Hello Everyone,

This has been quite a busy week here in Aix-en-Provence and there has been a ton of progress that has been made. We were quite busy and the week just flew by. I hope that everyone is doing well and that you all have had great weeks as well.

The first day of last week started out pretty busy, in teaching a new investigator in the morning and then in the evening we saw Erica and Irma and had a great lesson about baptism. We tried to get Erica engaged for baptism but she said she isn't ready yet. We talked about how prayer could really help her to know if she is ready and if these things are true.

On Tuesday we got stood up for a rendez-vous in the morning and then we went and saw Rueben, a new investigator that we had contacted. We had a good first lesson with him. He is very practicing Catholic but he is open and very curious to learn and know for himself. After, we ate and then headed out to do some contacting and then passed Madame Casale to see how she was doing and we did a little bit of service for her and chatted a bit so that she wasn't so lonely. We then went and did some door to door for the evening.

Wednesday, we did some "hard core" contacting in the morning and for some reason, everyone seemed to be in a bad mood, it was terrible. (We later found out that it was the first day of the big sales here in France, so I probably wouldn't want to talk to missionaries either if I was on a mission to get the best deals. Haha!) In the afternoon we went and saw Frère Philibeaux and he has been making great progress and hadn't smoked a cigarette for 5 days. It was great! We then did some more contacting but down by the university and we found a bunch of people! It definitely helped for the morale! We then ate and did English Class, which went pretty well, and then we headed to see Erica and Irma and Jennifer and read together in the Book of Mormon, it went really well.

Thursday was a little stressful because it was my first District Meeting as District Leader.... Yeah... I didn't mention that I am now district leader. The Meeting actually went really really well and I was super happy with how everybody participated. Afterwards, we wet and saw our investigator Wan Qing and she has really made some good progress with the Book of Mormon and everything since the last time that we had seen her. She still has some difficulties but it is going a lot better. We then hurried back up to see Reuben but he ended up cancelling at the last minute and so we did a bit of contacting before going to our meeting with the ward mission leader. After, we then hurried to eat with a family that live in the French Countryside in an enormous beautiful home. Can't complain with a gorgeous home in the French Provence!

Friday we left early in the morning so that we could go up to Gap so that I could do the baptismal interview for their investigator getting baptized on Sunday. The train takes 2 and a half hours just to get up there and it was cold! Gap is up in the Alpes and all of the mountains around there had tons of snow. There was even a little bit still in Gap but just mostly nasty dirty patches from the last snow storm. By the time we got up there, we ate with the Elders up there, it is a threesome. I then went with one of them to the chapel where I did the baptismal interview with their investigator Olivier. It went really well for my first baptismal interview. We then went and did some conacting and door knocking until we all had to meet back up so that my companion and I could take our train to head back to Aix. Two and a half hours later, we were home and tired.

Saturday we a busy day. In the morning, we saw the less active, Frère Soprano and then went in to eat. We were supposed to see Reuben but he didn't show up but we were able to meet some really great people on the street and even fix a rendez-vous with one of them for later that day, who is here from Brazil!! We then hurried to see Anna at the institute building and had a good lesson with her and we were able to engage her for baptism as well. After we hurried back into town to meet with Renato, the Brazilian guy. He is super great and even has a wife and a baby back in Brazil. We had a great little lesson with him, in English because he doesn't speak French too much. He actually lived in Arizona for a few months working with Honeywell, so we were able to talk about that a bit. We then went in to eat and then did a little bit of our weekly planning that we didn't have time to do during the week.

Sunday we went to church, unfortunately, no investigators came but it was still good even still. We went in to eat and then met another new investigator named Sero, who is from Benin in Africa and we had a really great first lesson with him. He is very sincere and humble. We then went and saw Rodrigo, who we hadn't seen for a few weeks and had a lesson with him, with tons of questions, as usual. It was still good though because he prayed at the end for the first time! We then went to see Irma and her daughters and she happened to have a friend there that had asked a ton of questions to Irma about the church! We were able to teach her, give her a book of mormon and then fix another rendez-vous with her. It was so incredible and unexpected!

We ended up having 5 new investigators this week!! It was so incredible, we were truly blessed. I am so grateful for all of you, for your love and support and your letters and such. I hope that all of you continue to do well and know how much I love you and that I do miss you, but it is ok, we will see each other pretty soon. Have a great week!!

Elder Kirkpatrick