Well-dressed

Hey everyone!

First of all, happy Fathers Day to my father! Thank you for everything you've done for me. I couldn't express it if I tried. You're the best, and I love you.

So most missionaries know that whenever you have a baptismal service, something has to go wrong. Nobody knows why; it's just a rule.

This Saturday we had the baptismal service of our friend Fred. I don't know if I've talked about Fred very much...he already had a baptismal date when I got into the sector. He's a homie. He actually reminds me a lot of my old roommate Osvaldo, just a Tahitian version. He was brought to church by a friend and was taught the gospel principally by Elder Rivas and the missionary I replaced, Elder Stolk.

So we got to the service and everything seemed fine: the font was filled, the water was warm, the food was prepared, the talks were ready...and then Fred went to change into his white baptismal clothes.

We expected him to have the pants. He expected us to have them.

With no options of going all the way home to get them, we looked through the closet in Versailles to find some replacement pants. Now Fred is not a small man, and all the clothes in that closet were just unrealistically small. No way he was going to fit into any of them, even for a two-minute ordinance. We didn't know what other options we had. I started thinking, it's not so bad to baptize someone who's not wearing full white, right?

When Elder Rivas held up a white dress for women's baptisms, commenting "This will have to do," I truly thought he was joking. That's the type of guy he is. But he was totally straight-faced. Then Fred took the dress, equally straight-faced, and went into the bathroom to change. He wasn't going to let something as small as a dress stop him from the most important act of his life.

 Luckily, Tahitians can pull this type of thing off. He rocked it. 

                                   He gave a great testimony at his service (his first time talking from the pulpit), 
                                 drove our ami home for us, and went to go buy a suit for his confirmation the next day. 

So missionaries aren't allowed to gather in a central location for transfer days anymore, nor are they allowed to be in Paris for very long...which means that over a hundred missionaries now have train tickets to Paris that give them about an hour in the city before they leave to their next area. An hour to find their new companion, travel through the metro from one of seven Paris train stations to another, with two gigantic suitcases. Now the thing is, no missionary is allowed to be alone, and an elder can't be alone with a sister. And who was it up to to create the solution to this hellish algorithm? Us. Central Paris. This is what a portion of our plans looked like:

On a sadder note, Elder Rivas is being transferred to Rennes this Wednesday. I was hoping we could stay more than one transfer together. My new companion, Elder Walton, was in my last zone and I was able to do a couple of exchanges with him; he's a hard worker and I have no doubt we'll do great together, but anything is a change from Elder Rivas. I'll miss that guy.

Just like you, we've done the lesson on Scriptures, the last two weeks for some reason. The second time was by our recent RM quorum president, who made this point: if any of us traveled for three days and realized we needed to go back home because we didn't have the scriptures, would we do it? Like Nephi did. Then he showed the difference between the Nephites and the Mulekites, whose largest difference was the presence or absence of scriptures. He said "I hope today we can all study the scriptures a little more than yesterday and a little less than tomorrow."

Et cetera. 

Lots of other things happened, including two finding days, a reporter asking to shadow us for a day, an awesome YSA activity, and us setting a baptismal date with another ami, but that'll all have to wait until next week. Or maybe you'll just have to see it in my journal. If I ever decide to update it more frequently than I update you guys.

If you made it to the bottom of this overly-long email, congrats. Love you guys. Be good!

Elder Stanford 

Mission Française de Paris

Inspirés d'en haut

Hey all! Not a lot of time. But I just wanted to share a quick miracle with you.

On Saturday, March 11th, 2016, a woman named Lydie was sitting in her home in Paris. Despite being quite active in a Christian church, she had been feeling for some time that something was missing in her spiritual life. That day, she expressed to God in prayer that she wanted to be guided toward something that He wants for her. Then she went outside.

She later found herself on a bus, and decided to get off at a park in the northwestern part of Paris.

---

At the same time, two elders were just finishing with an activity in a chapel just north of Paris. One of them, the Chinese-looking one who speaks three non-Chinese languages, wanted to go contacting. The other, a Canadian with unmatched charisma, agreed. Following the Asian/Latino (Lasian?) one's inspiration, they called an investigator and asked where they had contacted him that one time, and received the name of a park in northwestern Paris. They decided to go.

After meeting many people in the park, from non-practicing Muslims to disinterested families to really attractive Atheist couples, they had seen no fruits. The one with fiery hair received a call and therefore stopped contacting. The one with the more fiery personality, however--ever faithful--continued on his own.

---

After sitting on a bench in the park for a little while, Lydie decided that was no way to find what she was looking for. She got up and started walking somewhere--where, she didn't know. But it would turn out to be the right path, both figuratively and literally.

As she walked, an Asian man in a suit approached her and spoke to her in a Spanish accent: words of salvation, happiness and peace. The words sunk deep into her soul and strengthened her faith in the Saviour.

Then she asked for a card and walked away, a little weirded out.

JUST KIDDING.

After the taller one finished with his phone call, he joined them as they went and sat down. The three of them were able to discuss spiritual things, watch a church video, share testimonies and even pray together.

