I'M ON A BOAT!!

Hey everyone!

We had a pretty decent week. Last Monday we didn't really do much. It

was too windy so we couldn't take the lift up to the mountain. We

decided to go check out this marine museum. It was free for us because

we were under 26 years old. But it was pretty lame to be honest hahah.

I got to ride a boat on Tuesday hahah it was pretty fun. Kind of funny

cause it's been about two years. But it's a public transportation boat

in our sector, so we're allowed to use it haha.

We went to a different part of Toulon across the bay to go teach a

partial member Tahitian family! It went superrrrrr well. The nonmember

father picks it up super fast, and the recent convert mother was

helping so much. It was really great.

We got to go to Nice this week for a blitz and so that was really fun!

We saw this less active guy, contacted a bit, and played some

basketball, with a bunch of people. It was way fun! I was with Elder

Nadauld who's in his last transfer. I met him on my first day in the

mission! It was a great exchange.

On Friday we had district meeting in Cannes. We ate Steak 'n Shake for

lunch.. It's always a win! Haha then that evening we returned to

Toulon and had dinner with the Patous. They're a super nice couple

that have been Amis for a while now, but their situation is pretty

complicated. They have a baptismal date for February of 2018 haha.

They're practically members because they come every week and are

active, but they have a complicated situation with their former

spouses and trying to get divorce stuff filed and worked out.. So they

have a date, and now we just wait haha.

Saturday we had a ward picnic and that was super fun. It was at this

nice park that's on a ridge next to the sea. Super nice area! We

played pétanque all day haha it was fun. Look up pétanque because I

don't have time to explain it. But it was fun!

I love you all! Have a great week!

Nice

Cannes, Toulon, Antibes, Nice... Paradise!

Hello everyone! Life is going super well down here on the Côte

d'Azur.. We had a pretty cool week. We'll start off with Monday..

LE FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL DE CANNES

Last Sunday night we were talking on the phone with the elders in

Antibes.. They told us that it's the Cannes film festival and that we

should come to Cannes (two hour train, costs some personal money). So

we thought about it and decided to do it! We were afraid it wouldn't

be cool or something.. So we were hesitant to go but decided to do it

in the end!

Well, it turned out to be one of the coolest P-days of my mission..

During the film festival, tons of international people are there.

Literally sooooo many Americans all day long. We loved it!! And we met

some members as well from around. We'd be walking and all of sudden..

"Hey elders!!" Haha it was way fun. We are steak N shake which is

super good as always.. We bought some nice souvenirs and took pictures

and stuff. Saw the red carpet. We looked at some big yachts.. I came

down to Cannes last year in the moving equipe. It was fun to be back

again!

Cool story... As we were looking at the big boats and stuff, we found

ourselves suddenly getting into a small group of people, and there

were some paparazzi.. In short, I find myself being moved out of the

way by a body guard cause I'm all up in the business of Robert DeNiro!

Hahah and then one of the elders was like... "Do you see who that it

behind him?! That's Usher!!" Hahaha I was able to snap a few photos...

But there's my cool, worldly story for the week :)

Robert DeNiro

Usher (and that's the guy that pushed out of the way)

Now to some more important stuff..

We have a few Amis here in Toulon. One of our coolest is Ananias. He's

from Brazil and he's way sick. We had a good lesson with him this

week! I think he'll be baptized. He's just trying to get his life a

little more stable. One of his friends "borrowed" his car and ended up

peacing out to Spain. So he's trying to get his stolen car back; he

said once he has his car back, it will be super easy to come to church

and all. So we're praying for him!

Cannes

We visited a couple part member families..

One is the family Dehors. The husband is a nonmember and the wife is a

recent convert. They have two young kids. They're also Tahitian! We

had a Tahitian lunch with them and taught them. The husband is

receptive and enjoys the gospel. Apparently he likes our church more

that his own. He comes to church as well. They're a super nice family

that could easily become an eternal family!

