Oui Oui Vert

Bonjour à Tous!

Things are going well. The two new elders are settling in and they're
doing well. We all get along pretty well!

LA SEMAINE DE MANGEZVOUS

So we had a bunch of mangez-vous (French wordplay for dinner
appointment) with members this week so that was pretty chill. I think
in total we had like five or six. It was probably the most I've had in
one week during my mission! I really enjoy spending time with the
members! And plus we get to meet some of their friends sometimes,
which opens some new doors. The members here in Valence have been
really good about inviting us over and meeting their friends!

LYON AVEC CHIFFIE
Last Monday we went to Lyon for Pday. We went with Brother Lechifflart
(Chiffie). It was pretty fun! We just did some touristy stuff; it was
way cold but it was worth it! We went to some gourmet food store that
day as well and got some cool stuff.. Chiffie bought us some
Figatellu, which is a sausage that comes from Corsica. We at it later
that night and it was wayyyyy good. Chiffie also bought us a raclette
machine this last week which was way nice of him. Raclette is like
this thing where you put cheese on a little tray and then it melts the
cheese and you put it on potatoes with other stuff. It's super good
though! Chiffie has hooked us up, even though sometimes as a prank,
he spikes our drinks with stuff that makes our urine turn green hahaha

LYON

Valence! I barely have pictures of valence.. But here's centreville!

LE TRAVAIL
We've been able to find some new people to teach. I talked about that
one woman that we helped a few weeks ago and we got to see her
yesterday, and we had a brief lesson with her. She was willing to
listen, and we have a rdv with her next week!

Lately also we've received like 4 referrals in the past month, so that
has been pretty uncommon. We've been able to contact two of them, but
we're trying for the other two. We hope to see them sometime this
week. One of them is moving to Valence from Lyon, and I actually know
him! He was engaged for baptism back in Lyon, but now he's moving to
valence. So I hope we can see him soon!

Well that seems to be it for the week! I just can't remember what else
happened...

Love you all! Have a great week!

FOUR ENCORE!

Bonjour!

(Encore means again in French... So it's four again!)

LA SURPRISE
So this week we went to zone training on Friday in Lyon,

Master tacos with some of the trainers and blues

and before it started Elder Kahn and I were playing ping pong cause valence is one
of the few chapels that doesn't have a ping pong table :( and then
President Brown walks in! President doesn't usually come to zone
trainings.. But he came and saw how we're doing, and then told us
we're going to have some new roommates!! Long story (very long story)
short, missionaries needed to be taken out of a ville for safety
reasons, and so they took the two elders and put them in Valence. It
was pretty much perfect how president closed the other equipe two
weeks ago just so that these elders could come here! I'm super stoked
though. I'm with Elder Schettler, who's a homie from Holladay. I met
him in my first transfer, and we know a lot of the same people. And
the other is Elder Wilkey from England! Elder Wilkey is in his 2nd
transfer.. He's just and overall good guy!! But it's super fun being
back in the four man.. The ward was way stoked as well!

We found a dead mouse and propped it up hahah

LA SEMAINE
This week was way busy with a  bunch of stuff that was necessary to do
but didn't necessarily move the work forward.. We were in Lyon for two
days with training and legality stuff, then we just had a bunch going
on... We were able to go to the Thia's family's home for an
afternoon/evening.. We did service for them and then had dinner with
them! The mom is American, and the dad is from the reunion island. So
all their kids speak English and French. That family is probably one
of my favorite ones here! So it was super fun.

D'AUTRES CHOSES
Other than that, we had a rdv with Prince Success.. It was very
interesting.. He has been upset with the ward lately, and he was
saying he doesn't want to go to the temple anymore. Those kinds of
things are really sad.. But we bore testimony to him of the power of
the temple and the need his ancestors have of him, and honestly I had
a very deep  feeling of God needing him. So Prince still came to
church on Sunday, and the ward announced a temple trip in April, he
was way stoked about that. And then I helped one of the bishopric
members translate during an interview.. And they gave Prince a
calling! He was way stoked about that. A calling will be really good
for him, so I'm glad he has accepted it..
Here is a picture of Two of the Thia boys! It was Spencer's (middle) last Sunday in
valence until he gets married.. He's moving to Normandy

Otherwise, this week we plan to do a lot of finding! We need to find
some people to teach. Wish us luck :)

I love you all!

