Monday, January 30, 2012

Hey y'all

This last week was great! So much crazy stuff happened that I'm too tired to tell you about it all. Seriously this is going to be a short one cause my brain hurts and I just emailed the mission pres a huge email. Sooo... One funny story was Wednesday morning in the rain. Elder Chong-Mook and I were porting and there was no one in sight except for a strange creole man next to a small swing set across the street. He waved us over so we went and we started talking to him. He asked Chong-Mook what we were doing and about half way through the explanation the guy says, "Are you right handed or left handed?" Chong-Mook says, "What?" Creole says, "Right handed or left handed?!" Chong-Mook says, "Right handed." hahaha so the guy grabs Chong-Mook's hand and the creole guy puts it on his head (creole guy has the hand on his own head). Then he says,"Give me a little prayer," and Chong-Mook is like, "That's not really how it works." haha Then the creole guy flips and says, "GIVE ME A LITTLE PRAYER!" So Chong-Mook gave the gay some advice and said amen and then the guy had me give him a little prayer and in my prayer I said, "Get a job and quit drinking dodo." He was touched. We had a miracle day on Thursday in this giant apartment building. It all started with a door that had a sign that said, "If you're a TJ (JW) or any type of religious missionary do not disturb." The lady that answered was named Marie-Claude and she was super nice, we got her phone number and fixed a rendezvous and it was a super solid contact. We ended up finding like 20 more people in the same building and every single one of them were women. Except Fariçien, he was a bit of a flamer and he tried telling me that he was once the world champion of some genre of dancing. My foot. It was a great day. We also stumbled across some apartments full of college students who are all nice and fixed rendezvous with us. The only downer is that we are always in the dumb office emailing people and planning stuff and making arrangements for visas and flights and buying cars and it's just the worst. I don't think I have even experienced the worst of it. The weather in St. Denis is so much cooler than St. Paul. The hottest we get is 32 and in the south it's like 38 all the time. We were down there today to play sports and I was struggling. Tonight we have a F.H.E. with a Malagasy family and we are making coconut rice, I'll have some cool pictures for next week. Sorry for this lame one. I love you all, take it easy.

Jeff     

Monday, January 23, 2012

Hey,

I wanna die. I've been in an office and in a car all week and it's the WORST! It makes me tired in a different way and i feel like I'm turning into a blob. My mast few days in St.Paul were cool. We taught all our ami's one last time and I got some pictures with the Maillot family. Total bummer that I had to leave that awesome area that Elder Twitchell and I built up from ground zero but it's all good. I figure I'm only good for finding people and then we leave the finish work for the other missionaries who are better teachers. There wasn't too much excitement during the end of the week, just computer garbage, numbers emails, visas, new missionaries, it goes on and on and on... The sparkling clean apartment I had left behind when I got transferred to St. Paul had managed to have been destroyed once again due to lack of upkeep by the missionaries who stayed when Elder Leblanc and I left. My blood was starting to boil this morning while I was cleaning and discovering how unmaintained the place was. So we'll just have to attack that project one battle at a time. My comp Elder Chong-Mook is a goofy son of a gun haha. He giggles about the dumbest things all day and absolutely bust up when I have to type or do computer work because I'm such a noob when it comes to technology. Oh well, I'm learning quickly. Church was pretty sweet in the St. Denis branch. There were more than 12 members which was unusual and I didn't have to speak or anything which made it super weird. I just sat next to ami's and enjoyed sacrament meeting. I taught the Gospel Principles class and there were about 10 people not including Elder Chong-Mook and I. The lesson went way well, and priesthood afterwards was enjoyable as well because once again I was able to relax and be nourished by the good word of God. We planned a zone activity for this coming Monday and we are going up to "Le MaÏdo" which is this sick place up in the center of the island where you look out over one of the cirques and it's absolutely mind blowing how beautiful the view is. It's kind of fun to be able to plan what we do but at the same time it's a lot nicer to just tag a long for the ride. Do any of you remember the Gonthier family that I always talked about when i was in St. Marie? Well they are in-active :( I calle them up and we're going to their house for dinner this Wednesday and we're going to find out what dumb comment from another member made them throw away their eternal salvation and stop coming to church. That was a bit rash, but I mean seriously folks pull your heads out. Is the phrase "pull your heads out" to graphic for the old Riverview Rambler? If so sorry. Hmmm... what else... Oh yeah, we have dinner appointments set up for every single night this week because Elder Chong-Mook is a celebrity and everyone wants to feed him and whoever his companion is so I think I might be able to fill out my pants again by the end of our companionship. Nothing too crazy is going on. I'm still trying to figure out what investigators we actually have and what not. From the looks of it, I don't think we have much going on so it seems like this will be another battle from ground zero. Bummer... OH YEAH! I almost forgot again. Two weeks ago at our open house in St. Paul Elder Temarohirani was putting up pictures of priesthood ordinances from like the 70's and I was staring at this one of a father giving his son a blessing. At first I was just admiring the tie and then I noticed the kid was a pretty sharp looking guy and then I began to look at the dad and his awesome suit and BAM! It hit me, I was looking at a picture of Bruce Wainright giving Steve a blessing haha It blew my mind. I told everyone around me and they were like,"...awesome..." haha no one cared quite as much as I did. I thought it was pretty cool. Now the picture is hanging in my room at the apartment. Yeah, pretty lame week seeing as how that was the highlight. Well I think that's all the cool stuff. Everything else that was noteworthy made it in the journal. Have a great one everybody love y'all.

