Bonjour à tous!! I know your question....am I dead? And the answer is no! True be told you all knew about everything in Paris before I did so congrats;) and to be honest, I still have no idea what happened...so you'll have to tell me! Was it bad? I know like 120 died or something and there was a bomb? Anywho...this week we find out transfers! So we'll see if the lord has me finished in Dunkerque or if I haven't done enough damage yet;) PLEASE SEND ALL MAIL AND PACKAGES TO THE MISSION HOME UNTIL NEXT WEEK. ITS NOT WORTH LOSING IF I GET TRANSFERRED. Thank you!!
La Mission Française de Paris
Elder Tanner Libby
Voici ma semaine:)
MONDAY
today was such a fun zone PDAY!!!!! We had such a blast just hanging out together and having the challenges that we did. And to make things even better, I won a gold bar! Let's just say I'm rich;) so this morning we had to get up super early and head to the church to do emails. We were there til about 8:30 and then we headed to the gare to catch our train and make our way into Lille. We got in and headed to the chapel where a bunch of missionaries were already and so we went and chilled with them and looked at emails more and what not and then we started to help the ZLs get ready for the big game. We had to make food and set up games and all that fun stuff so it was really fun I guess. We had a super fun time playing though! We had an obstacle course that was made that we had to go through and answer questions in French and then we had a game about family history and had to put a family tree together of some random people based on clues that were given after a scavenger hunt! It was way fun. Then we had a race and had to do fun things as we found answers to questions of the soul in the Book of Mormon. Things like, walk with a egg on a spoon, or crab walk, or somersaults until we got to the other side of the room to find the answer. Then we ate and had awards ceremonies and my team won so that's how I got the gold bar;) haha it was great. Then we all just chilled and hung out with each other til our trains left. We headed to the gare and got our train home and after I sat down, I was OUT almost the whole ride home!! Zone pdays are so much fun! We then got home and still had to do our grocery shopping and clean our apartment so that took up the rest of our night....it was weird to have a PDAY where we didn't work....
TUESDAY
Well today was LITERALLY packed and we did so much and were running all day. Like legit the day FLEW by it was crazy! We had a couple rdv's and a lunch appt with a member and district meeting...AT NIGHT! Lol so we woke up this morning and had some studies and stuff and had to stop about half way through them cause we had a rdv with the blind man that we met last week while less active hunting. We had tried to call him a couple of times to confirm the rdv cause he told us to but he never answered...OH and by the way, we had absolutely no other time during the day that we could have gone back to the apt to grab our stuff to go to district meeting or anything and so what did we have to do all day?? We freaking had to lug everything around all day long while we were running from appt to appt...LOL LOOK AT THE MORMONS. it was great. So we headed out the apt and had to stop by the store to buy some syrup cause we forgot to buy some last night for our French toast that we were making for district meeting. So we did that and then headed to the blind mans house but he didn't answer...his phone or his door...so we hope he is ok...he told us last time that he was afraid of the dark...and he's blind so it's really unfortunate...I know that isn't supposed to be funny, AND IM NOT MAKING FUN, but I think it's ironic that he's scared of the dark
so when he didn't answer we had an hour to kill. Today was this weird French holiday where like all the kids go around in the street and ask for candy with lanterns or something?? And Jean Paul had asked is we wanted to go with him but since we were going to be in Calais we couldn't. So since it was early in the morning, and we couldn't go to his house tonight, we went to his house now and shared a little message with him! And boy was he happy! After we finished with him we made our way to the lunch appt we had with Soeur Foutrein and she made us Muscles!! And this yummy meat stuff with potatoes. Haha I've found that that's what frenchies love. Meat and potatoes....WITH BREAD! #cantforgetthebread so we ate and it went well and then we went to the church for a rdv we had with Dominique at the church. Soeur Foutrein is the branch family history consultant and he was interested in getting started and so she agreed to come and help. We got there and Dominique didn't know his parents and so obviously he didn't know ANYTHING about them and so it was hard to try and get him started. But we showed him all the sites and he said that he was going to go to some town halls and try to find some birth and death certificates. Then we had to go to catch a train. Soeur Foutrein drove us to the gare and we got on our train to go to district meeting. We took the same train as the elders from St Omer and so we were talking the whole way in. We walked to the chapel and had a really good district meeting actually! And then ate French toast, bacon, and orange juice for dinner! It was really yummy:) then we headed in for the night and elder Jouffray gave me a haircut cause my hurr was wayy too long and was getting wayy to crazy.
