Montpellier  1927

The missionaries were staying at the home of a french woman and her daughter in Montpellier. They had become interested in the Church and were very friendly to the missionaries. Our district president was a Frere Nelson from Provo. This french lady and her daughter were especially fond of Frere Nelson and it was not long after I arrived in Montpellier that they were both baptized into the Church. I recall that after the baptism service they invited all of the missionaries to a dinner at the best hotel in town. We were served lobster with all of the trimmings. All during my stay in Montpellier and later when I returned there as a district president, these two sisters remained faithful, although the missionaries did have considerable trouble with them about various minor things. After I left the mission field they both left the Church, demanded a return of all the money they had paid to the Church as tithing and made it very miserable for the missionaries who were assigned there. It may also be of interest to note that Frere Nelson upon returning to Utah, had very little to do with the Church. It was rumored in the mission field that he had been sent on a mission to reform him. If this were so the reformation did not last long although he was a very ardent and devout missionary all the time that I knew him.


YEAR (FILE ) SUBJECT
---- ------- ---------------------------------
1927 (9055) Thanksgiving at Castillies
1927 (9057) John Griffin

I remained in Montpellier approximately eight months. Leon Cowles was with me for about four months and then he was replaced by a Frere Johnson from Lewiston, Utah. I do not recall his first name. Later on when I returned to southern France as District President, his brother was assigned to Marseille. While in Montpellier we rented a store and fixed it up for a meeting place. Our meetings were sparsely attended, usually by two or three people besides the two members.

One Sunday morning we went down to hold church and as we approached the meeting place we noticed a lot of people gathered around on the sidewalk outside. When we arrived we found the hall full of people and people standing in the doorway and outside. We could not figure out what had happened. We held our services and upon returning home we found that there appeared on the front page of the local paper an article about our work there in Montpellier. It seems that a feature writer had seen the sign by our meeting place the previous Sunday and. had dropped in for a few minutes. He then wrote a story about us and his experiences and put it on the front page of the paper. It had attracted a lot of people and our meetings were well attended for a good many weeks after this. We looked up the writer and found him to be very friendly. He lived in the better part of town in a "Villa" and treated us very nice. He gave us free, considerable publicity during my stay in Montpellier.

LETTERS
--------------------------------------------------
(L271012) John Griffin to Mother / Montpellier, France

(MISSIONARY JOURNAL OF JOHN GRIFFIN - page 3)

page 21

Previous Page   Next Page   Table of Contents