Off to Compiegne!

bonjour tout le monde!
well, ça y est. i'm leaving caen. off to bigger and better things. off to the city of compiegne! i'm pretty excited. i'm mostly just excited about whitewashing. it should be super fun. so as to details, my area is actually the department of oise. if you type in oise france in google maps it'll show you my area. also, i think we take care of the branch in soissons, so we may be visiting them too. so as it turns out, compiègne is elder reed's blue ville, so he's been telling me a little about it. they have a smaller ward there, but a lot of good people. i think around 50-60 people each week. what is kind of exciting, is the fact that we have a car? weird huh. i'm not sure what i think about it. i think that we'll probably just not use it that often, cause i'd rather walk and bus and stuff but we'll see. we just have to make sure not to fall into the car trap and use it for everything. cause then we never talk to anyone. also with the car, i might be getting an international license. cause as of now, i can't drive the car cause i'm too old, after a year in france, you can't drive anymore cause of laws and such unless you switch your license for an international one. but i'm not sure how that will work when i have to come home... we'll see. but yeah, so we will be whitewashing in, me and elder christensen, and it's going to be a blast. apparently elder christensen is in his 4th transfer, so pretty blue still, but he has a ton of fire. he's from salt lake i think, but as to other details, i have no idea yet. i've talked to him like once before, but i don't know a ton. but we're going to do some great stuff out there. i think that we are probably going to start with ward relations. really get them on our side, cause i hear we have a great ward, and then from there we will have them help us find our family to baptise :) i'm honestly really excited though. it is going to be kinda weird though not being a zone leader anymore. i've been it for a year now, and i feel like i'm going to find myself with a lot of extra time. weird. it'll just take a little time to adjust though and then it'll be fine. i'm excited to be a district leader though. that should be really fun. in my district, there are 3 equipes, sisters in melun, elders in troyes, and us in compiègne. we're in the zone and stake of paris est (east) and guess who my zone leader is? elder szuch, my mtc comp. haha so that'll be fun to work with him. as to how the work was going up there before, i don't have any idea. often it's because it's not going that well that they whitewash it, but not always. we'll just have to see when we get there. i don't really mind if it is though cause it'll be fun to start from scratch and rebuild. just like villeneuve d'ascq all over again. it'll be fun. and it's a beautiful region apparently, so that'll be gnarly to take nice drives through the countryside. mais bon, so that's about all i know about the coming transfer. i'll keep you posted when i know more

anyway, about this week. it was a way good week to leave caen. we had a lot of good stuff happen and so it was a good note. guess what? at church this week, we had 5 families there with us and the sisters! one was a couple that us and the soeurs are teaching, sherry and philippe, she's american, he's french. another was ely and his wife odile and their two kids. another was a muslim man with his french wife that we are teaching and their two kids. then the last two were two mothers, one a recent convert that the sisters baptised, and the other they are teaching. glory has one kid, and abbee has 2. so it was terrific. it really was cool to see all the families coming to church and the power of this goal that we fixed. so yeah, that was so great. normally we only teach ely, but our rdv with him saturday i told him i was leaving and that i hadn't met his family yet so he had to bring them to church! so he said okay and voilà! i love playing that card. if you're going to have to leave, you might as well make the most out of it right? haha

as to the rest of church, it was kinda weird. i realized yesterday just how much people don't listen in church. it was pretty depressing. so i got up in priesthood and announced to everyone that i was leaving. there weren't very many people there though cause it was the beginning of the first hour, so it was fast and testimony meeting so i bore my testimony one last time to tell them i'm leaving and stuff too. and honestly, it was ridiculous. not even the people that were there in priesthood understood that i was leaving. i talked to so many people after that were telling us to have a good week and such and we'll see you next week and all and i had to tell them actually no and then they were all surprised and wondered why i hadn't told them. ridiculous. mais bon, i think that at least most of them realized what was going on by the end. but yeah, it was kinda sad to leave. it really was a bitter sweet feeling, cause after being with these people for 6 months, i had gotten really close with them, so it was hard to leave, but at the same time, i'm now kinda excited to go and to see new things. 6 months is a long time to stay in one place. so it'll be good in the end. i think it'll be just what i need to switch things up and make things exciting again.

oh so another thing that was kinda exciting this week was that we took a trip to lille! elder reed had to go there for his legality, so i went with and we had a jolly old party there in lille. i talked to the couple up there, and they invited us over for dinner, and they also invited cedric and gregory! gregory couldn't come cause he had work, but i did get to see cedric and talk with him a bit. it was so good. he's doing really well. he is now the elders quorom president and he is currently looking for his wife haha. he's doing terrific though and it was good to see him again. also we went to our favorite patiserrie out there and got some yum yums. so all in all a great trip. even if it was 8 hours of train for 4 hours there.

anyway, i'm getting bored of being on the computer and i still have to write president. so ima stop there and wish you all a happy week. christmas is coming soon! hopefully santa comes to the french too! love you! also, at the bottom there, that's my new address! cool cool. loves