January 10, 2011

Bonjour ma famille!
Ca-va? It was quite a week here in Nice. It's been raining for about three weeks straight now, but at least it's not that cold. We did see a little sunshine today and yesterday though! We had a super awesome week. The week before we didn't have a whole lot of lessons, so we had to do a lot of contacting, which isn't bad, but I'd rather be teaching people! But this week we were running all over the place to lessons and it was great. We found a lot of new investigators who are super sweet and I'm really excited for these last few weeks of the transfer.
One of these new investigators is a pretty cool story. When we don't have rendez-vous, a lot of time we'll pass by old investigators just so we'll have a sense of direction while we contact people on the way. Pass backs almost never work (at least as far as I've seen so far), but a couple weeks ago we just randomly picked a guy named James who was in our area book. He hadn't seen the missionaries for over 6 months. We passed by his apartment, and he was there and he let us in. We just talked for a few minutes and set a rendez-vous for the next week. He dind't seem super interested, but took the rendez-vous anyways. We invited him to the new years activity but he didn't show up. So the next week (this week) we met with him. We sat down, said a prayer, then right when we finished praying he started explaining to us that since New Year's, he's been thinking about resolutions and things, and he decided he wants to quit drinking, smoking, and be baptized, becaues that would be the best thing for him right now. The expression on my face was probably just like "yep, it sure is!!!" Haha we were totally caught off guard with that one. The Spirit was so strong, and I felt to testify of Christ and that through His Atonement, and ONLY through his Atonement, he would be able to reach his goal and be fully healed in the process. This next week we're going to work out a plan for him to quit smoking and drinking and fix a baptismal date!
Needless to say, that boosted our spirits, and the rest of the week was a lot like that! We see so many miracles every day here. The story about James testifies to me that the Lord is at the head of this work and htat he leads His servants to those He has prepared. It is obvious that the Spirit of the Lord had been influencing James to make those kinds of commitments to draw closer to our Heavenly Father, and I'm so thankful that the Lord trusted us enough to lead us to him to help him find the peace that comes from the Gospel.
I wouldn't trade anything for my mission. I love taking a moment just to reflect every once in awhile on what we are doing here, and every time I do, my testimony is strengthened that the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and it's spreading throughout the world is the most important work in the world. I love it here and I'm so happy! True, it is hard, but I love the picture of Christ with the quote underneath that says "I never said it would be easy, I just said it would be worth it." And I can testify to you that it is! Anything we do to bring ourselves and others closer to Christ IS worth it! Even if at times it may seem like we sacrifice too much to bring ourselves closer to Christ and align our lives more with His will, it is NEVER too much. Jesus Christ made the ultimate sacrifice so that in turn he could give us the ultimate gift if we only accept His will and sacrifice those things that keep us from following His commandments. "Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?... And Jesus said unto them... And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." (Matt. 19:27-29) I know that this is true, and that when we make sacrifices for the Lord to follow His commandments, we receive blessings that only He is capable of giving us, and I know that these blessings are more precious than anything else in this world! Bonne semaine a tous, et que Dieu soit avec vous! Je vous aime!

Love,
Elder Tudor