WE KAHN DO IT!

Bonjour tout le monde!
So I'm training now.. It's pretty sick! It's going well. My comps name
is Elder Kahn (pronounced con) and he's from Saratoga springs. It's
been going really well so far!

Elder Kahn and I

TROIS JOURS A LYON
I spent three days in Lyon which is always sick. I got to hang around
with all the other trainers for the most part and it was way fun.
We're all stuck in Lyon, so the zone leaders just kind of improvise
for stuff we can do. On Monday we just chilled in Lyon, cause it was
Pday. On Tuesday,  we contacted for like 4 hours.. It felt like 6 haha
we were way cold. But the mission buys the trainers dinner on Tuesday
night, so we got master tacos! Super good.

Wednesday we got our comps, and then went home.

Lyon

JE SUIS LÉGAL
Friday I had to go to Grenoble to do legality.. We met up with elder
Acheson and Loosle on Thursday night and slept in Grenoble for the
night. It was fun spending some time with the,! They're way far from
me so it's nice to see them. But now I'm legal again for another year!
Yay 

Elder Kahn and his first French Mcdonalds, (he grows up so fast!)

UN MIRACLE
So this week elder Kahn and I were walking swiftly to go buy him a bus
pass.. We wanted to buy it before the place closed, but we had like
ten minutes. We were going and on the road we saw this woman holding
her baby and pushing a stroller with a nightstand awkwardly fit onto
it, about to fall over. So we offered her some help! We walking a few
blocks with her to take the night stand. We got to know her a little
bit and when we dropped it off, we asked if she would be interested to
talk to us and she was! So we hope to see her this week. We didn't get
elder kahns bus pass that night, but we made a new friend! So it was
definitely worth it... It was a good lesson for us to never pass up an
opportunity to serve!

Elder Kahn and Delbert

D'AUTRES CHOSES
I already love having the area to ourselves... Our week gets booked
super fast and it's way nice! Haha the members are upset there's only
two of us now, but they still support us. We have some member RDVs
this week, one of which they said they are inviting some friends! So
we're stoked.

But life is well up in Valence France 😎

Have a great week!

Elder Kahn Chillin

STEADY TAKES VALENCE!

Hi friends and fam!

I don't have a lot of time today, I'm again in Lyon.. This will be
really short. Sorry!
So transfer calls came in and it was pretty crazy... So there's four
of us in Valence.

 We got our calls Friday morning; President started
by talking to Elder Stutz and Elder Hekking. He tells them that
they'll be staying together, but they will be whitewashing Bergerac...
So that was crazy! Bergerac is on the other side of the country haha
so they have a lot of trains to take. Elder Thangaraj is going to
Angouleme, and I'll be staying and training! The other companionship
is also being closed, so we'll be taking over everything in Valence!
I'm on my way to Lyon right now, and I'll be there for a couple days.
All the blues get in tomorrow, and then we will get them on Tuesday!

This last went well though. I was sick for the most of it. We went to
Lyon for Pday last Monday and we just saw some cool touristy stuff.

We found this cool new ami named Elizabeth. She really wants to speak
English with us but she seems interested in the church as well. We met
her on Wednesday, and fixed a rdv with her for an hour later at the
church.. And she showed up! She likes the chapel in valence a lot. We
were able to see her twice last week; she even gave us some ties as a
gift! We plan to see her again this week.. So we'll see how that goes!

But I'm super stoked to train. I'm upset Thangaraj is leaving me! He's a homie.

I get my blue on Wednesday! I'm super excited! He's probably
waking up in a few hours to go to the airport to get on the plane.
Haha pray for him!

I love you all! Have a great week!

CASTLES AND PRINCES

Bonjour!
Yo so this will probably be short. We spent all day in Lyon, so I
don't really have time left. But here we go!

