the chronicles of caen

well, everything is terrific. how goes it at the home? i sent some pictures home so you can see all the exciting things that i'm doing here in the beautiful city of caen! i'm loving life here. everything is going great. this week was really a terrific week with the members. we gave a training this week about working with members and loving them and our amis, and it was super good. so this week we've really been trying to apply the things that we taught. first off, we went to visit a couple members. we went to the family lefoyer, and it was super good. we read a talk that is called the case study of sister susan fulcher, and it was super good. it really talks about how to work with members and how this missionary completely turned a ward around and just lit it on fire. you can prolly find it on the internet if you want. but anyway, the biggest thing that i took from it was attitude. having a positive attitude about missionary work towards the members and just telling them how much we love it. cause honestly, i've had some companions that just try to be the martyr and talk about how hard missionary work is and how hard it is to be away from home and everything like that, but honestly i love it, and it brings me so much happiness. just the simple fact of telling people that changes them completely. we shared a spiritual thought just about how happy we are on missions and how just the fact to share the gospel makes us so happy, then told them it's not just us that can feel this, but you guys can too! you can have this joy too. it just simply comes from sharing the gospel. so that was really good, and the members seemed really inspired and excited to do missionary work too. so that was sweet. then sunday was stellar too. what we did is that we made a calendar to pass around to the members during relief society (cause it's obviously the women who are going to invite us over since the men always just say idk i'll have to ask my wife haha) that had a couple of scriptures on it and a message from us about how we'd really like to come over and really get to know them so we could all work together and such. so we passed that around, and it actually came back to us really filled out. we have about 3 rdvs with members each week for the next month or so. so that was stellar. and hopefully we can get them all excited about missionary work too. then after, we had testimony meeting, and it was great. we had about half of the testimonies that were about missionary work. about how teaching with the missionaries has blessed them and how we all have to help the missionaries and invite them to eat and such haha. it was super good. kinda awkward to translate since it was all talking about how great our missionaries are and such, so that was weird to say back in english, but it's fine. oh also, i don't know if i ever told you, but we do an english translation in our ward. there are often americans that come to see the normandy beaches and we have some amis who speak english, so that's fun. it's super super hard though. i had no idea how hard translating was until i had to do it. and it was killer. by the end of sacrament meeting i'm just pooped. it's great. so that was great seeing the members getting at least a little excited about missionary work. 

hmm. i can't really think of any other things going on here. all of our amis are doing great. we had a sweet rdv with stanley the other day, he's just super funny and he finally really opened up to us and we joked around and it was sweet. the poor guy though is in a sticky situation... he's from nigeria and he's here in france trying to get legality, but he's not in the system yet, so he's half living on the street... he sometimes sleeps at his friends house, but sometimes he sleeps in the train station.. it's super sad. there are honestly a ton of africans here that are trying to get legality but it takes forever and it's really hard because while the try they have almost literally nothing... it's really really humbling seeing people like this who don't really have anything and see how happy they are. turns out happiness doesn't come from having everything after all. that's one lesson i've learned. happiness comes from being happy with what you have. one of my favorite talks is the one from elder uchtdorf in relief society, forget me not. the part about charlie and the chocolate factory is golden. i'm a fan. so there's the sad note for the day. the worst part is that we can't do anything for them. mais bon..

anyway, to end on a good note, we have a bunch of great people that we are teaching right now. we are teaching this american lady, i don't know if i've told you, but her son is a member in the states, and he's coming up for the next 5 weeks, so they will all be coming to church for the next 5 weeks! so that'll be super great. cause the problem isn't the american lady, but it's her husband, who is a french guy who we don't get to see that often but who we're working on all together. cause she would love to get baptized, but she won't until her husband will. so this is our chance to have them all at the church and for them to have just a terrific experience. we're excited. also, mother, thank you for your testimony in one of your recent-ish letters about how things always go better when you put scripture reading and prayers and just heavenly father first. i shared it with this lady last week and she really enjoyed it. so thanks! thanks for all the support and everything that you do! love you all! have a terrific week! à plus!

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Elder Matthew Meyers
1 rue de la Délivrande
14000 Caen
La France