Marseille  1929

All during the time that I was in France the Castellis remained faithful to the Church and I understand did for many years after I left. During the War, however, when there were no missionaries in Marseille, and no church services were held, they went back to the Catholic church and Bob was raised as a staunch Catholic. When his mother learned several years ago that he was coming to California to visit me she wrote me a letter and asked me to promise not to tell Bob that she and his grandmother had ever left the Catholic church and joined the LDS Church. I wrote back and told her that unless he asked me I would not tell him but that if he did ask I could not tell him an untruth. Fortunately he did not ask. I found Bob very much a man of the world with typical "French" morals, but a very likable and intelligent fellow. I hope that having married he will settle down and not be like his father was. Someday, too I hope that he finds out about his mother and grandmother and becomes sufficiently interested to look into the Church himself.

While serving as district president I had many interesting experiences. One of the missionaries working at Marseille was J. Ruben Clark III. At the time, his father was under secretary of State of the United States. J. Ruben Jr had a diplomatic passport and he use to really enjoy visiting the American Counsels in the various cities and receiving the attention they would give to him.


YEAR (FILE ) SUBJECT
---- ------- ---------------------------------
1929 (9047) John Griffin and Sisters at the phonograph
1929 (9053) John Griffin - letter from home
1929 (9050) French mission missionaries

LETTERS
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(L290510) Rulon Christensen to John Griffin
(L291029) Mother to John Griffin / Ogden, UT

I went from town to town and visited with the missionaries, spending about a week in each town. We were reaching in our missionary work only those people living in the larger cities and so we decided to put on a series of meetings a few miles out of Montpellier down on the sea thinking that this would be a good place to hold such a meeting. I went down to the town and found that the only place large enough to hold a meeting was in the local theater. I found that we could rent it for the afternoon as they showed their movies only during the evening. I rented it for an afternoon several weeks ahead and then we went about preparing for the conference.

(MISSIONARY JOURNAL OF JOHN GRIFFIN - page 38)

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