Another 6 weeks in Epinal!

Bonjour à tous,

Well that's another transfer behind me, and we are both staying in Épinal!

Which is kind of convenient because we planned some things for Wednesday not realizing that if one of us moved, that whole day would be taken up. But it all worked out. 

In other news, we are still meeting with some super cool people! Their names are Bobby and Salome. They are still really cool. We have a lot to teach them before baptism, but we will get there. This week I hope to invite them to baptism, but we will see what the Spirit says. Today we had a fun day, we went shopping, realized that the next bus doesn't come for another 2 hours to get back. And went instead to lunch at a nearby restaurant called Flunch. It was pretty good! The only problem is the place is kinda far away. So it took up some travel time. But we got back.

Our amis came to church again on Sunday! They came late though because they thought it started at 10am. It's alright because they are just so awesome. We have another meeting with them this Thursday. 

I actually had a really cool personal experience I wanted to share that relates to them. I have been thinking a lot about what they need and how to best teach them. And my thoughts have been totally occupied with how we can teach them. On Sunday night, me and Elder Anderson wanted to watch some of the training video, District 2 by the church. So we were watching that, and about halfway through, elder Anderson had to go to the bathroom. So for a couple of minutes, I was alone. As I was walking into the hallway I stopped suddenly, mid step. And I felt something, like a small voice telling me to pray. So I said a quick prayer just asking my Heavenly Father to bless them and also to help me because I didn't know what to do. And I had a thought run through my heart that I hadn't thought of. It told me that I have been thinking of people more as teaching challenges instead of people. And that that is what has been holding me back. I expressed my gratitude and felt a quick surge of peace and emotion that left as soon as it came. I knew at that moment that the Spirit had spoken to my heart. And I vowed to myself to try my best to never do that again. And so, I am now trying to view people differently. 

It is easy to focus too much on the teaching challenges of others when they do not do or say what you want them to. I am learning to do quite the opposite, focus on the person. I hope that through me showing my heart to them, they will progress and see God in their lives and come closer to Christ. 

Other than that, we have a rendez-vous tonight with a super nice old man and his daughter. We hope that they will be interested to hear more.

Well, have a good week, and I love you all (not just saying that).

Sincerely
Elder Payne 
France, Paris Mission

Exciting Visitors at Church

Bonjour à tous,

Well this week has been a blast and there is another great week coming! Our new investigators came to church! They were super good! We left early in the morning to walk to their apartment (the things we do for our amis...), and they opened the door and were all ready to go, they said that they had only got 3 hours of sleep the previous night. But they were coming anyway. Which is awesome! They came and everyone in the branch was so excited to see investigators at church they just couldn't control themselves! After sacrament meeting our amis went around and met everyone, we didn't tell them to do that! So that was really cool and gave or tiny branch a little boost of excitement.

We are meeting with them again on Thursday. Also, the elders in Saint Dié have an ami named Pierre who I actually found while contacting. And he is getting baptized this Saturday!!!! I am totally going to see if I can go. And yes, I am excited for his baptism because I helped contact him originally. But at the same time, it was God and the Holy Spirit, that brought him to conversion, not me.

This week we have a jam packed week planned. We have a lot of people to see. And it's the last week of the transfer. So next week, things could change, I am pretty certain that I will stay here in Épinal. Whether my companion changes, I don't know. But we will see.

Today we went bowling as a district, it was a ton of fun! We did some last day of soldes shopping. The deals today were insane, so we figured if there was something for under 10 euros, ça va. This week is looking like a warm week for us, but it's also going to rain a lot. So I don't know how that's going to work out. 

I just took some pictures for the heck of it.

Sincerely
Elder Payne 
France, Paris Mission

Elder Payne on a train.

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Elder Anderson

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District bowling on P-Day. Serious competitors.

Different Nationalities in Epinal and Exciting New Teaching Opportunities

Bonjour à tous,

Well I'm at the point in my mission where people start to stop emailing me. I understand, I wouldn't have been any better. I think I only emailed my own brother a handful of times on his mission. So I understand, it's not me, it's you. (You feeling guilty yet?) 

NOTE:If you do not have Elder Payne's email address please post a comment on the blog and the email address can be sent to you.

Anyway, for those of you who weren't turned off by the opening paragraph, congratulations! You now get to read about the interesting parts of my week. Let me summarize it in a sentence. Serbians are interesting, Africans are the best, the ghetto is great for missionary work, and spend money carefully. 

The Serbian part is the fact that we found a Serbian family who have not been to church too often and are really cool people. They don't know perfect French but then again, who does. We didn't expect them to feed us, but they did. They fed us some sort of cake, some take out pizza, and slightly expired oranges. But don't worry, we didn't get sick. We got a ride home from their son, who has an English girlfriend. He is super cool and speaks a little English himself. They don't come to church because they don't understand French very well, which I get, I mean, it's hard for me too. But they are good people.

With the Africans part. We got some new investigators this week whom are absolutely amazing! I feel like it was one big, elaborate  three week miracle that brought us to them. So many things added up to us meeting them. But long story short, we met an African couple (by way of  a miracle) and the boyfriend is super strong in his faith and wants to learn as much as he can about the gospel. By the end of the rendez-vous, we had taught the entire restoration, and set up another rendez-vous tomorrow morning. He told us that they wouldn't mind us coming over 2-3 times a week for studying the gospel! That doesn't happen! So we are REALLY excited for that. Next time we are going to tech them about the gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope that goes well.

