Fifty-two

Bonjour a toute le monde 

So this week was packed full of a lot of things we had to do. 

-we found a new apartment

-helped the Poiter sisters move

-District meeting in Limoges

-Exchange in Brive la Gaillarde

So we were practically everywhere except Angouleme but it was still a good week :)

Wednesday: I was with Elder Bentley and he is a new missionary so it was a good time. It was basically a day full of contacting and we had 17 contacts and 3-4 of them were practically lessons. In order to be a lesson you have to pray with someone and praying in the road is a little weird in France :) But we met a Spaniard, a guy from Jerusalem and many different other types of cultured people. We ate at a Chinese Buffet and it was literally the best thing ever! 16 euros from everything you would like! It was a dream :)

Thursday: We had district meetings in Limoges. It was good and the main theme was about loyalty.  It was a really good meeting and Elder Brill, my last collegue is at Perigeux now so it was good to catch up with him. We took a TER train from Limoges to Angouleme and it took two hours! It was crazy so we got home around 19h30.

Friday: We helped the sister missionaries move apartments in Poiter. It is a really cool city and it really reminds me of Dijon. The mission rented out a camion and we just went to work. It took us to 19h30 at night and then we had to take the last train to Angouleme. When we got back we saw the really cool rainbow.

Saturday: We had some lessons and weekly planning. We passed by some potentials as well and it was a really good day.

Sunday: We had church and then more passing points. A family from Limoges came and they are really cool. His wife taught me to play a bit of piano.

So that was this week. We have zone conference at Bordeaux tomorrow and should be a good boost to get more energized.

I love you all and thank you for everything you all do. May we all continue on with an eye single to the glory of God and keep on walking with hope, faith, and a twinkle in our eyes.

Elder Duffy

Fifty-one

Hello everyone! Sorry for not writing yesterday. We got permission

from our Zone leaders to switch P-Days this week because literally on

Monday everything in Angouleme is closed so we changed it to today.

This week there is not a lot to report on. All our Amis are still on

vacation and Angouleme seems a little empty because everyone seems to

be anywhere else. I will send you a photo of what Elder Curtis and I

have been working on this week. We have been putting all the addresses

in our areabook on this app on our IPads so we can pass people in a

certain area when we are there. As well we have been cleaning and

preparing to change apartments.

This afternoon we have 2 appointments to look at new apartments so it

should be fun. One said it has an Italian shower so I am pretty

excited for whatever that is.

This week I have been thinking on really how lucky we are to have the

gospel and to have a latter-day prophet. It is truly a

magnificent blessing that we have that I can't even describe in words

how lucky we are. May we continue to walk in faith with a hope

singular to the glory of God.

16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the

children of God:

17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with

Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also

glorified together. (Romans 8:16)

39 For behold, this is my work and my glory--to bring to pass the

immortality and eternal life of man. (Moses 1:39)

As we taken up our daily cross and do the things that would make God proud

of us, even if it is found strange in our modern society. May we see

others not as they are right now but as they can become. May we focus

on the most important things in life and not the minuscule. May we all

do some self reflection, a self interview, and look on how we can put

off the natural man and become saints through Christ and be joint

heirs with him and an earthly savior for others.

I love you all and may God bless us all with more humility and joy in

the journey.

With love,

Elder Duffy

Fifty

Simple meals I can fix!

This week as the title has been one of much finding! A lot of our solid

amis are either out of town or have stopped answering calls :( mais

C'est la vie. At the beginning of my mission we would have been just

doing a lot of contacting and trying to go "ham" but Elder Curtis and

I are trying another technique. In our area book there are a lot of

potentials that only have addresses and no numbers. So we have been

putting their addresses and passing them and it has actually been

going quite well. We have this new friend Kevin and his family. He has a

very unique story on how he started following God, and I

would like to share it with you. Back in the year 2000 Kevin was

camping with two of his friends near to a cliff. It was night and they

were talking around a campfire, when suddenly, one of Kevin friends disappears. Kevin and his other friend start searching for their friend frantically and the next thing Kevin knows he is in the hospital. What happened was Kevin's friend had

fallen of his chair backwards and skidded down this steep slope and

off of the cliff. It was about 25 meters on the downward slope and

25-35 meters of this cliff. When Kevin and his other friend found he was missing Kevin had blindingly went through the same fate and fell off this cliff. Miracously, Kevin and his friend both survived but they both came out of this experience different. Kevin changed the course of his life traumatically and started living the principles that he had learned since his youth. It is such a amazing story of

survival and preserving. He didn't come out of this accident without

scars. He is missing some muscles in his back and he has some

gashes on his  head. But one thing that I omitted to say about Kevin is he

is probably the most fit person I have ever met.  His house is

filled with trophies of running and karate events. I actually think his

fitness level helped him to survive. He also showed us some moves with

his nunchucks.  

