Pear eh geuh

Greetings,

The subject line of my email is a rough pronunciation for the city in which I am serving.

If I have not mentioned it before, my companion and I whitewashed this area and there wasn't much going on. So, we contact a lot of people and try to fix rendez-vous, but the work hasn't been going forward too much. We have met some cool people and found some investigators, but it is still really slow here.

Because of this, my companion and I were praying about what we needed to do in order to find those that are ready to hear the gospel. But, when we started out week, we still had no clue.

We did have one really cool experience early in the week. We were working a little in Centreville (downtown) before we went out to another ville for a RDV (rendez-vous). We both had the name of this guy come to our head. We met this guy on one of the first days after being totally lead by the spirit right to his front door. He told us to come back in a couple weeks. So, we knew exactly who we needed to go see. We were around the police station when we started working. We walked down what we thought was his street and then realized that it wasn't. Elder Berry had an image come into his head of a rond-point (round-about) with 5 streets and there was a government buiding on one of the corners. This was all we had to work with and we went for it.

We raced through the streets trying out every street we knew that was similar. On the way, we taught a lesson to a girl on the street, and met two other prople who wanted to learn from us! Nevertheless, we did not feel accomplished. Then, all of the sudden, I saw an image pop into my head that the rond-point had a fountain in the middle and there was a pharmacy on one of the corners. When we put the two images together, all we knew is that we walk past this rond-point like every single day. Again, we set off. After a while, we knew exactly where we needed to go. So, we raced there and finally knew that we were where we needed to be. And... We found ourselves situated next to the Police Station... right where we started our journey. We felt so dumb, but I think that God knew that there were people out there to find before we went to see the guy. To say the least, the spirit of God works in mysterious ways, and I am simply a servant!

Cool France Street

Other than that, we had zone conference this week. We went there praying that we could find an answer to how we are supposed to find people. All of the missionaries were instructed to bring their area books (Elder Berry and I forgot ours... classic haha). However, the conference started and we found that all we were going to talk about is how to use our planners fully and how to use the information in the area book. The day before the conference, Elder Berry and I decided to color code our planners and they look really pretty, so we were totally prepared for the lecture on planners. However, as the assistants were talking about the area books, something cool happened. President cut one of the assistants off ans said, "I had a thought come to me in the middle of the night last night, and I didn't know why." He continued to expain that he knew he was supposed to share it now, because someone needed to hear it. "The thought was, 'It's right under your nose.'" THERE IT WAS. Of course! It is right under our nose. We had been spending so much time trying to contact people and didn't realize that there are potential investigators in the area book that are totally ready! I know that our mission president is called of God, and that God hears our prayers.

Ponderize: "If we are no better tomorrow that we were today, we are not very useful." David O. McKay. I love this because missionary work is so based on goals. This week, Elder Berry and I have a goal to contact everyone in the area book. That thing is a monster, but we will slay it.

Family and Friends, I love you. And if you are reading this, I would give you a suggestion of reading material for this next week that I found beautiful this week:
Becoming a Somebody - John H. Vandenberg
What is a Friend - Marvin J Ashton
Perfection Pending - Russell M. Nelson

Until next time,

Elder Marshall Cluff Underwood
Les Missionaires
2 rue de l'arc
24000 Périgueux
France

Elder Berry and I - food

Sunrise

A great gift from the one and only Zoe Wadge - Utah HOME t-shirt