 people in the amis class this week!  It was so awesome!

For our mission we are trying to have 125 baptisms before our new mission president arrives in July.  So, it's our last month to reach the goal and we know it is possible.  I feel like this scripture fits perfectly...D&C 128:22..."Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause?  Go forward and not backward.  Courage, Brethren; and on, on to the victory!  Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad."

I love this scripture and it shows that if we always press forward, take courage, and have joy, no matter what the difficulty or trial, we will reach our victory!  (125 baptisms)

I love you all so much and hope you have a great week!

Love, Elder Player

Elder Whatcott on the morning he's going home!

Helping the sisters with their luggage!


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