Well this week has gone by fast. It has been a very awesome week and I am not sure I even remember who I was last week.
First off I did get one letter that was sent and it was the one written at the pool so that had the right address. I am sorry about the other stuff and hope that it all works out.
My address for Toulon is:
Le Clos Fleuri Bat. 5
58 Ave. Auguste Berthon
83000 Toulon France
Hopefully there are no other problems :)
I haven't gotten a bag yet because Elder Frandsen has been letting me use his old one for the time being. We were going to look for one in the next couple weeks.
Second of all, my Ward here in Toulon is probably the best, most supportive nice ward anyone could ever ask for! There is so much of a desire to share the gospel here and all the members are involved in some way! It is a pretty big ward and it is the only here in Toulon. The sad thing is that more that half the ward is inactive and there used to be two wards. It is great for us because we always have inactives to pass and bring back!
The jet lag was seriously not even problem and I was able to adjust really well because I just stayed up the whole day that I got here and dropped when I fell in bed.
Missionary life is awesome! It can be very tiring sometimes, and sometimes you feel like you have contacted your last person, but it is so amazing! The Savior's Atonement just comes alive in your life when you have to say another prayer to work just one more hour or finish strong for the day with 5 minutes left. The French is coming! I am starting to understand a lot more and have been really trying to focus on what people say all the time so I can be that much better!
We have had two trainings in the last week where we went to Nice which was so awesome!! I felt like I learned so much each time! We had interviews with the President (along with yesterday's zone conference) which was also very good!
Nice Zone with President and Sister Roney and their two youngest boys
We also went to Aix-en-Provence last Tuesday for Elder Frandsen's legality so that was pretty cool too! Unfortunately I left my SD card in the computer last week so I couldn't take any photos so that is a bummer. The bright side is I still have my camera!
Elder Pettingill and Elder Frandsen
As far as our Amis go.. We have two right now with a baptismal date. The first one Guilene was the miracles lady we had last week. The only problem is that she hasn't called us back since that night but I know that she is going to call back sometime if not while I am here then later because Heavenly Father is definitely preparing her and has been preparing her. Our ami is named Andre. He is so AMAZING TOO! He came to his friend in the church and asked to come, which he did and we taught afterward. Then this week we taught him and committed him for baptism on the 31st of August! He said yes and has been meeting with us almost daily with his friend at church. He was having a difficult time with his life and we offered to give him a blessing, he accepted and after he said he felt something really just make him feel good and he didn't know what. We had the opportunity to bear testimony of God's love for us and of the Holy Ghost. We taught him the Word of Wisdom another day and he hasn't had a cup of coffee since (and he excitedly tells us how he is doing everytime we meet!). The best part is that he has already started to share the Gospel with his friends and gave us two contacts and brought one of them to church, this super nice lady name dMarie who is so ready!! She said she loved Relief Society (and all the principles we teach :) ) and she was making comments in Sunday School!!! We are going to go teach her on Jeudi (Thursday) which is so exciting!
I have really just come to love the people of France even with their weird things, like the thousands of Arabs who ride down the street on their motorscooter things doing wheelies for miles!! (I am not kidding and see several every day) or that I have had several people start rolling a cigarette in front of us while we are contacting them (It's funny because a lot of people do that instead of buying them pre-rolled), or that I have almost seen someone die already (This was again the Arabian people so maybe the real French people aren't the ones that are so weird...)
One other experience worth noting was last night after getting back from Nice we were invited over to a members house for FHE and we had a real French dinner. It was my first member meal and it was a very traumatic experience (in a good way). It was crazy because they started the meal off with a full table and I thought, "Wow I guess they don't do the 7 course meals anymore!" Well I ate what I thought was the main course (which consisted of a salad of tomatoes and green beans, bread, a rice peas and tuna dish and other small things like shrimp, asparagus, and what not. There was so much it would be hard not to think it was the main course.) Well I ate a couple servings of that (I learned that I love green beans and tomatoes!) and felt pretty good. Of course every time my plate was empty it would be filled again by Frere (Brother) Sassi, our host and a ward missionary. Well little did I know that there were still three more other courses!! One of them was a meatball/hot dog like meat spaghetti and dessert was more like three courses in itself. There was a layered thing that was sooooo goood!! It was a big tart/pie thing that had several layers with a chocolate filling in one and a vanilla filling in the other layer. In French its called something like a thousand layer tart or something because the crust is flaky. But then they also gave us a huge slice of this super good chocolate cake with a side of ice cream (I did the wrong thing and ask which flavor of ice cream was better and they gave me both....) The cake was definitely better than the Costco chocolate cake. Well by the end of it I was going to explode and had a hard time walking home. Not to mention that Frere Sassi gave us like 3 bags worth of leftovers (And not all of it were left overs! He even gave us unopened boxes of cookies.. Basically we don't even need groceries for the next week...)
I feel very blessed to be here in France and have really grown in my testimony of the Gospel and power of the Atonement to make us better every second of every day. Je sais que si nous ouvrons nos bouches et partager l'Evangile Dieu nous aidera avec l'Esprit. J'ai ressenti le pouvoir du don de langue beaucoup, et spécialement quand j'ai demandé. Mais c'est plus importante être une example de Jesus en nos actions. (I know that if we open our mouths and share the Gospel, God will help us with the Spirit. I feel the power of the gift of tongues a lot, and especially when I ask. But it is most important to be an example of Jesus by what we do.)
Mille-Feuille (what Jacob called a thousand layer tart) which literally means thousand leaves.
à la prochaine! (until next time!)
Elder Pettingill
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