We've had a car for the past few weeks, so we've been going to see some members and also some really less actives that no one knows about. We actually went to one house with a less active who has been less active for at least the past 10 years. Fortunately, they let us in and we were able to talk with them! The less active actually would like to come back to church, but her husband hates religion and churches so he doesn’t let her at all. It was a real miracle that he let us in the house!  We heard before that he didn’t let missionaries in or let members talk to his wife but it looks like he's changed a little bit! So that’s a good thing!  We were able to share a spiritual thought with just the less active, and her 2 little kids. The husband listened in on the lesson but didn’t participate. So it’s just a really little step forward but it's farther than where it was before! So that was one cool thing that happened this week!

With the branch here, we don’t have callings in the ward because there are enough members to do something! There are about 5 - 8 primary kids, I think.

This "transfer" was a little different. Lots of missionaries had to go home just 2 weeks earlier than normal because the school semester starts this week in a lot of places. That’s why there were some people that went home. But my companion is going home the normal time, which is actually next week. 

I left Melun and now I'm here out in the west side of France in a city called Quimper.  Lately it’s been really hot and humid here but not as bad as Central and Eastern France. I'm about 45 minutes by bus from the beach. The city is super super super small!!!  A lot different than my other areas.  Anyway, the west side of France has a reputation of being really hard for missionaries, and it's true... but we did find a guy that we’ve been teaching for a few weeks who we’ve given a baptismal date.  Hopefully it will work.  He has Word of Wisdom issues such as smoking and drinking that he is working on.  He seems to be improving little by little though!  We met him door knocking.  My new companion’s name is Elder Meissner.  Mom, it’s a good thing you wanted Germany to win the world cup because he's German!  He's actually from Austria though... he was born and lived in Germany for 11 years then moved to Austria and has been there ever since. So he's Austrian too and German!  He speaks really good English!  Also, this is his last transfer, so he finishes his mission in 5 weeks. It's good, however, he's not too interested in soccer so he wasn’t super excited about Germany winning. Of course he wanted them to win but sports aren’t his thing. He's more in to listening to classical music and playing string instruments. It’s a big change from all of my other companions, it'll be fun.

We have a new mission president now!  He actually speaks really good English as well, and he has a good accent when he speaks. It’s not very thick at all. His name is President Babin. The ward here is a branch... there’s around 15-20 people that show up every Sunday. So it’s a big change. This is the first time on my mission that I'm in a Branch.

Yesterday we were door knocking and a lady and her husband answered and they let us in!!  What a surprise. That doesn’t happen a whole lot. They really liked our message but they're leaving on vacation for 3 weeks so they'll be gone for a while. Maybe when they come back!

On Saturday there was a cool experience... a baptism!  But for an 8 year old boy.  The church here (it’s just a part of a big building where they rent out a few rooms) doesn’t have a baptismal font so the baptism was at the ocean!!!  Before I left Melun, we had a baptism for a 13 year old girl.  Her family are already members so now she is too!

Last Monday night, we were on our way to a family’s house for a Family Home Evening night, and while along the way an old man and his wife drove by in their car and stopped immediately. The man came out and came up to us and said, "Hey are you Mormons?" yes we responded and then he said "Wow that’s cool! Here's my address, come to my house tomorrow night, bye." Then he left! It was really odd. So we kept that in mind and went to the family's house for FHE. It was pretty good. So the next day we were on our way to go to this man’s house when we walked past this one street where there was a guy we knew (who we found door knocking, but he always said he was too busy AKA he wasn’t too interested).  We decided to stop by to see if he was home.  We knocked on the door and he was there! He also had time! So we taught him and he really liked it! So that was a miracle inside another miracle with this old man I’m going to talk about now.

After that lesson we went and found the house of the man from the previous night. He welcomed us in and almost instantly he started talking about family history/geneology. He knew our church was big in to geneology so that’s why he stopped us the day before! He wanted to know where we get the baptism for the dead doctrine from so we showed him 1 Corinthians 15 particularly verse 29. But the real reason why he invited us over was for us to help him with his geneology work! So we showed him familysearch.org. He had this great great uncle or something like that and he wanted to find more information about him. This relative was Italian and immigrated to New York to Ellis Island. So it was around that time frame. With family search, we found out a little bit more about him and we also found another relative that he had no idea about! He was really happy and thanked us a lot! We also gave him the number for the Family History person in the ward and told him to call this person and that he can do more stuff there at the church with it. He said he'd do that. He is very interested in geneology which is a very good first step! Then later in the week, we planned our baptism with our 13 year old investigator. The baptism will happen this Sunday so hopefully all will go well.

I haven’t met the new mission president yet, but I’m going to this Friday. We'll see how it goes on Friday! So there hasn’t been any transition yet that I've seen. And I don’t think there'll be a huge transition anyway.

