French

Hey everybody!

This last week has been great! On Saturday, I received my last transfer doctrine ever! It's so crazy! Elder Holmes and I will both be staying in Sandhill! Which means we'll be together until the end. We're both really excited to be sticking around for the baptisms we have coming up! 

Katie and Kyle's baptism was this Saturday! It was pretty great! Kyle asked me to baptize him, and that's always a really special experience. It reminded me of the first people I personally baptized, and the special feelings it gave me knowing that because of the priesthood authority I've been given, I was standing in the place of the Savior to extend "the first fruits of repentance" to someone. What a great experience!

The other highlight of the week was a couple of really cool experiences on Sunday. First of all, obviously, Katie and Kyle were confirmed, which was great! Secondly, we broke our record for number of investigators at church this week with a whopping 20 investigators! We're getting close to breaking mission records! 

I think my favorite experience of the day was after Sunday school though. Claude, the father of the refugee family came to Gospel Principles with us, like he usually does. Usually, we just let him use one of our iPads and give him the Gospel Principles book in French so he can read the chapter while the teacher teaches, since he doesn't understand a ton of English. This time, he actually ended up looking at a different chapter than the teacher was teaching, but it was a chapter that addressed a question he had, so we just let him stay on that chapter. It was all about modern day prophets. After the lesson, he had some questions about what he had read. Now for those of you who don't know, I took two years of French in school, but my French wasn't very good then and certainly hasn't gotten better with age, haha. I hardly remember anything. But somehow, yesterday I was able to understand all of Claude's questions in French, and answer them all in French as well! It was an amazing couple of minutes! I don't know exactly how it happened, but I know it was the spirit. The gift of tongues is real! I was so grateful to be able to have that experience. 

I love you all! Til next week!
Elder Excell

Our cars thermometer last week.
(Our car was parked firmly in the
shade when this was taken too)
Yep! That really does say 122!