And that's how we have a rendez-vous with Lydie this Wednesday. Pray for us!

Loves,

Elder Stanford

District photo
(Jordan's 12th transfer-- 12 x 6 weeks!)

Rain, food, finding. In that order.

Hey everyone!

So it's been enough weeks in the field that every time I want to start writing one of these emails, I need to pull out my planner (well actually, my calendar app #technology) in order to see what I did this week.

First of all, everyone keeps asking about the flooding. Nothing in my life has really been affected, except a couple of flooded underground metro stops which make it harder to get where I want to go. The Seine is absurdly high though, it's true. What HAS been ruining my life is that it's rained almost every single day in the month of May. It apparently broke the record for most rain in a month in France since recording the weather became a thing.

We have a hilarious African member, Frère Belinga, who begins every conversation with "La paix du Christ" and ends each one with "Amen." I wish I had a picture of him. Anyway, he offered to pour me some juice, and I said "But I'm not sure which of these two cups is mine." He responded with: "Le Christ a dit, ce n'est pas ce que tu manges qui est sale." (Those of you English-only speakers can look up Matthew 15:11 to see the scripture he was referring to.) And he proceeded to pour it into one of the cups. And I drank it. Don't know why, just thought that was funny. Moving on...

Zone conference happened this week. It went really well. Except the part where the four of us were running through the streets of Paris holding food and beverage enough to feed 44 missionaries, late for the conference, in our nicest suits, in the rain, with no umbrellas, and with our metro being shut down due to a "suspicious package." But despite that, Elder Richards' stopping at every little red light, Elder Rivas' bitter complaints regarding his comfort level and Elder Chen's overly full bladder, we made it and everyone was well-fed with self-made baguette sandwiches. Many thanked us for not just lazily ordering pizzas like every other zone conference...but maybe we'll take Elder Rivas' advice and go that route next time. Way simpler.

Let's see, what else? We've found a bunch of new people to teach. A lot of hard work was put into that (Elder Rivas doesn't "feel peace" until he can go out contacting) and results are finally starting to show! More updates on them as they begin to progress. This next week we're hoping to see at least 6 of them come to church.

Well, I wish I had more for you, but the days fly by too fast for my emails to catch up. Hope you're all doing well! Loves!

Elder Stanford

PS I've actually met about 439932 American members in the streets of Paris so far, especially given that the church is between the Pompidou and Notre Dame. If you ever want to meet a Mormon fast, the best way is to put on a suit and name tag and stand in front of a tourist attraction. I've thought about just spending P-day in front of a tourist site and seeing how many members give me things, but I decided that was almost extortion.

PPS As for the TB issue, I do have a tuberculosis, but not one that has a bad attitude about life and freaks out over nothing. She's chill. Unfortunately we have to kill her anyway, because that breed has a tendency to get annoyed over a long period of time and lash out. Wouldn't want that. We're poisoning her by degrees; it's almost over.

Crazy faith

Right then. This week was - big surprise - a crazy week here in the middle of Paris. I am still feeling a bit sick, or maybe I'm just developing allergies for the first time in my life, or maybe my body is just rudely telling me to ingest something other than baguettes, cheese and secondhand cigarette smoke.

Again, we had two back-to-back exchanges this week, both right here at home, with the elders of Versailles and St Ouen. (For those of you who are just joining us, a companion exchange is when a companionship comes to our area, or we go to theirs, and we switch companions for a day to learn from each other and the way we do missionary work.) I was able to work with Elder Harris, my son who was born a year ago; Elder Nagloo, from the Reunion Islands (is that how you say it in English?); Elder Mansfield, straight outta Idaho; and Elder Oopa, from Tahiti.

All four of these missionaries were fantastic at working hard, teaching and testifying, but today I'd like to talk specifically about Elder Oopa.

Elder Oopa is a new missionary being trained in St Ouen, in the Paris suburbs. When I entered the mission, he wasn't a member of the church.

He was baptized with his twin brother about a month after I came on the mission. It takes a year to prepare to go to the temple and on a mission, and he left as soon as he could. He and his twin (also named Elder Oopa now, uncoincidentally) lived with their grandparents in Tahiti because their mother passed away and their father left them and went to France. After one year, on the eve of their departure - just before their setting apart as full-time missionaries - they were able to baptize their grandparents. Now, here in France, Elder Oopa showed me a picture of his father and told me that he knew his father was in France, but he didn't know where...but he feels that the Lord sent him here for the specific reason of finding and baptizing him. And he has all the faith in the world that he'll be able to do it. One day I'd love to see a picture of Elder Oopa with his long-lost father, dressed in white in front of the baptismal font. I'll pray for him if you do.

Zone Conference

(Haha the screen)

No more time, but know that I love you all! Until next week!

Elder Jordan Stanford

Mission française de Paris

Sickest week ever

So life here in the middle of Paris is crazy. 