Jeff      

Monday, January 16, 2012

Hey everyone,

Great week. Just wonderful. The first half of the week was bland but the end was just full of fun surprises. So Tuesday after our lesson we got invited to lunch at Geoffrey's Mom's house, we usually meet at his Dad's house, but we talked a bit about french cuisine and he was just going off about how great it was and so he wanted to cook for us. So Sunday we went there and his mom lives in a sweet house with a pool and tons of other shweet stuff and it was pretty fancy. We had delicious fine cheese and other little appetizer things and what not. Then they brought out the escargot. They snails were bigger than I expected but it was pretty good. They just load garlic and butter on em which seems kind of dumb to me because honestly I think I could load garlic and butter all over piece of turd and get the same result haha. Sorry that was a little harsh. For the main course we had stuffed wheat crepes with cream chicken mushrooms onions lardons and cheese and that was stinkin deeelish. For dessert we had regular crepes but they were actually pretty good. They weren't the like the garbage elder Millar makes chez nous. The only bad part about our little lunch rendezvous was what Geoffrey's Mom was wearing. Ohh lala we'll leave it at that. Scandalous... His step Dad was super chill. He had been up all night watching the 49ers beat the saints and the patriots texans game. He was pumped to talk to me about football. He took me into his weightroom and showed mea football that he had signed by Lawrence Taylor haha it was nuts! The step dad had a giant Jedediah beard too. What a character. On Wednesday Mother Nature punched me in the face. We were out far away from the apartment with blue skies when a monsoon hit. We were in the middle of a followup with a guy in front of his house and the rain started falling and he looked at us and pulled a face like, "Yeah... Sorry... You're not coming in my house. Good luck with the rain." It was crazy how hard the storm hit. Within seconds we were floating down the road. My French scriptures got wrecked and I was drenched from head to toe before I could get into my rain gear. Bummer. It rained all day like that and it was just crazy how hard it rains here. They say it gets a lot worse. Supposedly there is a hurricane out in the ocean that might get us too... I sure hope so :) I don't think it will happen though :( We had our Journée Porte Ouverte on Saturday and it was an utter failure. I knew from the beginning hat it was a terrible idea, but hey what can ya do? We worked super hard to make it as good as possible and it just didn't happen. On Sunday at church we had ourselves a bit of a rodeo. I spoke in sacrament meeting and my talk was actually really good. I know, I'm great... but really though the spirit was blowing the roof off the joint and people actually listened. I spoke about the blessings I had received from the priesthood and the majority of the talk was about examples of priesthood leaders and my Bros and Dad and their examples of magnifying there callings and fulfilling their priesthood duties. We have trouble in the branch because men won't accept calls so the talk was good to somewhat address that issue. Our ami Carlo was at there and he was loving it too so i was happy about how it went. So after sacrament meeting president Poncharville came up to me and said, "Soeur Lebihan (sunday school teacher) is sick and can't teach, what are we going to do?!" Duh ha, "Well," I said, "It looks like we'll be teaching eh?" So Elder Temarohirani and I grabbed the manual and the lesson was about Lehi's dream. So we took vare of that while elder Twitchell and Elder millar taught our ami class. Then for priesthood The young mens president had left with his sick wife (Frère and Soeur Lebihan) so President Poncharville came up to me angain and said, "The Lebihan's aren't here, who's going to teach the young men!?" I said, "Well... Looks like we are going to handle that eh?" So we taught and it was actually a sweet lesson and the young men loved it. The spirit was strong all day and it was great. So for the last bit of excitement. Sunday night at 9 P.M. the phone rang and it was Elder Chong-Mook (A.P.) and he was calling to inform us that there were transfers. Oh Fun :) So Elder Millar got sent to Mada, Elder Twitchell is trained and will be companions with elder Temarohirani in St. Paul and I will Be in St. Denis as an A.P. with Elder Chong-Mook until he dies and then I will take over. Yikes... I'm going to get fat sitting in front of a computer and driving around in a car all day. I'm excited though. Yep that transfer call kind of snuck up on us all. I had no idea that there would be changes let alone that they would be that crazy. Well see ya. Love y'all!    

