clay all day: TWENTY-EIGHT

Boujour tout le monde!

I hope all is well for each and every one of you! Elder Ruby and I have had a splendid week up here in the Great White North of the Great White North! Rimouski is wearing on me, I love it up here! That being said... I have some repenting to do! I apologize for sounding so negative in my last letter. That was pretty uncool. Life is hard sometimes. Life for missionaries is even harder (sometimes). And we have to learn from hard times or we're wasting a wonderful opportunity to let the Lord show us who we can become! So I'll admit that I'm learning and still have a long ways to go!

This week rocked! Last Monday we had a great pday. Luckily we have a washer and a dryer in our apartment so we got to do our laundry while we studied. I took Elder Ruby to Tim Horton's (love that place!) for his first Timmatin. It was great. We went shopping and I learned something really cool about my companion. He is a total chef. He makes me the best food every day! So I just let him run wild in the store and get whatever he wanted. We were supposed to go to Soirée Familiale but it got cancelled because Annie was sick (she is one of the members) so we went knocking. I'll be totally honest... We get almost every door slammed in our face (like, actually slammed) but I don't mind. We've made it into a challenge to see how many principles we can teach in the 5 or so seconds that it takes for them to see "Jésus-Christ" on our tags. A lot of the people don't even know who we are or what we represent but the name of the Savior is enough to set them off. I pray for the people here!

Tuesday we went over to Vicky and Matthieu's house to help Matthieu pack some boxes. They are going to move soon and so we try to help him when we have time. I'm glad I learned how to pack and organize well from my dad because after seeing how other people do it... I'll refrain :) After that—porte à porte! We did a lot of knocking and talked to a few teenagers that were sitting around. It was their spring break up here (but because Spring won't happen in Rimouski until the end of May they just call it March Break!) We had dinner that night at the apartment and then had a lesson scheduled with someone we had met knocking. We picked up one of the members at his apartment and took him to the lesson. When we got there we found the Book of Mormon that we left in a bag hanging on the doorknob with our card inside. I have a feeling it was the parents of the person we were going to teach because when I called earlier that day to confirm the appointment an old angry lady answered and told me that the person didn't live there and I had the wrong number but then swore at me and told us not to come by that night... Way to give it away! :) So we're going to try passing by in a week or so. We took Frère Hébert home and then knocked for the rest of the night.

Wednesday morning we had district study! Since we live hours away from any of the other missionaries we joined in the district study over Google+ Hangout. It was kinda fun! We have a great district leader and a wonderful district! They love hearing about our adventures up here. We talked a lot about "How to Begin Teaching", one of the points in Preach My Gospel, and setting expectations at the beginning. After that we had lunch at the apartment and then went through some of the notes the previous missionaries left us and marked a few of the potential investigators on my GPS. (Oh yeah, one of the YSA is letting me use her GPS until I come back down to the Island. Shout out to the one and only President Courtney Wilson!! Thank you! I'm taking great care of it!) We passed by them and they were all pretty mad that we came by but we found some cool people knocking around them. That night we went to visit Chantale, Yvan, and their daughter Alisson. Chantale was baptized in December but has been coming to church for almost 15 years and her husband just allowed her to be baptized and let missionaries into his house. We got to know Yvan a little better and he gave us some advice about our truck (which I love by the way!) He is a tough position right now... He's almost 400 pounds and has a very very bad back. He can't work anymore and has been in a lot of accidents so he has turned to smoking to help with the pain. Chantale is very sad about it but she is supporting him as best as she can. He's great, though! Very nice! We shared a little about ourselves and then talked about the missionary work around the world. He was very interested in all of it.

Thursday we knocked like crazy! We spent all day outside which probably wasn't best idea because Elder Ruby got sick... but! We did it! We found someone! Her name is Diana and she is very excited to have the Book of Mormon in her hands! It took all day to find someone who would listen but things like that take time! We talked about the Restoration and the reality of the Book of Mormon. She was very excited to be learning about it. We are a little worried about her parents finding out though because she said that they are very against religion and won't let her study it but we have faith that her wait to receive the fullness of the Gospel will come to an end soon! We met another pretty cool family right before her. They didn't want to talk at all about religion and wouldn't let us but just as they were about to close the door I had an impression to ask her about her favorite restaurant in Rimouski. She opened the door and invited us in! She and her husband talked to us about food for a while and finally started asking us questions! We were able to sing a hymn for them and play the piano. She gave us these super delicious banana-chocolate chip muffins that saved our day! We didn't have lunch that day because we don't have a lot of kliks on our truck (the limit that we can drive) so we couldn't afford to go home for lunch. I made her a thank you card the next day and we took it to them. We hope that they'll invite us over sometime!

Friday was sick! Literally. Elder Ruby was really sick and Sister Cannon grounded us. I got a lot of reading done! I'm almost done with the New Testament! I love the Bible! I just took care of Elder Ruby all day and we practiced French but it was hard because he couldn't make the French "r" because of his throat. But we really got to know each other that day and I have a feeling that he will be a life-long friend. He is a really cool guy. At the end of the night we were dying to do something so we called Chantale to see if we could help her with anything. It was actually Alisson's birthday party the next day so we helped her set up for the party. She turned 9.

Saturday was great! We went to the birthday party and actually ended up teaching two lessons. One of Chantale's neighbors wanted to talk to us so she introduced us to him and then we stayed at his apartment and talked for a while. It turns out he already had a copy of the Book of Mormon and thinks that he is God and worships a stick.... but he was pretty cool to talk to anyways! Then one of the parents of the kids at the party ended up asking us a bunch of questions. You could tell she was making fun of us at first but when she realized what kind of people we are she turned into a sponge and started asking some great questions. We're going to have dinner with them sometime and talk about the Book of Mormon. I'm excited!

Sunday was super! Church was so good! Yvan and Alisson came with Chantale! We knew it was a huge sacrifice for them and we were so happy! President Dupont also came and we finally got to meet him. What a great guy! He is the perfect person to be leading this branch! We ended up having to watch the kids (who were absolutely nuts!) again for nursery but luckily only for one hour. There were enough priesthood holders there (4!) so we had Elder's Quorum which was a refresher! Yvan came to it and really liked it. He doesn't talk a lot but when he does he really lets you know what's going on. The lesson was chapter 5 in the Lorenzo Snow book which was quite a huge thing to take in ("As man is, God once was. As God is, man may be.") for Yvan but we kept the lesson in control! We talked with President Dupont after church for a while and made some good plans for the Branch. Oh, I don't know if I told you or not but I'm the First Counselor in the Branch Presidency and Elder Ruby is Second. Cool opportunity to learn! We'll be extending a few calls next week and get the Branch a little more organized so that when we start expanding it will be able to grow the way it should! And yes, we made the decision to call a Primary President/Instructor for the kids :)

Today we did our laundry and then got some blank CDs to burn some church music onto. Later we are going home teaching to visit some of the less-active families on the outskirts of town (we've been saving our kliks to be able to visit them) and then we have Soirée Familiale tonight!

To answer a few questions that you might have... Continue to send mail to the Mission Office (it will be the same way for my entire mission.) I'll be getting mail once a month so I apologize if I slow down in the letter writing!

Two funny things about missionary life in Rimouski—we play chess during every meal and I've eaten cereal and water for the past few days because we ran out of food and milk! But we're going shopping later! Glorious!

Well, that's just about it. Scripture of the week: Romans 15:4 "For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope."

Pictures!