Week #4 Transfer #2 Tarbes, France

Bonjour tout le monde!

This transfer is going by super fast, but it also feels like I've been here for so long - haha, time on the mission still confuses my brain. This week was really cool.

Awesome skies over Bordeaux

At the start of the week we took a train to Bordeaux on Tuesday for a mission conference in Bordeaux where we got to hear from our beloved mission president, President Brown, his wife and our mission mom Sister Brown, and from Elder Adler from the quorum of the 70 and his wife Sister Adler.  This conference was one of the most powerful meetings I have ever been to, and one where I learned more than I ever have in 4 hours.  Every single one of them cried at some point during their message, the spirit was strong and I learned so much. Elder Adler is hilarious, he's from Germany and probably the same part as Elder Uchtdorf (the 2nd counselor to the prophet in the 1st presidency of our church) because he reminded me a ton of him.  The message he shared was about the "evil behind smiling eyes", a talk by Elder Anderson of the 12 apostles, how we need to confirm what we believe are prompting a from the Holy Ghost with what we know is right, and what the commandments and scriptures say.  Awesome and then he pretty much went over every aspect of missionary work lol, my notes are like 10 pages long.

Elder Withers survives another Chef Josh meal

Anyways, we had a good time and I was so happy this week to have that conference, as well as an exchange (my first real exchange! I've only done blitzes or when 4 missionaries go to one city, so far) in Montauban with my district leader.

Sunset over Montauban

We met a lot of people this week, It was so cool!  I want to share one cool experience from Saturday night.  On Saturday night we had gone out porting and had some good conversations but no lessons and didn't find anyone interested in our message.  So we came back and talked to some people on the way home and got back to our apartment, but still had 25 minutes until 9:00.  Elder withers suggested making some calls at home, but we decided against that, I felt like we should try to hit our goal of 8 allez-vous that day, though unrealistic, so to try to see how close we could get.  We agreed.  I decided to have us circle around a block Ina route I felt like we should take, talking to people until 9.  

This one's for mom.  Sooooo jealous.

So we did and down the street I felt like we should go in our small route we met someone named Nicolas and did the  questionnaire on the family we usually do.  It got him taking about his family and so we introduced the temple to him.  After a good discussion Elder Withers was going to speak, and he sort of just waited with a puzzled expression, and then asked Nicolas if he thought it would be good for the world to have a prophet today. Completely changing the subject it was a little odd, but Nicolas didn't care and he thought about it and really decided that ya, he really thought the world needed a prophet today, to help out and give us God's guidance.  I was so happy then.  To share with him that today we do have a prophet, and a glint sparked in his eyes and he was suddenly sincerely interested in what we had to share.  We ended our what had become a lesson with him and scheduled to meet with him again, and as I checked my watch walking away it was exactly 9:00. We're going to meet with him on Saturday and I'm psyched. I know that as a team we can work together to accomplish the Lord's work, and as we each follow good prompting we can go where we need to go and talk to who we need to talk to and ask and share what they need to hear.  I'm so happy to be a part of this work, and to help others find what they're looking for, sometimes when they don't know what they're looking for!  Elder Withers' question helped Nicolas figure that out!!

Have a good week everyone, and I hope all goes well! Que Dieu vous benisse, et je vous aime tous!  (May God bless you and I love you all!)

Sincerement,
Elder Laney

PS:  We had an ami at church!  Met him on the road randomly during the week, he thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses and was sad we weren't, but when we shared a little bit we gave him a card, and then he called later to go to church with us!  He even confirmed later (what we usually do) in Saturday about it.  So many miracles are happening it's so cool.

PPS:  And dejuener, the word for lunch in French, literally means break fast! Or more like unfast, since jeuner means "to fast" but pretty funny nevertheless. So cool, just realized that this week. Breakfast is "little unfast"  btw, "petite dejuener".

Am now a completely competent cook.  And no, that isn't Rice-a-Roni!