The ghetto part is because we learned from the Serbian family that the area where we do most of our finding is considered the ghetto of Épinal, and we found the Africans in a less ghetto area. All in all, people in the ghetto are more humble, nice, and willing to accept help. Therefore, the ghetto is great for missionary work. And as long as you are obedient, you will be protected. (No worries).

And then last thing, I totally got swindled out of 50 euros for a pair of jeans. It all happened really fast. I knew today that I need new jeans. So with the insane deals going on right now for Soldes (French black Friday), I knew this was my last chance to get them for SUPER cheap. So I found some jeans that I thought were 25 euros because the price tag said 50% off. And the cashier came over and said "Are you buying those jeans?" I answered yes. She took the jeans to the cash register and rung everything up super fast. Said some fast French that I didn't understand, and before I know it, I'm out of the store before realizing that I paid 50 euros and not 25. So moral of the story, pay attention.

That was basically my week. We did a lot of finding and found some cool people.

I love you all!

Sincerely
Elder Payne 
France, Paris Mission

Continuing Work in Epinal and New Years Eve

Bonjour à tous,

And yes I will always start off my emails like that, you can't tell me otherwise. :) 

Well this week has been totally awesome!!! And just because we are really seeing the beginnings of success here. And life is good right now. We found 3 new investigators last week during exchanges! Which was amazing, and pretty much unheard of in this ville for a while. We met the Sudanese guys again, they were really nice and they fed us impromptu. We are trying to set up a French or English class for them to help them out. We also met a lady who was really cool and was interested in the gospel. So all in all, things are going well. We are also getting our dryer replaced this week. I'm really excited, because for a transfer now it never worked for me. I don't know why and it really doesn't make sense because it always worked for my companion. He doesn't understand either. I've decided that Épinal does not follow any sort of logic. Street smarts don't matter. Science? Forget it. Logic simply doesn't work here. I've gotten used to it. You just gotta get out and go and roll with the punches.

We had to drop our other people including the miracle lady because she is avoiding us. But I'm willing to make the trade for more promising people. Really, I would rather someone tell us straight up if they don't want to meet with us. It's just time consuming if we set something up and then they don't show up.

I also have been keeping record of our steps here in Épinal, because I got a pedometer for Christmas. Right now, we walk an average of about 1.5 miles a day. Which I realize is actually not that much, but we do a lot of finding in apartments. So not as much walking between each door.

I bought a cheap toy the other day that I really enjoy, especially when my companion takes so long on p-days to write emails. It's a magnetic toy that I can build and design things with. I really like it. Anyone who knows me well can easily say that I love to build things and create things. 

We had dinner with a member named Alhin for New Years, we had a galette des rois "cake of the kings". Which is a traditional cake that has a "bean" or little toy in the cake. And whoever find the bean gets named king for the party. My companion got the bean. It was a really good meal!

I hope you all have a good week!

Sincerely
Elder Payne 
France, Paris Mission

Elder Payne - enjoying dessert

Elder Anderson - King of New Years

New friends from Sudan

Bonjour à tous,

This week was pretty productive if I do say so myself. The funniest story is we had set aside some time to try and find the miracle lady that we met a couple of weeks ago. And we also wanted to try to meet with another lady who we met while porting. So first we tried the porting lady. She lives in an apartment. And the problem with apartments is you can't really get in unless someone rings you in. So we tried going to the sonner (the doorbell/phone) and started ringing her. But she wouldn't answer. We didn't give up. We tried ringing other people, but no one let us in. Then as we were walking away, we noticed a car was starting to pull out of the closed parking space under the apartment. So we snuck in (not trespassing) and got in before the door could close. Then the challenge was navigating this apartment building. So we tried the first door we found and it led us to what I like to call "the depths of Tarturus" because it looked like a dungeon. It was really just storage space. We ended up finding the door to the inside of the apartment building and found her room. We could hear people being pretty loud on the inside as if someone was on the phone. So we waited for a couple of minutes before ringing and a man came out and I found out that she was not home but that this was her husband. I asked him to tell her that we stopped by and then we moved on.

The interesting part was looking for miracle lady. With some clever deducting over the past few weeks, we found where she lived (it's not creepy). And took the elevator to her floor. As the elevator doors opened we met the Sudanese guy that we talked to the same day we found miracle lady! We was just leaving his house, but he saw us and without saying a word he motioned us to come in. So we went into his house where he had to 2 other (very confused) friends. He explained to us that he had to leave but that he would be back.

So we sat down with these guys we had never met before and started up conversation, they were all college age, Sudanese guys that spoke broken French. And as we were meeting our new friends. 3 more guys came! We said hi and ended up being there for like 2 hours just talking with these guys! At one point the man I was mainly talking to mentioned that he cooks Sudanese food. So we agreed that we should have a meal all together some time and exchanged Facebook profiles. Long story short, we met 5 college age, Sudanese refugees in the space of 2 hours, set up a rendez-vous, and made 5 new friends. It was awesome!

And later that week we tried going through our area book and looking at old amis and we ended up talking with 2 people who said we should call them and set something up after the holidays. 

So all in all, this week has been super good! Slow at times, but good. And we are beginning to see the fruits of our labors here in Épinal. 

Well I wish all of you a happy New Year! I love hearing about everyone's holiday season, so feel free to email me!

Love you all

Sincerely
Elder Payne 
France, Paris Mission