Journal April 3-10, 1962

April 3—A banner day! First, we received the reports of the bus trip from Le Mans back to Rennes. Mirabile dictu, nobody got sick! Sister Louis, who always gets sick in motor vehicles, made the trip without difficulty and also without her husband, who had promised to come along. She returned home, healthy and full of enthusiasm, to find that her husband had fallen ill while she was gone! Sister Menais had put several anti-nausea pills [121] in her purse, but she never had to take them. Like Sister Louis, she returned triumphant, to everybody’s surprise, and everybody resolved to go with her, next time.

This evening, the Leroys invited us (Elders Richard Hill, Halliday, Robins, and me) to celebrate St. Richard’s day, in honor of us two Richards. They gave us pretty greeting cards, little bouquets of violets [two, desiccated, are preserved between pp 120-121 of the Journal], and much joy. We ate cake, drank Pschitt, and sang until 10 p.m. Elder Hill almost wept. Me, too. I confess that I love this Leroy family almost as much as my own, and the two families (really one, for me) more than anybody else on the earth! By the way, neither Elder Hill nor I knew the pretext for our invitation: it was a surprise party!

Returned home and found the Bennions teaching one of the men who approached us in the street and asked for a Book of Mormon, about three weeks ago. They’ve read it, and they have received a testimony of it. I’m sure they’ll be baptized when they return in about three more weeks. He insisted that we sell him a Doctrines et Alliances, which we did, reluctantly.
April 5—At Sister Leroy’s request, we went to pray with her this morning at 8:30. She had to go to court for something about her divorce, and it’s always hard for her to have to do with the lawyers. She gets upset and has trouble keeping her cool. But this afternoon (in Brittany, they say “tantôt”) she reassured us that everything went well, and that she’s pleased with the outcome.
April 10—It’s getting tough to find the time to tract—the members keep bringing us so many referrals!

This morning, I have to speak to the missionaries in the district about challenging people to repent and be baptized. I’ll show them D&C 18:41-47 and 34:4-8. And then I’ll say something like this:

Everybody has from birth the light of Christ in him, and also his agency, which gives him the means to accept the light or to reject it. He who accepts it receives further inspiration from the Holy Ghost, which leads him to seek truth, and to the extent that he seeks it, he is justified in the eyes of God until He gives him the opportunity to hear the fullness of the Gospel. And that’s the most important crisis of his life. The testimony of the Spirit is joined in that moment to the testimony and to the challenge of a mortal person, and the choice belongs to the one who receives the challenge.

Until that critical moment, one can compare the testimony of the Spirit to a spirit before his birth in this world. His condition is good, and he has made progress, but he has to receive a body and the power to act on physical matter, before he can go further. But once that union is accomplished, all the future opens up, to one side or the other.

That’s why missionaries have to bear their testimony so frequently.
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