Bonjour à tous,

Well, I find myself once again in Montauban and for another six weeks. Honestly, I was quite ready to leave but apparently that is not what is meant to happen. So I have the next six weeks in Montauban to make it the best as possible.

On Tuesday, we did some contacting in the morning until lunchtime and then after munch we did some more untim we caught a bus to go out and see Patrick. We watched the first half of the Joseph: Prophet of the Restoration movie (we finally got it in French!). We then headed back and passed some different people until we went to the train station so that we could do an exchange with the Zone Leaders. So I headed to Toulouse with Elder Bollero and Elder Heywood (he happened to be in a three-some with the zone leaders for the end of the transfer) and so by the time we got into Toulouse, it was pretty late and so we just headed to the apartment.

Wednesday, we had a pretty full day in Toulouse. We had a couple rendez-vous and we did a bit of contacting as well in between the gaps. Then in the evening we went to the Young Adult Center and I remet Elder Fitch there and the Zone Leaders and Elder Heywood went for a lesson and so we stayed at the Young Adult Center and actually ate there with the Young Adults and celebrated Elder Larsen's birthday. He and Soeur Larsen are the older couple missionaries over the Youth Center in Toulouse. We then headed back to the apartment. It was a bit crazy because there were 5 of us in the apartment and then about 5 in the morning on Thursday the Assistants came in and fell asleep for a bit because they had exchanges to do so they took a night train from Geneva. So there were 7 of us in the morning all taking showers and all that so it was a bit crazy.

Thursday, as I said, was a bit crazy in the morning and then we went to have our District Meeting. After District Meeting, we headed back to Montauban, ate some lunch and went out to some rendez-vous that they had fixed the day before but none of them worked out unfortunately. We also stopped by to see Soeur Korpal because she had made us some food and wanted to give it to us. So we had a bit of a lesson with her and then took this enormous bowl of chicken that she had made back home (we ate it on Friday and it was really good!) and then went and did some contacting until meeting Frère Dieutre at the church. He picked us up and we went and ate dinner with them. While we were there he felt really pushed to invite his boss to his house the next Thursday with us so we can start to introduce him a bit to the church. He said that he wanted to paint the inside of the house a little bit first so we told him we would help and fixed a time for Saturday.

Friday we had our weekly planning in the morning and then in the afternoon we had a bunch of rendez-vous fixed. Unfortunately not one of them worked out! Out of four rendez-vous, every one of them, the person was not home. We were able to teach the husband of one of the ladies we had a rendez-vous with but he wasn't too interested in doing more than just talking a bit. But it was still pretty good. And with all of that, it was raining too. At least that helped cool it down, that is for sure. It felt pretty good actually. So at least walking around wasn't as bad. So at the end of the day we came in a bit tired.

Saturday we went to give a Book of Mormon to a Russian guy that we contacted the day before. He doesn't really speak any french at all so we gave him the Book of Mormon and a Brochure and invited him to come to church. We then did some contacting and met some pretty cool people before heading in for lunch. After lunch, we were supposed to have a lesson with Dmitri, but he didn't even show up so who knows what happened. So we went out and did some pass backs and then came back for a rendez-vous with a super cool guy named Ismael, who is from Cote D'Ivoire. We had a really good lesson with him, he is a really cool guy. He was very interested and open. It was awesome. Frère Dieutre then came and picked us up and we went to his house to paint and after painting they fed us dinner, which was very nice. They then took us back to our apartment.

Sunday, of course we had church, but what was super cool was that Auguste's Mother and Aunt from Martinique are here visiting and so he brought them to church with him! After church, where I had to play the piano again in Sacrament Meeting (I slid under the radar for the first half of my mission but they caught on here at Montauban.....), we went with Auguste, his Mom, Aunt and some members that he invited, to a picnic for his birthday. We had a nice time and his Aunt and Mom seemed to have really liked church. They are very open. I guess they know the church a bit back in Martinique. After a nice little time with them, we went back and dropped off some stuff, and went out for a couple rendez-vous but two got cancelled and then towards the end of the day we had a rendez-vous with a lady named Edith. We had a good lesson with her, she actually used to meet with the missionaries in Toulouse before, she has read quite a bit of the Book of Mormon already too. The missionaries before didn't fully explain why the Book of Mormon and so we talked about that and she really understood that if it was true, it meant a lot of things. We fixed another lesson with her and gave her a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon. We then headed back towards our apartment because it was a late.

Well, I hope that you are all doing well. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that we don't always particularly want to be in, maybe like spending another six weeks in a little city, but dwelling on that doesn't help the morale at all. So keep moving and getting on with life. That is the only way to be happy. Just forget that the situation may not be what we want and make the best of it. I love you all and hope you are all doing well. Enjoy the week and I hope to hear from you soon! Que Dieu vous benisse!

Elder Kirkpatrick