Fifty-six

Picture thanks to Roberta Battezzato, Elder Battezzato's mom.

Hello everyone! I have just noticed (because of a gentle reminder from my Dad ;) that my weekly letters are in fact getting shorter and shorter. Sorry for that :) 

So first off I would like to resend that poem that I send out last week because I messed up a little bit. 

Fleeing Greens

Fleeing greens flow ever yonder

Before I even have a glimpse

To truly come to appreciate and ponder

What to me they truly mean

So this peaceable dream continues

Without a hint of slowing down

I have come to trust the Lord

By the flow of fleeing greens

Voila :) 

So there is so much that I have had to catch up on, simple said Elder Curtis whitewashed Marseille and my new collegue is Elder Sorensen. He is from Draper Utah, he is a really hard worker and obedient and is super cool! 

He can do back flips and he is really good at skiing, and unicycled down a mountain at Snowbird, so he is pretty legendary. 

So at the start of the week a couple other missionaires and I transversed like all of France and got to Lyon. We had a lot of meetings. It was really fun to catch up with all the other missionaires that are like my same age. Elder Sorrensen and I headed back to Angouleme and it was awesome! For each of the train rides that we were on, (each consisting for a couple hours) we had conversations with the people across the USA for the whole time! It was really awesome and we meet with some really cool people. On Saturday we finally moved all the way into our apartment.  It is really nice to be done and the new apartment in Angouleme is so sweet! 

I would like to share another experience that we had. This last Sunday we were passing a less active, who ended up not being home. We saw 2 young guys, smoking, and doing other things, the type of people you wouldn't just go up to and talk to. But we had a really strong feeling that we should and we had no idea why. So we approached them and started talking to them to see if they knew the person we were looking for.  They said no but they said there was a guy that they know who is really believing who would be interested to talk with us. They pointed to this apartment building that we were right next to and say to press the number 1 so we did and this guy on the intercom answered real quick to us a let us in and it is a super cool guy from Congo who is about 30 years old, married, and has 2 kids. He is Buddhist but believes in Christ so he is Christian as well. He was super interested and we taught him the restoration and on the temple on the spot and he said he is going to church next week and inviting one of his friends! It was such a miracle and this experience really showed us the importance of following impressions of the Holy Ghost even when at first it looks like it will lead to nothing. It was an awesome experience. 

Besides that the work is progressing here in Angouleme, it is such a blessing to be a missionary. 

This is the Lord's work and it is such a blessing to know that. 

I love you all and everything is awesome here. Thank you for the emails and I love you all so much!

Elder Duffy

Envoyé de mon iPad

Fifty-five

Hello Everyone,.

Right now I am in Bordeaux.

So we got our calls on Friday and I will be staying here in Angouleme! I will be training a new bleu and becoming district leader! Elder Curtis will be going to Marseille and he will be white washing into Marseille! He is really excited and this next transfer is going to be really fun! The next 3 days I will be in Lyon getting training on how to be a trainer and then we will return back to Angouleme Thursday night or Friday morning. Then on Friday we will be moving everything into our new Apartment. We stayed in Angouleme for the whole week and we got to work :) 

I would like to share a poem I wrote 2 weeks ago on a train from Perigeux to Angouleme

Fleeing Greens

Flowing greens flow ever yonder

Before I even have a glimpse

To truly come to appreciate and ponder

What to me they truly mean

So this peaceable dream continues

Without a hint of slowing down

I have come to trust the Lord

By the flow of fleeing greens

I love you all and have a great week :)

Elder Duffy

Fifty-four

This week was an awesome week! We had district meeting in Perigeux, an
exchange in Brive, and we moved apartments, sort of :) The new
apartment is awesome! It is about 3-4 times bigger then our old
apartment and it is high up so you can see the city of Angouleme.
This is the last week of the transfer! It is nuts!
I have already been here in Angouleme for 3 months. Elder Curtis
and I came in and I am older then he is in the mission so
anything could happen. I don't have a lot of time to write but I love
you all and have a great week.

Love,

Elder Duffy

Fifty-three

We had Zone Conference this week in Bordeaux and it went well! We talked about wearing the whole armor of God. Since President Brown is an archer he brought his bow, and he let 2 missionaries shoot it, symbolizing the fiery darts of Satan. Sadly I was one of the two, but it was legendary quand même. The Spirit was strongly present at the conference and it was a very spiritually uplifting experience.

We found a new apartment! It was awesome! It is in a really nice part of the city and is probably 2 to 3 times bigger then our current apartment.

The dawn has broken! We were blessed to start teaching five new people this week. 

The last three weeks has been what we call in this mission "the grind". But now, the future is looking bright! I think this next week there could possibly be 3-5 new people with baptismal dates.

There are two things I have been thinking about this week. 

First: What is truth?

President Uchdorf addressed this topic in 2013 as a devotional talk.  

Here is a part of the talk I really enjoyed.

The Blind Men and the Elephant 

Over one hundred years ago, an American poet put to rhyme an ancient parable. The first verse of the poem speaks about:

Six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

 Might satisfy his mind.

In the poem each of the six travelers takes hold of a different part of the elephant and then describes to the others what he has discovered. One of the men finds the elephant’s leg and describes it as being round and rough like a tree. Another feels the tusk and describes the elephant as a spear. A third grabs the tail and insists that an elephant is like a rope. A fourth discovers the trunk and insists that the elephant is like a large snake.

Each is describing truth.

Because his truth comes from personal experience, each insists that he knows what he knows.

The poem concludes:

And so these men of Indostan

Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

We look at this story from a distance and smile. After all, we know what an elephant looks like. We have read about them and watched them on film, and many of us have even seen one with our own eyes. We believe we know the truth of what an elephant is. That someone could make a judgment based on one aspect of truth and apply it to the whole seems absurd or even unbelievable. On the other hand, can’t we recognize ourselves in these six blind men? Have we ever been guilty of the same pattern of thought?

I know for myself I am like these men of Indostan, I look at most situations/problems with a very limited, biased view and I believe most of us do. If we can master our mind, everything follows. That is what the Book of Mormon says in Alma 60:23.

23 Do ye suppose that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also.

The second thing that I have been thinking of this week is we need to understand history of other religions to better understand our own and where others are coming from. This has been on my mind because of an experience Elder Curtis and I had yesterday. We were going to pass by a less active’s house and I saw this guy on the side of a street with a nice beard, so I said to him I really like your beard, not trying to start a conversation because we had something to do but just compliment him. He said thank you and invited us over. This man is Muslim and he told us he had talked to other Mormon missionaries.  He knew quite a lot about our religion and what I know of his is very biased and influenced from many factors that I have heard. He told us that we should not change our religions views but that we should know about others as well and I totally agree with him. I feel sometime I was scared to learn about other religions because it would weaken my faith. But actually, I have learn it reinforces my testimony about things I hold dear.

I am so glad that I can see the whole “elephant”.

I love you all, but I am especially appreciative to my earthly parents who had the faith, hope, and charity to have taught me this principles in my youth.

Sincerely,

Elder Duffy