New Transfer

Hey everyone!

how is everything going?? so we've had a couple of changes here this last week! i got a new companion, and there were also some changes happening in the zone too. we now have another blue in our district with elder withers at cherbourg training, and we also got a senior couple out here in our district. they live in cherbourg, their names are brother and sister belessa from montana i think. they are nice. we had a lot of changes, but mostly, everything still feels the same. still here in caen and still having a good time. the one thing that really feels like a "big" change is when we change villes. other than that, they are all just little minor changes. anyway, so my new companion, his name is elder reed and he is from calgary canada! it's been pretty hard serving with a canadian so far just because he speaks english funny so it's kinda hard for us to understand each other (haha) but all in all he is a good kid and we're going to have a good transfer. it's really funny because it's really different being with him than with my other companions. i have always been kinda the follower, because the other companions i was with had really strong personalities, so it was easier just to follow them than to try to fight for the word, but now with elder reed, i'm in charge. it's good though and we're having fun and seeing miracles and everything is going great here in caen. turns out i do at least kind of know what i'm doing. but it's weird for me because if i want him to do something, i have to tell him to do it, because he doesn't know it has to be done, so i'm still getting used to that and getting him integrated with the work and the zone and not just trying to do it myself. so we're going to do a little training this week, so that'll be good. also, speaking of which. i have a favor to ask of you. okay so this weekend, we had a zone leader wide fast, along with the assistants and president to decide if we should fix something as a goal for our mission. really just to get the spiritual confirmation that it is possible. so we did this, and we decided that yes. the goal that we fixed is to find a family for christmas. to give them the greatest gift that we can, and to find that family that is ready to be baptized in every city. so we fixed this as a goal, and i was wondering if you could do something for me. could you pray for us here in caen and also in our zone if you want, that we can find that family that is ready to recieve the gospel? that would be stellar. thanks!

anyways, on to the week. so first off, i'll start with the bad experience of the week. well, long story short, elder reed and i both got food poisoning haha. this weekend we ate some bad food i guess (we are not exactly sure what it was but we are about 80 percent sure that it was these canned lentils and sausages that we ate, because other than that, we didn't really eat this weekend because we were fasting). anyway, so at the time it tasted fine, but then on sunday night, the night after, we were both feeling iffy. we went to sleep that night and both of us had to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and i even had some throw up in there too. fun stuff. so this was last night and we are both still trying to get over it. it's fun i suppose. i'm not really sure what i'm supposed to do to take care of that, so we'll probably just wait it out and hope that it passes quickly haha.

anyway, other more happy experiences this week. we we've done quite a lot of finding this week because we've really been trying to find the people that are ready right away to be baptized, and we had a lot of success this week. we found a lot of people and got a lot of numbers, and i'm not going to lie, i'm happy to be able to contact in my style again. cause with elder johnson, he was a really direct person, and it was kinda just "hey we are missionaries, do you want to hear about our message" and that's it. but now we really are having conversations with them and talking and it's good. i really just hope that i can be as good of an example as elder andrus was for me and that he can learn as much. we'll see.

so one cool experience that we had this week came when we did some porting a couple of nights ago. we were in this area, and we starting knocking doors, and we decided to use the approach that president had given us to do for porting, and that is to ask people if we can come in and pray with them and leave a blessing on their home. so we are doing this, and we knock on this lady's house, and she answers and opens the door, we tell her that we are here to pray with her, and she says come right in. so we come in, talk with them for a little, and it turns out that she is half italian, half spanish, and the husband is german but they all speak french perfectly. so we talk to them for a bit, and as it turns out, they have 7 children, from about 13-2, and they are really believing, and really catholic. so we go into a room with the kids and the mom, cause the dad was busy, and we say a prayer with them. first off, they all say "notre père" our father i think it's called in english, and then they finish, and we ask if we can say a prayer now. so we said a prayer, blessed their family, and are going to be going back tonight to see them again. so that was sweet to see the things that president told us to do work. they are really catholic and i'm not sure how they are going to react when they find out we're mormons, but we'll see. we're really praying and trying to figure out what to teach them tonight, so we'll see.

so yeah, this week has been really crazy. we've been running everywhere, we had exchanges with the assistants, we had zone council, and then we had to prepare our trainings for next week, welcome the zone in, and do all these things, and we really have just been running on all cylinders. we haven't had any down time, and our appartment shows it haha, it was so messy this morning, but at least we mostly got it clean. also, it's starting to get cold, and we don't really have heating in our apartment and it's terrrrrribly insolated. so the past couple of nights have been a bit chilly, but we found a couple of space heaters in the apartment, so we've turned those on and closed all the doors in our living quarters, so that the one side of our apartment is nice and warm, but the other side is freezing. it's a nice experience.

as to other things, all of our amis are doing pretty well, stanley and augustine got the priesthood this weekend, so that was sweet. ely, a guy we've been teaching for a little bit now, but who hasn't really been keeping rdvs that we fix here at the church, finally came to church yesterday, so that was great. i'm not sure how his experience was, elder reed said meh, but we'll see this tuesday when we see him. our ward isn't the best fellowshippers, and i was too busy running around trying to make everything else work out by myself since my companion didn't know what was going on yet which is completely normal, so i didn't get a chance to tell members to go up and meet him and integrate him and such, so we'll see. he's kinda shy until you break his shell, so we'll see what happens. also, raphael, an ami that we had been teaching about 3-4 months ago, who was super ready for the gospel, we got to see him again finally on sunday, and we had a great rdv with him. we talked again about the restoration and what that means and how if Jesus Christ's church, the one that he established himself, was on the earth, we would all want to belong to that one, and then we told about how it is and how he can know. so it was a really great rdv and we're gonna see him again this tuesday, so i think he's gonna be baptized this transfer. we're praying. our other amis, they are all doing fine too. everything is going just peachy here in caen.

well i'm all out of things to say and i feel nausious (spelling..........) so i'm gonna say bye! hope you have a stellar week and everything goes as planned! love you all! bisous!