Bonjour ma famille!!!    3-26-12

This past week has been a lot of hard work like always. A little rougher than others but all is good :) I hit 100 days out on a mission last week... That’s a lot. And this week is the end of the first transfer. Each transfer is six weeks long and at the end of each one its game on. Anyone can randomly get transferred anywhere in the mission. But I am staying here in Lille for at least this transfer with Elder Mayne. We are getting one new Elder in our appartement so that should be interesting. The whole transfer thing is fairly stressful. Especially if you really like the city that you are in! I would love to stay in Lille for a long time. The longest people usually stay is four transfers which is 6 months. There are also 16 transfers in a mission. 15 more to go! haha. I have heard that after your first transfer they just get faster and faster after that. I miss you guys so much! I got a little homesick this week but its okay.

This week in Lille was hard. People cancelled our rendezvous or didn’t answer the phone. The one rendezvous that we did have when I emailed you last was with Yves, the guy who speaks 15 languages. We taught him in the worst place possible but he wanted us to do it there, haha. We taught him in this cafe bar that was blaring rap music. But he did commit to read and pray and he told us something that I thought that I would never hear on my mission. He knows that the book of Mormon is true because the facts add up and because it makes sense that people came from Jerusalem to the Americas, haha. Hey I’ll take what I can get! We also had a rendezvous Zith Christian... I don’t know if you remember him at all from earlier but he decided that the only way that he can know if it is true is by reading the BoM. Thank you Christian! But he said he probably can’t start it until like June because he is a PhD student and super busy. I don’t know what will happen. Thursday night we went out contacting and it has been pretty warm here all week. So we went out in our white shirts only for the first time. It was so awesome! We talked with so many people and a ton knew who we were! We gave out five BoM in like two hours which is nuts haha. We also gave out over twenty pamphlets and got a bunch of numbers. The power of the white shirt... My French is getting a little better. But I am so shy to just talk to people. I get afraid of not being able to understand or of messing up. But I always do fine when I just try and speak. SO that’s what I am focusing on this week. Just putting myself out there and being bold. That is so different for me. But I know that it will work.

I got Jessica’s wedding invitation in the mail this week. It looks awesome, haha It is going to be a ton of fun for you guys to go! It sounds like you guys are doing really well. France is doing well. The streets are still dirty as ever, haha. and we are in a constant battle for what we believe in. It has really made me appreciate everything that we have. I know the church is true without a doubt. And I know that Heavenly Father looks out for us and always hears our prayers. I love you guys so much and hope that you are doing well! I miss you a ton and love you so much! Talk to you soon.

Elder Thomas