A GREAT week!

hello
First off about the mishhhh, its going great over here; brussels is
the promised land; truly the place of milk and honey; i love it here.
Me and my comp had the best numbers in the zone this week; nooot
bragging ha just sayin things are going well.  we have been meeting
alot with Collette (black lady from congo i think; but has lived in
belgium most her life) and her daughter Gracia; and everytime we go
over to give them a lesson they invite their whoooole family; they are
all super cool; kids and sisters and grandchildren all that, its too
bad that all of them besides collette and gracia are not in our area
but we pass them on to the other elders, a couple lessons ago we got
talking about baptism and priesthood, when i started talking about
priesthood and how its necessary for baptism i got a little choked up,
its been a while since ive felt like that, how we can literally trace
our priesthood straight back to Jesus Christ, very legit.  So there
were about 12 africans and me and my comp in this tiny room, juuust
too much fun; its great stuff.  a week ago me and elder D prayed to
know what date would be good for a baptismal date for them; we both
felt it should be March 3

So the next time we met with them we invited them to be baptized on
march 3, Gracia was pumped and wanted to, she would get baptized
tomorrow if she could; loves the church the gospel and wants to serve
a mission, but collette was like "can we pray and get our own
response?" so we said yes of course; but i was thinking; oh geeze shes
gonna pick some date like 6 months down the road and keep putting it
off, but at church yesterday after amis de l'église class she came up
to me and said that Prayer is real and she will be baptized this
weekend; wooow how cool; so we have two baptisms coming up this
weekend and hopefully their whole extended family will follow; they
always come and love the lessons so they i think they will. But its
going to be a hard week; satan will be working double time; so we will
see them as often as possible

Some of my favorite people on the mission are the senior missionaries,
no lies haha we have a senior couple missionary companionship and a
German sister senior missionary companionship in our ward, i  love to
talk with the german sisters; they just crack me up? theyre pretttttty
old but they do tons of great stuff

food is great; Elder D makes us Pasta alot; which is great and
naturally he is very good at it; I make AMERICAN food; potatoes; beef;
lots of eggs, butter; lardons and cheese all beautifully mixed into
one pan then covered in ketchup afterwards, ha but he loves it and i
love his food so its all good in the hood

a couple days ago in the metro there was an accordian player; playing
for money; (theres tons; always romanian or bulgarian) i think he
could just tell i was american so he started looked at me and started
playing Oh say can you see; yeah your not supposed to give them money
usually but i just haaaaaaaaaaad to give him a tip for that

Ive been reading up on the apostasy so i can DESTROY catholics, and i
had all my weapons ready to absolutely flatten all their false hopes;
but then i decided thats not cool haha i just feel bad for them (but
not for muslims or Jehovahs witnesses) theyre looking for the truth so
i cant complain; even if they freak out about it, its all good; just
invite and move on

what else is schlobus up to?

and thankyou for everything else; much love, tell mariah to email me back

"red eyes red eyes red eyes; i didnt expect to see you so... spoon!--Jeffrey!!"

A New Area!

hey homies; first off; we live at a different appartment than expected
194/3.2 Ave. de Broqueville
1200 Bruxelles
La Belgique

its pretty different up in here, really really big city, with all
sorts of different kinds of people, so its cool i like it. my new comp
is in his 4th transfer and im in my 3rd so we are both super young;
Elder Dicataldo; from Italy, speaks english alright and french pretty
good; so its cool, but we both "whitewashed" in, so the two elders
before us got sent out and we are both new; and the two before us left
the Craaaaapiest information; chaps my hide; reaaally frosts my
cookies; if i ever see them at zone conference; i tell you what.

But anywho so its pretty hard trying to figure out who is who, where
is where and what is what; alot of time spent in the area book
scratching our heads trying to figure something out, but we live in a
4 man apartment with the zone leaders so that makes things a little
easier; but the other zone leader is new too.

The ward is pretty big; 80 or so peeps were at church; and sacrament
were interesting; one was in portugese; one in spanish, one in english
and one in French, but they have translators and what not; all the
meetings are in both french and english, which is cool and what not
but its gonna take more work to learn the language; there quite a few
english spanish and portugese speakers in our ward. and when we went
contacting the other day; we ended up contacting more english speakers
than french speakers, and everything here is in French and Dutch; i
have no idea how a place can keep running with all these languages
goin around.

But its good, i like it, im learning quicker and contribute much much
more... now that im away from that leech trainer who sucked the life
out of me haha jokes jokes buut seriously.

