Hello again!

Thanks so much for the letters and emails!!!
This week was great! Like I said in my email last week which was very short.. We went to Rocamadour! It was super awesome and soo pretty! The reason that it was built was that they found the body of a man completely intact without any degrading of the body. So they decided that made him cool and made a Saint. St. Amadour. We enjoyed the day with Frere Bennedetti who took us along the tour which he has decided to do with missionaries somewhat often because he did that with missionaries when he lived in the north. His family is so awesome!
Frere Bennedetti with the Elders
They live in Tulle and so every time we want to go teach Olivia they have offered to feed us and then help with our lesson! They are so cool! For Rocamadeur Sr. Bennedetti made us all lunch and it was soooo good!! He also just for fun brought along cans of sardines for all of us that he got in Spain. So I tried my first sardine.. Not too bad actually! It just tastes like tuna! Frere B. is also extremely smart and loves to read! He is so funny because he found several books, one about the people of Haggoth (the group in the Book of Mormon who left in boat) which was over 1000 pages and is claimed to be the real history of the people. He also has a book from a guy that claimed to have translated the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon and it is almost three time the size of the Book of Mormon. So those might be some good reads if you get some time to throw down a good couple weeks of straight reading (maybe Adam would be a good candidate to tackle them) ;)





Elder Tihopu and Fr. Bennedetti




Elder Pettngill and Elder Martinez
Elder Pettingill and Elder Hunt

Tuesday we started the missionary work again and on Tuesday we got to teach an awesome Spanish family from Elder Martinez' city! They are also the Martinez family so that was cool.. It was really weird because they would be speaking in Spanish and then we would be speaking in French and at one point the dad switched from speaking to Elder Martinez in Spanish to me also in Spanish. He just sat there for like 4 minutes speaking in Spanish to me and I just nodded my head like I understood what he was saying (I got the general sense but I didn't really know what he was saying at all). His wife is atheist after things that have happened in her life and told us that we were completely crazy!! She could not understand at all why we would "throw away" two years of our lives when we could be having fun and enjoying the sun of Spain :) She wanted to let Elder Martinez call his mom because she knew that she might be worried :) They are great and we are going back on Friday to teach them again. Later we got to teach Thierry with Frere Vilain  and that went really well. Thierry has read almost half of the Book of Mormon and said he wants to read it a second time using the guide to the scriptures (with topics) to help him learn. He came to general conference for the Sunday morning session and left because had to do something so we didn't get to see how he liked it.

Alain is doing really well. We got to see him with Fr. Deneuche on Wednesday and that was so good! Fr. Deneuche just stopped smoking with his wife and so he was a great help and strength for Alain. Alain after that decided that he would not buy anymore cigarettes and was strong in his decision. He is so awesome!
Elder Olsen and Elder Pettingill

We had district meeting this week and it went pretty well. I knew that because I would not be very good at presenting I needed something that would blow away everyone and make them think that I was really cool. So I bought everyone a Big Brive speculoos eclair with Elder Olsen (we were on an exchange!)

Brive District
Then we woke up early and got out early to get the eclairs before Elder Hunt and Tihopu knew and hid the eclairs. then we ran from the gare (train station) to the Perigueux chapel and hid the eclairs all over and one in the closet in the chapel. Then during the meeting Elder Olsen helped me by using visual to teach the principle of goal setting (get a brive eclair), faith, and setting sub-goals to give us to map to get there! (I gave him a map of brive) Then while he was wandering around the room I kept talking and everyone thought Elder Olsen was being weird until he sat back in his seat with a Brive eclair! Everyone then was very very excited to show their faith (ESPECIALLY Elder Hunt) and see if they could get the Brive eclairs for themselves. 

So I know that this church is directed by servants of God because of the amazing conference that we had! I absolutely loved it all and loved all the talks!! Elder Holland said “it is worth it to defend your faith with kindness and long suffering. “ I love it.

I know that this church is CHRIST's church. I love the Lord and am trying so hard to keep his commandments! Please take Elder Ballard's invitation to bring one person forward for the missionaries to teach! 

Con amor,

Elder Pettingill

I asked Elder Pettingill what he thinks will happen with transfers next week.  Here is what he said:

 I think I will probably stay and maybe Elder Martinez too. I am not really sure but I am completely content in any case :)I just love Brive and we are just teaching so many cool people that I would love to continue with them!
Elders having fun in the apartment