I'll let you all step into the shoes of a missionary in France! This week we were spit on, sworn at, yelled at, and of course called Jehovah Witnesses. You might be thinking, why is going through all of that worth it? Well, I'll tell you. Its worth it because i get to walk around all day as a representative of Jesus Christ. Its tough work but I'm proud to bear that name. I also learned one of the reasons why the French dont like Mormons! There is a tv show, apparently, called Les Mormons and it follows around those sects of people who claim to be a part of our church and call themselves Mormon, but they actually aren't. So if you say that you are Mormon in France they all think you are a strange polygamous cult - which is just flat out not true. It's sad to see how much bad one tv show can do, although in actuality it is just Satan trying to stop the gospel from moving forward. Even he can't stop it though and the work is moving forward, slower here than other places, but it is moving forward and I'm glad to be a part of that!
Elder Walton and I only had one rendezvous this week. It was with Maud, who is a 62 year old french woman who knows the church is true but won't be baptized for 2 more years. That Is because she works on Sunday and receives double pay for working weekends and won't really give the option of working on another day a chance. She's ready for baptism though. It was mother days yesterday for France so what we watched the general conference talk "Behold Thy Mother" by elder Holland with her. She was very touched by the talk and the spirit was definitely there. We also gave her some cookies with a little note on it. She was very grateful and have us both the French Biz.
I'm not sure if this is exciting news or not, but I am the only elder in this mission allowed to wear SNEAKERS with my SUIT. My foot problems have been reoccurring here and to combat the pain the mission nurse authorized me to wear sneakers. So I went and bought some full black nikes, which are super discreet, and have been wearing those. Only two people have noticed, which is good because you get judged super hard in France for what you wear on your feet. Pain is a lot less and I'm super happy about that - now if these blisters could go away... On Wednesday Elder Walton and I went to a podiatrist and he said I needed new inserts. Luckily the mission is paying for those! I get them today, so we will see how comfortable they are and if they help. Maybe I can switch back to a dress shoe! I find it a little amusing because I was a little bit of a fashion guy before my mission and now I'm wearing sneakers and a suit! You can hardly tell though - tender mercy right there!
The only other thing we did this week was bake a lot of cookies. Elder Walton and Sœur Robertson thought it would be a good idea to make cookies for all the active women in the ward for Mothers day. So, that's what we did. It was actually super nice because out of the 4 or 5 houses Elder Walton and I brought cookies to, we got rendezvous with them and we were able to have nice little chats with the families. One of those rendezvous was lunch yesterday with Nicolas Bourroux and his family. He's in his early 30s and has 6 children, which is A LOT for France. He speaks french, Spanish and English, so it's nice communicating with him. His wife is from Spain and speaks Spanish and French, and understands English completely but doesn't speak it. We had lasagna. It was really nice!
Yesterday we had a 70 come to our ward. I heard he gave great talks, if I understood what he was saying I'd share, we will all just have to believe the members. We also handed out the rest of our cookies to the mothers. I gave some to Giuome and Jessie and when her kids crowded around her she jokingly said to me "pour quoi?!" But then her kids gave me big hugs, that was awesome.
It's been deathly hot the last few days. Caen has the same weather as Rochester, so I don't really have to explain that. Just imagine walking around in the 80 degree heat, air conditioning doesnt exist, And you're in pants. It's not the best, but I love it any way.
That's about it!
See you soon,
Elder Molinari
Pictures from a Cathedral from the 11th century
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| William the Conqueror's tomb |
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| 11th century Cathedral |
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