Subject: Another Week in France
This week has been good. Full of laughs and sorrow. First starts with the news we just got last night. We have a lady who was ready to be baptised. She had a testimony, she read more than I did before I came out. she even was reading the Gospel Principles book and was talking about stuff we had just sat down to teach her. Then she wasn't at church yesterday so we give her a call. Turns out her husband thinks the Book of Mormon is Satanic and that she's following satan by wanting to join this church. The thing I can't understand is that when we're over there he's very nice to us. He's a member of another church but when we talk to him about his beliefs he just says that they follow the Bible exactly. So what do we do? We ask about things in the Bible that other religions don't seem to completely grasp. Baptism by immersion, authority, baptisms for the dead, Sunday worship (they worship on Saturday). And each one of those he has a dumb excuse from authority from just reading the Bible to that certain verses are translated incorrectly. You want to talk about a hard nut to crack I've got him. So we talk to her and she says she is going to follow what her husband is telling her. It was frustrating and incredibly sad.
Later that night though we had a short lesson with a guy that we found knocking on doors. Last Monday he said he was busy so we said "Another day can we come back?" This guy says yes but in his mind he's thinking something like we can come back when hell freezes over whereas to us that means come back Sunday. So we went back and when he opens the door you can see in his face that he's thinking "I didn't think you'd actually come back." But he said yes so he lets us in and tells us that he's catholic but we have five minutes. We explain to him the first lesson and then my companion starts headed somewhere that'll just end in arguing which goes nowhere. So in order to stop it I have to jump in there somehow so I start talking about the Book of Mormon and what it's about and the cool pictures in the front. In the end we leave him with a book and a prayer (we didn't explain prayer so he wasn't expecting this kind of prayer). I cracked my eyes halfway through to see his face and I had a hard time not reacting to the confusion that I found. But moral of the story he has a Book of Mormon. By their fruits ye shall know them. He has the fruit now.
And then the other story I wanted to share was about our apartement and how it's situated. So across from us is a nice little park with trees and benches and nice grassy feilds. However this makes for a local spot for high schoolers during lunch time (they get lunch time from noon to two here in France). Now as we were all high schoolers with all of the chemicals raging through our artteries you can imagine what's going on. This is very weird for two missionaries trying to have lunch on the fourth floor across from them. Luckily we have found a way to benefit from this and my companion and I have become very profitiant water ballon tossers. If we ever have a primary activity and one of them is that thing when you toss the balloon back and forth they better look out because we've become somewhat of an expert.
So that has been my excitment for the week. I can't wait to hear from you all soon to find out how your lives are going back in the states. Until next week,
-Elder Davis
PS... Here we're doing much more cooking for ourselves. The branch is really small (only about thirty people with twenty five regulars). Everyone who lives close is old ladies who have lost husbands so we can't visit them alone and everyone else is really far out of town. Bikes were just in Brive. They had been left from elders before so I didn't take them. It's actually very rare for bikes. I was on exchange there and the district leader who had been out a year had never riden a bike in France so it probably won't happen again. I'll talk about teaching in the big letter. There's been some great stories and a sad story this week.
I love you mommy and pass the love to the primary kids too.
-Elder Davis
PS.... You're going to have the best time with that group of people (at Girls Camp). There may not be a more fun and entertaining group out there. Tell the Hawes that I say hello.
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