I finally made it to my new area, and I’m back in France… Mulhouse, France.  There is a huge difference between France and Luxembourg.  I’m glad I had the opportunity to serve in Luxembourg.  Today is actually really clear and kind of warm outside and I can see the mountains! But no it’s not the Alps. But they are actual mountains though!  And no snow yet!!  I’m really close to Switzerland and there are some members here in the ward that have been talking to me saying how amazing Switzerland is and how much better it is than France... haha, but I can’t go there unlike in Luxembourg where I could go to Germany.

Some cool news is that we have someone here who is getting baptized on Friday!  So hopefully if nothing crazy happens then that will be cool. The guy is from Uganda. I don’t know about the university here, there are universities in every city that I've been to though. And also the population here in Mulhouse is 70% Muslim.

It’s just me and my comp by ourselves in this city. I don’t live with another set of missionaries anymore. I liked having 4 of us in an apartment, oh well.  Our apartment is right in the middle of downtown right next to a huge cathedral. My companion’s name is Elder Allen. He's from a little town right next to Houston, Texas.

As for the call on Christmas, I hope to have more information next week.  It will probably be in the morning your time. The call is for an hour (but if it happens to go longer its ok with me)!  Also, this week we have an enormous conference up (not down anymore) in Paris so that will be cool. I don’t have any pictures to send right now but hopefully I’ll send some in the future. The email place we go to is annoying. You have to pay before you get on so there's a countdown. Until next week….

There’s no snow yet!  Actually, it was super bright and sunny today!  Even a little warm!!  But I don’t think it’s going to last too long.

We found an apartment just three houses down from ours so we went to talk to the agency and gave them all of the papers they needed.  We’ll hear from them later but seems like a good possibility.

That sounds cool about the Christmas devotional!  If I ever have the opportunity to watch it I will.

Yes, our transfers are today and unfortunately I’m leaving Luxembourg. :(

I’m going to a place called Mulhouse. (pronounced Moo-looze).  It’s at the bottom right corner of our mission (South East), and on a real map its right above Switzerland. It’s almost at the corner of France, Germany, and Switzerland. So I guess I’ll be surrounded by more Germans! They told me that I’m going to be a district leader there too, so that’ll be interesting.

I hope Nana had a fun time at our house, even if she was sick. Oh yeah, my sickness was just like a 24 hour thing, It’s totally passed now.

Well I need to go, not much time to write.  I’m going to miss Luxembourg. The members here are so awesome!!  I had a great time here and I’ll never forget it!

A... baptism (notice the font)

Exciting day!

Pere Noel in Luxembourg

Chocolate covered banana

The 4 Elders in Luxembourg at a Christmas village eating
Luxemgourgish food.  (a hash brown type of food which
Cooper said was very good!)  2 Elders are Spanish speaking
and Cooper and his companion are French speaking.

Watch out Santa!

On Thursday for Thanksgiving we're going down to France, in Nancy, to have interviews with the President!..... And we're going to celebrate thanksgiving there with a lot of missionaries, so that will be good. We're going to eat at the home of an American family in the ward with other American members on Sunday, so that will be fun! There’s no KFC here. There's KFC in Belgium though. On the drive down to teach an investigator who lives in France, we pass through Belgium and there's a KFC there. Its too far to just go and eat at but maybe one day if I serve in Belgium I'll go there.

A… was baptized!  It was great.  He is such an awesome person. I was able to teach our investigator from Albania a few days ago! It was a really fun lesson. He knows very very very little French (and no English) and his brother (who's a member) is there too and he knows even less French! So we explain something, see if he understands, then we have to act it out to show what it is and what it means and everything. It was fun! He's a really cool guy and wants to get baptized, but he can’t come to church because he lives so far away. There are no buses or trains that go from his tiny little town in France to Luxembourg on Sunday. And there aren't members that live near him to come pick him up for church on Sunday. So once there's a solution for that, he'll probably get baptized. 

Our apartment situation is interesting... The owner of the apartment building wants to live in our apartment space so he's kicking us out. We have within 6-8 weeks to find and move in to a new apartment!! We were originally planning on moving in to a member’s apartment that was moving out but the owner of that building said we can't move in because he thinks that we will just party and do crazy things that other 20-year olds would do. Even though the church is paying for it, meaning it will be under the church's name, they still won’t accept us. We have to find an apartment quick. The mission office said that if we can’t find one within 6 weeks and we get kicked out, then Elders in Luxembourg will be sent somewhere else and there won’t be Elders in Luxembourg any more, just sisters. That would be an enormous blow to the ward and the mission and everything! So we have to find one real soon. The ward is trying to help, the mission is trying to help, and of course we're looking too. There is only one ward that covers the entire Luxembourg (city & country), a big chunk of the east of Belgium, a little bit of France, and the borders of Luxembourg and Germany. So the ward’s boundaries are really really big.  As for what we as missionaries here in Luxembourg can use, we still don’t have ipads , iphones, or even Facebook. We just have a dinky slide cell phone, and the little planners that every missionary knows and loves.

  

                              Cooper and companions at the ward "trunk or treat" for Halloween

                       
                                                             Cooper and the Chickens?

                                             Elder Saffell with his companion Elder Watts

Yeah we had daylight savings 2 weeks ago, I think...

On Saturday we were planning on teaching someone at his house with this one member at 4 o’clock but our investigator couldn’t get home until 6. We just went over at 6, but the member couldn’t come then because he was assigned to clean the church. So we all decided to go to the church which took a while to get there.  When we got there it was still going to take a while for the member to finish cleaning.  Another member was there helping clean also, so there were 2 members there.  Anyways we needed them to hurry up because we had another lesson at the church at 7:30 and it was already 7 now!  When the members finally finished, it was 7:30 and our other investigator came in through the doors!  The one we were planning on teaching first was, you could say, way more advanced and knew more about the gospel then the other investigator. So we had an idea to have two lessons go on at the same time, one missionary with one member teaching one investigator. You can do that so it’s good.  We asked the other member who was helping clean also if he could help teach with us but he couldn’t stay any longer, so now we had 2 investigators, one member, and 2 missionaries.  We couldn’t divide up now so we just did one big lesson all together!  We watched the Restoration DVD. It’s only 20 minutes long and then we talked about it after. It was a good lesson for the one who didn’t know a whole lot about the church yet, and it was a good review for the other who's been having lessons for a while. So it ended up good after all.  Also, A… should get baptized this month!

So it’s freeezing cold here now. It hasn’t snowed yet, but it always rains and it’s always windy. I remember when it was roasting hot when I got here.  I’ve been to Germany twice actually. It's nice... pretty much the same as everywhere else I’ve been.

Ok, have a great week!  Hope BYU and the Jazz are doing well!!

A few days ago our ward had a Halloween trunk-or-treat party because almost all of the Relief Society is made up of Americans. So that was cool, I got a lot of candy!

Also..... I'm staying in Luxembourg for another transfer, with the same companion. But we're moving apartments in 2 or 3 weeks, so I'll give you the address of the new place later.

The best foods I've eaten are Polynesian food from some members who are from Tahiti, and food from members who are from South America. Also, there’s this French meal called a Raclette. It’s just baked potatoes, and all kind of meat (beef, chicken, pig) just mixed up together with some melted cheese on it. And the dessert places they have everywhere are good too, but expensive. The grossest thing was this drink that’s from Germany. It tasted like uncarbonated root beer but with no taste. It was gross, I can’t explain it.