Chèr tout le monde

 

Before Bethany’s email, here are a few of her responses to some questions we had: We are supposed to do 1/2 hour to an hour of language study everyday. I have to admit that if we're busy that's the first thing that gets dropped from our schedule. However, I always enjoy it when we have time for it. It's cool how I'll learn a new thing and then I'll hear someone use that new phrase/idiom/grammer principle and think to myself "Hey, I just studied that"! Actually, I think President Caplain would love an Alabama T-shirt.  Did Alabama win the title again? Size XL I think. He's not fat, but he is REALLY tall. His wife is also tall, she used to be a pretty popular model in Paris, but quit when she joined the church. Also, we got Bethany’s entire debit card issues resolved with the bank. We were surprised at how many people responded with similar experiences!   Chèr tout le monde, It was a wonderfully sunny week here in Quimper. People keep saying it's very strange to have this much sun here, but I'm just grateful that Heavenly Father loves me enough to keep sending sun. We had District meeting this week in Lorient. Lorient is a 45 minutes train ride away which is so different then how things were in Torcy. It was also weird bein the new person again, but I've always liked meeting new people so it was actually really fun. Our Zone Leaders attended the meeting this week and one of them, Elder Foley, was in Torcy my first three transfers. So I saw enough familiar faces to be happy. We struggled with “finding” this week because normally the best time to do finding is after 6 here. Normally the French don't eat until 8 and are still up talking all the way until 9:30 or 10. However, people are in bed at 7:30 here in Quimper, so we've decided that we're going to ask President if we can change our finding hours to 4 to 7 instead and then come home and eat. We have been seeing a lot of inactives and recent converts. The good thing about visiting them is that they are best at giving us referrals. We've also been doing a lot of Visiting Teaching because the Branch is so small that they need us to be companions for several women in the ward while they go Visiting Teaching. It's a little bothersome to me because we could be using that time finding new amis, but things are different here and I have to learn to adjust. Our miracle this week was that after we went contacting in the center of town one day, we decided to go home for dinner. I was soooo sure that we were going to have something good happen that I was kind of disappointed. I kept trying to take the long way back to the bus station so we could talk to more people. Good thing I did, because as we waited for the bus and French guy came running up and asked Sr. Alves if she was from the Tahitian Island of Rurutu. We were surprised that he would know that. It turns out his wife is from Tahiti and they often get together with other Tahitians in Bretagne for dinner. We gave him our information and not even an hour later his wife called to invite us to dinner. The dinner was yesterday and we spent 6 hours there!!! A long time for sure, but they asked us a lot of questions about the church. We're hoping that a little seed of interest was planted.   We also bought and built a dresser all by ourselves! You'd be so proud of me dad! (See photos) Actually, Sr. Alves did most of it, not because I didn't want to, but because she secretly did it after I went to bed. Ok, not so secretly, she was hammering until midnight. I don't know why she felt she had to finish it in one night. Haha! Wow Dad! The Blue Man Group concert sounds awesome. You guys always seem to see cool stuff while I'm away. Since you guys were so close to the front did you get paint all over your clothes? We're you able to take some good photos on your smartphones? Some members have shown me the Facebook page (of the France Paris Mission) and I did get to see myself singing Silent Night. I thought my outfit looked terrible, but all in all the video was good. I'm glad that friends and family of missionaries can get good updates from that page. I don't know if Narré got baptized. I doubt it though, just because she still had a lot of obstacles. However, I don't think that means the baptism is off, just that it probably got moved to another date. We got a call from the Torcy Soeurs, but we missed it and they didn't answer when I called again. If I get a hold of them I'll ask what is happening. Hope everyone has an awesome week!!! Bethany