Elder Chase Player: Trains, trains and more trains!

Bonjour & Happy Labor Day! Hopefully you are all taking a nice break from your "labors" and enjoying a long weekend. This week in Nancy has been great and we've had some awesome experiences. We are so busy and I can see that this transfer is going to fly by!

We traveled by trains quite a bit this last week. We started with District meeting in Strasbourg. This is a large city right on the French/German border and I've wanted to go there my whole mission. The meeting was great and we learned about how we can become more "consecrated" missionaries. I liked a quote that President Babin shared... "Going from good to better is repentance but going from better to best is consecration!" We were able to talk about how we can continue to improve and become the missionaries that the Lord needs. Consecration is a process - not something that comes overnight - it takes time, effort and persistence but it will come. It was a time for me to reflect on how much I've grown in the last two years. It's crazy to see the changes in all aspects of my life since I started college in 2012! I love seeing how the gospel changes lives and I'm so grateful for how it has changed mine!

As the week continued I was able to go on an exchange with Elder Stoker, who's from Utah, in his 14th transfer. He's an awesome missionary. We stayed in Nancy and got to do contacting, teaching on bridges, porting and teaching our amis! One of the highlights was when we were porting and asked the Pierrel family to pick a road for us to go and port. They gave us a rue(street) and we got busy. We only had 45 minutes and every house we went to said no until the last one. A young girl, about 20, answered and when we asked if we could pray with her and her family she said she was just leaving and no one else was home but to come back in two days. Elder Gram and I went back in two days and another girl answered from the window. We introduced ourselves and asked for the girl with blonde hair and explained that she had said to come back tonight. Another girl came to the door and we started wondering if it was a sorority house or something but finally the mom came to the door and said thanks for coming by but we're were not interested. As we left we asked how many daughters she had (four) and left her with a Family Proclamation Brochure.

Thursday we finished the exchange with Strasbourg and in the afternoon we took off for Colmar which was about an hour and a half by train. Elder Tidwell and Elder Johnson were waiting for us with "Pain au Chocolats" in hand. (Yum!) For the next 24 hours I got a chance to do an exchange with Elder Johnson, who I trained, and it was great! We went out and walked quite a ways to a very nice neighborhood and we ported for a few hours. We were able to plant a lot of seeds for future missionaries and we found a huge cornfield right next to the homes. Small cities are pretty cool! The next morning we went out and did some contacting and taught a man on the road about prophets and how we have a living prophet today. The spirit was strong and he was touched. Hopefully, he'll remember the day that two Mormon missionaries in white shirts talked about prophets and want to hear more. Elder Johnson is an awesome missionary and it was fun to work with him again.

Marie-line that was baptized last week was confirmed on Sunday and she was beaming from ear to ear. Michel and Johanna came to church yesterday (YES!) and loved it. Michel mentioned that we had only been to their home once last week and said how much he likes it when we come because everything is better. It felt like something was missing last week and it just wasn't good! It was cool to see how he could recognize the difference the gospel was making in his life. I can't wait to see them get baptized. I can't explain how much I love the people here. I have only been here a couple of weeks and they already feel like family.

This coming week I get to go on an exchange with Elder Davis, who trained me, and that should be great. It's been almost a year since we were able to work together and we'll be working in Versailles! On Thursday we have Zone Conference with President and Soeur Babin and are doing another exchange with the Elders in Epinal. I'm looking forward to another busy week. I'm loving it here in Nancy and feel so blessed to be here. Thanks for all your emails and prayers - they are felt. Have a great week and know that I love and miss you all!

Love...
Elder Player