Week 2 Transfer 4 I love Brive (Jacob-Brive)

Well this has been a great week. I love the GOSPEL. So I have been feeling so much love for the Savior as I have turned to Him to help me with weaknesses and to help me become the missionary He wants me to be! I love Him. This week we got the chance to watch Finding Faith in Christ with Alain and I loved it. I love Easter, I wish I ate up the scriptures as much as I ate up the chocolate. And I wish I kept receiving more of the Spirit as I kept receiving more chocolate from members. I am going to have to bump up the quality of my personal studies in order to balance it all out. 

This week I had a lot of thoughts about how much I didn't understand the gospel from before my mission. It is amazing that no matter how much you shove and force and cram the scriptures and church and seminary and the gospel into your life, it really doesn't make sense until you share it. (Or maybe I just didn't cram as hard as I could.) It is amazing how if you just sit down and really think about the Plan of Salvation, then you look at the world and you realize WHY everything is there. You realize that NOTHING really matters that doesn't not bring us either closer to our Heavenly Father or that doesn't bring us joy. The plan is so simple but we make it so complicated sometimes. I love it so much and I feel like I have come to understand it so much more. How much do I still not understand. But in any case, thanks Mom and Dad. I get why you did what you did.

Some things that happened this week were we got to enjoy a family home evening with the return missionary in the ward who was serving in Provo. That was cool! That mission was a lot different than here from what he was telling us. In any case he is really excited to do missionary work and so while he is here we are going to be doing some work together.

On Tuesday I had an awesome exchange with Elder Pedersen who is a new Elder in the district. We got to do some fun things like contacting, eating Brive eclairs, and going to Ward Council. He is super awesome and comes from Denmark so he is pretty unique and speaks Danish. 

On Thursday we got to go to zone training in Bordeaux so that was super great! We got taught by Elders Beyer and Taylor! They explained how to set goals and why they are important and what make good goals! I really enjoyed that and it has been the theme since last transfer. After that, we all tried to set some goals and really break them down into the simplest steps we can come up with so all we need to do is go down the checklist doing the individual steps and boom you have reached your goals. It is so important to be able to accomplish that because if you can fix a goal and then diligently accomplish the little things (Alma 37:6) you can do ANYTHING you put your head to. Or so I hear. In theory it works but I do have a small growing testimony already that the reason I am here are because of the small spiritual experiences in my life. But I am going to start trying to apply this better in my life so that I can become more like Christ and develop faster and just get to the point that I want to be at! I love the gospel! 

We have interviews with President this Friday so I am super excited for that so I can figure out this whole missionary thing ;)

On Friday we helped move out another family in our ward of 5 so that is making the ward smaller but we are going to really work hard so that we can build it back up with a couple baptisms this transfer.

Alain is doing well but he is struggling to stop smoking. He really needs your prayers so if you could that would be wonderful.

Olivia went to Bordeaux on Saturday and basically got super integrated by playing piano at the Stake Relief Society activity and apparently she had a blast! 

Thierry, well we finished teaching him everything this week and basically he said is going to get baptized he just has to get there on his own time! He needs to feel comfortable with prayer so if you could pray for him for that (that he can pray ;))

And Bello is the African guy that Serge brought and he is super awesome! He came to church for the second week in a row and brought us a bunch of African food so that we can see how his culture is. We are teaching him how to read English and he is excited to be baptized!

I love this gospel. I know the church is true! Please!!!!!!! READ PREACH MY GOSPEL EVERYDAY!!!!! STUDY IT AS MUCH AS YOU STUDY THE OTHER SCRIPTUREs!!!!! IT IS INSPIRED FOR US NOT JUST ME!!!! INVITE SOMEONE TO FAMILY HOME EVENING WITH/ or without THE MISSSIONARIES THIS WEEK! BECOME FRIENDS WITH SOMEONE YOU DON,T KNOW SO WELL! I know it can be hard but it is soooo important! We are so blessed!

Love Elder Pettingill

Jacob sent home these pictures with no explanation.  Maybe it is the African food they tried?

Elder Pettingill with the Tahitian ; )

Elder Martinez