Monday, January 26, 2015

Week 7 (Jacob-Montpellier)

Well this week went very, very fast! 

Monday night we went over to the family Beziers. They are super awesome and the dad is the 1st couselor in the bishopric. We had a wonderful family home evening! We talked about Mosiah 18:8-10. We discussed how the ordinance of baptism is a promise between us and our Heavenly Father that simply says that we are going to be delightful, loving, and serving people! I received a strong testimony of how the Holy Ghose can help us fulfill that promise, especially when we are weak, this week. We then fixed goals with their family for this year for missionary work! Their son Quentin, who reminds me a lot of Adam, took charge of the responsibility of helping the family concretize those goals and write them down.

Tuesday we went and did service at the family Roman's house; their house is coming along and is being painted on the inside. It was funny to see Brother and Sister Roman bicker about whether or not to throw certain things away that came from Grandpa Roman. It seemed like a situation that I may need to face later on in life when I am married.

Wednesday we had blitz in Narbonne!! It is officially the smallest city in the mission and is a side sector connected to the Beziers ward and sector. We had a wonderful time as we spent a good 6 hours proselyting! We found lots of new cool people and had tons of fun with Elder Whiting and Grant! One cool miracle was that Elder Whiting and I were out contacting and we saw this guy and started to talk to him; he was obviously not interested at all by the looks he gave us and by the fact that he said "je ne suis pas interessé" (I am not interested) We didn't catch the hint and just started to be delightful and he started to open up a little. We talked for a while and then slowly integrated the gospel back into the conversation. IN the end he accepted a Book of Mormon and we exchanged numbers! It was a huge testimony of the power of love! We should not ever get discouraged if people do not accept our invitations right away to learn about the Gospel! We should just put on a smile and love a little more and become interested in the lives of those around us. As we do that, there will be not one person that won't want to be a little more like us (because were so delightful). 

Then we stayed the night over and went to district meeting in Beziers on Thursday! We learned how to better set goals and be more delightful! I think they were trying to hint that we set a goal to be more delightful but I wasn't sure. In any case I studied PMG ch 6 as well and loved it as always! What better way to be more delightful than just try and have the attributes that Christ has! 

A motivating moment for Elder Thompson this week was that he realized that he hit his 6 month mark! When I hit mine I was super motivated to do more morning MANGOS but when he hit his he was finally behind me! So we decided to go running in the morning and try and find some stairs to run. We found a nice flight of stairs that is about a 5 minute run from the house. So we have been waking up just a little bit earlier at 6 am to run do that and also have time to get large afterwards as well with push ups and weights. That has been good!

Friday night we were invited to Sr Corrado's house; I think we SPARCed her up a lot because she definitely invited us over less than two weeks ago! In any case she has been telling us that she wanted to make us a Paella because she knows where to get fresh moules (clams), so voila she made us that BEST paella I have ever had (considering it was the first as well) and we ate very well. She is so cute because she was so worried that not everyone would like it and so during the meal she was asking us " Vous vous regalez?" or are you enjoying it? I must have said, "OH oui Je me regale trop!"( Oh yes I'm enjoying it too much!) probably 5 to 10 times during the night!

Saturday we saw Ajnes at her sisters house and she came to church. She wants to be baptised in the next couple of weeks so we are trying to get her ready for that!

Sunday was a great day. Rossil came to church at 9 am all by himself and stayed all three hours. There has been this been ordeal with the baptism Saturday because apparently here in the Toulouse Stake there is one Saturday a month that is set aside for families, meaning no activities. Well it turns out that this coming Saturday is that day. So the bishop was trying to see if we could move the baptism to another time so we could respect that. We tried but Rossil was so set on being baptised this Saturday that we are going to just go through with it (considering there aren't any other days that would work for him). He is great and we are going to go visit him later on today. We have the baptismal interview set for Thursday where he will get a back to back interviews with Elder Withers for Nimes and then the Bishop  to get to know him better). Sunday night we went the family Orsoni for dinner! They are so great! 

Also the stake president popped into Montpellier really fast Sunday night to give a recent convert lady her temple recommend interview for her endowments! It was so cool to see how happy she was and how much she has the light of Christ! She was only baptised like a  year ago so it is pretty incredible to see that she is getting there so fast!

Well I love you all so much and hope that everything is going well!!

à bientôt! (see you soon!)
Elder Pettingill 


No comments: