Week 65

Wow it's been a super long week. We were asked to visit all the districts in the zone and do an exchange with each district leader.

Here's a little map of everywhere we went

Week 65

Dres' mission President's wife posts all these pics of what is going on in the mission on Facebook.  This is Elder Empey at the Mission Council that was in Paris on Friday

This is elder Durant's letter home. I thought you guys might like having a different point of view  

Well, a solid week for Elder Empey and me in Rennes

Tuesday we had no district meeting or anything since it is week one of the transfer and we got to work. It was fun. Winter is setting in. We had a great lesson with our ami Albert and his family. His son wants to get baptized with him now.

Wednesday was good. We woke up a little early and ran to the sister's apartment in the morning to help get her luggage to the train station. It was fun to see the city at that point of view. For no real reason, maybe because it is fall, I have been craving chili. Not good chili, low quality canned chili. It is one of the best foods in the world and takes me back to football in 6th grade and it just so happens that a ward family made us chili. I was too happy. We saw our ami Patience and a few others.  Everyone is doing pretty well it was nice to welcome a new sister missionary to Rennes.

Thursday was a battle. We got stood up 4 times and had a lot of traveling to do. We used our time to the best though and countered our bad luck by swinging by some ami's homes and then doing some of our weekly planning. The night ended with us eating raclette at my favorite family's home.

Friday we were up and at 'em at 3:55 am so we could get pretty and go into Paris for mission council. President Babin is my hero. Love that guy.

Saturday was a real hoot. We went out to a town called Fougeres to help someone move. In that town there is the largest medieval castle in Europe. Maybe I will come back to see it when I can explore.

Sunday was nice.

This week will be crazy. President wants us to do all of our exchanges and go to all district meetings this week. That means tuesday we will be in Brest (the farthest west in the mission) wednesday we will be in Angers and then Cholet, thursday we will be in Nantes and then Saint Nazaire. Friday morning we take the 5:57 train and get home just in time for our district meeting. Should be great. I am excited.

Have a good week, you are the best,

Elder Durant

Week 64

Our week was good. Transfers are Wednesday and elder durant and I will be staying together for another six weeks. We found out that they are combining zones together and now there are 30 missionaries in our zone. So we are going to be a bunch more busy going to visit two more districts and what not. It used to just be the Rennes and Brest districts in our zone but now we have the Nantes and Anger district as well. Geographically speaking our zone now covers from Rennes over to Brest and all the way down to La Rochelle. It's going to be pretty fun going down to that part of the mission but were stressin just a little bit as well hah.

As for this weeks events..... I didn't bring a journal or my planner to the church with me so I'm kinda drawing blanks on stuff that happened this week 😁 I'll try my best though. We were able to get back in contact with one of our Amis that had a baptismal date at one point. Elder Baldwin and I found him and he was progressing super well

until we totally lost contact, elder durant and I passed by a couple days earlier and fixed a rendez vous. The rdv went super well, the spirt was strong and we talked about the plan of salvation. He has a testimony of the restoration and I think we'll be getting him back on track to be baptized.

The elders from vannes came over Friday to do a baptismal interview for the sisters here in Rennes. The interview was scheduled for the evening so they ended up staying the night with us and that was fun, like being in a 4 man again.

We went to a wedding! One of the Soeurs Amis was getting married and invited us to it. It was at the city hall, which is super pretty, and it was a cool little experience.

We've been knocking doors in this student apartment building just next to our house and it's been sweet! We got let in like 3 times within 30 min which is pretty good. We found that students are really open and this is the age that people really start to ask questions and all so we feel like we could find some solid Amis in there!

Week 63

We were sent this picture by a friend of Josh Stanley's sister who lives in Dres' ward in Rennes.  He talks about doing service for them on Saturday in this letter.

Conference is awesome! We were only able to watch a couple of the sessions and so I'm excited to read the other talks here soon. I really like the elder renlund, the new apostle, his testimony and what he said about looking at everyone through the eyes of a parent, it's then when we can get a glimpse of the love our Heavenly Father has for
us. 

The earlier part of the week was pretty good, I've had a slight cold which has been a little bit annoying but nothing too bad. We did some exchanges with the elders from Saint brieuc. I was with elder Sanchez here in Rennes, he's a cool guy, we're pretty tight. We visited this ami of ours that's kinda interested in the gospel but he kinda just wants to be our friend for the most part, we played guitar with him for a min and then started talking about prophets but then his friends showed up and we weren't able to finish what we were wanting to say cuz they talked a whole bunch hah.

Wednesday, we exchanged back, went to see an ami and had a couple other good rendezvous. We got to see our Chinese recent convert, he's awesome.

Thursday, was elder Durants one year mark. We went down to vannes to do his legality in the morning, I was able to pick up my card of legality while we were there as well. Once we got back from vannes we had a rendez vous with one of ours Amis. He has been investigating the church for over a year and really wants to get baptized but hasn't been able to quit smoking, he has been reading a bunch in the Book of Mormon every day and has recently been able to quit coffee and so we engaged him to stop smoking and he gave us his can of tobacco, cigarette paper, and filters. We also got to go see a super cool member family from New Caledonia that night, they're super fun! 

On Friday morning we went out and tried to pass by some people who are only available in the mornings but no one was home. A cool congolai member took us out to a Chinese buffet which was really nice of him.  Two Americans and an African man at a Chinese restaurant in France, pretty rad. He's a super cool nice guy and is always willing to teach with us which we really appreciate.

We got to go give service Saturday morning for an American family from the ward. We went and helped them haul some wood for their furnace and I found out that the mom is friends with one of josh Stanley's sisters, pretty cool! We got to see one of our  most solid Amis as well. We found him and his family when we walked past an apartment building with a bunch of chairs sitting out front. We asked if they needed help and we ended up helping a bunch with their move.  They moved right into our neighbor hood and we've been able to see them a couple of times.   They are from Congo, and have only been in France for a couple of years. The dad is super interested and is really searching for the truth.  

Saturday night and most of Sunday we were watching general conference which, like I said earlier, was super
good! Love you guys and I love this gospel. Stay sweet ✌🏼️