Bonjour!
Sorry my letter wasn't too long last week. I went overtime, and I thought I told you all about what happened. I'm not sure today's letter is going to be any longer...
Chez Bennion is the the senior couple's house. The old senior couple used to live there so that's what the house is addressed under, it is now the house of the new senior couple the Richmond's. The Richmond's are from Tahiti, they only speak French, they cover the whole island, and I have only seen them twice since I have been here. I haven't received your letter yet, so I'll keep checking.
The work has been going well, its been tough because we have had a lot of district leader duties that we have had to take care of, like baptismal interviews in Lamentin, meetings, and bunch of stuff that has taken a lot of time for traveling which cuts down a lot of working time. We haven't really done very much contacting because of that, most of our time is visiting our couple of investigators and the less active members.
Yes, I live in actual Basse-Terre, which is the actual capital of Guadeloupe. I live in "Petit Paris" specifically. The group building is just down the road from our house and it shares a parking lot with a boulangerie. bakery
Its a lot harder to get together with all the missionaries on Guadeloupe. We haven't had very many big activities. Today we hiked La Grande Soufrière, not sure how to spell it but it means the sulfur maker. Its the volcano in Basse-Terre. It was really fun and really beautiful.
La Grande Soufrière, is an active stratovolcano on the French island of Basse-Terre, in Guadeloupe. It is the highest mountain peak in the Lesser Antilles, and rises 1,467 m high.
Well as for the rest of this week. I hardly got to work in my area at all. On Tuesday right after district meeting I went on an exchange with Elder Okano in Capesterre. I had to figure out the bus systems because he is new and this is actually one of my first times ever actually using the buses. I only got lost once. We had a great time and met some cool people. One guy stopped us on the road asking about genealogy. I never had that happen before. Most of the time I was trying to help Elder Okano speak more, he is actually really good with French but I wanted to get him to help more in their lessons, he did really good.
When we were supposed to switch back I learned that the car wasn't working, so I couldn't be driven back to my area, so I had to stay another day in Capesterre. Thursday I got picked up from Capesterre, only to get dropped off with Elder Broadbent in Baie-Mahault for another exchange. We were on bikes and we got dumped on by the rain. We had to stop on the side of the road under a canopy and wait it out. While we were there we talked to a really cool kid that had to wait out the rain too. They are going to try to re-contact him this week.
Finally Friday afternoon I got to come back to Basse-Terre. We visited an investigator and talked about prayer. He is still waiting for his court appeal on Oct. 2 before we can start setting up for baptism, but he really wants to be baptized. As we were walking back I realized we were in an area that I recognized (I don't know my area very well yet) and so I asked if we could stop and see an old contact that we missed during the week. Turned out he was home and it was the only time during the day that he happened to be home. He brought up a lot of good questions. One about why bad things happen to people. I was impressed to share the story of Brianna when she was born. I told him that she had done nothing wrong to deserve heart problems at birth but that I myself was affected by it as well. I told him that when she was born I remembered praying as a family for her and that it was one of the first spiritual experiences I ever had. I really like this guy that we taught.
Nothing too special happened other than that during the week. We had church at Capesterre group. Then we climbed Soufrière this morning.
The email place is closing, I gotta go. I love you all. I'll try to get back on if I can but if not, have a great week!
avec amour,
Elder Call