The other family is the family Manoa. We had lunch with them this last

week. The husband is also not a member; he also plays rugby for

Toulon. We are trying to teach him. It's an American Tongan family

from California. They're way cool! They have 5 kids. We're teaching

one of the boys because he's going to be baptized soon. Sister Manoa's

nephew was at their house when we visited them. He's like 20 years old

and he's a bro! Hahah he said that I have an accent.. Which is weird

because my family also said I have an accent! I don't feel like I have

an accent though, so it's weird..

D'AUTRES CHOSES

We had zone training this week. That went really well. We talked a lot

about the apostolic blessing from Elder Christofferson and how we can

really claim these blessings. I won't go into detail because the

blessing is sacred for just our mission, but we talked a lot about It

and what we can do to improve our work. We called it the Comeback

Conference.

I was able to do an exchange with Elder Hurst in Antibes/Cannes. We

had a really fun time and I enjoyed the exchange. Antibes and Cannes

are super nice places! We finished the exchange by going back to

Toulon for a couple hours to do samedi sportif (Saturday sports) with

the other elders. We played basketball with some random dudes and they

destroyed us. But we got to talk to some nice dudes and we're going to

play with them next week.

Also I'm pretty stoked we can wear sunglasses now.

But that's about all that happened this week. Thanks for all that you

do! I love you all!

TOULON TIME!

Hey everyone!

So I'm in my new ville Toulon! It's way cool. It's quite a decent
sized ville! It's the biggest I've served in not counting Lyon. But
the weather here is super nice and it's a cool place. Our work is really good.
My comp and I get along pretty well. He's almost at his year mark, 
so he speaks pretty good French and so we just get to work.
I forgot what it's like to be in such a big area. I love it! Our whole zone is really cool. 
Our zone takes in Nice, Cannes, Antibes, Toulon. St Raphael, and Corsica. 
(I know you don't know what most those Villes are, but if you look up pictures 
of them you'll be amazed at every one hahah. Last week we had
some cool appointments! We have quite a few people here that are set
up to get baptized.

We also have a recent convert that was baptized just two weeks ago!
His name is Xavier. He's this older dude with Italian origins. He's a
super funny guy! He's very integrated into the church. They only found
him about two months ago! He has a crazy life story. But now he's very
into the church and very active! He talks soooo much so he talks to
all the members and gets along with them. Apparently he was using
lds.org a lot just  a few weeks after they met him! Haha he was like
"hey I won't be able to come in two weeks, who do I need to tell?"
He's a super great guy! 

Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet

We're teaching this Brazilian guy named Ananias. He's way cool! He
lives here in Toulon with his son (who only speaks Portuguese). We
engaged him to baptism and he was like "absolutely!" So we have him a
date for about 5 weeks out. We're gonna try to see him a few times a
week and hopefully he'll be able to come to Church.. He works quite a
bit.

The members here are cool too! There's the Nonu Family.. Ma'a Nonu
(the father) is from New Zealand and he plays rugby here! He's super
sick. He makes us some good food! He's with his wife and three kids
here. He used to play rugby for the all blacks, and he won a World
Cup, and then decided to play for Toulon. He's actually a pretty
famous player in the world! (Look him up, he is actually very famous)

We also visited Sister Burel. She's this superrrrr nice woman that has
a bunch of health problems, so she has difficulties coming to church.
But we try to see her weekly and she's always very welcoming! She's
been in the church for about 44 years. She has a profound testimony of
the gospel.

Sorry I didn't take many pictures this week, it's been pretty busy.
But I'll for sure try to get some more.

Love you all! Have a great week!

LETS GO TO THE BEACH!!!

Disclaimer: I didn't actually go to beach and I'm not going to because
we're not allowed to... So calm down before you tell my mission
president hahah

I've been transferred to Toulon! It's a fairly large port city on the
Côte d'Azur. I think it's like the 15th largest city in France, so
it's a decent size. I haven't seen much yet, but I'm super stoked to
be here! I can already feel the climate difference.

New Companion Elder Loveland


Also here's my new address.. Send me something :)

Le Clos Fleuri Bât. 5
58 Rue Augustin Berthon
83000 Toulon
France

I was gonna do emails yesterday during my multiple hours of trains but
some stranger was distracting me and asking me about the church... I'm
joking of course, I had a wonderful conversation with this college
bro. He was way cool and interested about our church and the
significance in it. He's from Aix-En-Provence and when we told him
there's a Mormon church there he was like "for real?!?" Haha but that
was pretty cool talking to him!

