Week 3/Transfer 10 (Jacob-Nice)

This week in Nice was a very very good one and full of miracles!

The coolest miracle was one day we were heading over to Frank's place after our exchange with Antibes. We got over there which is in the middle of centre ville so it is in a very touristy part of town and we sat there and we called about 3 times and he was not answering.  We were confused because we had just confirmed about 2 hours earlier, and while I was trying to figure out where he was, Elder Davis talked to this lady who was looking at us a little; well it turns out that she was super believing and was Catholic but had been reading the Bible and had found many things that disturbed her. So she had lots of questions and she had been praying to find someone with whom she could talk to in order to resolve her concerns.  Well we didnt know about this until we taught her at the RDV that we fixed for 2 days later. Her name is Mistral and she is very very nice. She is super great (very eccentric), but very willing to do things. She told us she would call us to confirm something and she did!

Benoit is also doing very well. Elder Erramouspe (in the apartment) and I went and visited him Saturday night together. Benoit had received a Liahona (conference issue Ensign) from one of the members last week and had read Elder Holland's talk, the Costs and Blessings of Discipleship. He loved it. The most amazing part is that he did that and read a good amount in the Book of Mormon even though he has two jobs and so often is working 9 or 10 hour days, Last Saturday he worked a 13 hour day! But he is the one who is progressing the best! He is excited and already loves church!

I guess the only other thing that I have to add is that we did a 1000 finding day with the Paris mission and it was a blast! (In both the Paris and Lyon Missions, each companionship stopped to pray every 30 minutes, with a goal for the combined missions to find 1000 new people to teach.) Everyone got super excited and we found 5 new potentials during the day! Now this week we are all headed to Lyon (our zone and the ones around Lyon) to watch Elder Ballard's words to us (he came to Geneva). I am excited!

Also I finished Jesus the Christ! Very heavy read for only 5 weeks! I learned a lot (I may have to go through one more time a little slower)!

Love You!!

BISOUS!

Elder Pettingill

Also, here are some of the answers to your questions. You asked how it is being in the sunny paradise of the mission. 

Well I am downloading some photos of our visit to Eze village...  Basically as I was reading Daniel's letters I thought, well it is probably just as nice over there but this is truly a different place over here! It is so awesome to be here! It is so beautiful here and has been in the high 70s low 80s lately with a nice little breeze. So it is perfect because the people are in the perfect enviroment to be happy! So when we talk to them they are still in a little trance of happiness and they are more open! But I guess one of the downsides is (to answer another question) there is tons of immodesty here. It is different than Brive and Lyon in just that it is warmer here, there are tons of tourists and I think that Nice is just a less clothing cultured place.. There is obviously lots of immodesty everywhere (especially in advertising) but here it just seems that the mindset of everyone is just the beach so obviously peoplewear less clothing, The thing about that is when you are being constantly hit by it you are forced to either sink or swim and so I have really grown in my testimony.

Things are going very very well here with Elder Davis as well. We have gotten very close and enjoy being together! We have been finding a lot of people and have started teaching more. It was obviously hard with last week everywhere else but our area. There weren't a huge amount of changes with the transfer and we only had a few equipes changes. All the blues stayed with their trainers but we had a few missionaries finish their missions and go home so that was sad.  We did have one more equipe added with a new equipe in St Raphael so that was nice. They are starting from scratch but are doing really well.