Good week, good work, good weather. Jean is still amazing. Everything is good for his baptism and he has asked me to baptism him. That will be the first time that I have actually baptised someone myself on my mission. It was all announced on Sunday. Dad, it is awesome that you did some research on Togo. I didn't know what it was before my mission either, but I have had a lot of investigators from there. Most of our other African investigators come from Congo, Ivory Coast, Camaroun, and Madagascar.

This week I did district meeting about grace and the atonement. I used a lot of the talk "His Grace is Sufficient" by Brad Wilcox. The goal was for us to better understand what our investigators need to understand in order for them to have true faith- the kind that will push them to act. It turned out really well and most everyone came and told me so afterwards. Isn't being a district leader so fun? Except I have no clue what to talk about for district meeting tomorrow. I spent most of my studies thinking about it and came up with only a few ideas.

Hahaha. So. You know how you guys were an hour late to church on sunday because of daylight savings? Well we made up for it because we were an hour early to church this sunday. Turns out that France doesn't make the time switch for two more weeks and the calendar in our apartment is American so... we sort of most some sleep on accident. Can you think of anything worse?

Guess who I went on an exchange with this week?! Elder Decker!! After 21 months of not serving anywhere near each other, we finally got our first exchange in. He (being my zone leader) came down to Nantes. We spent a hunk of a beautiful day in the boondocks of France on some lake with the most gorgeous view. We went swimming, did some boating, and other stuff like that. Not really though- no watersports. We did service for some members by diggin this big old whole up against the house so that they can put in a basement window. They fed us Filipino food. Delish. We spent most of the exchange talking about BYU memories. It seems like it was so long ago.

Here is a miracle that Caled will like: on Sunday after church a lot of the ward was mingling out in front of the chapel when a chinese family walking by stopped and started talking to everyone. There was a mom, dad, 11 yr old, and a baby. They have been in Nantes for 3 weeks (in France for a year and a half) and were on a walk looking for a church. What? The members were like "Elders get out here RIGHT NOW!!" When they lived in China (Shanghai) they were christian but they had to hold church at their home in secret or something like that. The ward just engulfed them. It was cool to tell them about Caleb serving in China. I also got to use my chinese skills on them. "Wǒ shì chuánjiào shì." It took me like ten tries before they understood. I've been working on that stupid phrase my whole mission. It means I'm a missionary. Luckily the dad speaks really good english because of his job (he is a programmer). They live right close to the church and we are going to see them this week. Pray for them please?

One more thing. This week we took a rainy afternoon to do a little bit of what we like to call "middle of nowhere porting." So we took a bus out into the middle of... well, nowhere. Somehow we ended up walked through a lot of fields and pastures n' junk. We passed by a members house (after finally finding it), shared a thought, and then did some knocking around. People seem to be so much nicer out in the country. Also it was such a breath of fresh air (no pun intended) to go out into the country side. I miss it so much. I am a hundred and fifty thousand percent sure that I will raise my family out in the country. We got let into a really big, really nice house by a french couple that are both massage therapists. They were super nice and most of what they believe is the exact same as us, but they just call it something different. Not too interested all around, but we had a great little rendez-vous. When we were leaving they told us to come back if we missed the bus and they would drive us into town. Luckily we caught the last bus of the night by about 3 minutes. Phew!!

I think that's about all I can think of to say. It was a good week. Probably our best yet. We are so blessed :)

I love you all so much.

Elder Ben