What an exciting week this has been!
Tuesday was such a cool day. I've been really struggling with learning the language and it was really starting to bum me out, as a result of that I have been doing a lot of praying and started the Book of Mormon in french. Tuesday was such a testimony builder for me of what prayer and hard work can do. Elder Walton and I went to a rendezvous with our ami, Martinho, and we watched a general conference talk in french, that I couldn't really understand. I hadn't had time to read the talk before the lesson so I was going in pretty blind and to make things even better, as soon as the talk ended, Elder Walton asked me what my thoughts were on the talk. Let me tell you, the palms started sweating, the room got hotter, it was the end of the world for me!! It actually wasn't, I just quickly read the heading of the talk in English and started speaking and as I was bearing testimony I needed the word "better" in French and in front of my eyes, as clear as this email is to you, I saw the word "Meilleur" which is the french words for better. That was super cool for me. BUT WAIT! There's more! After we finished our lesson, Martinho was just chatting with us and asked me a direct question that I wasn't understanding at first and then, all at once, the question clicked and we had an entire conversation in French. Later Elder Walton would tell me that Martinho was asking me questions in kind of slang french and he knew there would be no way I could understand them, but then he said I answered them perfectly every single time, without his help. The gift of tongues is so real. To make this day even better, after that rendezvous, Elder Walton and I walked home and I spoke french the entire way back. It's about a 30 minute walk. The gift of tongues is so real. If you are worthy and willing to put in the work and the effort the language will come and the Lord will bless you for your efforts. Heavenly Father hears and answers all of our prayers and if you ask for help in faith, believing that he will help, then by his power he will make all things possible through you.
Wednesday we had zone conference. That was just all the missionaries in my zone meeting up for a meeting. Super long, semi motivational, it was ok though. After that the zone leaders came over to Caen and we had an exchange. I spent the whole day of Thursday with Elder Silva and he was a super cool guy! He is willing to talk to anyone and it really motivated me to talk with everyone. We have had awful success finding new Amis in Caen, but when Elder Silva and I went out we found two new Amis! It was super cool to see what opening your mouth can do. We were also able to teach Constantine, who I think is my favorite investigator (don't tell anyone, I'm not supposed to like anyone more than anyone else.) He is our Russian investigator, who has lived in France for 17 years and doesn't know any french. He is a Russian tour guide, so he never had to speak French, but France just sanctioned Russians, so he is out of work. Constantine has been asking all the right questions lately and I kind of felt like Elder Walton wasn't doing anything about it, so I told Elder Silva what's up and he was super pumped. So we began teaching and Constantine asked a few questions on the subject of what happened to Christ's church and we explained the apostasy to him and he actually understood it! Then we brought up Joseph Smith and he asked why it took 1800 years to restore the gospel, so I explained to him all the history behind the apostasy and he seemed super exciting. We finished on the first vision and he was super excited to learn more. This was major progress since he has never really showed interest in anything before. Then he taught us some Russian for a half hour or so, which made him even more excited because he loves teaching Russian to others. He even complimented me on my Russian pronunciation!
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| A random picture in Cherbourg |
My personal studies this week have been focused on opening my mouth and having the courage to speak to everyone. As well as developing christ like attributes and remembering him more. It has been very difficult for me to just walk up to someone and talk with them. It was difficult for me to do that in English and now I'm doing it in a language I don't know. But as I have been prayerfully studying the scriptures and preach my gospel, I have found my fear to talk with people is disappearing. I can pretty much walk up to anyone now and start a conversation with them. You find that most people are glad to talk with you, until you say you're a missionary, but there are people out there that just like to chat and are willing to help me with my french and that has been a blessing for me. Don't expect me to talk all the time when I get home though, just kidding...maybe. I have also been studying how to be more Christ-like, which is very difficult. It has been hard for me to just love everyone I meet, mostly because I have no idea who they are! So I have been trying to develop the attitude I need to see everyone through Heavenly Father's eyes. Still working on that, so no success stories yet. But, success stories are coming soon to an email near you!
That's all for this week. I can't think of a funny story that happened this week, just miracles and that is a good replacement in my opinion.
Until next week!
Love,
Elder Molinari
Here is the weekly photo of me sleeping and a great eclair, I don't really have anything else! Actually I'll add another picture of me sleeping this week as well.
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