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