Week 17, Valence, France

Bonjour,

We got our transfer calls on Tuesday and I will be staying in Valence for the next six weeks with Elder Dover. One of the sisters in Valence, Sister Rose, is leaving to Switzerland so there will be a new sister missionary here. I am glad that I am staying in Valence because there is a lot of work that I want to do here. Recently we have found some new people that are very prepared for the gospel and I am planning on finding more. We have also made a lot of progress with some of our amis and I am excited to continue working with them.

This week we got an awesome new ami who is a friend of a member in the ward. We have taught him once and it went very well. He is very open to learning more about the gospel and I am very excited to start teaching him. His name is Michael which makes things confusing because we have another ami who is also named Michael. We decided to rename the other Michael Old Michael.

On Wednesday we had an exchange where the Elders in Grenoble came to Valence and all four of us worked in Valence. We were able to have 3 lessons which is the most we have had in one day this transfer.


My District

Funny story: On Wednesday night the Grenoble Elders were staying at our apartment and we were making burritos. I was cutting some really hot peppers and made the mistake of itching my eye. I got some of the pepper in my eye and it hurt really, really bad. I washed it out and called the mission nurse who told me to put some stuff in it but it still hurt for a really long time. My whole face got really red and felt like it was on fire. Eventually it went away and now I am totally fine so no need to worry. Now it is just funny to think about.


I wanted to talk about what I do during a typical day. It is hard to say because we do not ever do the same thing but we always start out with getting up at 6:30 and exercising for 30 minuets. Then we eat breakfast and prepare for the day. At 8 we have personal study. Then and 9 we have companionship study and then language study at 10. Then we have the rest of the day to do proselyting until 9:00. We also have an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner that we have to fit in. We try to spend most of our time teaching lessons to people. We teach them the principals of the gospel of Jesus Christ and try to help them repent and strengthen there faith by keeping commitments. Our purpose as missionaries is to invite others to come unto Christ through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end. We do not force anyone to do anything, we just invite them. If we are not teaching we are trying to find people to teach. We do this by talking to everyone on the street or at their homes. We also spend a lot of time working with members to strengthen their faith and find more people to teach. I really love being a missionary. It is a lot of hard work but it is easier when I rely on God's help and realize that I am doing his work.

I love you all and hope you have a great week.

Miracle of the week:

We gave a Book of Mormon to someone and he was very happy that we gave it to him.

  

Fun French fact of the week:

French people like to use their knife a lot more when they eat meals. It is also important for them to eat everything on the plate and soak up all the left over sauce with bread so that the plate is totally clean. Sometimes I think they are in a contest to leave the plate cleaner then they found it.

Anders didn't label these pictures.  I hope he remembers where they are someday.  Beautiful.

Anders ward mission leader sent the following two pictures.  The first is from a ward picnic playing Petanque, a "popular sport in southern France"  The second picture is Anders "enjoying McDonalds a la francaise"