Happy Hoildays!

Hey,

So Christmas Conference was pretty awesome. Bishop Caussé was there and spoke about the long process that took for the Temple in Paris to get approved. He compared the small and simple miracles it took for the Temple to be built to the small and simple miracles it takes to do missionary work. It was a really good message.

We were able to call some people in the area Book and were able to set up some new rendezvous for this next week.  So we'll have more new Amis by the end of this week.

Christmas was great. We spent Christmas Eve at the famille Clavaux's house and spent Christmas Day and did our Skype calls at the family Smatti's house. It was good fun.

Have a happy new year!

Elder Aburto

'Tis the season to be Jolly!

December 19th, 2016

Hey,

Not too much new happened this week except for we went to Calais for DM. It's a very nice town. We also went to another little town in our sector to go finding called Hazebrouck. The town centre is full of markets and a huge ice-skating rink.

We're getting many members to feed us here which is awesome.

I've really noticed the warmth of the people here. Everyone so nice here. We've set a baptismal date with this kid of this lady who's a member but she's been hesitant to get her son baptised, until now. So hopefully that goes through.

I don't know what else to say except for see you on Christmas.

I have attached a picture of Elder Loya.

See you soon!

Love,

Elder Aburto

Saint-Omer!!!

Hey,

This was an awesome week.

Transfer Day was as hectic as crazy on Wednesday with train delays and everything, but by the end of the day I made it to St. Omer with Loya in one piece.

The ville is super, super tiny, but it's really nice. Before I came up here, everyone was telling me about how nice everyone in the North is, and it's definitely true. Yesterday at church everyone was so nice to me and they treated me really nicely. I really like the feeling of the branch here. There are only like 30 people in this branch, but it feels like a big family because everyone loves each other. Yeah, the ville is in fact, the smallest in the mission, but we do have a car, and our apartment is right next to the town centre with a nice Christmas Market and a giant Ferris wheel.

The town is super quiet and calm, too. There actually aren't too many refugees here in St. Omer, they're more Northwest in Calais.

The past three days we've been helping this lady and her son move into their new apartment. They had so much stuff... And we painted the kitchen of her old apartment because the person coming in after wanted it a different colour, so we painted the kitchen for them.

Elder Loya and I are getting along well. We hope to get the work moving here because it's apparently a "dead ville" but we all know those don't exist.

We're also getting a lot of mangezvous this week, which I'm super excited for because we didn't get many in my last area.

Well, I guess that's all for now. I'm really excited for the time I'll spend here in this ville, I know good things are ahead.

Love,

Elder Aburto

Transfers...

December 5^th, 2016

Bonjour, tout le monde,

The répertoire came out on Saturday and.... I'm getting transferred out of La Rochelle. I'm moving to the ville of Saint Omer, in the region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais. In the northernmost region of France. From what I understand, it's the smallest ville in our mission and there are a lot of refugees there.

My new companion is Elder Loya, another Spanish-speaker from Colorado. I'll also get a car over there, too. Apparently, it rains a lot and it's really windy over there, so I'll be in for a cold winter. St. Omer is known as a "dead-ville" in this mission, but I'm really excited. I think it'll be a lot of fun. The members here have told me the people in the north are super, super nice, so there's a lot to look forward to. It's been a fun three transfers here, but I'm also excited for what's next.

Yeah, the work may be a little hard here, papi. But there's always a bright side. We're living in France for super cheap, and we have our mission conférences in Paris! There are a lot of people who would give a lot to be in our shoes. And our mission may not be as "baptism-happy" as other missions, however, this year, we've seen a total of just over 200 convert-baptisms this year. So things aren't really as bad as they seem, eh?

I think one reason I love the Babin's so much is because they don't baby us around. They understand the difficult circumstances, but they push us to work. And yet, they know how to have fun as well. We're in good hands.

I started my mission in the 2nd biggest ville in the mission with metros, tramways, and buses, then moved to a smaller city with just tramways and buses, and then from there moved to a smaller city with just buses, now I'm moving to the smallest ville in our mission. Haha.

Today we had an awesome rendezvous with Priscilla, it was a long time since the last time we taught her, but we feel really good about her.

See you soon.

Love,

Elder Aburto