Aug. 10, 2015 - Adam's letter and pics of cathedral

this is the one like Aragorn; pretty cool!!! Sick!

the organ!!!!

Love you Mom and Grace and Gabe and Hyrum and Malia and Dad! 

This week has been good, we got to go see a really great big cathedral! Guess
what else, we still have two baptismal dates, we had to move them back,
but it's going well, the Lord is blessing us here in Nantes.

I think about you guys often! By the way, thank you so much for the
letters, I appreciate it so much. God bless you in all your endeavors.

I got to be part of a really cool Plan of salvation lesson yesterday,
and guess what? I think that someone who I personally contacted will
get baptized. We'll see though all in the Lords hands.

Learning so much about being independent and becoming a better person
and being stronger in the gospel. Encourage you all to read a talk by
Bishop Causse entitled "Architects of Our Own Happines." Do things that
encourage you and lift you up and help you make your goals. Do things
that help you but the lord and the gospel first. That's always
important. The people who don't in hiatory always regret it.

Always be ready to help in missionary work and in genealogy work. So
important in our lives!!

Love you all so much and thank you for the photos of the family party.
God bless you all. Sorry I couldn,t get a personal email to each of
you today but hope it"s going well. Love you!

Sincerely,

Your loving son and brother serving the Lord In France,

Elder Adam Grant Edwards

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From Adam to Dad (Mike):  

Cool!! Go get 'em in court Dad!!! :) whip that prosecution! No haha

sorry I'm just kidding. But I love you lots and I think of you and

your example often. It's interesting to be here and be so far from

you, but I'm glad I'm doing it. I think i'm going to work on having

fun here and enjoying t like you said.

Oh I don't know--maybe just some good family pictures and maybe a good

cookbook with some good recipes, haha I want to learn how to cook

better. I hope that's okay, thanks so much Dad! Also, I know this is

kind of a special request, but I thought it would be really neat if you

could please enlist the four grandmas and grandpas in putting together

a little family tree with all of my ancestors marked who were converts

to the church, like marked in red, and a copy or retelling of each of

their conversion stories. If there's a way to get that from them four

and you and Mom, too, even mission stories, that'd be great. Even just

a couple little cool ones, whatever you think Dad. I hope that's not

too much. Please thank everyone for all their kind notes and letters

and prayers and support!

Can you imagine I've already bee out here for 10 months? Lots of

people are impressed by my French, I get lots of compliments now, but

also still have a hard time communicating, but it's from the Lord, I

don't want to take any glory from it.

Talked to a cool guy who was going on vacation here in Nantes on a bus

who was Vietnamese. He was a cool guy, really nice. I don't know, you

probably tried it on your mission, but MAN bus and tram contacting

takes soe courage. It's all right, I'm more used to it now, but you

really have to be nice and natural and it's kind of hard just to start

talking to people, also to get the subject toward the gospel!!!

Anyway I talked to him just for a minute and, mentioned the church,

asked him, I think, maybe not if he'd be intereseted in hearing more,

and he said no, but it was still cool. Stuck out to me because he was

Asian and i really like Asian people, they're good, they have good

hearts, you know.

Well we have been teaching, for the second or third time now, a new

ami who is from Africa who just moved here from Tours. How we found

her is quite miraculous, definitely inspired toward her, but we found

her pretty far out of the middle of town where we live and where we

most often cross through, and we talked to her and taught her a little

lesson right there on the street (it's different now, you can teach

just a principle from Preach My Gospel, even just a little something

like how we believe in prophets or how to say a prayer, then you have

to wy a prayer, then give them a commitment to do, then it counts as a

lesson). Then we got her number and address and were able to go over

to her house the first time a few weeks ago. Now we were just able to

go over yesterday with the sisters, Sister Proudfoot (who I qctually

knew in the MTC) and sister Romero, to pass her over to them. Her

name, by the way, is Marina. She has two cute little African boys, so

energetic and fun! Haha Elder McBride bought the little guy a soccer

ball for his birthday last week and gave it to him, he's been loving

it. It was hard a little bit to let her go, especially since elder

McBride announced that we'd be passing her over to the sisters before

he'd even discussed it with me, but I'm not bitter, it's actually

better in the end, just sad to see her go because she is literally one

of the most legitimate people I have ever contacted. After the visit

with her yesterday, when we finished teaching the Plan of salvation,

she cried at one point and said she believes it, she's trying to

accept it at least. She will get baptized in six weeks, I call it! No

ha a but it will be fun to see what happens, I have faith in it!

God bless you Dad, hope that's good to read. Would you and Mom like me

to add more stories and experiences in general to my letters? What else

would you like in them? Also i've been studying and trying to figure

out my life mission, studying my patriarchal blessing and all that, and

what do you and Mom think about my life mission? Any important

thoughts or impressions you've had, especially about how I'm learning

and growing in my mission? I hope that life is going good for each and

every one of you. God bless you so much.

That album is SO COOL!! Thank you so much. Yes, could you please send

me Handel's Messiah and the Stones in the River album? Thanks so much.

Thanks for teaching me how to sing too because then if it's in your

head, it's out in the air! (Especially if your name is Dad

Edwards--and it may well come out with a couple little rhymes and funny

additions!!:D )

Dad, sometimes I get kind of down, seeing all the wickedness and all the drinking and smoking and stuff that people do, it makes me kind of sad. You would not believe

how many crazy, evil ideas are rooted, i mean rooted in these peoples'

minds, it's amazing!!! Like truth is relative for each person, good

for you if you believe in God but it's not important for me right now,

maybe later, the good ole' "well there's so much bad stuff in the world

that how could God live," you know of course.

Love you tons, God bless ysou in everything you do. Serge and Covalie

actually are not dropped, but we currentlycannotget in contact with

them. Denice is doing well, we need to get this family coming back to

church and to see and teach him again soon. David we saw and we moved

their baptismal dates to the2 september, just after my birthday!

Cool right? Anyway yeah. Lots of exchanges. I got to go to St. Nazaire

by the coast twice two weeks ago and also to la Rochelle right down by

the coast (AND the southern-most area in our mission, or close to it

at least, nerly surrounded by the Lyon mission and the Bordeau stake)

and that was really cool. The people just get MEAN sometimes in little

villes like that when missionaries have been there for a while.

Generally it was all right, we chose a hard spot to contact for a bit,

too, it was just interesting, haha. Some French people certainly do not

have a hard time being cold. But most are good. nantes is really nice

because lots of people don't know you, you know? Probably one of the

closer things we have to being like San Fran, a lot smaller but still

lots of people and lots take the tram.

God bless dad. I know this gospel is true. 

Love, and with eternal friendship and brotherhood and sonhood, your

dear beloved son,

Elder Edwards