New Branch!

Hey everybody!

       First off, I want to apologize in advance if this is a shorter email. I could write all day about what's going on, but I won't have the time for that! Sorry. Second off, Fall in Canada is the best Fall. Sorry for you stuck in Utah, but this last week has been the most beautiful fall of my life. Never seen so many vibrant colors on trees. I got dad's letter from a bit ago at zone conference. It was the one where you were talking about how Planet X was supposed to destroy the world or something. Some missionaries actually had some pretty funny stories about talking to people about the Gospel, and people told them that they'd totally join the church, but since the world was ending, they were going to go party. Go figure. Wonder how their hangovers feel now.

       Edmundston has been pretty awesome tho. We've had some exciting news here. We had Zone conference this last week, and that was super cool. The training was really useful, and because I'm with the Zone Leaders, I end up in a lot of role plays! It's been really good though, they are really fantastic missionaries, and they're helping me out lots with learning French and with teaching. We also had stake conference, and this conference Edmundston got made into a branch! For the last year it's been a group, but we just got a branch president and Elders quorum leader! Hopefully we'll get a building as we start getting more people baptized! So yeah, I don't know about you guys, but I've been involved with the formation of a branch in the first 2 weeks of my mission, haha. There was a baptism in Caribou the other Saturday, and its really exciting to see the work move forward! The other Elders here in Edmundston, (Elder Smith and Elder Boardman) have FOUR baptisms coming up! They're really killing it! The only problem is that half of the people can't cross the Border, so they have to go to Caribou. Actually, that's true for a surprising number of people here. You would think that since the only Walmart in town is on the French side, all the English people would want to go to that, but a bunch of people don't have passports. 

       We're doing good though. We have seen a bunch of progress with some of our investigators. We gave Allen (he actually reminds me a lot of Ali from the MTC) a big Book of Mormon, and he got really excited about that. He's actually really cool, he's been opening up to us. He told us that he got into a fistfight with Osama Bin Laden in Germany. He's been making a lot of progress with drinking too, a couple days ago, he didn't drink at all! He's drunk since then, but I think our help is working.

       We build a fence for Chery, one of our investigators. The people she hired to do it never showed up to finish the job, and we finished the work for her. She has been telling us a lot more about her too, and she told us that us coming over has really helped her. She wants us to come teach her kids next week when they come into town to stay with her.

       There's been a bunch more cool stories, but can't tell them all. One more though, We are going to teach an Apostolic Pentecostal minister with Ben and Nancy. I was really stressed out about it at first, but as we've started planning and studying the scriptures and praying (a lot) I've felt a lot better about it.

       Love you all. Happy birthday Ains. I haven't gotten new letters yet, and haven't asked any members about sending them mail. I'll tell you next week though. For recipes Id love pretty much anything and everything. Love you and keep up the good work back home!

Elder Marsh