November 4, 2013

Bonjour,

So this past week was fun. We headed up to Lyon on tuesday to meet up with the bleus. All of the trainers had dinner and talked and such until the evening. The next morning we headed to the office to have a meeting about training and after lunch we headed to the church where we finnaly got to meet our comps. There were around 25 missionaries coming in this transfer so the chapel was pretty full. Of all of the new missionaries less than half were american which was pretty cool. There were missionaries from france, england, spain, brasil, germany, denmark, and finland. Anyway so they all went up one by one and read their calls to see where they were serving and who their trainer would be. We went through about 75% of them before someone finnaly read that his trainer would be Elder Swenson.

My new comp is Elder Pedersen. He is Danish. He is really cool and so far it has been really good working with him. His french is alot better than mine was when i got in. It always helps distinguish your companionship in big wards when your companion isn't the same old american elder that members are used to seeing. Unless your comp is Native american like Elder Tulley that is. We should be able to sneak ahead of the other elders and just behind the sisters in the dinner appointment department :)

So this past friday we saw a pretty cool little miracle. In studies that morning i was reading over my patriarchal blessing. There was a particular line that stood out to me that morning that said, If you strengthen your faith you will find that all things are possible. I repeated this phrase in my head throughout the day as we worked. When the evening came we had some free time that we had planned to go contacting in the park. The night before we had set the goal to either get a number or fix a rdv during this time. As we walked towards the park I remembered this goal as well as the line from the blessing. I said a prayer in which I asked for us to reach our goal, full of faith knowing that the only thing that could keep us from getting a number was God's will. I said amen. We then got a number from the first person that we contacted and set up a rdv for the next day. Miracle.

The rdv with him went well. We taught him how to pray and helped him say his first ever prayer. When we were explaining prayer he was like, "you mean you can just say what ever? And you can ask for blessings for you and your family? and that works? And its just like a conversation? Well that's easy!" It was really touching to be able to teach someone such a simple principle like that and litterally see the light go into them. It is just a big reminder of how blessed we really are to be in this church with a knowlege of the gosple. Prayer really is such a blessing and i can testify that i know from experience that it really does work. Sometimes we forget how true that fact really is. I love you all and wish you the best!

Elder Swenson