THIRTY-THREE

Bonjour tout le monde!

Alrighty, I've got to plow through this one because we started emails a little late and we have places to go, people to see, and food to eat! This week was fun! It was a bit out of the ordinary (again!) But I won't complain, it's fun to have a little change in the schedule! For the past few weeks I've had really bad allergies and this week they were really acting up. I've got pretty bad sinus pressure and my ears feel like they're going to pop, so if I sound a little off at least you know why! 

Monday we did our normal missionary stuff for preparation day! Nothing too out of the ordinary happened. That night we had a fondue with a ton of fruit after Soirée Familiale. Nothing much besides that!

Catherine and Stitch (her phone cover)

Just a little something I threw down at Soirée Familiale

 Old McDonald had a farm!

Tuesday morning was interesting... Mathieu had us come over because he said that he needed some help at the new apartment. We are always glad to help him out when he needs us! We told him we would finish our studies and then come over. We've helped him clean his house a lot in the past few weeks and we figured that we'd be doing the same thing again so I made sure to mention that he needed to make as much progress as he could while he was waiting for us. When we got there the place was an absolute wreck. It was almost worse than their last place and they hadn't even been there for more than a week! No one answered the door so we called—he was asleep upstairs. He gave us a few things to do and then told us that he would be cleaning upstairs. Anyways, we cleaned for a bit and then went up to check on him and he was asleep again. I don't blame him because he had a long weekend of moving but we aren't housemaids. We got everything really clean again and then he had us run a tape roller over to Soeur Lévesque. She was pretty mad that we had cleaned his house for him. She told us that they need to learn to be responsible and if we kept doing it for them they would never learn. In a way she was right and we went and talked to Mathieu about it. We haven't heard from him since... I hope everything is okay. We did a bunch of tracting until our appointment with Marielle and Jacques that night. I had been looking forward to that appointment for a long time. They had given us a bunch of scriptures that supposedly proved their point of view and questioned ours. I had been studying them for a bit during the week to better understand them and to learn how to teach them correctly. I won't go into too much detail, but if you want a really good read from the Bible read Ecclesiastes! It's a wonderful use of satire to expose the limited human perspective and our explanations of naturally occurring events without the necessary insight provided by revelation. It's not to be taken literally or as individual declarations of doctrinal truth, but if viewed from that light can really get one into trouble. I showed them that in the simplest way I knew how and they were terrified. It proved everything they believe wrong (which was not my objective) and they didn't know what to do. They pulled out some heavy philosophical situations (like going to war or not) and tried to corner us. I didn't fall for it and wouldn't stand to be tossed around so we bore testimony, invited them to consider the Book of Mormon for what it claims to be and then left. I didn't think we'd be seeing them any time soon for a return appointment. They really are nice people, though. Just a bit misled is all.

Wednesday! We did quite a bit of knocking and met some really interesting people! We went out to a town called St. Luce which is about 20 minutes from Rimouski. We are slowly working our way up the coast trying to find people in the smaller communities. They tend to be a little more open to conversation! The town ended up being a tourist-type town mostly and so we weren't able to find many people. I'm sure it's beautiful in the summer time! That night we had a dinner appointment with the Lévesque family. They are a really nice family! We get a lot of help from them throughout the weeks. The dinner was pretty good! We had an interesting chicken pie and then a bunch of macaroni in mayonnaise... that was... well it didn't kill me! After dinner we followed up on our Book of Mormon challenge that we gave them. They had almost all given out their copies with their testimonies in them!

St. Luce

Gandalf!

Almost stepped on that little guy!

Thursday morning we had service at the Friperie again! This time we got to clean shoes and purses instead of hauling big trash bags of clothes! The people there are really nice. They like to ask us questions about the States. They think I'm a total hick because I lived in Texas. Anyways, after that we needed to pick up some bread because all of ours went bad while we were in Québec City. Just as we were walking into the store we ran into Marielle. She was shocked to see us because we were in street/service clothes. She thought it was pretty funny. We talked for a bit and she told us that she and Jacques were about to go knocking. We compared notes a bit on knocking and asked her where her favorite areas are and she told us it was a secret! Haha. It was good to see that we were still friends even after our lesson the other night. She said that she liked the article that I gave her (I left an Ensign, well a Liahona, for her to read.) I still have hope for her one day that she'll be brave enough to open up and look at what the Church has to offer. When we got home we started making hamburgers for lunch and then the doorbell rang. I was really shocked because I didn't know we had a doorbell. I looked at the peephole and was surprised to see other missionaries! The zone leaders came clear up from Québec to surprise visit us. It was quite the surprise indeed! We helped them unload their car, ate, and then left to take them knocking! Elder Kastendick and I went to a lesson with Chantale while Elder Ruby and Elder Prawitt went up to St. Luce to knock. It was an okay lesson—Chantale was being really negative about a situation she's in and it was totally killing the mood. We read some scriptures with her, chatted with Yvan to see how he was doing and then got out to meet up with the others elders in St. Luce. We knocked for a while with them and met a really cool guy who makes wood statues. He showed us a few that he still had around his house. Later that night we had two lessons with some less-actives so we split up to see both. We taught Yvette and her husband who is actually not a member (yet!) while they taught André. It was nice to be teaching with someone new! I was able to pick up on a few cool teaching techniques from Elder Kastendick.

Elder Ruby, Elder Prawitt (the kid's tall!), moi, and Elder Kastendick

Cause

Effect

(My head is hurting so I'm just going to blaze through the rest of the week!)

Friday we did our planning and then drove out to St. Narcisse to see a less-active member named Shirley with Frère Hébert. She was really nice! She teaches English as a private tutor. Her house is nearly impossible to find—she lives deep in the woods. We had dinner with Chantale and Yvan that night. After dinner we tried to teach a lesson but things just got out of hand and we lost control of the conversation. They started telling some crazy stories about horrible situations that people are in that they know. They seem to look for the negative in almost every thing that happens and I really can't stand it. Whenever they start talking like that I get really irritated and we try to leave. I'm not sure how to help her be more positive but we'll keep trying! 

Saturday we had lunch with the St. Jacques family. It was basically just plates of every kind of meat you can imagine. I'm pretty sure it was breaking the word of wisdom almost. They are such a nice family. The older kids don't have any interest in the Gospel but they're fun to talk to anyways. They love robots and were actually just in a competition in Montréal a few weeks ago and won a few events. When we got home we went through our Area Book to see if there were any potential or former investigators that we could pass by. We ending up finding about 20 and so we made a list with names and addresses and spent the day searching them out! We found a few who are still interested in learning more!

In the Area Book I found a piece of paper that's older than me and has an entry from my birth date!

Sunday was interesting! We got to church and there was a family visiting from Québec City. I think they recently received a calling to check up on the branch every once in a while. As we were setting things up Elder Ruby noticed that on Frère Hébert's announcement sheet it said that I was supposed to be giving a talk. I never got a call about that so I frantically put something together and ended up pulling it off! I talked about prayer and seven principles to be a more powerful pray-er. We did a lot of knocking after church and got rejected a bunch!

Everyone has painted mailboxes here. I thought this one describes Québec perfectly. A bar that's bigger than the church and right next door!

Cool house!

Alrighty, well I need to get going! Sorry if this letter was a little lame! Oh and Happy Birthday to my little brother, Adam, tomorrow! You rock big guy!

Avec amour,

Elder Ellis