Elder Fitch: March 13, 2012

Alright so last week was pretty great! Im doing my emails today because we were unable to take our Pday yesterday. There is a member here that needed us to help with basically rewiring there whole house. Unfortunatly it ended up being a really big waste of time for what we actually got accomplished. We were supposed to be there helping but the guy whose project it was (brother of this member) was this old bitter stubborn man. He wouldn't have us do anything, so we did a lot of watching. We were in a different city and it wasn't an option to leave, so we watched.....and watched. OH and they fed us lunch and it was....sketchy...to say the least. It was sauerkraut with wierd pieces of meat and strange looking little potatoes. For dessert it was cherries.....let me tell you....yuck. So first off one thing I've learned to do is eat anything, but these cherries just looked....sketchy...so I asked for just a little (you can't say no). Luckily I didn't see cause I would have barfed, but Elder Jensen told me after that on his last couple cherry he realized that there were tons of maggots! YUCK! That was not a good meal. One thing about the french that was REALLY evident with this family is the complete lack of priorities when it comes to money. Their house is falling apart, they were without heating right in that big cold because they didn't have money to make repairs, they have problems making other payments like rent, BUT they have a couple nice TVs, Ps3, nice phones etc. It is ridiculous I think and there are SO many people here that are like that. Dumb. anyway It went really slow and didn't get a lot done, which is a bummer because I think we could have accomplished most everything that needed to be done. and then when we finally got back we had time only to go back and change and go to a family night that we do for single members here. SO we moved our pday today. voila. 
The week was great though! Do you guys remember Catherine? We were teaching her like right when I got here, but she wanted to take a break to read more in the Book of Mormon. She was the one that didn't have time to read because she was reading the Old Testament. ANYWAY we've stayed in contact with her since then and this week we were able to see her again. She had finished the Old Testament and had read pas mal in the Book of Mormon. We had a great time just talking about her questions and connections between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. She is super sincere in questions and in her efforts to know if our message is true or not. She explained how she disproved the catholic church in reading the OT. She was baptized catholic but now knows that it can not be the true church from reading the Bible for herself. She says if she got an answer that our message is true she would be baptized in a second. She also was very interested in seeing general conference and seeing who the prophet is today. So that should be super sweet. 
Odile kinda had another break down. It is SO frustrating! She wants an answer, she does. She is sincere too, EXCEPT she is not willing to make any effort. She wont DO anything. She wants her answer to come on a silver platter and to have it fed to her. That is unfortunatly not possible. We can not GIVE her a testimony. One can only recieve a testimony for one's self in making one own efforts. As missionaries we can only invite and guide. The answers come from God though. In the end she wanted to take another break because she is frustrated and doesn't understand why she is not progressing. So we will see if something happens in the next couple weeks. 
SO I have some more news from Montauban! yay! so do you remember Emma? She was the lady that we found knocking doors that was going to celebrate Christmas with us, but ended up not. Super nice lady. Well she was baptized this weekend!! super awesome!! It's so cool hearing that someone you helped find is getting baptized. Super. 
And I also got a call from Jeanpierre. If you remember his story a little bit he just started coming back to church last spring after going off the deep end and swimming around for over ten years. So he called me and told me how he had just come from an interview with his Stake President and there he recieved permission to take the sacrament on sunday. Through tears he told me "For the first time in ten years I will be able to renew my baptisimal covenants". That hit me pretty hard and made me think a little bit more seriously about how precious that really is. I don't think I'll forget that one. It is moments like those that have made my mission priceless. I got to witness the miracle of forgiveness. 
There was lots of other good stuff that happened this week but I will leave it at that for now. I love you all. CIAO!!
Mark