Tuesday Was Our Big Miracle Day!

Utah State and Regional Champions with their Mom

I've gotta keep this short this week, running out of time again...

Great news all around from the band world! My predictions totally came true, and you guys totally owned! Great work! I expect big things at nationals. :) (Adam's brothers Tyler and Kevin marched with the American Fork High School Marching Band over the weekend and the Band won both the Utah State 5A Championships and the St George Regional Championships!!)

This week really flew by. I made a commitment to myself a while back to write in my journal every day, and I've been doing really well with it. So I've got a lot I could say. Also, my handwriting has gotten way better out here.

Monday I bought my French coat! I think it looks pretty nice. You guys will get to see it a lot, considering how cold it gets here. Just kind of a regular P-day. And if you had thought some of our neighbors' kids are crazy, you should've seen the members we visited...almost literally bouncing off the walls.

Tuesday was our big miracle day. I summarized it in my letter to President:

Nous faisions du port à port le Mardi soir, et nous avons sonné et parlé avec la femme et elle a dit <<Non, on est Catholique pratiquant, on est pas très intéressé.>> Nous avons dit bon soirée et tout ça et quitté. Après juste quelque seconds, elle a retourné. Nous avons pensé elle vas dire <<ils sont pas là>> (parce que nous avons sonné à la prochain maison), mais je peut témoigner, le pouvoir du Saint-Esprit est réelle. Quelle surpris quand elle a dit <<est-ce que vous voulez dîner avec nous?>> Bien sûr, nous avons dit oui! Nous avons passé une très bonne soirée avec eux. Ils ont trois fils, et ils ont tous demandé des bons questions à propos de nos croyances et l'évangile. Aussi, ils ont dit que nous pouvons retourner! L'Esprit est réelle et il change les cœur des hommes. Cette belle expérience nous a aidé de continuer de garder la foi et travailler dur. J'aime d'être un missionnaire!

Oh, that's French isn't it? :) Please don't show that to anyone who actually speaks French, it's probably pretty bad... but the story goes like this:

We were out just doing some regular door to door stuff. We came across this nice woman, a practicing catholic, who said that her family didn't really have time. So we headed off to the next house. All of a sudden, here she comes back out of the gate, walking up to us. Now, normally when this happens its cause people are gonna tell us to give up or that the person isn't there or something like that. What NEVER happens is the following. She walked up to us and said "would you like to join us for dinner?" WHAT?! THAT blew our minds. Of course, we said yes and headed in. She's married and has three nice young boys (kind of like the brothers back at home). We ate with them and they asked some really good questions. Like I said to President, the power of the Holy Ghost is real and it does change peoples' hearts. It was an amazing experience and ended with them saying we could come back. We'll see what happens.

Wednesday was busy as we helped out with transfers at a HUGE train station, Gare de l'Est. I met Elder Jared Hall and talked to him for a minute. He seemed to be doing well, although he hadn't been dumped into too much French yet. :) 

Thursday was Halloween. It's not too big here in France, but some kids still do it. We ended up going home a little early cause we just didn't feel right out there.

I'm skipping Friday just for time. Not much exciting happened there.

Saturday was cool. We had a rather hilarious lesson with Alberto that night. For one reason or another, he started going off on a rant about modern medicine and how when he was a kid, if he got a cut, he'd just slap some dirt on it and be good and then something about how he was born in a field that I didn't really understand. He was just being really goofy. Then he had a question about a scripture. Now, he speaks portuguese, so his scriptures are in portuguese. After reading about a half a chapter to us (in portuguese), he stopped and summarized (we think) and then asked a really long question, but still speaking portuguese! After about 10 seconds of looking qt us he was all "oh, I spoke portuguese..." It was so funny.

And nothing too exciting happened Sunday. Overall, a good week. The language is coming along well. Like I said to mom: The language is actually coming along quite well! I can usually express what I need to say, almost always. I've got a decent vocabulary. The hard part right now has become understanding people. some times I'm really good at it, other times, not so much. It's a work in progress. I feel like about the 6 month mark is where I'll feel fully comfortable with it, but I'm pushing myself enough that I think I'll be able to hold my own in another month or two.

Anyway, I've really gotta go. Keep working hard everybody, and thanks so much for all the love!

Elder Bigler