Hello Everyone

I hope, as always, that everyone is doing well. It should feel like Spring pretty much no matter where you are right now, flowers in bloom, plenty of sun, maybe some rainshowers... In any case it should be a fairly nice time of year. It has been beautiful lately. A bit warm, a few mosquitos, but very beautiful and of course plenty of people are taking advantage of it with all of the beaches. This has been another busy week for us here in Toulon, with a lot of good things happening.

Monday, of course, was our preparation day and once we started working we had a lesson with Anthony, and it was an ok lesson. Afterwards, we just headed home and got a couple street contacts.

Tuesday, our morning started out with a lesson with Horacio, the less active member and oh my was that interesting. He was on one and was not happy. He started talking about how he was offended at a bunch of members. We tried to share scriptures, even sing a hymn and he would not let us. Of course we didn't stay very long. Most of these problems he has is because he just invents them or it is a communication error because even the members can't understand him and he doesn't always listen, so it is a bit tricky. In the afternoon we had a first rendez-vous with a fairly young black girl who was evangilical and unfortunately at the end she said that she would not take the Book of Mormon because she needed God to specifically tell her that she needed to read it. We tried to get her to take it anyway but she wouldn't accept it. In the end, she told us that she would call us if she received the impression that she needed to read it. A little after, we taught Jean-François with Frère Sanderre and before, while planning for the lesson, we really felt like we needed to engage him for baptism. He had started mentioning it as a long term goal type of thing but we felt like he was ready. Well Frère Sanderre, really likes to talk so we didn't get much talking in but he received a call from his wife, who was sick, asking if he could come home. So he left and we stayed. We started talking and then went in for the baptismal engagement. We gave him the date of May 21. First, he thought May 21 of net year, which he was completely ok with and then when we clarified this year, in 4 weeks. He about had a heart attack. At first I was thinking, "Oh no, what have I done?" because I was the one that gave the engagement. We started talking through it all and what he needed to do to prepare and gave him the plan to stop smoking and he started to calm down a bit. Thankfully. By the end, he seemed a bit overwhelmed but a lot more at ease and feeling like it was possible. We left him with the plan to stop smoking to read that night and then told him we would come back the next day to go over it. Elder Milman and I both left the rendez-vous feeling like that was the right thing to do and that the Lord would take care of Jean-François.

Wednesday was another busy day. We first met another Evangelical man in the morning, and we had a good rendez-vous. He at least took a Book of Mormon but he wouldn't fix another rendez-vous unfortunately. We then went home and ate and then headed to see Jean-François. He was so full of hope, it was incredible. The idea of baptism in 4 weeks was now completely plausible. He wanted to make that covenant and he wanted the promise of having the Holy Ghost. In fact he came up with how he wanted to do the quit smoking before we even got there. He had even started to dramatically decrease his intake. I have never seen anybody with as much will power as him. Right after we engaged him to quit drinking coffee, he stopped. Right after we started meeting with him, he quit drinking alcohol. Now he was fully ready to give up basically the last vice, and in many respects the hardest. We gave him lots of encouragement and talked about how we receive blessings thanks to our obedience. We fixed another lesson for later on in the week and then left to go meet Kate. We had a nice rendez-vous with her about the gospel of Jesus Christ. She is the girl from Nigeria and it is very hard to see what her comprehension level is. She doesn't talk too much and when we ask questions she doesn't say too much in response so we are trying to go fairly slow to see where she actually is.

Afterwards, we then headed to our meeting with the ward missionaries. It was good as usual and then Frère Sanderre went with us to a rendez-vous with Sara and Eric. Sara is the less active with the two kids and Eric is her not husband but basically husband. Sara's mother also happened to be there, who is also a less active in the North of France. It was a good lesson, basically by Frère Sanderre but it was still good. The only bad thing is that they told us they want to move back to Nancy, in the North of France. Of course we were a bit bummed but she said that they still had more figuring out to see if that was the best thing for them. On one hand, we want them to stay, and on the other we went them to do what is best for them. So we will see in the coming week what happens.

Thursday was a very interesting day and a little bit boring. In the morning we took a bus way out to try and find a less active. After a very long time of searching, we finally found her and weren't able to go in because her husband wasn't there but we did fix a lesson with her for Saturday thankfully. We headed back to Toulon and our afternoon all got cancelled. We started in on contacting and got nothing after nothing and just towards the end we got one guy, and then another, and then randomly it started pouring raining so we jumped into a little over hang of a building and got two more contacts from people getting shelter from the rain. That was a blessing from the Lord! We then headed to the church and did our English Class and then a member picked us up to go to Jacira's house but unfortunately, she was not there. So we headed home because it was already late.

Friday we had planning in the morning, taught Jean-François right after, seeing even more progress with the cigarettes and then headed to the church to see Sebastien. We had a fairly good lesson with him, ignoring when he has bizarre comments, and then headed to see Kate before she left for Paris. We talked about the word of wisdom, which she already keeps, and then figured that we will call each other in about a week when she comes back from taking her tests in Paris. Afterwards, we had a lesson with Laura at Manon's house and two other young women from the ward, who were having a sleep over there that evening. We tried to come up with something creative since Laura has been taught everything so we created a Jeopardy game! Elder Milman created the questions and then I created the game part. It was a big hit and worked out really well. I think they had a lot of fun. It took a lot of work for us to put it together but we hope that we will be able to use it again in the future. As you can imagine, we then headed home and crashed because we were wiped out!

Saturday was another day with a lot of cancellations. We had three rendez-vous that all got cancelled last minute so we were stuck with some open time. We did some contacting and we played Basketball and then in the evening headed back out to the less active's house. They are a young couple, she is a member and he is not. But he is open and kind. We had a nice little rendez-vous and then headed back into town, did a tiny bit of contacting on the way home and ended for the evening.

On Sunday we had 5 people come to church, no one new, but 5 of the normal ones who come, including Jean-François. It was a really good Sunday and then we got a ride home because the buses were not running at all. After lunch we had a rendez-vous with a guy we met on the road a few days before and we accidently got him started talking about his movie and DVD collection, because he has TONS, and that was a bad idea! He never stopped until the moment we had to leave for our next rendez-vous. Our two other rendez-vous got cancelled and so we ended up stopping by Jean-François' house. Which was good. He was quite discouraged because he fell a little bit in his progress but we gave him encouragement and some ideas to stay positive and helped him see all of the great strides he has already made. Much quicker than a lot of other people. He was a bit better after the rendez-vous and they we headed home for the night.

It has been another busy week and thank you for your love, your prays, your concern. I am very lucky to have so many people who care about me and how I am doing. I love you all and wish you a great week.

Elder Kirkpatrick