March 5, 2012

Ni hao,
I feel like every week of my mission gets crazier and crazier. I love it. This week we drove to Lourdes and spent the day there with the Tarbes elders and Pau sisters. That city is scary. Then we started our exchange with Tarbes and that lasted til Tuesday evening. Elder Bowen and Elder Miller are great. Elder Bowen goes home at the end of the transfer. They're both great missionaries. We had beautiful weather in Tarbes as well and it's a really pretty city. We had a monster kebab at the kebab shop run by this muslim guy who loves americans. He gave us so much food and for super cheap and we couldn't even eat it all. Elder Gubbay and I left and drove back to Bordeaux with that in our stomachs and it was super good when we ate it, but not too pleasant sitting like a rock in our stomachs for 2 hours in the car. Once we got to Bordeaux we got on the plane to Lyon that same night. The assistants picked us up at the airport when we got there (around 1030) and took us to the Lyon ZL's apartment. I got to see Elder Allen!!! He's ZL in Lyon now! I missed that man. It was great to see everybody again at zone council. Zone council was really inspiring this month and I learned quite a bit. Wednesday night we took the plane back to Bordeaux and got home around 930. So, Thursday, we finally got to work in our area! yay! We saw these two pompous french guys on Thursday. One of them just went to some impressive business school and the other guy was his friend. They say they're atheist... or agnostic, I can't remember. They're basically the same thing. When we started the lesson they had a lot of questions and they just tried to throw us in every direction with their "reason", but we calmly responded to every question they had. We eventually got to teach about the restoration and I testified of the answers I had received from God that the Book of Mormon is true and that God truly exists, and that i received these answers in my heart. As I testified, one of them was just smiling and just shaking his head like I was crazy, but then I remembered something president Packer said in a talk once about a person he testified to who said you can't know that god exists. I just asked him, pretendingly, what salt tastes like, because I had never tasted it before. He said, well, I don't know, it's hard to describe. Does that mean salt doesn't exist then? Of course not. I told him it was the same with God. When you know He lives you just KNOW. It's something you have to experience for yourself to really know what it's like, just like tasting salt. Then we invited them to read the BoM and pray. They said they didn't think they'd pray, but Elder Gubbay just said, if you read, you'll want to pray. It was a great lesson. It seemed like it was going nowhere at first, but question after question, they were confounded. I realized that Elder Gubbay and I didn't really do anything. We taught true doctrine and testified of it. I learned what it means when in the scriptures it says that Alma or Amulek or anyone else confounded them in all their questions and words. It wasn't because they tried to reason with them and think of some brilliant, complicated answer. They confounded them by teaching simply and clearly and testifying. In the end, the honest in heart will always realize that what we're saying is true, which was the case with our lesson the other day. We'll be seeing them next week.
Friday we saw T H. and had a great lesson with him. He comes to chruch every week and is so awesome, he just needs to get baptized! We sat down with him and just asked questions. We found out that he has a hard time keeping a couple of commandments. We just listened, then we testified of baptism and what it takes to be ready and why it is worth more than anything he could ever do. He accepted to prepare to be baptized the 17th of March. Pray for him! Saturday we had a chinese night at the institute. H, R, C, and two of H's friends came and cooked all afternoon. All the YSA came and learned how to cook chinese with them and helped them make the food. At the end, we all sat down and ate it. There were about 25 of us, it was great, and there was a ton of food! Our stomachs took a hit this week. Sunday morning we taught H with the bishop before church. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to talk about all that we wanted to, but it went well, and after we left the room to go attend the meetings, H said she wanted to talk after church.
Meanwhile, a host of romanians came to church again. P and L are doing great. We're going to do a FHE with them this week with the Wilkey's. R is diong awesome as well. He's already preparing to receive the melchezidek priesthood and will get it within a few weeks. That's so soon! I've never seen anyone get it that fast. He is the most witty person I've ever met. I don't know if I've ever met a funnier person. He has the greatest retorts to everything you say. You just never stop laughing. So anyways, after church we taught H again, like she wanted. She explained to us that she didn't know when she was going back to china, maybe 2 years, maybe 4, mayber never. We weren't sure where she was going with that, then she said she was worried that she wouldn't find the church in China because she thought it didn't exist. We reassured her that there are chapels everywhere there. Then she looked at her cell phone calendar and said, "my birthday is the 19th of march, but I work that day. Can I get baptized a little before or a little after that?" Elder Gubbay, Grace (the member), and I just looked at eachother in disbelief. Yes! of course you can! haha. I was so happy I wanted to cry. We've been praying for this for so long. She's finally made a decision! we set the date for the 18th. Pray for her!
Today, I was just thinking about how blessed i am to be here on a mission. I'm so blessed to meet so many amazing people and to see the gospel change them and make them happier and happier. I know that God lives and that this is His church and His gospel. Why? Because these people, and myself, are happy! That is why we're here, to be happy. Every one of us has the right to be happy, we must only choose to be it through righteous living. I know God loves us and that He has given us the Gospel of Jesus Christ so we may have joy in this life. I know that through the Gospel is the only way to have pure, true, and lasting happiness. Love you all! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Tudor