Elder Ian James Smith

 Mission Email November 25, 2024 Crazy cool and fun week! It's always a good time with Elder Tupana. I love serving in Paris too, the time just seems to fly! We have had so many awesome experiences here. We do so many phone calls it's crazy. One time I woke up and had 6 referrals and they all happened in one night wild!  We have an amazing investigator named Marin and all he wants to do is serve a mission. He is so cool. He has soooo much energy. We have a temple tour with him and will probably set a date for baptism then, I'm so excited !  Today was super cool. We went to the Paris Christmas market in La Defence, so dope. We had these malt balls with some type of nut in them that was super fun. We then went to the l'arche. It's so cool, it's a building with a hole in it. We also saw a huge statue of a thumb. I don’t know why it's there but it is weird but cool. I sat on Santa's seat so I had a great day !! Also I have to give the Elders of Bourges and t...

November 18, 2024  What's up everyone, how are you?  I am fantastic. So this was my first full week in Paris in the Les Lilas sector. I am so pumped, my new comp's name is Elder Tupana from Tahiiti, genuinely one of the sweetest and most hard working guys I've ever met. I am now in a four man apartment with another companionship. My comp can't handle spice. If it's spicy he will say oh that's "pik", which is like spicy and sweet at the same time. So like good missionaries, we forced him to put paprika and cayenne pepper on a spoon and eat it. I have a video on my google photo album. It's pretty funny. In Les Lilas we do ridiculous amounts of calls. Anyone in Paris who fills out a formula and doesn't say where they live goes to us, So we do a lot of calling and redirecting dots but I'm for it. Can't wait, I'm going to love this area!  Today was awesome. This was my first p-day in Paris. We visited the Sacrée Cœur Cathedral with some ...

Hello my friends, how are you doing? I had the craziest week of my mission so far! I finished reading the Book of Mormon on Tuesday marking everything. So I have a Book of Mormon now with 41 tabs in it.  On Wednesday we helped our friends move again. This is the same friend that we helped move before but they needed more help with some stuff. So that was good and fun.  The next two days were pretty standard then Saturday was transfer news! Just to preface this is how we get moved around. Whatever the mission president feels inspired to do, but typically we are in an area for 2-3 transfers (one transfer is roughly 6 weeks long). I was genuinely shocked when we got transfer news and I wasn't staying in Chartres. It took me a while to find my name but I  found out I am going to Les Lilas, a sector in Paris that is known as the busiest sector in the mission! You apparently do a lot of calls, but that aside, I am super stoked. My new companion is from Tahiti, his nam...

November 4, 2024  This week was absolutely awesome, so I'll try to get through it the best I can! On Tuesday we had district P-day, I was able to go do an endowment session and go to the gardens of Versailles. The temple in Paris is absolutely beautiful and very special. The Gardens of Versailles are breathtaking. They are so big and so pretty but it genuinely is a huge area and everything is cut to perfection. There was also music going on that was straight out of an old french film. We were there with our district which was awesome. I have some photos of us at the Gardens and the Temple below.  On Friday we had an exchange with the district leaders which was cool. We also had 9 lessons planned between the two of us which was awesome. We had dinner with our ward mission leader Sylvete (one of my favorite people ever). He is from Tahiti and makes incredible food, he is awesome! Right now we're teaching a man named Djafar. He is amazing. He's from Algeria but he has come t...