Journal October 17-18, 1962
October 17 (concluded)—After that meeting, Brother Gille was kind enough to invite me to his home for supper, before heading to a baptismal service. His family is very welcoming,1 and it was a joy to accept. It was a fine baptism, too: the son of an inactive family who was baptized by the good work of my true brother, Robins. I confess, by the way, that my affection for this man has grown since we’re no longer companions. With my weakness of impatience, I found it hard to follow him. But there’s no way to keep from loving him: he’s so full of love, himself!

One more night on that hard, cold kitchen floor at [208] the elders’ rue de Chanzy apartment; I have to admit that that got old, fast. Thanks to a bad cold and three nights without much sleep, I found myself rather worn out. So I was very glad to get in the Simca with Elder Miller to go to Angers to pick up the ZAPs; they took me home to Rennes, arriving at about 5:30.

October 18—It’s now been a year since Air France brought me to Paris; it’s a big day in my life; I don’t need to emphasize that it really doesn’t seem as if so much time has gone by.

Elder Mitton2 has agreed that we’ll all go to Mont St-Michel tomorrow to commemorate an unprecedented event: a missionary’s anniversary in his first city. This diversion will be another memorable event.

Elders Peterson and Halliday, in front of a cloud-obscured Mont St-Michel.
1We need an adequate equivalent in English for accueillant…
2To make it clear how very glad we were finally to have Elder Lynn Mitton as our leader, I’ll just be uncharitable enough to recount here that his lamentable but unlamented predecessor had consented to a similar project, some months earlier. We were all very excited. We got half-way to the Mont, when suddenly Elder David Bennion had one of his patented “revelations,” stopped the casserole, turned around, and took us all home. He was big on repentance. Especially the repentance he kept saying I should practice. He’d invite himself to join with us in our daily companionship prayers, and then he’d plead with the Lord that I would humble up… Guess maybe I shoulda, but it never seemed called for, at the time. Amazing that we got so much good, solid work done, in spite of the dreadful parody of leadership that we got from him.
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