Date
March 1, 2017
Area
Antibes
Companion
Elder Blackham
Transfer Week
Well, my 13th transfer is in the books and so starts my 14th... out of 16. Where on earth has all of the time gone? Elder Blackham and I are staying together down here. This makes my 4th transfer here and I ain't even mad. I definitely have a different mentality doing 4 here than I did in Angoulême. The work is quite a bit different here too though. And the ward. I love it here. This place is my home away from home. I could probably happily finish my mission here, but I highly doubt that will happen.
So as far as the work goes, Bernard and Liliane aren't really making much progress. They're still seeing us though, but they haven't started reading the Book of Mormon other than the 2 chapters we left them a while ago. So the last time we were there we really explained the importance to read it, so we'll be seeing if they understood that tomorrow. Also, we found 3 new people to teach this week! 3!!!!! I'm so excited! The work here in Antibes is really starting to roll. So, the first person is named Anna. She's probably in her 40s and Portuguese. We knocked on her door one evening and invited us in without us saying anything. We instead sat on her front porch because she was all alone and continued to teach her about the restoration of the church of Jesus Christ. We gave her a Book of Mormon, and she was super excited to read it. She also asked if people were allowed to visit our meeting on Sunday, which they totally are! She didn't come yesterday, but we have a rdv with her this week, so im praying all goes well. The next two people I'm even more excited about. We were walking along the coast and stopped two young, black dudes and started talking to them (Emmanuel and Franklin). They both said Jesus means the world to them and that their lives would fall apart without him. So we walked with them and taught them about the restoration as well. We also gave each of them a copy of the Book of Mormon and they were super excited to have another testament of Jesus Christ. They're both college students too! What could be better? I'm honestly so excited to see what this transfer has in store for us down here. We put in a ton of work last transfer finding people to teach, and now we're starting to see the fruits of our labors, and lemme tell you, it's a dang good feeling.
Speaking of finding, yesterday we were talking to an older couple that told us they were atheist when a man walked by and said something to us not to kind that sounds like "con" in English, but a little longer. Anybody fluent in French swear words should know what I'm talking about. The older couple were quite offended by him, then the 4 of us just talked about how rude he was and how, even if we have differing opinions, we need to respect each other. It was a pretty funny experience.
As I was reading proverbs this week, I came across this.
"5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." (Proverbs 3:5-6)
Sometimes it's hard to put our confidence 100% in the Lord, especially when things don't go as we planned them, but we are proposed that if we trust him and his knowledge, everything is going to be alright. That's comforting.
To anybody that cares enough to write, my address hasn't changed
Elder Calvin Tew
5 Avenue Pasteur
06600 Antibes
France
Elder Tew