June 9, 2014

Just pictures.

Ok, so secretly I'm planning on taking one week to write a quality group email, and the next week to respond to individual emails. In either case, there's just not a whole lot of time.

Here's some pictures! Trinidad was great. Love you!

-Elder Santos

June 2, 2014

Personally, my favorite one is the baby one.

Stories for the week!

-I blessed a baby on Sunday. Linaël Taïna Pedre. She's the daughter of a recent convert in our area, a single mother who chose me to do the blessing. Funny thing is, she never actually asked me myself. Our branch president told me in a CEP a while back. So, yeah, that was interesting. 

-So do you remember Karine and Slorane from a while back? Well, some stuff happened and we hadn't seen them for a while, but then out of no where on Thursday she called us and asked us to come over! So we went over, and she explained that she really wants to put her life in order, and she asked for our help. She wants Slorane to get baptized first, so we're going to work with her and we'll see what we can do! She's a very intelligent kid. It was just kind of one of those tender mercy moments, the Lord letting us know that He's still aware of us.

-On Tuesday, we went and picked up a branch missionary, hoping to take him to teach several of our investigators that we had rendez vous with, and one in particular that we thought that he would be a good fit for. Well, of course, every one of those rendez vous fell through. As we were getting back into the car, a man came up to us and started talking to this branch missionary. Over the next twenty minutes, we found out that this man had gone to church and studied with the missionaries for three years, and that he wanted to get baptized, but didn't want to leave his girlfriend that he was not married to. Two years ago, he had decided to stop everything, and he hadn't talked to missionaries since then. Well, to make the story shorter, we ended up taking his number, and we're going to start teaching him again. He and his girlfriend live in different houses, so as long as we can get them to live the law of chastity, there is nothing that would keep him from getting baptized. Cool, right?

-I don't know if I ever mentioned this yet, but I'm leaving for Trinidad tomorrow morning. No, it's not a transfer-I'm coming back Thursday night. But if you remember, back in December, we had a Mission Leadership Conference where I left Guianne to go to Trinidad a few days. Same thing. So. That will probably be super inspiring and stuff. Details to come!

-My writing skills have not improved since I've been on my mission. But, as a side note, my handwriting may have! I've been practicing holding my pen with three fingers and forming my letters from the top. Also, I now write in my journal in cursive french.

-Welcome home, Jack!

-Thursday was our priesthood commemoration activity. We went for a hike in the woods. I got to carry somebody across a stream on my back!

-Beach jumping photos! This was the best one I had of Elder Harrison and I jumping. Yep.

May 26, 2014

I was an unwise steward of email time.

And therefore have none left. I'm sorry about keeping on doing this! But, everything is going well.

Just one quick story. After our farewell, we went and did the little eating food thing at the Millett household. Well, Mama Quinton gave me a skittles book. Three bags of skittles. And, for some reason, I've been saving one of them. I think the idea was to eat it on the way home or something. Didn't work. I decided to open it up this past week. This is what it looked like.

Love you!

May 19, 2014

A thousand words...

his picture. Is my favorite. So, yeah, that's going to be the meat of my email this week.

But other than that, it really was a good week. Heavenly Father was basically just throwing people at us to teach. Here's a quick story.

So, last Monday, I received, for the second time in my mission, a referral from church headquarters. A man named Pierre, who lives in our area, had asked for a missionary visit through mormon.org. We contacted him, and he asked us to come over Sunday afternoon. So, that's what we did! At first, we were talking, asking how he had heard of the church and everything, and he said that he had met someone in France who had told him about the church. "I'm more interested in the book, for now". So we sang, prayed, and gave him a Book of Mormon. At the end, he opened up a little bit more, and we found out several things about him. First off, the person who had talked to him about the church was his girlfriend, and she had recently been baptized in France. Second, she had been giving him missionary lessons over the phone for a while now. Third, he was planning on going back to France soon, and has already decided that he wants to get baptized on July 12th. So, yeah. That was our cool miracle for the week.

We also had to go to les urgences at the hospital this week. I debated on whether or not to include this story, but here we go! So yeah, a missionary which shall remain nameless got hit by a car while they were on their bike this week. Not seriously hurt, nothing broken, just very sore. I prefer to not give the name, because I don't know if they're planning on telling this story to their family just yet, but hey, it's an exciting one. As an interesting side note, french emergency rooms are much more calm than one would expect from a place with "emergency" in it's name. We show up, there's a line to talk to a receptionist, and when we finally get to her, the following interesting conversation ensues:

"Hi, my friend just got hit by a car, and would like to see a doctor."

"Okay, well can I see your [french social security card]?"

"No, actually, we're american. But we just wanted to see a doctor to make sure that everything is okay, and to-"

"Well we can't do anything for you if you don't have your card! How are you going to pay?"

"...well...we could just pay normally, I guess. Like I said, my friend just got hit by a car, so we would really like to see a doctor."

"Alright, well we need a copy of an identity card, two phone numbers, and a street address."

"Actually, I don't really know what the exact address is."

"Well, we can't do anything for you if we don't have the address!"

"...alright, we'll make a phone call..."

So yeah. Eventually we figured everything out. Everyone is fine now, but french hospitals are ridiculous.

And that's my story!

Love,

-Elder Santos