NOTRE AMI QUI N'EST PLUS NOTRE AMI
We had this guy we were teaching named Bonté.. But then got his name
changed to Afinio... And we were walking to our appointment to meet up
with him, and we saw him on the road. We started talking to him and he
cut in; he was like "I chose my religion!" And we were like "oh
yeah??" And he was like "I'm now going to be Muslim. Tomorrow, I'm
going to pick up my son and take him to a mosque." We were just like
"quoi...????" (What...???). So we probably won't be seeing him again
soon haha

It's ironic cause this guy has a big ol' cross tattooed on his neck..
We'll try to pass him in a month and see how he is.

LE PRINCE
Our highlight of the week was probably seeing our homie, Prince
Success. (For the record, he is a prince, and technically king if he
returns to his country). We asked him to bring his crown and his royal
attire (I don't know what to call it). So that was pretty cool!

Prince Success

Also I'm not sure if I've completely explained Prince's story... I
won't go into depth, but he's here in France for political asylum,
because he was attacked by an anti-Christian tribe in his country.
They cut his neck and left him to bleed out. Somehow, he ended up at
the gate of a doctor, who then took care of him for the next nine
months. At some point I think he was in a coma. Then he came to France
for better medical care and political asylum. So he showed us his
scar!

Prince's Scar

It's pretty crazy that he survived that. God wanted to keep him
here! Probably so he could find the church :)

We're working on getting him to the temple! It's been hard trying to
find a member to take him.. He's got names and a recommend, so now we
just have to wait on the members..

LE CHÂTEAU
We went porting (door-knocking) this week in this middle of nowhere
neighborhood in a middle of nowhere ville. We ended up finding a
castle in the neighborhood #ILoveFrance.

A small part of the castle we found

D'AUTRES CHOSES
Well we're still trying to find people to teach.. We have quite a few
potentials, but we can't really seem to fix with them. We might have
to start taking some different, out-of-the-box styles of missionary
work. So we'll see how it goes. Pray for us!

I love you all!

Je Ne Sais Pas Bonjour Family et Friends! This week was good. I don't remember much of what happened, but it was still good.

NOS AMIS
So we came in contact with this investigator that was dropped in the
past. His name is Bonté. He's an interesting dude from French Guyane.
He has a lot of faith! But he's definitely interesting haha. We had a
good first rdv with him; he talked about how much he felt with the
missionaries in the past. He had truly felt the spirit! He said a lot
of other things that I didn't understand.. He was once shot in the
throat, and now he has this scar and his voice sounds pretty bad. So
it's way hard to understand him! But fortunately it's not me that will
be speaking to his heart. C'est l'esprit de Dieu!

We saw some our boys, the island boys! We saw Mesake and his buddy
Sieta from Tonga. We had a really good rdv with them! It's funny; with
those guys, we just stop by their house and they just let us in. They
always offer us food as well. But we got to know Sieta a little better
and it turns out that his wife is a member, and they have three kids!
His wife and kids live in Australia, while Sieta is here to play rugby
professionally. But he knows the missionaries pretty well and seems interested! 

 Some random friends on the street. Two of which are SDFs (hobos)

We also passed by one our homies, Keith. He's a member here in
valence, but he doesn't come to church very often. He also plays rugby
with the boys. But we had a good meets with him! His brother is
actually on a mission as well. We can feel the faith that Keith has,
we just need to give him a little push! He's way sick though.

We visited our friend Odile as well yesterday. I've talked about her a
bit; she's super smart and super nice! She likes having all four of us
over. we usually visit her on Sundays; she's really occupied during
the week with all of her studies. But we really appreciate her and how
nice she is!

D'AUTRES CHOSES
We had zone conference this week. A portion of it was spent at a Roman
amphitheater in Lyon. It was built in 12 BC. So it was definitely one
of the oldest things I've been to! But it was way cool. I really like
President Brown!

Roman Theater

Latest goals have been faithful family finding. Our president has been encouraging us to try harder to find families;'they've always been our priority, but he's telling us to not let one family get by without a chance to hear the restored gospel. I really like President Brown and what he does. 

 Vegetables and fruit are more appealing to me. (I love Zucchini  hahaha) you probably think this is my comp writing this email haha.

But it's crazy to think tomorrow marks one year of being in France!! I left exactly a year ago to come to France.

Not much else happened though... We went to the dentist again, and
we're going again this week. Yayyy

I love you all! Have a great week!