so when he didn't answer we had an hour to kill. Today was this weird French holiday where like all the kids go around in the street and ask for candy with lanterns or something?? And Jean Paul had asked is we wanted to go with him but since we were going to be in Calais we couldn't. So since it was early in the morning, and we couldn't go to his house tonight, we went to his house now and shared a little message with him! And boy was he happy! After we finished with him we made our way to the lunch appt we had with Soeur Foutrein and she made us Muscles!! And this yummy meat stuff with potatoes. Haha I've found that that's what frenchies love. Meat and potatoes....WITH BREAD! #cantforgetthebread so we ate and it went well and then we went to the church for a rdv we had with Dominique at the church. Soeur Foutrein is the branch family history consultant and he was interested in getting started and so she agreed to come and help. We got there and Dominique didn't know his parents and so obviously he didn't know ANYTHING about them and so it was hard to try and get him started. But we showed him all the sites and he said that he was going to go to some town halls and try to find some birth and death certificates. Then we had to go to catch a train. Soeur Foutrein drove us to the gare and we got on our train to go to district meeting. We took the same train as the elders from St Omer and so we were talking the whole way in. We walked to the chapel and had a really good district meeting actually! And then ate French toast, bacon, and orange juice for dinner! It was really yummy:) then we headed in for the night and elder Jouffray gave me a haircut cause my hurr was wayy too long and was getting wayy to crazy.
WEDNESDAY
We had a good day today. It was a French holiday so....
VIVE LA FRANCE as you can tell, almost every other day is a holiday here... so it was a really good day for finding;) that was a joke lol but we do our best with what we've got. We woke up this morning and had a little bit of studies but not a ton cause we had to go and catch our train. So we left Calais for Dunkerque and got home sooner or later! After a good 2 hours of trains and what not we got home to our apartment where we planned and got ready for our day. We were given a bag of walnuts from the branch president on Sunday and he asked that we stop by a less active and give them to her cause she'd asked for some when they went to go see her in the hospital. So we called her up and she told us we could come over to her house. She's the one who likes it when we sing to her. So after we'd finished planning we went and headed out to her house and talked a little bit about lightening our burdens through Christ and she loved it cause it was a video on our iPads and she's just so fascinated with our iPads! After we finished with her, we did some porting in her neighborhood. Since it was the big holiday, there was no one outside so we decided that our time would be better spent knocking on some doors. We knocked and we knocked and we knocked and we knocked and then!....We knocked again;) haha we spent the whole afternoon asking if people needed service and asking if we could leave them with a prayer or what not and we kept getting some no's...but it's ok. One day they'll get the chance! So anyway we headed to the bus stop and went our way to our rdv with Mado. She is just the cutest, most confusing, lovable, grudge holder I've ever met. AH! She makes me crazy! But I guess that is good for me to have to learn patience...we talked about standing up for what we know to be true and shared the video of Thomas S Monson when he was at marines boot camp and had to go to church and he stood as the only Mormon and she loved it! But then told us that coming to church on Sunday is not as important as helping a friend in need...so we are still working on that. Any good ideas on trying to get people to know coming to church is important??? Let me know:) after that it turned to the usual gossip fest that happens when we go to her place and we left and got kebabs to end the night. It's been a while since I had a kebab! And it tasted good and made me want to kill myself, that's how you know it was a good kebab!
VIVE LA FRANCE as you can tell, almost every other day is a holiday here... so it was a really good day for finding;) that was a joke lol but we do our best with what we've got. We woke up this morning and had a little bit of studies but not a ton cause we had to go and catch our train. So we left Calais for Dunkerque and got home sooner or later! After a good 2 hours of trains and what not we got home to our apartment where we planned and got ready for our day. We were given a bag of walnuts from the branch president on Sunday and he asked that we stop by a less active and give them to her cause she'd asked for some when they went to go see her in the hospital. So we called her up and she told us we could come over to her house. She's the one who likes it when we sing to her. So after we'd finished planning we went and headed out to her house and talked a little bit about lightening our burdens through Christ and she loved it cause it was a video on our iPads and she's just so fascinated with our iPads! After we finished with her, we did some porting in her neighborhood. Since it was the big holiday, there was no one outside so we decided that our time would be better spent knocking on some doors. We knocked and we knocked and we knocked and we knocked and then!....We knocked again;) haha we spent the whole afternoon asking if people needed service and asking if we could leave them with a prayer or what not and we kept getting some no's...but it's ok. One day they'll get the chance! So anyway we headed to the bus stop and went our way to our rdv with Mado. She is just the cutest, most confusing, lovable, grudge holder I've ever met. AH! She makes me crazy! But I guess that is good for me to have to learn patience...we talked about standing up for what we know to be true and shared the video of Thomas S Monson when he was at marines boot camp and had to go to church and he stood as the only Mormon and she loved it! But then told us that coming to church on Sunday is not as important as helping a friend in need...so we are still working on that. Any good ideas on trying to get people to know coming to church is important??? Let me know:) after that it turned to the usual gossip fest that happens when we go to her place and we left and got kebabs to end the night. It's been a while since I had a kebab! And it tasted good and made me want to kill myself, that's how you know it was a good kebab!
