Journal May 31 - June 6, 1962
May 31—For a couple of days, Elder Allen has been helping me to transfer my branch responsibilities to others. For the time being, Elder Halliday will lead the singing in Sacrament Meeting, until we can find a music leader among the members. Simone Daviron will lead the singing in Sunday School. Jean Fruchet will serve as branch clerk. Robins will probably take over the Missionnaires de la Jeunesse Mormonne (MJM) and also the firesides that we two are getting organized. Dunno who’s going to be the second counselor to President Renaud. Probably a missionary; maybe Elder Robins. It’s a lot harder to hand over these responsibilities than it would be to hang onto them, both from the emotional point of view and because of the whole pile of work that the transferral process occasions.

A brief word about those firesides. Starting next week, we’ll hold them on Sunday evenings in order to discuss the Scriptures systematically. We’ll start with the Old Testament, for I’ve observed that our new Mormons badly need a working notion of the fundamental concept of a covenant people. I’ll teach the lessons—that is, I’ll lead the discussions—from what I can remember from Seminary. Thanks, Coach! I hope to stay in town long enough to get this program off the ground; as programs go, I think it’s among the most likely to bear good fruit.

June 7—[144] Well, here I am still, in Rennes. We’ve done a lot of proselytizing since I last wrote. The fireside went well. I regret only my inability to stay here forever to run these meetings.

Thanks to a whole lot of tracting, we begin to have again some investigators with splendid possibilities.

We held a meeting last evening at the Molinas’. We presented the fourth discussion, after which Sister Molina announced that she has decided to be baptized. We’re glad, of course. If all goes well, we’ll baptize them both Sunday afternoon.

Brother Hasoppe is in town today and tomorrow to look for a meeting-hall and a building lot. We’ve already spent the morning without finding anything…

… We witnessed two miracles today. A real estate agent showed us a very attractive building on the Place de Bretagne, on the entry of the boulevard de la Liberté, the finest location [145] in the city. Brother Hasoppe is convinced that the Church should buy the building to use as a temporary meeting-house, until we get one built.

And then we went to see M. Lemercier, the city’s urban architect, who will help us find a chapel-site and to get our church built. He’s a close friend of the mayor and of his subordinate in charge of buildings, and he’s sure that we’ll have, even here in the Vatican, all the permission we’ll need to build.

June 6—Here’s how we had a big success yesterday:

It turns out that the real estate agent who found the building for us is Sister Leroy’s cousin, and we had already met him at the Fête de la Jeunesse. But we found him again through the “Publi-Hall” agent who had been so kind to us when we came to his home. As a result of this pleasant memory, we went there again, day before yesterday, and it turns out that he’s exactly the man we need. It’s wildly unlikely [146] that we’d have found him without the Lord’s help.

For the building-ground and the architect, we‘ve had to follow even a twistier path. Agent Lebot of 7, rue de Toulouse, didn’t do anything except to introduce us to M. Batson, businessman of rue Thomas-Connecte. He’s a friend of M. Lemercier, and it’s on his recommendation that we went there.
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