Journal June 30 - July 3, 1962

June 30 (Concluded…)—Between the sessions, M Le Bras, one of the sisters’ investigators, [159] expressed a desire to be baptized. Maybe sixty people came to his baptism in the Maine River, right where brother Tani had been baptized that morning. So this was a day not like the others, no? Two baptismal services in the same day. And in the bus on the way back, a young fellow named Serge Sauvage, who had become acquainted with the Church only today, announced that he was ready to be baptized, as well. We’ve set his date for July 3.

A sidebar here on French and Breton names. You’ll have noticed surnames like Le Bras and Le Tiec in this account: they’re Celtic Breton, not Latinate French, as their owners might insist with some truculence. “Le bras”, pronounced in French as “brah,” means “the arm.” But that of our new member family is pronounced “brahss,” and means, if I was correctly informed and if memory serves, “strong.” Other names betray their Celtic origin even more clearly: Calloc’h, for example, and Lehinaff. That “c’h,” for example, is pronounced gutturally, as in German “ach” or Scottish “och” or Hebrew “l’chaim”—a sound that doesn’t appear in the French or American phonemic catalogue.

July 3—Today we witnessed the baptism of six persons: Serge Sauvage, and the wife and four children of brother Le Bras. It was a very touching service. For the statistics, I confirmed Martial Le Bras this morning, 3 July 1962. These baptisms were credited to the sisters, but of course we elders had to carry out the ordinances. We’d asked M Molina to bring a few members in his auto, and he agreed; he and his wife both came. They want baptism, once again, but they’re very slow to show the necessary fruits of repentance. I phoned President Hinckley this morning in the hope that he’d extricate me from a fix I seem to have gotten into. To help brother Fruchet learn his branch clerk duties, I had taken steps to arrange the purchase of a typewriter for the branch. Receiving no response from headquarters, however, and fearing an imminent transfer, I’d gone ahead and completed the transaction. Then, this morning, a letter from Elder Nelson, the Mission financial secretary, said that the President didn’t agree that we should make the purchase. So I called him immediately to explain what I’d done. I had, by the way, a good precedent, inasmuch as the Bordeaux branch had made a similar purchase a few months ago. The President sympathized and gave me hope that the branch could keep the machine. Then he passed the phone to Elder Skidmore, his second counselor, who informed me that President Moyle would arrive in Paris tomorrow morning; that he [160] might decide to call all the missionaries to Paris; that we should be ready to leave tomorrow morning at 10:00; and that he’d update the situation for us as soon as he had any news.

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