In one week, we went to a giant soirée familiale with all the young single adults in the Paris area, went to the cities of Rouen and Caen for meetings, saw a riot in Rouen on the aforementioned trip, had exchanges in Versailles, brought the Cherbourg elders to Paris for exchanges, got another freaking blood test for this tuberculosis scare, and taught over a dozen lessons...all while I was sick. It's this mega-cold that's lasted for about six days so far, that's made me go through multiple rolls of toilet paper (no missionary apartment invests in Kleenex boxes), gave me a gnarly sinus headache, and allowed me to sing lower than ever before. And it's still here. And I'm not allowed to take certain medicines that help with colds because of the other drugs I'm taking.

Anyway...

In front of the Paris Temple

This is Elder Richards, with whom I live. He is serving Mandarin-speaking and is currently training a new Chinese missionary, Elder Chen. Elder Chen was born in Taiwan and grew up in Montreal, but somehow his first language is English. He speaks French and Chinese too though. 

Elder Richards is just a better human than all the rest of the humans. The man will not let ANYTHING go to waste. I've seen him steam banana peels and pineapple husks and eat them so he didn't have to throw them away. He's vegetarian, takes cold showers, sleeps on the ground, grabs recyclable stuff out of the trash, runs barefoot outside, and picks up litter whenever he sees it here in downtown Paris. 

The other really cool person I have the pleasure of working with is Fr. Keita, from Mali. Over the course of a couple of months since the missionaries contacted him in the street, he has gone from non-practicing Muslim to practicing Christian. He has a baptismal date for June. It's an interesting situation, because we have had to start from the very beginning with him: who the Saviour is, why we needed to be saved, why we call Him the Son of God. Super cool, open guy. He knows that his family in Mali will likely reject him for becoming Christian, but he denies any actual physical danger, so we'll be able to proceed with the baptism when he's ready for it. 

God is there, He answers prayers and His church is again on the earth! Love you all!

Elder Stanford

Heart of Paris

Hey hey!

Right then. My new area is great. My comp (ex-MTC comp Elder Rivas) is pretty much the same as he was when I first met him, except a lot more experienced and knowledgeable of the scriptures. Still hilarious and a little crazy and full of faith. And I still don't know what language to speak with him. The apartment is actually really good! Most Paris apartments aren't, so I was surprised. We live in the 13th Arrondissement, if that means anything to you folks. We live with the Mandarin elders. They are hilarious and unique, though not straight outta China. I'll tell you more about them next time.

New address:

Elder Jordan Stanford

Les missionnaires

17 Passage Foubert

75013 Paris

FRANCE

The ward is good...I think. This being the centre of Paris, about a million tourists come through each week.

...I'm writing this on my iPad while sitting on a metro and this guy just sat down beside me who is not at all small. And I'm squished and he's invading my personal bubble and he sat on the side of my jacket and that's literally dragging me down. Anyway...

Yeah a million tourists pass through each week, and many more members are American, including the bishop. The missionaries here honestly don't know that many members because we're so busy running around with amis and directing the tourists to other Americans they could talk to.

But it seems like a good ward. Just crazy. Everything is translated from French to English or vice versa.

I got to that ward and who did I see? Four girls I know from BYU, doing an exchange program thing in Paris. So weird. They'll be here for the next two weeks. Maybe I'll have pictures next time.

My week was super super busy. Being the équipe in the heart of Paris, and given that the office elders are all the way in Versailles, we have to do a bunch of organizing, especially on transfer week. Setting up for meetings, buying food for the blues coming in, getting metro tickets for them, herding everyone and their luggage around the different train stations of Paris so they can be shipped all over France while never ever being alone...pretty hectic. All that after getting about 3 hours of sleep the night before transfer day due to packing and early trains.

We taught a few cool people, but the most touching spiritual moment was when a Chinese university student was asked to give the prayer at the end of amis class in my new ward. It was the most honest and sincere prayer I've ever heard, because she had never heard anyone pray when she was growing up. She said things like "Thank you for bringing Chinese people into this church. I hope I can understand more and then that I can help the other Chinese people understand more about you as well. Thank you for the missionaries that talked to me. I hope you can help them to find many more people to teach." I LOVE Chinese people now because every one of them at church was so polite, actually followed the lessons in Chinese on their phones, and genuinely wanted to study to know more.

Last but not least, on Thursday we got to visit the temple site and then go to a conference right beside the Chateau de Versailles where Prsident Uchtdorf came and spoke! It was awesome. He talked about helping the refugees, and always being worthy of a temple recommend.

We had a self-referred investigator show up!

That's all I've got! Love you guys! Be good!

Alive and happy

Hello everyone!

This being my last Monday in Amiens, I have a lot of people to see, some large suitcases to pack and one giant cathedral (biggest in Europe) to climb before I catch the next train out early Wednesday morning. I'm going back to Paris!

More details next week, but suffice it to say that I'm still alive, and happy to be.

Thank you all for the birthday pictures and videos!

Love you all and happy Mothers Day!

Amiens Cathedral
(the biggest in Europe)

Street and canal in Amiens

A 'mangez-vous' with an African family.
Guess which dish I didn't touch?

Laser tag and bowling with the youth

Our Mother's Day call !!!