Another week has come and gone so fast. It seems like this transfer is speeding by. It's only a 5 week transfer because the schedule got messed up from the change with all the new missionaries. I was up in Aix en Provence for 2 days this week because we had an exchange with the zone leaders and then a zone conference the next day. When we slept over at the zone leaders appartment we thought it would just be the 4 of us but then another group called and needed a place to stay and then the assistants called needing a place to sleep. So there were 8 of us in the tiny appartment. It was a grand time of sleeping on the floor and ice cold showers. The conference the next day was good though and president Roney talked about having faith and being consecrated missionaries.
Aix is still a pretty big city but not as big as Marseille. I'm finally begining to know where i'm going now. I sure do miss the nice easy to find addresses in utah though. We still get lost but not a often and not as far off. We had more lessons with Alain. He is such an awesome guy and i'm 90% positive he will be getting baptized on march 2. Keep him in your prayers. We also had this lesson with a part member family this week. It was crazy. About 5 minutes in it got completely derailed because of some concerns of the wife. So pretty much for the next 30 minutes we just listened to her vent. After that though she started calming down and me and Elder Tulley just started testifying of simple truths and sharing personal experiences. With us only talking for about 10% of the lesson she completely had a 180 and was testifying herself at the end. The spirit was super strong and definately did all the work. At the end she invited us to come back and told us that we are the first set of missionaries that she hasn't yelled out of the house. She is actually a really spiritual person and said that she feels that our church is right and that she thinks she might want to be baptized soon. They are really an awesome family and we're lucky to be able to go and teach them.
My testimony of letting the spirit teach was really strengthened from that lesson. We taught in english so i was excited to be able to say and understand a little more in the lesson because our french lessons pretty much consist of me just sharing little things here and there and mostly testifying of the things Elder Tulley says. But then in the end it turned out that the only things that we could share to help in this certain lesson were simple testimonies. The spirit truly is the teacher that is going to help members come unto Christ. It doesn't matter how well we speak the language or how much we know as long as we can invite the spirit. Being able to look someone in the eye and testify to them of the things that you hold sacred and know to be true is so much more of an impact then going in and trying to wow them with your gospel knowlege. The power that a simple testimony can have is increadible.
I love you all and just want to let you know how much I love this gospel and feel so lucky to be able to share it with everyone. I love seeing how much it can impact peoples lives for the better. I love being a missionary.
L'amour Elder Swenson
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