Happy Leap Year!

This week started with some area book work. Elder Little likes area book work, but I absolutely despise it. I feel like staying inside to look through papers and call people makes me a lazy missionary. In reality, it is a good thing to do because there are people in there that once stopped meeting with the missionaries. but are now prepared. So, we took a couple hours and I tried to do anything and everything that we could. Tuesday ended with an English class where I had to explain to a member the difference between 'hustle' and a swear word that sounds a lot like askwhole. I was going to explain 'hassle' to him. but I decided it was too dangerous for a French person to try to say hassle.

Wednesday was my last day of being 18 and I wanted to work my butt off. We left the apartment at 8 am and we got back at 8 pm. Imagine a pumped up Elder Marshall Underwood racing through the French countryside from door to door while his companion struggles to keep up. I don't know where all of the energy came from but we covered about 8 km of ground that day. Also we taught the Garcias which went well as always.

On my birthday, we had an exchange with the zone leaders. At the beginning of the day, the one that would be with me wished me a happy birthday. I told him that it wasn't my birthday and I didn't know what he was talking about. This kinda made things awkward so I said, "thanks for wishing me a happy birthday anyway." We then went throughout the day and I had a ton of fun with Elder Richmond. Elder Richmond was also companions with Elder Berry for 3 transfers. Elder Berry and I talked a lot about him so Elder Richmond was surprised at all the random facts I knew about his life. At night, I made burritos and a cake. While we were eating this feast, Elder Richmond asked "is it really not your birthday?" I explained to him that it was and he got mad. So, I got away with tricking someone into thinking that it wasn't my birthday for the whole day. Sly.  Elder Berry also called me to sing happy birthday. Love that guy.

On Friday we had a zone training. It was great. As we were walking to the tram afterwards, I straight up walked into a pole. Smacked straight into a pole. It was so embarrassing. I didn't even try to pull of a joke like I normally would. I just took the shame. Also, some homeless guy grabbed one of the sisters hands and kissed it. What courage. At night, a member called us and asked to come give her nephew a blessing. It turns out that he was not a member and he just turned up at her house asking for a blessing. He left with a Book of Mormon and he was stoked at God can answer prayers.

Saturday was fun because of this: we went to eat with a member. This member invited a member that just left the church. He started out the night by basically saying, "alright I want to start with a scripture. I don't share this scripture to demean or criticize our friend here who just left the church or anyone else here but I just like this scripture that I read today." He then continued to read a scripture where Nephi gets mad at the Nephi tea because they had testimonies and then they left the church. "Now, it's easy to see that if you have a testimony, you can't leave the church. Now, you just left the church brother and you should really think about when you had a testimony. But, after that, you do whatever you want I guess." LOL this member is a savage. It was really uncomfortable.

The Garcia fam came to church except for the wife. She stayed home so that all of the kids could go together because their car isn't big enough. She's really great.

I also did the 2x2 Rubik's cube without looking. That was fun.

Love you all. Thanks for the birthday wishes

Elder Marshall Underwood