St Etienne 3

Hello family.  The internet place goes to lunch in Ten minutes, so  I hope I can get this all in.  It is quite a wonder, all of France totally shuts down for about two hours every afternoon ha ha. I even have seen a small café closed for lunch.. well it was more a boulangerie (bakery), but really… ha ha

Questions:  Yes there is day light savings in Europe, but ours is a week or so earlier than yours, so that already happened a little while ago.

No Elder Brady is not new here.  This is his third transfer in St-Etienne, I thought I had mentioned that.

There are about 75-80 active members here, we are in the same type of building as I was in Avignon, so we fill it up quite nicely.

Yes I still have the guitar.  There is also a small keyboard in our appartement, along with a “hymns made easy book” that has the guitar chords for a lot of the hymns.  I am also learning to play piano, I am getting better as well, I can sight read almost all the melodies, and sometimes the alto part. 

Ok, well the place is closing for lunch, and come to mention it, I am starving as well.  I’ll finish this later in the day.  There is a Pizza hut not far from here and the American stores are usually the only things open at this time. 

Do not freak out, I’ll email you again later today.  Yes we did get two baptisms by the way yesterday.  Louisette and Rita.  It was realy cool.  Tell you more later, the internet guy is kicking us out.  Love you à plus!

Ok, continuons with the questions:

Yes our amis are going well.  They all have almost no problems with testimonies or keeping commitments, but with them come other challenges.  Notably that many of them are here in France illegally, that's really a sticky situation, but we'll see what we can do, which isn't really a lot of things.

I wanted to mention Dad, that even when you get up at 6h30 every day, it is still difficult ha ha, even when you are getting eight hours of sleep a night, I still feel tired pretty much all the time ha ha.

Yes there are some Bichons here, ne vous inquiétez pas.

I would wait until after the next transfer til you send the christmas package, I will probably be here still, but with president Roney, you never really know.  Yes you have the right address, I got your halloween card the other day thank you!  YEs I could use some new white shirts.  There are a few left over here that I have been wearing, and I now wear a 16 1/2 inch collar.

As for other things I would like for Christmas;.. all I can really think of is shirts and maybe a couple ties.  I know you'll want to throw lots of goodies in there too, and I'm sure they will all be well appreciated.  Though I do know what I want for Christmas 2013, well this isn't all I want, but some things are a new set of scriptures in English, with the bible and book of Mormon separate.

Monday:Basically we hung out in the apartment, and then we went to family home evening, it went well

(this is going to be rather brief because I do not have tons of time to finish this email)

Tuesday:  Talked to Djo, he is awesome, and really ready for the gospel, but he is probably illegal... so we'll see.  After we saw Louisette, she is also awesome (and legal) just totally golden.  Then we had a bunch of raté-vous, but I remember we filled our time well doing something.

Wednesday:  Did some work in the Area book, looking up old amis we'd like to pass as well as less actives etc...  Then we saw Childric, I like him a lot, he really wants to know the truth and the doctrine of the church.  Then we passed a bunch of the less actives and the old amis we looked up earlier.  Then we saw Bila a recent convert, then had the baptismal interviews for Rita and Louisette, and all went well.

Thursday:  Exchange with Elder Turley (our district leader)  we taught Frère Samuel, he is doing really well.  So far this week he hasn't gone into a bar, and he hasn't drank, he hasn't gambled, and he has been praying when thoughts about women come into his head.  (as far as I know, he is still holding strong)  Really a big miracle.  He is a cool guy, but still kinda has a lot of progress to make before he can be baptized, but he really wants to be baptized.  The other equipe (elder Brady and Elder Smith) went and saw Lisa, who is also still golden and accepted the word of wisdom without any hesitation.

Friday:  We got a Kebab to celebrate my year mark then taught a whole bunch of lessons, to Djo and some other people.  Really busy day, but I really didn't write what we did, so I don't remember.

Saturday:  First day on my mission where every single rendez vous actually happened.  Well there have been days where we have had one rendez vous planned and it happened, but this day we had five rendez vous fixed and we ended up having six!  Rita, then Fr samuel, then Collette (converti recent), Childric, André (less active), and then David (a member)/  Probably the most mentally tiring day of my life, but it was really cool how everything just worked.  Really gereat

Sunday:  Good church service.  Rita and Louisette were baptized without problems.  The bishop baptized Rita, and Elder Brady baptized Louisette.  After the baptisms were over a former member called Narcisse came by.  His situation is a little special.  He was  dating Rita and actually introduced her to the church, and then he kinda went insane.  He is convinced that Rita is possessed, he came looking for Rita and he was incredibly angry because Rita broke up with him and He blames it on the church.  Anyway, we had to take him outside and calm him down while the members snuck Rita out the back.  Quite a stressful .... rencontre (I don't know what to say in english) but he eventually left fairly peacefully, at least without throwing any punches.  However, he apparently has come back to the church several times again looking for Rita, so the bishop has asked all of us to avoid the chapel for the rest of the week. 

Ok, I really need to go now.  I love you all very much.  I am staying safe and loving life.  Have a good day!