THURSDAY
today was a pretty long day! But we got what we needed to do done. Can I just tell you that people who think the church is going to change make me crazy?! I'm sorry there is my little complaint. But anyway. It was a day full of stuff to do. So because we are trying to get general conference on some DVDs for some less active members, we spent this morning at the church to download some conferences to put on the DVDs. We got there and waited for all the members to arrive for branch council. When everyone had gotten there, we started and had a really productive branch council, for the missionaries! Haha after we had finished we were talking about how the branch council was almost not productive at all for the members, but helped out the missionaries a ton cause they were telling us all about some of the less active members that they knew and thought it would be good to stop by, but we planned like nothing special for the branch. But they were all happy and so we hope we are doing good things here!:/ after the meeting, Miguel had been waiting EVER SO PATIENTLY (I say that very sarcastically, cause he was texting me the whole time telling me how mad he was cause we were late finishing) for his home teaching. For the moment, we are his home teachers with one member present at the church. So we went in and shared Yielding Our Hearts unto God from the last conference and then talked about changing our lives to let God help us. He told us that his 2 goals were to make it to the temple and get a job. So hopefully that works out for him! Then we went home for lunch and then went out and got some contacting in to try and get some of those lessons! But no one was there for tonight haha we were walking and talking to lots of different people, but none of them were quite ready for the gospel in their lives yet;) so we then went to our rdv with the less active man that we found and that we've been working with lately and we taught him about scripture study and he told us he'd been praying morning and night and that he was going to start reading one page of the Book of Mormon a day! So I'm really hoping he sticks to that! We then made our way to our little miracle from last week. On the way there we contacted a man who told us that he didn't believe in a god BECAUSE of the complexity of the universe. Which is weird cause that is one of the reasons I do believe in a god! I thought it was interesting! We got to the miracle less actives house from last week and they let us in the apt building but told us that they couldn't let us in tonight but wanted us to come back next week! So we exchanged numbers and she told us thank you for coming and that it meant a lot to see the missionaries after so long and that she couldn't wait for our rdv next week! We then ended the night contacting around and porting a couple houses.
FRIDAY
well today seemed a little long. And it was Friday the 13th. I made it out alive and I was glad when it had finished! You know those random cravings you get for macdo at 9 at night? That was happening to me...lol I just wanted some macdo. But I was a good missionary and headed in for the night on time. So this morning we started off with some studies and it's funny cause today was the first time all week that we had had normal studies all 3 hours! #busymissionarylifeyo so I took advantage! It's amazing what a good study of the gospel can do to help you out through the rough times. After we had finished our studies we went out to contact and do some less active searching. As a missionary I've realized that that is what I do best!search for some less active people! So we went and found a house of some people and their names were still on the mailbox so we think they still live there. So we left them a note and asked them to call us. Then we stopped by a store on the way home cause we got the thought to make our branch president a cake for his birthday this Sunday! So we got some cake mix and some ice cream and we are going to celebrate his birthday! It will be fun. Then we made our way home for some lunch. After we had eaten we started to weekly plan and that went LONG. Like usual:) hehe but we do what we must. After spending PLENTY of time on that we decided to go out and try to stop by some pass backs. On the way there we stopped by the church to continue downloading general conference and getting it ready to put on some discs. So after we had started the downloads we went out and ported/stopped by our pass backs. We got to one who told us that awkwardly enough, they were Jehovah's Witnesses and that she was sorry that the man told us to come back. Haha so we said thank you and off we went! We then tried the others, but no one answered so we just ported to finish out the night. We got to another lady who told us that she wouldn't mind praying if we stopped by next week cause she was the only one home right now and she needed to take care of the baby. So we'll see about that! Then we headed back to the church and got our DVDs made and headed home for the night. On the bus ride home, there was a lady that sat down right next to me and asked me if I was Mormon and I said yes! Haha so we talked for a little bit and then she told me she would maybe stop by church one time 1) if she had time and 2) if God wanted it to happen;) #SI.DIEU.LE.VEUT (yes, God wants!) lol
SATURDAY
