Bonjour!
This week was cold! To be honest we don't really have anyone to teach, we work with many less actives and with the members but we don't have any investigators that are progressing and that we see often. It is always cold when you have nobody to teach, funny how that works out :) We need to put our shoulder to the wheel and teach people! We were outside quite a bit this week, and I am pretty sure that it was the coldest week of my life. We knocked a bunch of doors and found a couple of people with some real potential and we will have to see what happens. This has reminded me of my first transfer in Perigueux, it was cold as well and we had nobody to teach as well, but the Lord blessed us after and we saw lots of success, so we are going to do the same thing, we are going to keep working and I know that the Lord will send us those that are ready to accept the Gospel. It just takes time.
Saturday we had some appointments fall through and so we went and started knocking some doors. We knocked on a door and an American man stuck his head out the window and we asked him if he had ever read the Book of Mormon, he said that he hadn’t read the book. We said to him, “It is a book that has helped us build our faith in Christ. What does your faith in Christ do for you?” He was a little surprised and because it was cold he didn’t want to answer the question with the window open. He closed the window and came down and let us in and he immediately invited his wife to come down stairs and listen to us. We sat down and he said, “Before I answer your question I want to know, what your faith has done for you?” I don’t know why, but I was surprised by his question. We testified of personal revelation and the love that we have for the Savior, the man and his wife were very touched and our testimonies softened their hearts and they began to ask many questions about our faith and the Restoration. They are very strong believers in Christ, and they accepted to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and to accept us again into their home this week.
After seeing this family, the man’s question has stayed in my mind. “What does my faith in Christ do for me?” My answer is that my faith allows me to see clearly in a world that is very unclear and often impossible to navigate all alone. I am grateful for the peace and clearness that come from the Holy Ghost and from my knowledge of the Atonement. It is this same peace and clearness that has taught me that Jesus is the Christ.
I love this work and I am really enjoying my time with Elder Bollero, he is a great missionary and we are getting along great!
Love you all
Elder Smith
Monday, February 6, 2012
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Let it snow!!!
So this week was pretty great, I am writing today because Monday we were in Lyon for a Training and then on Tuesday we were in Geneva for another training.
In Geneva I finally got to see Elder Fitch, he has been out on his mission for more than a year and I finally got to see him, when I walked into the Geneva chapel yesterday he was standing there and I just ran up to him and picked him and gave him a massive hug. It was great to be able to talk with him and see him, he is a great missionary and he is still the great Mark Fitch that I knew from High School. There was a moment when we were doing some practices and I have a good 10 minutes conversation in French with him, he speaks really really well and I am sure that our high school french teacher Mr Miller would be proud. It was great to see him and we should see each other several more times, because we both just got transferred in to the Geneva zone. he is serving in an area like me that is just on the other side of the french boarder, he is in a city called Chambery.
That same day I woke up to a beautiful site as well, SNOW!!!!! as you can see i got pretty excited and ran outside and played in it a little bit. I can't wait to get back and hit the slopes next year
Besides that last week was good, we did an exchange with the Geneva elders and it went really well, because Geneva is an international melting pot there are lots of foreigners, we stayed the entire day at the institute with back to back appointments and all we did was teach about 8 Mongolians. That might be a surprise but in Geneva there are lots of Mongolians there are about with members and investigators combined there is about 30 Mongolians that come to church regularly. One of the Mongolians got baptized this week and he is super strong and will be a great priesthood holder.
Besides that we got stuck in the office a little bit doing reports and things for president and then we got out into our area. We started teaching a man named Sylvain, he is a really really cool man, he is about 30, he has his own construction company and he is really sincere and funny. He has known the missionaries for a while and we just recontacted him and started teaching him. He knows some members and would like to be baptized, we are going to help him, he worries that he won't be strong enough to quit smoking but he wants to. he only smokes every once in a while and he has stopped before in the past. I hope that we will be able to continue to see him and help him be baptized.
We also learned through visiting a member family that there is a young boy, named Greg, who is 11 years old that has never been baptized. His family is very very active in the church and he comes every week, he does his duty to god primary activities and would like to be baptized. His parents got a divorce when he was little and that is only thing that is holding him back from being baptized, so we are going to begin to fast and pray and do everything that we can to soften the fathers heart to that he will give the authorization for him to be baptized.
We had a pretty good week and we are happy and working hard, the members are really great in Gex and there are about our only source of finding people because there are not very many people that live in our area and they all work during the day and are hard to find, he have jumped in at 110 percent to help members share the gospel.
I got a package for the sealy's this week and it made my day, I loved the pictures so much!!
Have a great week
Love
Elder Smith
In Geneva I finally got to see Elder Fitch, he has been out on his mission for more than a year and I finally got to see him, when I walked into the Geneva chapel yesterday he was standing there and I just ran up to him and picked him and gave him a massive hug. It was great to be able to talk with him and see him, he is a great missionary and he is still the great Mark Fitch that I knew from High School. There was a moment when we were doing some practices and I have a good 10 minutes conversation in French with him, he speaks really really well and I am sure that our high school french teacher Mr Miller would be proud. It was great to see him and we should see each other several more times, because we both just got transferred in to the Geneva zone. he is serving in an area like me that is just on the other side of the french boarder, he is in a city called Chambery.
That same day I woke up to a beautiful site as well, SNOW!!!!! as you can see i got pretty excited and ran outside and played in it a little bit. I can't wait to get back and hit the slopes next year
Besides that last week was good, we did an exchange with the Geneva elders and it went really well, because Geneva is an international melting pot there are lots of foreigners, we stayed the entire day at the institute with back to back appointments and all we did was teach about 8 Mongolians. That might be a surprise but in Geneva there are lots of Mongolians there are about with members and investigators combined there is about 30 Mongolians that come to church regularly. One of the Mongolians got baptized this week and he is super strong and will be a great priesthood holder.
Besides that we got stuck in the office a little bit doing reports and things for president and then we got out into our area. We started teaching a man named Sylvain, he is a really really cool man, he is about 30, he has his own construction company and he is really sincere and funny. He has known the missionaries for a while and we just recontacted him and started teaching him. He knows some members and would like to be baptized, we are going to help him, he worries that he won't be strong enough to quit smoking but he wants to. he only smokes every once in a while and he has stopped before in the past. I hope that we will be able to continue to see him and help him be baptized.
We also learned through visiting a member family that there is a young boy, named Greg, who is 11 years old that has never been baptized. His family is very very active in the church and he comes every week, he does his duty to god primary activities and would like to be baptized. His parents got a divorce when he was little and that is only thing that is holding him back from being baptized, so we are going to begin to fast and pray and do everything that we can to soften the fathers heart to that he will give the authorization for him to be baptized.
We had a pretty good week and we are happy and working hard, the members are really great in Gex and there are about our only source of finding people because there are not very many people that live in our area and they all work during the day and are hard to find, he have jumped in at 110 percent to help members share the gospel.
I got a package for the sealy's this week and it made my day, I loved the pictures so much!!
Have a great week
Love
Elder Smith
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