And the voice has spoken (Jacob-Brive)

Dear Family,

I imagine you are very interested to hear the fate of the Friday calls from President. Well I left Toulon (sadly but amazingly!) I went across the country to the small town of Brive-la-Gaillarde!!

I am now in the process of opening up a new equipe (companionship) with my extremely old companion of 3 months (yes he is going into his 3 transfer... And that makes me the highest amount of French in the companionship!!!). His name is Elder Adamson and he is from Utah! He is 19 but right out of high school! He is super awesome and I can already tell that we are going to have a lot of fun together!! Brive is a beautiful apparently cold place (normally, but because of the weirdly warm winter it is not too bad!) but it is definitely a lot colder than Toulon! We have a ward here so that is nice and we are already going to go see the Bishop tonight! Also you don't need to worry about Christmas because the other Elders here (Elder Packer and his new bleu that will arrive Friday) already fixed things up and we are going to go eat with a family all together for Christmas Eve and then we got someone else to do emails all together Christmas night!  So that was nice and with a couple Sundays the members won't be able to not love us! 

Elder Adamson has 8 brothers and sisters so we have a couple things in common!

He just came from serving in Grenoble for 2 transfers so he knows what cold is... This transfer is going to be awesome having 4 Elders in our apartment (except for the fact that now we are in an apartment for 2 but it is still really good) We are in the Bordeax Zone and Elder Smith followed me to be my Zone leader again! I have Perigueux and Bergerac in my district! 

As far as my last week in Toulon, it was really great! It is amazing how easy it is to fix rdvs (appointments) with people when they know you are leaving. Sunday we left Church and then basically just went from house to house to house. We saw 3 amis and a less active! We had been seeing Bruno all weekend and he came to church, but he was sad I was leaving (being the first missionary he met) and so we passed him Sunday night and he gave me a watch! I tried not to accept it but what was I supposed to do? He is so golden and we talked about tithing with him, he was like <<There is no way I will keep that!>> but then he said << but I will pray about it if it is something I need to do>> so that was an acceptable response... ;) We were so happy and I can't wait to get the pics from his baptism! I also saw Christian Sunday night and that was very quick because we didn't have much time but I have a photo to remember him so that is awesome!

Yesterday for trains I got on a train at 8h45 (a.m.)went to Marseille for 1 hour 30, waited 45 minutes, then hopped on a four hour train ride to Toulouse then waited for 1h30 then hopped on a 2 hour train ride straight to Brive and got in at 19h00 (7 p.m.)!! It took a little bit to get there! But it was super awesome because I got to see a bunch of people from the MTC and meet tons of other missionaries who all were coming and going through Toulouse and Marseille.

So there you have it!!

Love,

Elder Pettingill

We also got to email real time and I asked him lots of questions.  Here are his responses:

How are you?  
I am great!.0

That is a beautiful area of France. It's near Angouleme which was my first area. I only wish you were on bikes so you could ride around and see the countryside.  Although Angouleme was brutal on bikes because it has tons of hills.  
WE DOOO HAVE BIKES!!!!  Brive is also slightly hilly but we do have bikes ( right now only two are working but Elder Packer is going to get two other ones running.)

I loved being on a bike on my mission. The bus made me sleepy. 

Yeah I agree!! Here there are buses but the missionaries don't use them so it will be walking and bikes here!! 

Are you the senior companion since you have been out longer? 

Yes that makes me the senior companion. Plus we get to start a new area book with nothing but tabs in it :) 

Dad is sitting next to me and says 'very fun.'  He says that is what he always wanted to do, start brand new in a new city. 
We aren't exactly starting anew because there are the other elders here (Elder Packer has been here for 3 transfers already)  and they have a nice fat area book that we may steal a little from.

So you said you are going to a member's house to email for Christmas.  Did you mean phone calls? 
Yeah I meant skype... 

Where is Elder Adamson in his family line up?  What number child? 
He is #3

Did Elder Adamson have French before his mission?

No only 8th and 9th grade.