Elder Barclay

Monday, January 9, 2012

Hi everyone

What a week. Monday was nothing special, we just cleaned and relaxed at the apartment. For the night we went to one of our suivi's house to see if he would let us teach him and he let us in. We sat down and talked and he is from Belgium and his accent is hilarious. We had a pretty sweet lesson with him and he committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray. He Is a scuba diver and he takes people out and gives tours and stuff for his work. He drives a big van that says "Wulfy Diving" on the side and he is a total surfer bum type. Throughout the lesson fireworks were going off and mangos kept falling out of the trees and when one of the mangos hit his car he stopped and said in english, "Mind the mangos," with his belgian/dutch accent haha it was awesome. After our first contact with him I wrote a little note to describe him in my planner next to his address and I wrote scuba steve. I asked him what his name was at the end and it turns out he really is named steve. So Tuesday we had an awesome lesson with the Maillot's. The daughter Mailly sat in on the lesson and she asked for a blessing at the end. We talked to them about changing and straightening up and they were all for it so we invited them to church and they both ended up coming. Hallelujah!!! They are so awesome and they want to change but they just struggle. Total bummer but we keep working with them. Wednesday we had a lunch rendezvous at a members house and it was a party. It was at Soeur Ferrier's house and all her in-active kids came. We ate some delicious pork chops and potatoes and it was just the best ha. We taught a lesson to them all and it was sweet. Souer Ferrier is crazy active but her kids are struggling so it was good to visit with them, they have all started to come to church more and more since we've been in St.paul. Thursday we had another lunch appointment at Daniel's house and we had cous cous and chicken and stuff and it was way good. We taught him after lunch and he just seemed super depressed so at the end I just asked him if he ws happy and he said no and opened up. It was really cool and I testified of the happiness that the gospel brings to us and how awesome it is. Friday we fond a guy that had been taught by two sister missionaries in 1994 and he had a way old Book of Mormon and tons of old school pamphlets and stuff. He let us in and we talked and he used to go to church all the time back in the day but the sisters left and he never heard from anyone again. His name is carlo and he is 54 and he lives alone in his little house. He builds these giant model spaceship things out of a paste that he makes from mashed flowers, water, and paper. Its nuts haha we took some pictures you'll see. Saturday we met some funny people, the first was this plastered kreole who invited us in for some coca :) So we went in and had a little drink and chat while whe swayed back and forth and giggled and tried to organize her thoughts into sentences. It was amusing but a waste of time so I slapped a word of wisdom pamphlet in her hand and we bounced. right after that this onry old lady was in her front yard and when we walked up to her gate she said, "Who are you looking for!?" I said,"You madame." She liked that and she invited us back another day.  Sunday was fast sunday and I wanted to die. We went porting and found a family that was from portugal. Holy moly it was hard to understand them with their accents. I told them I had a Friend who's family was from Açores and the Dad lit up like a christmas tree. We taught them about the Book of Mormon and they were amazed by the story of lehi and his family and they were amped to read. They tried giving us money to buy drinks and stuff and then wouldn't let us leave because they wanted to keep talking but we got out of there finally and we're going back this week. For dinner I created a monster. This meal that I made will kill a man if it is consumed more than twice a week. We haven't given it a name yet but i'll explain what it is. Potatoes, cream, lardons, cheese, ground beef, salami, piled together into a casserole that is greasier than miguel from Jiffy Lube. We all dished up good sized plates and started in and it was the most delicious thing we had ever eaten. About 3/4's of the way in all of us doubled over and started to groan because it was the heaviest thing we had ever eaten. Elder Temarohirani looked at me and said in english, "Whats wrong with you?" haha I've been moving a little slower today due to the cloggage in my arteries. Well thats about how my week was. Celine is still on track for baptism. She has stopped smoking and she came to church with the Maillot's. Yep thats it so I love y'all see ya

