I have officially stopped counting!! (Jacob-Toulon)

Well I now have no idea what week I am at, so I guess that means I am becoming a good missionary? I am not sure but I guess it does mean I don't have time to care. I have been amazingly surprised how in the MTC time went by so fast!!! Then transfer 1-2 went even faster!!!! Literally I feel like those went by soo slow compared to this last week. I am no longer considered "Bleu" (new) as of last week and that means that I no longer have the super spiritual but super energy draining extra studies (1 hr of "The first twelve weeks" and 1 hr language study, now it's just 30 mins language. :)) The days have felt the same but the week felt like it went by so fast!! 

As far as this week, it was literally so amazing!!! Elder Blythe showed up Monday night like I mentioned and the next day we got to work! Basically we have been building our ami (investigator) base because we have had to drop a couple. 

Basically, Tuesday we went out ready to work, and oh, man, the Lord made it happen.  We were just passing less-actives (of which there are a lot, there used to be two wards here in Toulon but now we have one solid ward and lots of people to bring back!! It is sad but is nice because it gives us places to go and time to fill so that we are not just sitting contacting waiting for the Lord to put people in our path.) 

We had planned the night before to have a miracle lesson around 11:30, so around 11:45, the Spirit reminded me of that and I looked in front of me and saw the park, which is perfect for lessons! So I looked at Elder Blythe and said "Well, we were supposed to have that miracle right now, so let's go do that."

So we walked into the park with faith to find and we asked the first lady we contacted if we could teach her and she said yeah!! So we sat down, taught her and then taught her Friday morning with a member in the park again!!! So amazing. The thing that made the difference was a covenant made the night before with Heavenly Father and then a little bit of faith/action! The Lord lives! That was only one of many miracle we saw this week. 

Another was with one of our amis (investigators)! He hadn't been doing any of his efforts and it has been probably 3 weeks. We have been working with him but he just wasn't progressing because he wasn't putting his efforts in, so we were going to drop him. We asked him one last time to just read one verse to see if we could help him develop little habits. So we went Saturday night ready to see and it turns our he read 3 chapters!! And he said he didn't understand "rien!" (anything!) It was so amazing!! (Really he did understand and gave us a nice summary of the chapters in the end.)

We had an amazing church yesterday, as it was fast Sunday and also we had a great Gospel Principles lesson where we learned about the importance of family history! I felt so excited and have this huge desire to work on our family history now... Soeur (Sister) Martinez in our ward (the ward geneology specialist) is so amazing! She is super funny and old and lives right next to us so we got to talk to her the whole bus ride home! She taught with us on Friday in the park.

I had other things I wanted to say but forgot... Desole..(Sorry)

LOVE!! 

Elder Pettingill

Also, here are some questions and answers we emailed back and forth while he was on the computer: 

I've been waiting to hear from you!! How are you??

I am doing so good!!! You would be proud of me! Today we went and ate some yummy stuff :)

Yay!! Tell Elder Blythe I like him already! ; )  So what did you eat??

We went to the sandwich  kebab shop of the copaine  (girlfriend) of one our amis (investigators) and ate these super good sandwiches, and then we had a super good pain au chocolate (chocolate croissant) that we shared because it was the size of a cake!!!

How is Christian?

He had his family come into town and they freaked out when they found out he was getting baptized after a month of knowing us. So he canceled the baptism in order to help them feel calm but we talked with him and he said that he there isn't anything that will stop him from getting baptized. It is just to help them calm down. And he gave us cookies so we would feel better. :) We felt better.

I'm glad that cookies can make you feel better.  How is his attempt to quit smoking going?

Haha well the cookies were nice but really it took a good personal study and lots of prayer to feel bette.r :) He already quit smoking :) He's at like 2 weeks and going strong now.

He will get there. Just keep being obedient and doing your best.  That is hardest part of missionary work. It's heart breaking to see people give up on the Gospel when you know it would help them so much. But it's very hard to be a member in France, so they really need to go through the opposition now or they will just fall away later.  Do you need anything?

Yeah it is frustrating as I have already seen it with Andre, Marie, and now Christian!! It is very hard too because the mission goal is for every missionary to baptize once monthly, but these french people have such crazy amounts of opposition! But I don't think I need anything for now! Thanks! Also I am getting off now so sorry..

Pain au chocolat 

(You can buy these at Trader Joe's in the freezer section.  They are called Chocolate Croissants.  Let them rise overnight and bake.  They are amazing!!  If you want a little taste of France...)