One Busy Day
Un día muy
ocupado / un jour bien remplie / un dia atrafegat
A day in the life: not typical but
noteworthy.
We had driven two hours on Saturday from our home in
LaPrimaube to a hotel in Perpignan, so Sunday morning we had time to prepare
for church at the very active Perpignan Ward. We had prepared two short talks
at the request of Bishop Legrand.
The speaker before us had such a long talk that the counselor had to interrupt her and ask her to conclude, and they shortened the intermediate hymn to give us a little more time. In my talk I told them to share their stories in the Global Church History Writing Competition, and I gave them a condensed version of stories others had shared about France. Jonathan gave a condensed version of his own talk, changing the topic to align with the first speaker’s talk about trials.
After the second hour (RS and Ph), while the ward prepared for their potluck meal, we displayed our CH artifacts and explained them to an enthusiastic audience.
We didn’t have time to accept their invitation to stay
for the meal, so they packed up several goodies for us, and we left for
Terrassa across the border in Spain two hours away.
I played the piano for the opening hymn (#9 in Spanish) about Cumorah, then I narrated a translated version of Jonathan’s church history presentation. He had given a similar talk many times in France, about the origin of the Book of Mormon and the preparation of Joseph Smith.
This time the tables were turned, and he distributed the artifacts to pass around while I explained them in Spanish. Pablo Serrano was an effective translator when I got stuck on an obscure word. He is very talented, switching easily from his native Catalan to French, English, or Spanish.
After one hour of talking we invited the audience to approach the
front to see the death masks and original pages from an 1830 Book of Mormon.
If you want to practice your Spanish you can watch the program
at this link [starts at 21:15].
They took lots of pictures and asked questions. The family of the Terrassa Ward bishop was especially interested in my mission experiences, as they were from Cali Colombia, and they recognized their home ward chapel in the photo I had shown. Meanwhile Jonathan and Pablo recorded close-ups for their YouTube broadcast so remote viewers could also see the artifacts.
We had sent the invitations and set it up, but Francoise Mourier, our friend in Paris, helped us by explaining to 35 participants how to use the UHT to post about their YW activities.
One More Church History Moment
Monday morning before we left Girona, we conducted a Pathway interview with a student in Luxembourg. She had moved there from Peru. After she met the missionaries in Luxembourg and was baptized, she learned there are thousands of Latter-day Saints in Peru, but she had never met any until she went to Europe.
She related inspiring stories about her efforts toward a business degree. In Luxembourg she wanted to take college classes but learned she had to show proficiency in French, German, English and Luxembourgish to do so. When friends told her of Pathway, she was relieved that she only had to pass the English placement exam.
She has already earned one certificate and is one class away from her associate
degree, while raising a family of four children including a 7-month old baby.
She told of coordinating projects with fellow-students from Africa, U.S.,
Philippines, Brazil and Thailand. She expressed gratitude for coming to love people all over the world and learn how they have the same hopes and fears she has, and are all beloved children of one Father.
She mentioned challenges such as finding acceptable schedules between so many different time zones, and being shy and scared about her turn to lead the class discussion. But for every challenge, she ended up grateful because of the love and support she felt in all the meetings, and for what the hard times had taught her. When I asked how she balanced her busy life, she said Pathway taught her to prioritize tasks and manage time, so that now she has enough time to spend with her children, with her husband, and for homework.
One man in her class had been inactive in church, but he told how Pathway
helped him see God’s hand in his life, which he had forgotten about. He shared his
reconversion process with the class, who felt they experienced it along with
him. She concluded by saying she would encourage everyone to just try Pathway,
that they would not appreciate its many advantages until they tried it.
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