This is the beginning of my email: I ate horse this week. The end. So this week a lot of cool, random things happened. It started off on Monday when we bought a radiator because our heaters didn't work and so I was always so cold, and the radiator is like a dog, where you can just drag it around and it's warm but only warms like 5 inches in diameter so it is always where we are haha. I hope that makes sense.
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| these two little post blues both bought the same jacket as me haha |
We saw one of our Chinese amis this week, Ling. He is super cool, and we gave him a tour of the chapel and then tried to teach a very simple Plan of Salvation lesson. The only pamphlets we had were traditional Chinese, and that's not what most Chinese people read and write, they use simplified. So he was trying to read it and we were trying to translate words like spirit and Heavenly Father. It was kind of funny when we were doing the tour because he seemed kind of suspicious of
the whole building. When we showed him the baptismal font, I think he thought we were going to push him into an empty tile pit. Haha anyways, I had a dream that he told us he read the scriptures we gave him and prayed, so I hope that will happen one day. We'll keep trying, and I guess I'll have to learn Chinese! (Haha I'm just kidding...)
On Wednesday we had district Meeting and we talked about goals and how to set goals and how not to set goals. Turns out, I set way too many unrealistic goals for myself and then accomplish none of them, but that's okay because I'm shooting high! Lol but anyway, for lunch one of the French elders brought some horse meat and they made it and made us all try it and it was just gross. Imagine taking your favorite horse and eating him. That's what it was like.
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| November in France |
Also, we went to pass a less active who is also a part member family and they didn't answer. So on the way back to the church, I wanted to stop and take a picture of this empty lot with puddles and old cars, so we stopped but then I decided it wasn't that cool and we were just about to turn around when a soccer ball flew over this tiny stone barrier in between two old large buildings. It was such a quiet little thing and so looked at it because we were as suspicious of it but we went over and threw it back over the wall. We heard some little voices shout praises because there was no way they could have gotten that back, and in reality they lived like 2 blocks away if they wanted to go around. So that was how we were the answer to some little kids prayers. 😊
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us with the missionaries and
an ami in gex
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Once we were sitting doing area Book work in the chapel and the chapel phone rang and it was a woman who said she needed help with some family history. We fixed a RDV for the next day and invited our DMP and his wife who is the ward family history specialist. Our RDV came and so did the woman named Corrine and her daughter Clémence. Corrine said that her parents had been married during the war in France, and her dad was from Louisiana but had to go back and left her mom. He got injured and couldn't ever return back to France, and she said that she had always wanted to find out more about him and her family. She has never been to America and doesn't know any relatives over there and didn't even know where to start on the family history, but her son directed her towards us. We taught her the importance of doing genealogy and temples, and then tried to get on family search but the internet was down. We really wanted to, so we went and looked and all of the internet stuff was turned off for some odd reason. We turned it back on, and got onto family search. She brought her family book and some documents, and we started getting her an account for family search. We typed in the names she had in the search boxes and nothing was coming up. I could tell they were pretty hopeful and I was praying that we could find something, because I love family history, and I was really invested in her family's story. Well, we tried one last ditch effort with a name of her grandpa on her fathers side, and it brought up some old indexed documents. On them, it had the same dates that she had, but it had records for her grandparents, her dad, her aunts, and maybe even some half siblings, as well as addresses that we found later! We were able to put all of this information and more that we found on other documents thanks to this one, and enter it all into family search! The spirit was so strong, and I got chills multiple times. It was such a cool experience, and testified to me that this work is hastening right now in France, because of the announcement of the Paris temple open house and dedication! These ancestors want to be found, and so they are reaching out to help us down here. Corrine was so thankful, and we were able to give them some Book of Mormons and
talk about the temple. I love family history!
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| elder fiala and I with this holiday bear |
We were also témoignes at a baptism, and we flew to Geneva to drive to a little ville called gex to do my comps legality and it was super cool but both of our planes were late and between us two we bought 14 bars of chocolate haha. It was a great trip and France and Switzerland are so extremely beautiful.
I love you all! I'll tell you all about how thanksgiving goes, next week! But have a great Thanksgiving! Remember to count your blessings and if you do you'll see how much we are blessed, especially to have this gospel! Soyez reconnaissant!
Avec amour,
Elder Hall
Your Favorite Missionary
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