The Eiffel Tower and More!

Hello!

I forgot last week to tell you an amazing story so I'm writing it first thing so I don't forget this week too. We've been teaching a man named Chriso that Soeur Callister found with her last companion. At first he didn't talk much and didn't seem to get the lessons, but he kept seeing the Sisters. Then he had a stroke, which made him talk even slower and he seemed to understand even less. When I got here, things were going better and he appeared to like the lessons. He had also been coming to church regularly for several weeks. Really, the only thing stopping him from being baptized is his wife. She doesn't care what church he's going too, but she doesn't like the idea of a second baptism.

After a few weeks of trying to explain that when you know something is the right thing to do you should do it, we were kind of losing hope that he would actually get baptized. Then one day he said, I've decided that I'm going to tell you at the end of the month when I want to get baptized. Then he said he thought it would be in August. We're soooo excited! And he seems to get more and more enthusiastic too! One day he even said that when his daughters found out they were like "Dad, you're going to become a Mormon?!" and he said "I AM a Mormon." And now when he refers to the church he doesn't say "you" he says "we". And yesterday he explained to the whole Sunday School class about how he had felt that for some reason he should let the Sisters in when they knocked on the door despite the fact that he was actually in the middle of watching Catholic Mass on TV. He said the way he feels about what he has learned has a much better spirit than what he knew about God before. He should be giving us a baptism date this Wednesday. I won't be in St. Ouen by that time since transfers are in a week and a half and I already know that I'm leaving. However, if I'm still in the Paris region I definitely want to attend.

Another miracle is that we were supposed to meet with a Philippino woman but because both her French and her English aren’t that great, we mis-understood her text and thought she said she was "no longer eager" to meet us. So we decided not to go to the meeting place. Well, she texted us and was like, “where are you?!” And we felt soooo bad, we thought she's definitely not going to be eager to see us now. I called and she was so nice about it and said that, in fact, "she WAS eager" to see us, so we set up an appointment for next Wednesday! It was a stressful but good ending.

After that, we needed to leave for our next appointment, Thérèse, and since the day had been so stressful we were praying "Heavenly Father, just let us have a nice little appointment now". We got all the way to the church which takes about 45 minutes by public transport, (15 by car in you're wondering) and alas, she wasn't there!! We were so disappointed and after half an hour decided to ask Heavenly Father to inspire her to come. A few minutes later she called and asked if we still wanted to meet and we said YES!!! When she arrived she was a whole lot sweeter than I remember her being when we met her on the street (I think I was thinking about someone else). She sweetly asked us to pray that she could find an apartment so she could bring her children from Africa to live with her. During the lesson she said she wanted to learn how to be 100 percent the person God wanted her to be (melts my heart!). When we gave her the “soft invitation” she said yea, she wants to get baptized, something she hasn't done yet. It was a wonderful end to a crazy day!

Last week, however, our numbers were down. Even though we still teach more lessons than I ever taught in my other villes, we still need to consider what we can do to be better. Honestly, at first I was like "it's fine, we've still got several progressing investigators, a ton of lessons and several investigators at church". I kind of kicked against the pricks a little in wanting to discuss this as a companionship. But then I realized that mediocrity isn't enough eternally and that I needed to humble myself. I've been reading about the fall of the Nephites into wickedness in the Book of Mormon just before the coming of Christ and have come to a realization that accepting doing things halfway starts the ball rolling downhill.

I realize that you can't always bring yourself down for not being perfect, but accepting imperfection reverses progression, which is the opposite of what the purpose of life is! Hello! We are here to learn to be like our Heavenly Father! I'm grateful that He is patient with me. And above all I'm grateful that He sent His Only Begotten to help us obey the commandment, "Be ye, therefore, perfect". I can't do it alone, but I can do it with Him.

Soeur Paxton 

 

We added some pictures off the Mission Facebook page from early July when Bethany and her companion went to the Mission Home to meet the new Sister in their trio.