Marseille   1929-1930

The fair was very much like other fairs, except that all of the buildings were of modern design which at that time was quite new. One thing that I remember was that they played excerpts from the opera Aeida over the loud speaker system all day long. We not only took in the fair but also saw as much of the city of Barcelona as possible. People there on vacation live a very different life. No one thinks of getting up before ten in the morning and they have breakfast about 11 am. We did not take lunch at the boarding house and I doubt that they served it. Dinner was at 8:30 p.m. and then everyone would go out for the night it seemed to us. The food was very good at the boarding house, and we had no difficulty eating everything that was served, although it was spanish type food.

The only person that I ever converted on my mission lived in Grenoble. I do not now even recall her name. She worked in a button factory. I found her tracting, and we later held cottage meetings at her home. She was baptised after I left Grenoble, but she told me that I was the one who interested her in the gospel and taught it to her. The only person who I baptised while on my mission was the wife of an Armenian member of the Church at Marseille. I had nothing to do with converting her.


YEAR (FILE ) SUBJECT
---- ------- ---------------------------------
1929 (9054) A French Christmas

As the end of my mission approached I realized that when I left France I would probably leave it forever. I had learned to like France and the French people very much and the thought of leaving France made me sad. Several of the other missionaries who had been released had stayed on in Paris and attended the Sorbonne (University of Paris). Two or three of the missionaries that were to be released about the time I was, had decided to attend the University and so I wrote to my parents asking them if they could keep me for a few more months so that I would have this opportunity. I had decided as do most missionaries who spend their mission in a foreign land to study for and enter the foreign service, always with the hope that I would eventually be assigned somewhere in France. My parents told me that they would be able to send me just what I was receiving while on my mission ($40 per month) and that if I could manage on that I could go to school. I had saved a little money and so decided to try it.

I advised the mission president and asked him that I be released in time to enroll in the winter semester that commenced in February, 1930. My request was granted and I went from Marseille to Paris to start school. When I arrived I found that only one of the other missionaries who had planned on attending the University was going through with his plans. This was brother Rulon Christensen who was president of the mission for a little more than a year. We decided to get a room in a small hotel on the left bank of the Seine and eat out in restaurants rather than tie ourselves down to a boarding house. Rulon had decided to take a special course that qualified him as a teacher of French in the United States. As he was very much interested in history, he also took an extra course in history.

(MISSIONARY JOURNAL OF JOHN GRIFFIN - page 43)

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