Family!!!!!!

Okay the new address is:

Elder Benny Boy Cute Coburn
Les Missionnaires
7 Rue Blanche, Apt. 34
59000 LILLE
France

All Christmas loot can be fowarded to that address. Speaking of that- homemade cookies would be an EXCELLENT addition to any Christmas package :) Just a thought I had this week...

Anyway, we're not actually celebrating Christmas yet, because today is the LILLE ZONE TURKEY BOWL!!! Frankly, it's been a bit of a nightmare to get organized, but it should be good. We are currently doing our emails at the church waiting for our 20 missionaries to show up to the church. We are going to do a spiritual thought/ training about our vision for the zone, then football, then frisbee, then EAT, then play this French game called Loups-garous. It is like the game Mafia. Elder Godfrey and I being the brave and fearless zone leaders that we are volunteered to provide the Turkey for the meal. We are actually going to by chicken instead though since turkey is pretty rare here. So later today we will be throwing down 55 euros on ten rotissery chickens. One for each companionship. Sweet :) Speaking of Turkey Bowl - Dad? You've really retired from ward turkey bowls? How about when I get back home you will start playing again... You're not even like that close to being old. Anyway. All I know is that there are going to be some mean 5 yard slant routes run today.

Are vision for the zone that we are sharing today is "Finding Your 16 Stones." It's all about figuring out what it is the Lord wants us to do to "light our boats," and then taking it to him so that he can touch it and put the magic in it. Like the Brother of Jared accepted to Lord's invitation to act and be creative, so should we. We have little sacks of 16 stones that we are giving to every companionship. We swindled the rocks from nature and then cut up some old sheets to make the bags. They're cute. There is actually a story behind getting the rocks... here is what Elder Godfrey told his family about it:

We are going to be giving a training today to the zone to get them really syked up about working and stuff so after much prayer and thinking and what we feel is inspiration we decided to use the ever so popular story of the brother of Jared and as a visual aide we need 16 stones in a small cloth sac for every team. Sl 1st problem no stones in our appartment. So while we are out we find a nice dirt patch with perfect stones that well work. The thing is that we need about 160. So we make a deal between Elder Coburn and myself. Ill carry all that he has in his bag if he will then fill his bag with these rocks for the object lesson. So pretty sweet deal. So we do it and then go to the RDV that we had in theh neighborhood. Well the ami had lots of questions to anwser and the lesson went a little long and now Elder Coburn had a very heavy bag and we found ourselves running to get back to the metro so that we could be back home on time. Elder Coburn certainly got the short end of the stick on that deal seeing as now he had to run home with his bag completely full of our object lessonfor our zone. But it was worth the sacrifice because things are going to be great.

So that was fun. We have been SO BUSY this week. I love Lille because there is already work going on here! That is a good feeling :) There is a young man in the ward who will be getting baptized in a couple weeks. And then there is this kick butt family (a mom and her two daughters) that will hopefully be getting baptized this transfer too. Good good stuff is here.

EN PLUS (translation: whats more)!! Lille is a fairy tale city. Really. Christmas lights everywhere, ferris wheel, cobblestones, never ending, lots of pedestrian streets, cute little houses everywhere, etc. It is really close to Belgium so the architecture is a lot different than everywhere else that I've been in France. It kind of looks like Amsterdam, or Bruge (which Dad is actually not in our mission. It is in the non-french part unfortunately. Yes I remember our vacation there).

Leaving Nancy was sad. We did secret santa all together before we left since we aren't going to be together for Christmas. Elder Hales had my name and got me a pair of pink cargo shorts. It was way fun.

To celebrate the real Thanksgiving on thursday we bought four slices of the cheapest turkey we could find. It was gross.

It sounds like you have a pretty good bishop in the new ward up there. You all seem to like him a lot. About playing the organ like you guys asked: I'm not proffesional. I am kind of lame with my feet, but other than that it is the same thing as piano basically.

Cool. I love you. I will probably have a chance later on today to check my email again real quick. PS, talk to you IN LESS THAN A MONTH!

Elder Coburn