We just finished our week of the Mission Tour with our two visiting general authorities. Elder D. Martin Goury and Elder James E. Evanson of the Seventies. They are the two councilors from our new Canada Region Presidency. We were able to attend the meetings on Wednesday with half the mission and then we helped with logistics on Thursday for the other half of the mission in a different building. It’s a lot of missionaries when we are together like this. Many missionaries were flown in, including Senior missionaries. All the missionary cars (about 20 on our day) had to be spot checked and the food that was delivered had to be set out on the tables in time for the lunch. They catered the lunch, though it was just sandwiches and veggies. We heard from a few missionaries that they preferred our usual lunches from our regular zone conferences. That’s good to hear but it was a nice break for us, though we do enjoy cooking for the missionaries. The messages were very uplifting on the subjects of eternal life, salvation and of course missionary work. We were taught about how Jesus has already achieved immortality for everyone and that God the Father has a goal of eternal life for everyone. Not everyone will reach eternal life, but it is still His goal for all His children. We wish to share the message of these gospel truths with everyone we meet. We are feeling the urgency of God’s work as we get closer to the second coming of Christ.
Much of what I do is on the side of reactivating. A couple weeks ago, I felt prompted to reconnect with a friend in our old Greenfield Park ward. She apparently was in a bit of a slump. I invited her to come with us to our Stake Conference held this weekend. She doesn’t drive and tends to hermitize at times and so this was an opportunity to get her out. She agreed to go with us to the leadership meeting and just wait for the regular session to start on Saturday night but soon joined us in the leadership meeting with Elder Goury again as our visiting authority. He is from the Ivory Coast and our friend, Tendai is from Rwanda. She really joined in with the discussion as she herself is quite outspoken. I had introduced her earlier in the afternoon to Sis. Goury who is from England and Tendai served her mission in England. They soon connected as Tendai shared her amazing story of conversion. The evening turned out to be a great experience for her and helped her to realize that she needed to be out among her friends again. She is really talented and very successful.
On Sunday, we were privileged to give a ride to a man named Alphonse who is from Central Republic of Africa. He is going to be baptized next week and used to be a minister in an evangelical church back in Africa. He was so thrilled with the talks at our stake conference and took copious notes throughout. We talked to him about the Book of Mormon and his conversion and mine. He had great questions and was obviously very impressed with the church here. More about him next week as we are planning for his baptism. Elder Glenn was able to participate in two priesthood ordinations after Stake Conference. Two of the African brothers in the branch received the Melchizedek priesthood. After Stake Conference we had a nice dinner at our apartment with one of those brothers and another fellow we are working with. The work goes forward in our humble branch of the church here in Chomedey.
Au revoir,
The Glenns
Gigi & Papi