Hello, Arras is actually not a branch, but a full ward with an actual church building and everything. I'll try to remember to take a picture of the building. I was pretty excited to see that it was an actual building when I got here. Even when I was in Torcy, where the ward is bigger, they used part of an office building just because there is practically no land to buy that close to Paris. Going to church in an actual ward building makes me feel like I'm at home. It's not as big as ours, but they have a large parking lot and other areas to expand the building if needed.   Something I've learned on the mish is that all of the towns in France are modern, just like the states. They just have little quarters that are still ancient looking and fun to visit. I tend to show you the ancient stuff in my pictures because that's what people like to see. Luckily here in Arras, we live in the ancient quarter, which makes our life seem a little cooler. I'm so happy that the lesson with Chris went well! And that he stayed for all three hours of church! Quel bonheur! I'm really so proud of you two for helping them out like that. I kept thinking about your lesson all week and couldn't wait to get news about it. The weather was cold for most of the week, but not as cold as it was last transfer.  And the sun was still out. It warmed up again later in the week. I look forward to hearing what happened on your trip to the West Mom. Stay safe! Hopefully Dad won't be too lonely without you. This week we taught a Elodie, Wesley and Lesley (the ones we miraculously ran into on the street). We taught about how the atonement can help us overcome our problems if we ask for the Savior to lighten our burdens. Lesley (the 10 year old) was sitting at the edge of the couch, her eyes were wide and totally focused as we taught. I pray that she remembers to use the Atonement when her life gets hard. Unfortunately, she was not born into an easy family life and she's a very tenderhearted girl. Wesley is an energetic 8 year old and had a hard time focusing, but still would ask amazing questions and make great comments like "we should be nice to everybody because we're all children of God. That's why we say we're brothers and sisters!" It was good to hear him say that. I was really hoping that Elodie would be more focused because her life has already been so difficult and will probably have even more difficulties. I'm pretty sure that she would have, but Lesley and Wesley's two year old sister, Océane, was visiting for the weekend and Elodie was often occupied with her. Next week we plan on talking about the Atonement again, but this time with repentance. We are also really pushing for them to come to church. They want to and their neighbor who is an active member will take them, but we're having a hard time seeing Dominique (the father/boyfriend who is never there) in order to get his permission and officially organize everything. Maxime came to church again! We used this lesson to explain that our goal is to baptize people unto Christ and the only way he can know if that's the right thing for him is by gaining a testimony. He gets so hung up on things like fasting and tithing that he's missing what really matters: whether or not The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the true church of God on the earth.  We had a breakthrough, though, because he admitted to himself (we already suspected this) that he's sort of afraid to sincerely pray because he's not exactly sure he wants to get an answer because that would mean he would have to change and follow our "rules".   We explained that it was good for him to realize this, because now he knows the thing that is blocking him from getting an answer. And the member who was teaching with us pointed out that the "rules" are God's commandments and, that while it is hard to follow them sometimes, as we do them we begin to see that they bring peace and joy to our lives. Not boring misery. However, the question is, will decide that giving up his past sins and bad habits is worth it? As a companionship we realized that we had done everything we could for him and now it was up to his free agency and the guiding hand of the Lord. We've decided to meet with him again next week to see if he's decided that he's willing to make the sacrfices necessary. We also decided to teach him about the importance of looking for answers in the scritpures and not on different internet forums. However, if he doesn't want to make changes then we'll probably have to make the hard decision of dropping him. If he's not going to progress than both he and we are wasting our time. We'll be praying and fasting that the Lord will open his heart this week. We also had other great miracles this Sunday! We had 4 inactive families/individuals come to church this week! Some of them were real surprises and I was in hog heaven (was that phrase too american? probably). I gave a talk yesterday about how to gain a testimony and one of the inactive men told me he wrote notes on what I said. That made me glad because I had been praying that what I said would touch the heart of somebody. Bethany