Let's see if I can answer some of your questions. ONE , Yes I got grandmas
package and it was greatly appreciated!! It came in one of the best moment's of
my mission!! We just finished yet another wonderful rendezvous with Remy and the
baptism is going to be awesome this Saturday!! We taught him the remaining
commandments and it turns out he already keeps all of them!! (P.S. the tie is
beautiful grandma!!) TWO, No Mom I haven't gotten this calendar thingy yet
.....THREE No I haven't heard from Joe either. I sent a letter to him ages ago
and I hope he got it, but I am not sure.....I haven't heard from Nils for awhile
either. FOUR, Yes we have a zone Christmas thing tomorrow in Paris so that will
be pretty tight!!!
Alright! This last week was incredible! Obviously, with the baptism for
Rémy coming up, but we have had some incredible experiences tracting and
contacting this week as well!! Where to start....I believe it was Tuesday where
we had absolutely nothing planned but contacting until 7pm. We recently had
made a goal to be more specific in our prayers and planning so we could be more
effective in finding these elect persons. The night before we specifically
planned to find someone searching for another testament of Christ ...or someone
we could share the Book of Mormon with. We also wanted to find a young couple
that was just starting their family. In the first hour we found no one. Just as
we were about to finish up I saw a nice looking man with a cowboy looking hat
and glasses and I knew it was our man! Turns out he is from Poland and he LOVES
gospel music and searching into other religions. He was super excited to hear
about a polish Book of Mormon.....No I didn't have one on me, but that's how we
fixed a return rendezvous and got his address!! We will be stopping by his
place this Wednesday with a brand new polish BOM!
Later we went out to the university where we hoped to find our young
couple. We found them almost immediately after we got of the tram and we ran to
talk to them! Turns out they weren't to interested in the gospel but they were
super nice. I know that god put them in our path because we specifically asked
for them.
Later in the week we went tracting for two hours after getting bauffed
(stood up) by Claude. It started out super SUPER rough. No one would even let
us say anything before they slammed the door in our faces. This continued for an
hour (it was raining pretty bad).....and needless to say we wanted to go
home. I just couldn't let myself. I told my comp we had to keep on goin' ! Not
much changed, but we started to have fun with it and laugh at how ridiculous
things were with the rain and some .....interesting people we were meeting. We
started to try and talk to people about Christmas and apparently people thought
we were trying to trick them into something because they kept telling us they
weren't interested. My companion would say,"what you don't like Christmas!" It
didn't help much, but I had to try really hard not to laugh. Well anyways, we
kept going for another half hour and then we ran into this lady who said she
didn't celebrate Christmas and that she didn't believe in God. This caught me a
little of guard....well not her unbelief but the Christmas thing. I could tell
that she was struggling with something. I felt like I needed to testify of the
gift of Christ,( being the atonement), and how through his atonement we could
learn how to overcome the difficulties of life. By studying the scriptures like
the Book of Mormon we could grow to understand this gift and gain a testimony of
God and His church. I testified that this was how we could find true happiness.
She started crying and was super touched about our love for her. She took the
Book of Mormon and is excited to have us come back. She looked like someone had
just beaten her and I wanted to help her so bad!! I hope she doesn't have a jerk
husband!!!!! Needless to say, we found who we needed to after a l o n g
session of tracting, but it was super good!!
I love this time of year as a missionary! There is no better time than
now to share a message of Christ! I think next time we are going to try caroling
and see if that will go anywhere!!! Anyways we are loving it in Valenciennes and
miracles happen everyday!! I miss all of you and loves all of you tons!! I sent
out letters to most of you and you should have gotten them by now....tell me if
you don't! I haven't sent grandmas and Lili's yet but those should come soon
too!
Have a great week and I will talk to you soon!
LOVE ELDER LYONS
