Week 3 in Marksville: We do NOT waste all our miles!

Bonjour amis et familles!

The mood is up! The feeling's here! It only comes this time of year! Happiness and cheer! Let every heart prepare Him room! Other quotes from Christmas songs!

I'm not going to highlight the rest of the email Christmas colors because it might distract. Or give someone a headache. Or not. Or maybe I don't need a reason, but I digress.

This week was so great. I'm having so much fun being a missionary just in general. I don't even care that I'm not in Africa right now. I did enough travel this week anyway, with 2 different 2-hour drives! I'll now tell you about it:

MISSIONARY MOMENTS OF THE WEEK

We had another lesson with Carl on Wednesday. It would've been a perfect lesson if he'd read the Book of Mormon on his own yet, dangit! But it was awesome. There were multiple times where I truly felt the Spirit testify of the truthfulness of what I was teaching. I got a bit teary-eyed at one point. Carl really loves what we're teaching him about the Gospel, but we'll see if he starts actively pursuing it when we're not over at his house. Let's all hope for that!

On Saturday, we went as a whole zone (largest geographical subset of one 'mission'; for example, I'm in the Alexandria, LA Zone) to Natchitoches, LA (pronounced NACK-I-TISH; it's a French spelling of a Native name) for the oldest Christmas light festival in Louisiana and to give out free hot chocolate there. After getting there, we were informed by the Natchitoches Elders that we might've wasted all our miles (we have limited miles we can drive each month), since most booths were packing up already, everybody was leaving to go see the lights and fireworks better, and the Elders who had the propane stove to heat the water hadn't arrived yet. But I believe in Christmas miracles! After the hot chocolate was actually hot, and after discussing as a zone the legality of it (the space where we put our booth was $100 to get), we decided to move the table to where people were congregating. We ended up having about 500 customers, and our only encounter with the law was when a police officer decided to partake of the free holiday beverage! It turned into an awesome experience and I'm so glad our miles didn't go to waste!

FUNNY QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Don't put the sword in the hot chocolate!"

I don't remember who said this to be honest; I think it was Sister Jaster. But the context is this: we didn't bring anything to mix the hot chocolate with, so Sister Jacobs went to find something long and skinny to do so. She found a wooden sword for sale from another booth that was still open and bought it. After stirring for about 10 seconds, someone ran over and exclaimed this. Long story short, we might have given the first 30 people free hot cocoa and free food poisoning! But it's alright!

SCRIPTURE/SPIRITUAL THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

"Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words."
- Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

This is literally what we did in Natchitoches. We weren't preaching, we weren't openly testifying. All we were doing was giving out free hot chocolate. I have a firm belief in this principle, and when we live it, we can be a beacon to others, and they will then give us the opportunity to preach and testify to them of our wonderful message.

My love for each of you has in no way diminished over the past 3 1/2 weeks. In fact, it's grown. Just wanted to make y'all aware.

Jusqu'à la fois prochaine que j'écris (until the next time I write),
Elder May

PICTURES

1, 4: From Natchitoches lights festival
2, 3: My first zone conference! (the other 2-hour drive)! One is a picture of my district (one subset down from a zone; I'm also in the Alexandria district), the other is me and Elder Mills with President Amos (he's the mission president who's in charge of all the missionaries)
5: I got my English tags at zone conference. Will I wear them instead of the French ones? We'll see...
6, 7: Zone conference was at the Baton Rouge Stake Center, which shares a parking lot with the Baton Rouge temple. So we got some pics.









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