With the world cup it might turn in to chaos because literally over half of France is from Algeria (aka Muslim). Whenever Algeria plays in the world cup everyone goes crazy!! And this world cup is the first time that Algeria has advanced past the beginning part of the tournament so people went nuts!!! I was sleeping but my companion said he heard tons of cops and other people screaming and doing all sorts of crazy stuff out on the street after the game a few nights ago. Good thing I was asleep! And now Algeria plays Germany and if they win, it’s going to be super crazy... It’s funny because no one is crazy and ridiculous when France plays. Of course everyone talks about France but people don’t go crazy with it, as far as I know!  We’ll see…

This was an interesting week.  We had our last goodbye meeting with Pres. and Sis. Poznanski. It was pretty fun, but sad to see them go. And yes it was very spiritual as well. They do literally so much all the time and nobody realizes it!  They do a lot more than we think they do!  And now they're gone... Well not until Friday. Then on Friday President Babin comes in!  I've only met him once, and that was at our stake conference a few weeks ago. I didn’t talk to him, just said "Hello, how are you? Good, I’m good as well." I actually didn’t know it was him when I talked to him, I thought it was just some random guy in the stake, hahaha.  We will be having a welcome conference for President Babin once he’s here!  I read the article about the Temple being built in Paris. It is going to be right "next door" to the castle at Versailles! That area is a very exclusive area of France.  Transfers are in 2 weeks by the way. So we'll see what happens in 2 weeks from today.  At the conference, I don’t really know what the food was, but it was good!  Yes I got the camera!  Thanks

With our baptisms, one of them with the eight year old girl was supposed to happen yesterday, but we had to cancel it because someone in their family who was in Africa died on Saturday. So that baptism will happen another day. And another baptism with the 13 year old girl should happen in 2 weeks! So hopefully all will be well!

I thought of an idea yesterday during church. Every week we share a "missionary minute" where we share a miracle or something cool that happened during the week that involves sharing the gospel. I thought that I would pass this idea along to you!  At the beginning of your meeting, share a missionary experience that happened during the week. Like giving someone a Book of Mormon, talking about our beliefs, something really, really simple. That’s just an idea. Also, I got a ward newsletter in the mail which was cool! 

                                                     

An experience Cooper shared on April 29, 2014:

On Monday morning we went to the what we'll call the “DMV” for a city in France so I can be legal in France for a 2nd year. We did all the paperwork and I got my second year visa there. All is good. Then later, my companion and I were eating lunch in the main area of one of the big train stations in Paris (because we spent our P-day there in Paris). The train to go home was going to leave in around 10 minutes so we decided to get on the train and just wait inside. We got up from our spot and went in to the train. Not even 3 minutes passed when I realized I left my shoulder bag where we had eaten! It had everything in it, Passport with the new Visa, Birth Certificate, camera, little notebooks, everything. But at least I had my wallet with my debit card and drivers license with me!  So I called the mission office/home and told them everything, and they told me what to do. First, I had to go back to the "DMV" place and tell them that I lost my visa/passport and hopefully they would give me a document saying I lost my visa and passport. Then with that document, I had to go to the American Embassy in Paris to reapply for a new passport. But the DMV place was closed, so we had to wait until the next day (today). So this morning, we left really really early to go back to the DMV place and like all DMVs, wait in a really long line until it was my turn. So it eventually was my turn and my companion and I told the lady everything that had happened. Fortunately, it was the exact same lady who did all of the paperwork and visa stuff for me yesterday, and she remembered me so she gave me the document saying I lost my Visa and passport. Hooray! Step 1 done. So now we were heading to American Embassy by metro to get a new passport. However, while we were on the metro, our cell phone rang. It was a private number and it was a lady on the other end asking if this was me, Mr. Saffell. Yes, I responded. She told me that she has my bag!!! So then she told me that she is at a certain area around the big train station where I lost my bag earlier and to meet her there. However, the train station is really really big, and there are people everywhere! So after a few hours of searching around and asking where this random place was, nothing. We couldn’t call her back because it was a private number. Still no bag. So we decided to go to our big Zone Conference at the church in Paris that we had today, that we pretty much missed all of because of the situation.  At the end of the conference, we got a text from one of the Police departments! It said that they have a bag with my name on it!  They had our number because I left some cards in my bag with our number on them! So we went to the police station, and I got my bag back!! I searched through everything in my bag and there wasn’t a whole lot taken from it!! ALL of my legal papers (birth certificate, passport, second-year visa, etc) were still there, and not ruined! There were only a few things stolen however: my train pass to be able to ride trains outside of Paris (which costs not even 30 euros and it was expiring soon anyway), 20 euros that I had in a little pocket, and my camera with all of my pictures :( ..... I had over 600 pictures on my memory card since last September. So that was a real disappointment. But aside from that, all is well!!!  My soul is secure!  Miracles do exist!  God answers prayers!!!  Thanks for all the prayers and everything!