Our Branch President, his wife, and two grandchildren were in

an autoroute accident two days ago so if you could keep them in your

prayers. I think Soeur Savreux got injured pretty bad.

Love you all family and friends and have a great week! As well if you

have not started doing genealogy, you need to start. I have

started looking at my family tree 3 weeks ago and it is really a

wonderful thing to see.

Love you all!

Enthusiastically and Sincerely,

Elder Duffy

Forty-nine

I hope everyone of you had a great week! Sorry that this letter is

going to be short and don't have a lot of time :(

So I would just like to focus on Christ Kevine's baptism. It was

really great! There were about 20-25 people there, about 10-15 members

and 6 other people that are Christ Kevine's friends. It lasted 3 1/2 hours because 

we had a barbecue afterward.

I won't send you the all the details of the service but I

will share some funny moments. At the beginning of the service

Christ’s friends just began to go up to people and take photos and

videos of people singing, it was the first time I saw something like

that :) After the first song the Branch President, President Savreaux,

told them in a really polite way that they can't do it. But besides

that Christ was really happy before and especially after his baptism and confirmation.  

It was a great experience for everyone involved. Really the Spirit of God is manifested 

very powerfully during sacred ordannces and we need to

remember and hold tight to those moments when we can't deny when we

felt the Holy Ghost. That's why the scriptures keep saying remember

for that exact reason. I love you all and I will write a more next week.  

Elder Curtis and I will be staying another transfer here in Angouleme.

Have a great week!

Avec amour,

Elder Duffy

Forty-eight

Hello everyone!

Let me just say that this week was hot! It reached 40 degrees Celsius
a couple times which I think is just lower or higher then 100 degrees
Fahrenheit, so it was hot :)

Tuesday: We went to the hospital at around 11 am to get the stitches out of
Elder Curtis belly. We were there for about an hour with Frere Banks.
A great man from the south of London and he is super funny!
After that he took us out to McDonald's and dropped us back at our
place. We had service actually planned at his place but his wife and
him had to cancel because something came up.

Wednesday: It was a pretty packed day. We had three lessons with
friends.This week we saw Chris Kevin just to make sure that he
is going to be ready for his baptism this Saturday. Everything has
been planned and he is so ready! He has such a desire to do missionary
work as well it is super cool! I will send you a photo of the baptism
next week and all the details of what happened. He even asked me if I
could be the person that baptized him! I am pretty nervous because
I have never baptized someone all by self before.
I helped in a baptism in Montpellier with Frantz but all I did was make
sure that he all the way under the water. So it
will be a super cool experience and I am excited :)

Thursday: We had our studies and then cleaned for 3 1/2 hours in a mission wide
cleaning day. It was fun and we threw away about 9 full bags of trash.
It was a good time :) Then we headed to Brive because I had to do
my legality in Brive and we also had an exchange. It was really fun
and everything worked for my legality so it is a good de stressor.

Friday: We finished the exchange in Brive and we did a lot of contacting and
found a couple of interested people. We left Brive around 5 and it
took the rest of the night for us to get back to Angouleme.

Saturday: We had some rdvs  in the morning and weekly planning at the night. It
was a really good day but the coolest thing that happened is we
contacted a man from Ireland and we started talking to him a little
bit. When he looked at my tag he started going off about the Duffy
clan and he showed me on a map where the Duffy's live in Ireland. It
was super cool. We are from central Ireland in between the two big lakes.
 I guess there is a big valley and that is where the Duffy clan
is from. He said my name used to be O Duffigh and
then with time and changes it came to Duffy. It was super cool! We are
going to talk to him the first week in August because he just left on
vacation. It got me super hyped for genealogy. I am totally
going on a European tour/backpacking trip post mission and going back
to the homeland (Ireland) :)

Sunday: We had church and have just been coordinating the
baptism with all the leaders here. It has been two years since a baptism
in Angouleme so people are pretty excited. After
church we went to the Banks and had lunch with Chris.
He is getting incorporated into the Branch just
fine. After that the Banks dropped Elder Curtis and I back chez nous
and then the Mazalyrats, the only active family in the branch picked
us up and we went to a hospital to see Soeur Mazalyrat's motherer and we gave
her a blessing. It was really fun. Missionary work is a lot more
enjoyable when you work with the members.

So that was this week! This Friday is when
we will get our transfer calls, and on Saturday Chris Kevin's baptism!

I love you all and thank you for all the support and
prayers! It is such a blessing being a missionary and I know this is
the greatest and most important work that is our blessing to do.

En avant

With love,

Elder Duffy
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Forty-seven

Hello everyone! This week has literally flown by! First off, prayers go

out to the people in Nice, and everyone affected by what happened.

