How's it going?
So yesterday was transfer day aaaaaaaaaaanddddddd. I'm gonna stay :). Elder Bennett got moved to Switzerland in the Yverdon-les-bains sector (It's kinda near Bienne) and I received Elder Castillo Pazmiño. He's originally from Ecuador, then he moved to Spain, and then he lived in England for a bit. I'm excited for this upcoming transfer and more opportunities to serve the Lord with my new companion! :D
Last week was pretty packed, but I'll still try to keep this email short.
On Monday we visited an elderly sister, she seemed to really appreciate it.
Tuesday we did some work with our DMB (stands for Ward Mission Leader). He drove us around to different towns so we could pass by some less-actives' houses.
The first house we tried to pass ended up being some kind of farm. Our DMB had to park his big white van far from the actual house because there was a chain blocking the long road leading there. So Elder Bennett and I hopped out and walked in the mud up to the farmhouse. We had almost reached it when Elder Bennett suddenly stopped. I looked a bit closer and we had almost walked straight into an electric fence circling the area to keep the cows in. We climbed over the fence and continued.
We walked up to a set of buildings that we supposed would be the living area. A few were sheds and garages, but one had what seemed to be a front yard, but we couldn't see the door from where we were at. So we rounded the corner to look for it, but as we did so, we saw a group of cows just standing there. One of them was a bull, and as we got closer, still looking for the door, he started stamping one of his feet and lowering his head looking like he was gonna charge us, so we quickly backed away to save that house for another day! XD
Wednesday we met with Pascale (Agen's amazing recent-convert) for Lunch. On the bus ride there, this French girl did some reverse finding for us and contacted Elder Bennett, so now we have her number and Facebook XD. After the meal with Pascale, we had that rendez-vous with Espoir that he set up last week when we passed by his house. When we arrived, he wasn't there of course. :P. Figures.
Thursday we went to this outer village called Auch. We shared a spiritual thought and ate with an older, but still very active member at his house there. We told him we were also planning on visiting another member who is even older than him named Philipe. He offered to show us the way to where he lives, so we happily agreed, seeing as neither of us had been to Auch before. On the way, he became our tour guide as he showed us Auch's big Cathedral (which is actually kinda beautiful in a very imposing and apostate way). The cathedral is at the top of a big hill and from it, you can see most of Auch and the surrounding area, so that was cool. Going down the hill there was also a really nice, big staircase with some verses of the Bible made of metal on the ground of one tier written in Latin. Apparently, they are about Noah and the arc. Kinda interesting.
Auch is pretty nice, kinda reminds me of Angoulême, where I used to go for exchanges while I served in Périgueux.
So we arrived at our destination and it turns out that Philipe, who comes to church almost every week along with the other older member, lives in a mental hospital...
He is mostly sane, but that explains why he always acts more like a kid than an old man.
We talked with him and shared a video in the waiting room of the hospital. The fact that we visited him made him really happy! After the lesson, as we were leaving the mental hospital, we saw some of the other patients walking around, and we deducted that Philipe is probably the most sane person there! He's honestly probably in there because he no longer speaks French very well. He speaks better English in fact, but that's probably because he served a mission in Canada and lived in England for a while.
Friday we had transfer calls and weekly planning. We went around and said goodbye to some of our friends and invited
Elder Bennett
