Elder Race Acheson: The Amazing Race in France: WEEK #2 IN CARCASONNE, FRANCE

Hello friends and family!

So it's pretty awesome here in Carcassonne, France. Elder Eberhard is an awesome person and is a rock star with the piano. He is also really good at contacting. We got 100 conversations with people this week! We have been super busy.

We spent the entire day porting (knocking on doors) one day and a couple let us in. They weren't interested but they gave us water to drink, and we talked with the husband for a minute. He was nice.

We taught one of our engages at her house. Her name is Bernice and has 2 kids. She's a single mom so we brought a member. We talked about the Law of Chastity and it went well. Bernice has a son with Downs Syndrome and is about 4 years old, so I distracted him while Elder Eberhard and the member that was with us could teach Bernice.

We have also begun teaching another guy named Michel Chateau. He isn't too interested in reading the Book of Mormon. So we are going to try and see if we can help him start with that, and if not, we will have to think of something else.

We taught another lady named Miranda. She is from Africa, and her husband just passed away a month ago. She's about 30 and has a small daughter. So we taught her the Plan of Salvation and we are trying to help her see that there is hope out there! She wasn't able to come to church this last Sunday.

We went to an outer ville to do some work called Limoux. It's pretty small but beautiful. We started out the day there by seeing a less active. She hasn't come to church for a long time, and her name is Caroline. She has a cute little 8-year-old daughter that is with her some of the time. We taught the Restoration again to help her remember. The daughter listened too. The daughter isn't baptized so we can help that happen!

Another thing that happened was that we taught a potential ami. Her son was there and we found out that he was already baptized a member in Lyon. He said that he has changed his beliefs. We left them a Book of Mormon and told them to read it and then we can answer their questions the next time.

On Sunday we had a couple that we are teaching named Jean-Pierre and Francoise come to church. They are getting married in September and want to get baptized. They are about 60 and they are pretty cool! We teach them once a week, so that's great!

There even was a lady that is staying here for a month who came. It was her first time here at church and after church she told us that she wants to be baptized. She's moving to Montpelier in a month so we won't be able to baptize her here, but we will start teaching her so she can when's ready!

We taught the lesson at church on prayer, and Caroline said the prayer for the class, and it was really good! She told us after that the night when we taught her the Restoration her daughter asked if they could say a prayer that night. So we are really happy to know that the daughter is starting to get influenced.

So those are the things that are happening work wise. Some details I haven't mentioned are the long hours contacting. We talked to 100 people this week and that's the most that I have ever done! I'm feeling pretty good about Carcassonne! We have a member that we spend a lot of time with named Fr. Vital. He cooks for us every week and we will eat with him twice next week! He drives us around a lot and even took us to do our groceries today!

We have a lunch after church every week for the members that travel a long way, as well for our investigators. There seems to be a big focus of missionary work!

We wake up every morning at 6:00 to go on runs, or go to the church to play piano. Twice this week we ran to the big castle. It is about a 15-minute run. The castle is really pretty! We have seen the sunrise there and it's super beautiful.