9-5-16!

Hello everyone! This week was incredible! What went down:

Monday-pday! We visited St Jean Cap-Ferrat, a peninsula by Nice. Super beautiful! We came back, cleaned, did emails, and bought some stuff for zone conference. We taught 3 street lessons, and got a new ami named Reg! He's pretty interested, we're seeing him again on Thursday. The other elders went to the bishop's house for dinner today and they brought back tons of food!! Our bishop had no idea, but we've been short in money for a while, and we have been pretty hungry actually. So it was quite a miracle that they gave us lots of food, we really needed it! Last week I had rice for breakfast! So yeah, crazy miracle. God takes care of us!

Tuesday-super solid day. We did some more prep for zone conference, went to teach a lesson with Frere Fran but the rdv fell through. And it was pouring rain. So we went w/ Frere Fran to the gardens at Cimiez, by the church, but nobody was really there. We taught a lesson after searching for a while, then we met a girl named Est. She's Buddhist, and really nice. We taught her the retab, gave her a Book of Mormon, took her on a tour of the chapel, engaged her to come to church this Sunday! She was pretty interested. She's 20, studying to become a nurse, and loves her family! After that, we practiced Praise to the Man for zone conference, then had English class. Two people came, with Frere Fran we had 3. Pie and Bar, the students, are really cool. We just found them last week! Hopefully we can get a good class going. We shared a Book of Mormon scripture at the end, we got to talk about the plan of salvation with them as well. We invited them to church as well, I hope they come! Three lessons in the presence, all with one member haha! It was fun hanging with MA. His calling is to take care of the church building. The front door is kind of broken, and when we showed him, he just said "ohhh...crap!" in his French accent haha. It was too funny. He's a great guy, so funny and great to be around.

Wednesday-tombez-boys but ça va. We contacted, planned for our zone conference presentation, and contacted some more. We found a great potentielle amie, Mar! She said she couldn't have faith, so we showed her Alma 32 and testified that she can have faith if she tries to. Then we practiced our musical number, taught Fl with Frere M, and had ward council. Fl doesn't want to see us anymore, he is too philosophical for us haha. At ward council, we got our missionary activity approved! It's for the 30th of September. Lots of members have wanted a missionary activity, so hopefully this helps them invite friends!

Thursday-exchange w/ Elder Thangaraj from Ajaccio! We had a little of everything: cool rdv with a member, a dentist appointment, cool contacting, and a new ami named Mi! He speaks Spanish which is good for Elder Sauro. It was really really fun to get together with Elder Thangaraj. He's a great friend.

Friday-zone conference! It was incredible. By far, the best zone conference I have ever had. We did our musical number, it went alright considering that we didn't practice all together before the conference. I conducted the meeting, so I got to sit next to President up on the stand, which was pretty cool. President Brown talked to us about loyalty, of course. It was incredible! I love that man. I could go on for hours, but he basically made us feel accountable for our own sectors, and promised that the Lord has prepared at least one family for each sector that can be baptized before the end of the year. He got really hyped! We went out and talked about our missionary armor of God, and shot President's bow at a basketball. It was pretty fun. The whole conference went off without a hitch. Lunch was great too! Sr.Rou came in clutch. My interview with President Brown was great too. We talked at length about sports, including swimming and golf, it was pretty fun.

Saturday-we took President Brown's counsel to go up to a mountain to seek revelation in order to find the family the Lord has prepared in our area. So we went up to the Nice Observatory, on Mount Gros. We prayed and pondered for about an hour, and got some good things to chew on. We came back down, helped the Antibes elders get train tickets, train passes, reduction cards, etc. Then we went by the Port and contacted, taught some street lessons.

Sunday-a big grind! We were at 16 lessons through Saturday, so after church, we grounded at the local parc, found some cool people and taught four lessons. We ported a street we chose yesterday on Mount Gros and we found an amazing family! We talked to the dad for an hour about religion from a philosopher's point of view. He's agnostic, but he used to be a practicing Jew. The Dad, Gi, told us we could come back another time! Hopefully we'll be able to see his family together. We hope they're the family that God has prepared! On verra.

What I learned:
I learned so much this week, but maybe the most important thing I learned was to seek after answers. I've never been one to pray lots about deep questions I have, and maybe I should do more of that. I've never been one to say "I've had this question for a long time and I finally got an answer to my prayer!" That has seldom been me. But as a missionary, I pray all the time for guidance, to know what to do, not for myself, but for the work. As Elder Sauro and I prayed continually this week to be guided, to know what to do, to do the Lord's will, we have been given extraordinary guidance and direction. This has built my faith in prayer and receiving answers. I think I have slowly learned to pray with real intent, and that makes all the difference. I hope this will help me to seek after more and more answers, be they day-to-day calls upon the Lord for help, or profound questions asked again and again over an extended period of time.

(free) Advice I have: go read Elder Holland's recent BYU devotional. It's called "Religion: Bound by Loving Ties." It's excellent. Go read it, please :)

The week was great! Heavenly Father blessed us with lots of miracles, despite all the things we had to do, we were able to teach 20 lessons again.

I love you all! Have a wonderful week!
Elder MacArthur

At St Jean Cap Ferrat

Zone Conference