The other half are wonderful French people that don't like the tourists or the superficial people and they just somehow ended up living here. Case in point, Fabrice, and his two daughters Claire and Clemence. They asked us what we were doing here and so we explained a bit and the whole family was really involved asking questions and explaining their values, what they disagree with in the Catholic church they attend. It is always refreshing to talk to people with similar values. We gave him a BOM and he kept repeating, I will keep it preciously. I don't think that translates the same into English, but you get the idea.
On another note, so many people on the Azure coast use cars that they are the best stick shift drivers I've ever ridden with. Second only to Bishop Kitley. I'm planning on lessons btw.
This week was insanely tiring. It started off with a challenge from Elder Peterson to get 30 lessons this week, and it all kind of spitballed from there. It was cool because literally ALL of our 15+ ami lessons fell through, so we had to do some scrambling to replace them. Our contacting increased in energy and focus and we really tried to teach people on the streets rather than just plan another time to do that same thing. We'd try to get them to sit down with us for a minute and listen to us and we met so many cool people!
Let it be known, these are not all people that will be seeing us again soon, but judging once again on the number of tears shed by these people, I am fairly confident that we did some good work and faith building. We also are living all of the controllable standards of excellence, meaning we saw three members and five less actives this week.
One of those is Akima, who actually recently decided that she doesn't like us visiting. Probably because we call her to repentance. Par contre, her children love us. And whenever we go over, they beg their mom to let us come over tomorrow. That's the secret. Get in with the children.
We visited the friend of a member this week, Christine Dion. She's really old, but really loved our message and agreed to let us come back. So that's cool.
We taught Ismael in the parking lot of a Muslim mosque. He chose the venue. That being said, he only comes from a Muslim background and is searching elsewhere for the truth. We met Uric, a self-proclaimed hobo reporter who speaks impeccable english and has lived in Australia, Turkey, Lebanon, and India. He's 25 and due to his revealing reportages and various angry groups, he's already taken two bullets. He also spends his whole day going out of his way to make other people happy. What a delightful soul.
Adelito and Antunes are both Portuguese Catholics that have already met the church in Portugal and are willing to act to find out more.
Here's Soeur Schreiber's favorite story of the week. We saw three black guys sitting on the steps of a building, so I go up and start talking to them. They're Catholics from Cape Verde and somehow related. One of them is older, the others are 31 and 25. The old guy just keeps saying over and over again that he doesn't understand english, but he speaks French and he speaks better Portuguese. He probably said that 300 times.
So I ignored him and let Soeur Schreiber listen to him while I started trying to teach the other two the Retab. After charming them with my limited knowledge of Brazilian Portuguese, they listened a bit. I showed them a Portuguese Retab pamphlet we had and we talked about the Book of Mormon and the first vision. This is all pretty spiritual, while being interrupted by the old man.
So eventually, I just get one of the kids to calm him down and read to him out of the brochure. He listens like a little child. The other young guy gets a phone call and his friends ask him to come meet them at the bus stop, so he's trying to get us to all go walk down there together. Anyways, Danny, the 25 year old reading the brochure to the old man, says, Wow. I really like this message, I would like to learn more. So we exchange numbers so we can meet him without the old man yelling the same things over and over like a crazy guy.
The other guy, Tavares; 31yrs, decides he also wants to exchange numbers. But he says, No, I don't want the missionary number, I want YOUR number. I laughed and said haha, yeah right. You can have the missionary number and only if you really want to learn more about Jesus Christ. Then the crazy old man yells NO! HE WANTS TO MARRY YOU! And starts trying to convince me it's a good idea. He's alone, you're alone...Please. Eventually I just yelled NO ONE IS GETTING MARRIED HERE TONIGHT. To which they all laughed and we ran away telling Danny we'd call him.
In other news, Raphael came to church and loved it despite the fact that he disagreed with some things. So that was cool. And we ended up with 26 well-earned lessons and my brain is so tired. We are rewarding ourselves with ice cream. Then we're gonna do it again.
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