Well, we're back in the groove. This week was a one thousand percent improvement from last week. We were able to teach a lot more and some really good stuff happened. Josée came to church yesterday, and then we fixed a baptismal date with her later in the afternoon. It was a really great rendez-vous. As you would expect, I'm a little hesitant to be too excited about her baptismal date, but it just feels right. Everyone at church is really helpful too in showering her with love every Sunday. So if all goes to plan she will get baptized on August 27th, which will most likely be my last Saturday in Reims. We also made a lot of progress with Lilianne and her three children too, but then she didn't come to church. Darn.

One day this week we saw a tent while walking through a neighborhood. I thought it was some kind of an auction or something, so I decided to go check it out. As we got closer to it two kids started walking at us, so we got scared and turned around. They said "bonjour!! do you want to know what this is??" So reluctantly we turned around and were surprised to find out that it was an evangelical church conglommeration! They were doing a special event with a bunch of churches, so the next night we went to take a peek at their service. Nothing really great came out of it, but it was good to see the kind of church that most of our African amis are used to. Plenty of singing, hand clapping, and amens. It was good.

A couple weeks ago we were at a restaurant with some members and we became friends with the waitress. She loves films and speaking english so we invited her to english class and she came this last week! We didn't know before, but she is a very practicing Catholic, so she was really interested in our little spiritual thought at the end of english class. She just left on vacation but hopefully we will see her again when whe gets back. She is a very nice girl. Her name is Isabelle.

Also this week I got a phonecall from a woman in Alpine, Utah. That was surprising!!! I answered in French but we very quickly switched to English. So this woman, Sandy, did a BYU study abroad in Paris 36 years ago, and has kept contact with a french woman ever since. Sandy said that Christiane lost her husband about 3 months ago and would love to meet the missionaries. Problem: she lives about and hour and half away from us (in the boundaries of a little branch with no missionaries). But so we called Christiane and had a lovely conversation with her. She is way nice and within 10 minutes had told me everything about her from her old cat to her 102 year old mother. She's so sweet. So we are planning a trip up to the Charleville-Mezziers Branch to teach her and visit some other members and less actives up there. Exciting exciting!

This week while searching for a place to relieve himself, Elder Bjerga stumbled upon the biggest blackberry patch known to man. So we got a bag, and picked blackberries till our fingers were all purple. Since then, we've been enjoying blackberries and cream, and a kick-trash blackberry cobler. Mmm :) We're going back for more berries today.

For this last p day we once again went out to the vinyards for a picnic with our ward mission leader. It is probably the most beautiful spot I've ever been. It is the number one place that we are going when we come on vacation here. Deal?

I miss you and love you a lot. Keep having great weeks.

Love,
Elder Coburn

ps, it just started storming outside. really loud thunder