I got my new companion Wednesday. His name is Elder Williams. He's from Salt Lake, technically, a really tiny town right next to SLC called Holiday, but just Salt Lake City pretty much. My first Utah companion! hahaha, excluding my MTC comp. He's 18 years old.  By the time he's my age right now, he'll be finished! so weird. The French is really hard for him, so I have to do a lot of stuff!  But I'm not going to complain because I was complaining for the first 8 months about French as well and I'm sure my companions didn't like it then either.

During the week we found some new people to teach! Its really weird, most of the people here who like us and let us talk with them respect us a lot for what we're doing, but they don't really want to talk about our church. They'll want us to come over and visit with them, but that's about it. Oh well, its cool though. 

The Bowles asked me if they eat horse meat here? Yes, they do eat horse here. They sell it at all of the grocery stores. But no, I haven't eaten it yet (I don't think). I ate rabbit a few weeks ago though.

A suggestion about your talk?? Uhhhh,..... about missionary work, its not about how many good stats you get compared to others during the week, or how many baptisms you get, it's about how many people are really converted and have a strong-rooted testimony. That's what I've noticed out here. 

 See ya next week!

This was a good week.  It was fun!  It hasn’t snowed yet but it’s been getting really, really, cold.  I bought a coat last week!

The guy from Bulgaria is a cool guy.  He's also a very interesting one.... but he's pretty cool.  We also met a lady by "port-à-port" who didn’t want to talk or anything so she shut the door and we moved on.  When we finished doing the other doors on the same floor of this apartment building, we were on our way to go down the stairs when the lady opened up her door again and said something along the lines of... "what are you guys doing here?!  Come here! come, come!"  So we went back and talked with her for a very long time about Mormons, who we really are and everything. She thought Mormons were the Amish... That’s how well known our religion is here in France.  But it was really cool though. Then just yesterday, we were knocking on doors again when this guy answered and let us in with no hesitation.  We talked for a while and it went really well!  It felt just like the MTC!

So transfers are this week, and my new comp is...........I don’t know!  I'll find out on Wednesday!  I'm going to be a trainer!  It'll be cool having a new missionary.

Yes, I heard earlier today about the news of the new mission president. You probably knew before I did because I heard just a couple of hours ago. And no, I have no idea who he is. If I ever serve in the Evry area (which is where he's from, its part of Paris) then I'll meet him. If not, then I'll meet him when he becomes mission president or if there’s a conference before or something.

That's cool about the guy from our stake coming out here, speaking Spanish!!

So for p day today I found this really cool store with just all sorts of random stuff that I liked. I almost bought a hammock to sleep on in the apartment....... but I didn’t. I bought a new coat, new pants to wear everyday, and some ties. Everything is so expensive here, but this time of year is when the sales are around 20-60% off, so I took advantage. It happens like twice or three times a year. It’s called Soldes. Mark will know about it.

This week we got a referral from Mormon.org!  He's this guy from Bulgaria who lives here in Mulhouse. He knows French. He is actually in the military for France. He saw a show on National Geographic about Mormons and it caught his attention and so he went to Mormon.org and wanted to meet missionaries so he put in his information. We met him and he's a really nice guy! We just introduced what we do as missionaries and introduced the Book of Mormon and he liked it!  He's cool. We're meeting with him more this week.

So to answer your question on how I got to the leader training conference in Paris, I can go two ways; take a train from here to Dijon (which is out of our mission boundaries, but president knows and okays it) then get to Paris. It takes about 3 hours or so. Or I go from here to Strasbourg (one hour) then go 2 1/2 hours from there to Paris. I did the one going to Strasbourg because I went with the Zone Leaders who are in Strasbourg. I stayed in Strasbourg for the night then we got up early and took a train.

Things are going well. Next week is transfers so I’ll find out who my new companion is! One last question, how do I make Pizza? I want to make it. I think they already sell pre-made crust at the stores, but you can include that recipe also!

Thanks!

This week we met with this guy (a referral from the other France mission!) but it was only about 2 or 3 minutes because he was working at this outdoor mall that happens every Saturday. He said he wanted to go to church so we gave him the address and tried to set up a time to be able to talk with him but he couldn’t. We hoped he would come to church but he never showed up... We tried calling him but he didn’t answer his phone. I hope that we can meet with him and teach him. Also, there is this family in the area (who aren’t members) that have never been taught by missionaries or anyone, but they really like missionaries!  They're really cool. The husband’s from Argentina and the wife is from Sweden. They speak English and French and Spanish and the husband can speak some Swedish. I hope we can teach them in the future!  

It’s banned for us to teach English to people here, unlike other missions around the world.  If we do, then the French officials will label our religion as a cult. Right now it’s labeled as a religion and we want to keep it that way!

On New Years we went to a family’s house in the ward and played some French board games. The dad actually went to BYU "back in the Brigham Young Academy days" as he likes to joke about that... so he knows English.

Tomorrow there’s a big mission conference in Paris for all the District and Zone leaders so I get to go!  It will be fun!  I'll get to see most of my friends from the MTC and other people that I’ve met in the mission.

I got all of the letters that everyone in the family wrote from the Christmas Eve party!  Thank you so much!  I will answer the questions you asked another time.

Until next week!

                   The night view next to my apartment in downtown Mulhouse at Christmas time

         
                                                       A typical French neighborhood
                                                                   Belfort, France

                                                              Baptism in Mulhouse!