Monday, December 3, 2012

Thanksgiving Week

bonjour tout le monde!
comment ça va cette semaine?? how are you? here in caen everything is going great. life is good and everyone is doing well and such. this week was a good week, we had a terrific experience with elder andersen, so that was fun. we had a really conference and we learned a lot. it was interesting though because in his talk he talked about so many different things. he just bounced from one experience to another and then another and he just touched on a bunch of different things briefly. he didn't really focus on one thing for a long time. it was interesting. he shared a lot of personal experiences and things that he saw when he was here as mission president of the bordeaux mission. and yes, he did speak french. not for the whole time, but he would throw french phrases in every so often and he told us a story in french. he speaks surprisingly well for it having been 20 years since he has spoken it. so that was a fun experience. we took a cute little picture together and everything so that should be on the facebook page. speaking of which, have you looked at that yet? they always take picture of us and they should be there so if you want to see all about our exciting adventures at zone conference and stuff, allez-y.

annnnnywho. i don't have a ton of experiences that i want to share with you this week and we are kinda hurried on time, so i'm going to talk a little about the coming week. it's going to be intense. so, on thursday of this week, we're having a zone turkey bowl! just like last year, we're all going to the city of Rouen, and we are going to have a nice turkey feast and turkey bowl! everyone is assigned to bring something different and it's byot (bring your own turkey, but since we are in france i think that it will be more so bring your own chicken) and then we will have a nice thanksgiving feast together. it's going to be radical. too bad that the football probably won't be too fun cause we're missionaries and we've learned to not go all out on things like this, but we have two kids in our zone who played college football as wide receivers, so we should have some exciting events. on verra. 

okay random side note, do you guys even know how to pronounce caen? i was thinking about that as i was writing rouen, cause as it turns out these names are pretty weird. anyway, if not, it's pronounced mostly the same way that you would say con as in pros and cons. as to rouen, it's kinda like.... roo-wan. voilà the french lesson for the day.

so the other lesson for the day is a life lesson. so yesterday we taught our amis class in church, and we figured since it was thanksgiving this week, why not talk about that? so we had a nice little lesson on gratitude. (also i was thinking about this, and i don't know how i'm ever going to manage when i don't have a companion. it would be so weird to teach a lesson by myself. hopefully i never get that call haha. jokes.) so anyway, we talked about gratitude and there were a couple of things that stood out to me as we were preparing our lesson. the first thing is that gratitude is not just being thankful for the big things that we are given. it's not just saying thanks when we recieve a huge gift or something like that. it's the act of really searching out these things that we are blessed with. because there are a lot of them. i've realized that the attitude of gratitude changes everything. if we look at the bad side, things will be bad. but if we look at the positive and look for all the blessings that we receive, it's wonderful. i've really learned how much i have to be grateful for ever since i've come here in france and i've been around so many people who really don't have anything. it's opened up my eyes. because i see a ton of people who don't have the everyday things that we take for granted. a house over our head, food to eat, not wanting in anything. you don't realize how great these things are until you don't have it or at least until you see someone who doesn't have these things. it also helps you realize the importance of the gospel. because these people that i am talking about don't have anything, but they have the gospel, and that is everything to them. it's crazy. let's give thanks.

anyway, that's about everything for this week. hope you are having a great week and you have a good thanksgiving! hugs and kisses! buy me something exciting on black friday!  watch out for people like this loves.

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