Love Jeff  

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Hi there

This last week was pretty chouette. We started keeping track of our hours of proselyting time and calculating the percentage of our time we spend proselyting (teaching, finding, and traveling) and we are working harder and harder. As a result we've had some awesome success. We fixed a baptismal date with Celine for the 4th of February and we set up like 5 rendezvous for next week with solid investigator families. Yeah, it's nuts. As for funny stories, there aren't really any. We just worked our guts out and it feels good ha. On Friday after we taught our friend Geoffrey at the church we caught a little taxi bus to go up in the mountains to see a former investigator that called us. We had to get up there quick but the buses don't run at night so we packed a change of clothes so that we would have time to stay up there and work and then run home at night to be home on time. So the run home was awesome. We ran so fast and it was farther than I thought it was from our apartment. I was drenched from head to toe in sweat and I thought I was going to die ha ha. When we got to the street of our apartment we walked and cooled down and it was about 9 P.M. and this place shuts down at about 8 30 so the only people out at night are the hood rats. So many hunnies were fishing for green cards as we walked by ha ha it was ridiculous! Saturday we had a zone conference in the south at the St. Pierre church to fix goals and stuff for the new year and it was a joke. I wanted to punch a hole in the chalk board because people are unintelligent. I'm not going to go into detail but man, people are just dumb. After the zone conference a family from st.Pierre invited all 18 missionaries to their house for dinner for new years and that was fun. We were grilling saucisse and like mad and there was tons of rice and rougaille tomate. I ate my brains out. Sunday was interesting. We had 15 people at church including the four missionaries and things got a little heated during priesthood and it was bad. There are some major problems here with church leadership and disciplinary action and people are just going crazy and President Poncharville tells us everything and wants us to tell him what to do. Half of the branch presidents here are guys that have been members for less than 4 years and no one knows how the church works and there are big problems. Yikes ha I don't want to be a bishop. I think I'll go be catholic after my mission. It's to the point where I don't want to bring our investigators to church because members are out of line. There isn't much we can do though so tant pis. Last night we went to dinner at The Gahete's house again and we had ourselves a jolly old time. Yeah I'm sorry, I don't have much more exciting news... Madame Maillot is still our homie and she protects us from the bad guys which is nice. Les Frères Mormon get some respect now because we've got an in with the boss of the streets. Yep well Picture time! See ya Love you all Happy New Year!

Jeff