So last Monday was intense! I sent the frowns face photo of me by the

cartoon museum because it is closed Monday, it's pretty sad mais ca va.

Monday night we headed to Brive to have an exchange with our

district leader and do my legality but right when we entered Limoges I

realized I had forgotten everything that I needed to do legality! It

was one of those kind of moments that you just laugh and keep on going.

Tuesday was one of my best days ever on the mission! We were in Brive

and we had just finished our studies when we got a call from Elder Carlson, our district leader, who said President and Soeur Brown were going to be in Brive in 20 minutes (because they were going to Bordeaux) and that they wanted to take us go out and eat! We went to this crepe/galette place. I got the traditional French galette and it was so good! France is such a cool country! Basically Europe is just so cool! So after that we contacted for about an hour and we took a train to Bordeaux to get ready for a zone conference.

That night while we were taking the elevator up to the 9th floor

to the zone leaders apartment, we got stuck in he elevator for like

20-30 minutes. It was epic! A repair man had to come fix the elevator

but before he came Elder Richmond found the lever and we were able to

get out. It's a great story though :)

Wednesday: The conference was really good and we just talked about opposition and how we really need to focus our efforts on working with members and less actives.

That is what we are going to do.

Thursday: It was a solid day and we started to work with the members more.

Working with members in France is awesome but also challenging.

We will be having the baptism in 1 1/2 weeks of Christ Kevin.

He is 16 years old but seems he is 25. God and Jesus Christ are the

focus of his life and he is really a great example to me and he has a

great testimony of the Book of Mormon. He says he wants to be a

missionary in the future and he asked me if I would be the one to

baptize him, so it is really cool! He is really ready and he is solid!

(I just wished he had a car :)

Friday: We started out with some service in the morning for Carole Serard, and we went with Frere Banques. He is from South London and he is a great man! We did some lawn stuff and fixed his tools. Then he took us to McDonald's and he basically made Elder Curtis and I get the biggest thing on the menu :) it was great! After that we went to an Amis house Francois and ate lunch with them and talked/taught a lesson. Then we had a lesson with Florent and then Christ and then weekly planned for the rest of the day.

Saturday: A day of lessons and it was pretty tranquille. In Angouleme is a lot of people are open to talk with us, but not a lot

of people want/are willing to change.

Sunday: Had church for 2 hours. A lot of people in the branch are on vacation

so that cut church to 2 hours. After church we put almost all the less actives/members in our IPads. Then we ate, had a lesson, less active lesson, had dinner, and then we had an hour of lighting our bonfires which basically means do some our genealogy. It is something that is new that is being started.

So that was my week.

I would like to end with my favorite scripture

D:C 68:6

6 Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with

you, and will stand by you; and ye shall bear record of me, even Jesus

Christ, that I am the Son of the living God, that I was, that I am,

and that I am to come.

Have a great week,

With love,

Elder Duffy

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Forty-six

Hello everyone!

We were all over this week, so here is what happened:

Monday we were at Bordeaux for a zone day preparation day and it was really fun. We played ping-pong had a barbecue and overall just had a really good time. After that we did three hours of finding.

We had forty-two conversations that day and found a really cool Belgium couple that were really interested. We gave them a book of Mormon and sent their contact information to Belgium.

After the finding day we took the train back to Angouleme. On

Wednesday we had Family Home Evening with an investigator and 2 members. It was a good time for Bruno and the members to bond. (It was a good time plus food so that never hurts). 

Thursday we had a district meeting in Perigeux. We are focusing on how to create bonfires. We’re using the European plan and trying to work with the members more, to achieve the overall goal this year to have 250 baptisms.

(Right now we're about 70 baptisms for this year but it's looking good

for this next half.) Here in Angouleme we have someone

that will be baptized in two weeks. His name is Chris Kevin and he is

from the Ivory Coast.

Friday was another busy day.  We had 4 lessons and weekly planning.

It was really packed but it was a great day. 

Saturday was another great day, we had some people not show up to rendezvous's but hey that's missionary life. 

Sunday was great.  We had church, then we had ward council.  We had three investigators that were planning to come but only Chris Kevin came. He said he wants to go on a mission, and he knows that the Book of Mormon is true.

This next week we're going to be out of town a lot because we will actually be in Brive.  I need to do my legality this year so we’ll be going there and do an exchange with the district leaders.  We will also be going to Bordeaux for a zone

conference with President and Soeur Brown.

I know the gospel is true.  It is the greatest knowledge that you can have to know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is true.  It’s a great peace one receives with this knowledge. My invitation for

everyone is to find out for yourself.

You should know if it's true or not if you ask with a sincere heart and a contrite spirit.

Have a great week :-)

With love,

Elder Duffy