Last week consisted of visiting multiple members and eating with them.
In the end, we had about 6 total dinner appointments throughout the
week.. I'll list them off and give brief word summaries:
Family Barro: Great French meal. That one is going down in the books.

Family Tavella: Canadian French family that feeds us well

Tavella Family 

Family Thia: Food from the reunion island. They brought some of their
friends that are interested to learn more. The elders are going back
this week.

Family Luotongo: Islander BBQ with them and some of their friends...
Super good! They're a great family.

Sœur Gibert: she feeds us like every week... One of the nicest members
in Valence!!
Family Tuilevuka (only Seta): skype calls and chillin with Seta. He's a homie.

On Sunday we said goodbye to a bunch of people at church and then we
ran from appointment to appointment to say goodbye to people.

Not too much else happened. We had a cinco de mayo district meeting
taco party. I almost tore my hamstring in an intense game of leapfrog
(it was highly applicable to our meeting).

But Valence has been too good to me! Six months felt like a long
time... I lived with seven different people in that apartment and
enjoyed every moment of it. I'm very thankful for the time I go to
serve there. Such a wonderful ward.

I'm stoked to be down here in Toulon. I'll try to learn as much as i
can about it and let you all know next week ✌🏻✌🏼✌🏽✌🏾 (that's me
getting more and more tan working out here in this beautiful area.

I went to Marseille for a few hours

Skyping with the family

I love you all! Have a great week!

Ghetto Couch and Grenoble Chillin

Bonjour everyone!

So we had a decent week.

L'ECHANGE
Last Monday the zone leaders came to valence to hang out with us
before starting the exchange. We just chilled and played some
basketball. On Tuesday I went on exchange with Elder Berry in Valence.
We didn't really have much going on that day, so we went porting (door
knocking) for what felt like 5 hours. We kind of lost track of time
haha but we talked to a lot of people. We didn't find anyone to return
to, but some random Moroccan dude gave us some homemade cookies so
that was cool.

Grenoble

Elder Berry is finishing next week and he is going to USU when he gets
back. He had already gone for a year, so he and I connect pretty well.
I'll most likely see him after the mission up there. We finished off
the night by going to Jean-Yves! He fed us some lasagna.

Wednesday we went up to Lyon to trade back.. I really don't remember
what else happened that day. We saw Prince success when we got back to
Valence, but after that I don't remember.

Thursday we had a tombezvous (when you make a rdv but they don't show
up). We had confirmed the rdv at 6PM the night before, we show up to
our meeting spot exactly at the time, and the guy didn't show up...
Haha so that was annoying. We also saw our friend Michel. He's a super
old guy that loves the missionaries. We usually just read the Book of
Mormon with him.

We've had a hard time seeing any of our Amis lately, so we've had to
do some more finding. But we're still trying!

Friday we did a blitz in Grenoble. A blitz is an exchange but both of
us were in Grenoble instead of one going back to Valence. It was fun;
we had an appointment with a family to eat lunch. They knew some
people from draper. The father was a mission president in Madagascar a
while ago! That evening we taught one of their Amis that is going to
get baptized this week. Normally I would be doing the interview, but
because of her situation, president brown is going to do it.. So
unfortunately I won't be interviewing anyone this transfer!

Saturday we helped the Grenoble elder with a service project. We took
these big ball-things like a ski lift to the top of the Bastille, and
we walked down all of it and picked up trash. It was pretty fun! There
were some members and a bunch of nonmembers, so we enjoyed talking to
a bunch of people. We got some nice photos as well!

Sunday we had church and ate with Frere Barro and his wife. It was my
first time there,vans it was way good! They're super nice.

This week we're trying to have a mangezvous every day.. Haha we have
almost filled up the week! We're still trying to find someone for
Friday and Saturday... So we'll see.

Also, we rearranged our apartment so make some more space because
we're no longer 4 missionaries  and that turned into us making a new
ghetto couch using a bookcase, planks of wood, and a huge pad. Haha
it's pretty cool!

Well that's all for this week. I love you All! Have a great one!