So today was the day that we found out about all the attacks...we were just a little confused on what was going on. We woke up to a text from the zone leaders that said we were to stay in our apartments all day until we received further notice. So that was interesting! We were like what the heck happened?! So we studied and then called our district leader who happened to be at the church and he looked up what was going on in the Internet and told us a little bit about what he could see. So that was scary! We then got a text from the zone leaders saying that president had told them all that we were to stay in our apartment all day long unless we already had a rdv planned and that we were not to contact at all this weekend and that we couldn't wear shoulder bags or anything and so the rules were like strict haha! He also said we were to all go to the church to send a quick email home to our families and tell them that we were safe and ok. So we called up Jean Paul and asked if we could go and stop by his house really fast and send an email home to our families really quickly before we headed to our rdv and he said yes. So we went to his house and when we got there, I already had an email from home saying they knew everything! So it wasn't that much of a shock to anyone I don't think! I'm pretty sure you all knew about it faster than I did! So we sent a quick email home and then we headed out the door to our rdv with a less active. We watched the conference talk from Neill F Marriott and she LOVED it. She said that it was probably the best conference talk that she had ever watched and that she got a lot out of it. So we headed home but on the way home we stopped by the store and grabbed all that stuff we needed for the cake. We then headed in and chilled in the apartment for the day. We made cake, and read scriptures, and watched funny videos on our iPads and took a couple naps and called people from the area book and cleaned out the area book...haha it was a long day! But to end the night we went and had a rdv with Mike and it was good. We talked about the temple and he said he was excited to be able to go one day. He's a pretty cool kid!!!
SUNDAY
so today was good. We woke up and got all ready and headed out to church. We had all the cake and ice cream and got there and put them all in the fridge and had some really good meetings. During Sunday school Soeur Foutrein talked about the love of God and how much he loves us. She compared it to the love a parent has for the kid and we made a big table on the chalk board of different traits that parents have that are similar to God and it was a really good lesson! We then had sacrament meeting and right after we cleaned up and then went and got all the cake ready and grabbed the branch president and went in and sang to him and ate some cake and ice cream and everyone said that the cake was good. Sorensen told them that if it was good, he made it, but if it was not, I made it. So he took a lot of the glory on that one;) it was good though. To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to the rest of the day. We were to stay in the apartment all day long, unless we had a rdv and we didn't have a rdv so we were just going to go home and chill. But as we were about to walk out I went up to Soeur Deslypper and, she had told me earlier this week that she was going to invite us over to eat this week, and so I said we will see you sometime this week? And she said you can't come over today? And I said if you invite us we'll come! I explained to her that we'd just be sitting in the apartment all day and so her husband said well then you'll spend the day with us! So we hopped in their car and off we went to their house! We are with them and talked and sat in their living room and played the piano and they decided that us and them are going to do a performance in the Christmas sacrament meeting and so we chose to sing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and they were just a little too excited about it;) they were cute. We then got talking about transfers and I told them how I don't want to leave Dunkerque quite yet and Soeur Deslypper told me that out of all the missionaries she'd seen come and go, none of them had a ton of success here and so leaving wasn't sad for them, and so to see a missionary that was sad to leave really touched her heart and made her happy. She told us that for the past few months she'd seen a change in the attitude among the members and that we all seemed a little bit closer together and she was grateful for that. So that made me happy and made me not want to leave, that much more! We are blessed as missionaries! We shared a little video called Men's Hearts Shall Fail Them by Russell M Nelson and they loved it and then brought us home for the night.
So there was that week! Don't worry everyone. I'm doing fine. NOTHING happens in Dunkerque;) we are ok here and all is well. The lord is watching over his missionaries. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be here at this time. I'm grateful for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and the happiness and comfort that it brings to me. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary for my savior. I love him and I know he lives. His wish is for us to accept him to be able to live with him and his father again someday. 'Que ces mots réchauffent le cœur, je sais qu'il vit mon rédempteur!' (French version of I know that my redeemer lives) I love you all and I'll let you know about transfers soon:) love you!
Elder Libby
What's your verse?? My was 1 Peter 3:14-15
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