WEEK #1 IN MONTAUBAN, FRANCE

Hello friends and family! I have made it one week in Montauban! 

So, to give some wanted details... I'm serving with elder Pesnell. He's on his 4th transfer, and is 18. Montauban is a small ville with a branch of 40 people who come each week. We have an Ami named Frederic who has a baptism date for the 6th of Feb. so far, the work is Porting(door to door) and contacting.

We plan to go to outer villes a lot, so that's good.

For the week:

Monday: rode trains all day. 

Tuesday: we shopped for food, and i unpacked a bit. We contacted for a bit, and then went to our ami Frederic's home. We talked about reading scriptures and praying everyday. We challenged him to read and pray everyday. 

Frederic is a big fellow. He loves plaid, and looks like a lumberjack. He loves math, and is writing a math book! It probably won't get published, but it's his thing.

Wednesday: we had our meeting with our Branch Mission Leader. We talked about the things that we could do to be better missionaries. He was happy to talk about that. 

After the meeting, we took a train to an outer ville named Castelsarrisan. It's a very small ville, and it was raining a good deal. We tried to pass an ancient ami, but they couldn't see us. So we ported for 4 1/2 hours. We talked to a good amount of people! We found a mom and a few kids who said we could come back another day. Besides that, we got a lot of people who were busy, didn't want to talk, or weren't home.

Thursday: Since I hit my year mark in France soon, i have to renew my legality. So Elder Pesnell and I went all the way up to Grenoble. It was a good 6 hours on trains. We stayed the night with the old Toulouse Zone Leader Elder Hansen, and his Blu Elder Little. 

Friday: Elder Steadman and Loosle drove into Grenoble to do their legality as well, so we all had a party. We went to a good Kebab place and ate there together. After that, we went to the prefecture to do our legality. 

We had a packet of papers from the office with all the things needed for legality. You have to give a couple copies of Legal Photos, and I didn't have any on me. So I went downstairs to a photo machine to take some. One of my old companions, elder Douglas did a great photo for his legality. He had his eyes wide open. There's a bunch of rules for the pictures, like no hair on the face, no smiling, looking straight, and other things. There are no rules though, about how wide open your eyes can be. So.... I opened them as wide as I could. 

It turned out pretty good. They ladies at the desk laughed and said I looked surprised. 

After the legality, we caught a ride to Lyon with Elder Loosle. We met up with Elder Keller and his comp, and we went to go eat at master tacos. Then we stayed the night at their apartment. 

Saturday: we went to the Gare, and took a train to Toulouse and then back home. We had to go to the church right when we came home to help Frederic with his genealogy. We had one of the family history missionaries in the branch come and help us. After the lesson, we walked to a less active members apartment. We don't know why she doesn't want to come. She's super funny, and loves to pretend to Box us. She is fine with is coming over to read the scriptures. So hopefully that helps her have the desire to come back to church. 

After that we got picked up by a member and we went to his house to have pizza! He had two friends over who went members. There was another member there who studied at BYU, and we talked about Provo. I talked with the nonmember about the Marseille area, and she was happy to know I lived down there. We talked about I French food, and other small things. The member that invited us told us that this lady wasn't believing. So we were there to help her feel comfortable being around the church. 

It seemed like it was a successful night!

Sunday: we had church at 9:00, and I spoke quickly and introduced myself. After sacrament meeting, the branch president pulled me aside and talked to me a bit about what I want to do with the branch. He said that it would be a good idea to try different styles of mission work. So we will see what will happens this transfer!

We had class with Frederic. We have a member teach each week, and we learned about prophets. We talked about how there were prophets back in the old days, and there should be and are prophets today. Frederic seemed to talk it all in. 

For priesthood, we talked about the goals for the year. They mentioned how the branch should support the missionaries. So hopefully this will be a good year! 

After church we went home and studied and ate. Then we went back to the church to order train tickets. Then we walked to a member who didn't come to church today. She wasn't home, so we walked back home and tried to contact people on the way. But because it was raining, there was no one to talk to.

So that's a look into the life here in Montauban! It's different than the moving equipe. But it feels good to do mission work again. I love you all, and I know this is the Lords work! It may be hard to port for 5 hours straight in the rain, but its worth it!

I love you all! 

-Love, Elder Race Acheson!