Thats funny to hear about shlobus; and cool that austin got his mission call.

faja thanks for the talk; thats probably my biggest pet peeve when
people talk too much; especially during testimony meeting; but like
maja said i guess its cool she gave a talk


niiiiiiiiiiice faja; good talk; for reals cool stuff, i thinks its
cool once you pass the sunday school level of the gospel and really
start to figure out what its all about and how it woks; sunday school
was still the bomb! but i think thats something ive learned so far;
just how intensely cool the gospel can be when you really study it;
much respect; thanks again
we are teaching a mom and her daughter who are so so close to baptism
so we will keep working with that; i hope that everything with joseph
in saint quentin is going smoothly as well. anywho thanks for
everything; its cool to hear from you guys, the advice and everything
that the shmeegles are up to

DO A BARRELL ROLE!

Saying Bye, Bye...

yeah it will be kinda sad; but itll be cool to start again in a new city, a couple weeks last week we set a baptismal date with Joseph and he came to church again yesterday? he loves the ward and the ward loves him so its really cool, buuuuut hes got a really sketchy background; hes an immigrant and trying to work on all his legality, applying for asylum i think; cuz he cant go back to his country, so of course technical stuff gets in the way; i will miss him the most, we were pretty tight; on sunday i told him i was leaving and at first he didnt understand but eventually it made sense to him "it hurts me brudda to see you go; i feel pains you understand; you are a nice guy; very good friend, but you have to find more people in brussels" aah shucks joseph haha he told me he wants to serve a mission one day haha wooooaah one step at a time brotha ha... but i sure hope hes able to be baptized. We went to his place to teach him last week, just a really sketchy hotel thing with lots of africans, he told us he had a dream where his family was telling him to come home and be the chief of the tribe, at that moment i was thinking aaah no way hes going home to africa; but then he said he just opened up the bom and it opened to mosiah 18 i think; and he read; the verses say to leave the traditions of your fathers; follow christ and be baptized; ha wow so he told us then that he wanted to be baptized; he liked us and everything we were telling him. pretty cool.

 

i gave away most of the recess on sunday; keeping some for brussels; but we had a ward meal after church in the sacrament room; i decided to play a game with the young men; i would give them a recess for each american state they name, after a couple minutes the bishop noticed and came over; started yelling states ha and then frere membre busted out his iphone and started searching up states and yelling em out; i ran out of recess pretty quick ha it escalated out of control

 

I gave my testimony and said bye bye in sacrament meeting; i took a moment to speak to just the young men, it would be fliiiiiipin hard to be a mormon teenage boy in northern france; so much respect.

 

faja thanks for the advice; its very true we need to set some goals early, i think my next comp is not american; hopefully hes a frenchy thatd help out the lang.

 

anyway yatta; thanks again; talk to you soon

Transferred...

Hey homies; I'm going to.... Brussels; just got the transfer email today; so I'm leaving Saint Quentin on Wednesday; but I got your package yesterday; it was aaaawesome; thankyou very much for the books and candy

 

Here's my new address if you could shlap it on to facebook and wherever else for the peeps

106 ave. Marechal Joffre 

1190 Forest 

Brussels, Belgium 

I thinks thats how it goes

Great Week...

Good stuff good stuff; its great to hear about the clan; especially spropumbus, and the support i get from mom and dad; thankyou very much; respect respect; i do take both of your advice and try to put it to good use, if you could tell Aaron to email me that would be sweet; it was great the things he explained at the mtc; having served a mish.

 

Sooo what went down this week... I had an exchange in Amiens; prrretty cool happnin city; i was with Elder Paoletti from Perpignan, we went on member splits, i met an older member guy from madagascar at the church where we waited for another dude from madagascar, our investigator; we prepared a little before and then Paul; our investigator showed up and we gave him the lesson; probably my best lesson yet; he really let me take the reigns; i was not expecting it; but it went greeeeaaat. after we walked back to his place; i met his family and elder paolette showed up; they fed us some pretty good but super super spicy soup; good good

 

It was a great exchange, gave two books of mormon; got two numbers two potential investigators; just the confidence boost i needed for the ol language

 

It's super super cold here now; and it snowed a couple days ago, so i bought one of those sick furry hats that cover most of the head ya know what im saaayin; only one euro; wow what a steal

 

Went to Paris again because my companion had a training thing; so i got to see some of the boys i knew; we did contacting for the first hour and then they let us loose; so i took elder garcia and we walked around just wherever in paris; lookin for some foods, if we had more time we wouldve taken the metro but we just had an hour or so; so we could go far

 

Joseph the african guy came to church yesterday; our first investigator to church here in saint quentin (thats one thing thats gonna change once my comp leaves haha) thats for sure something im gonna focus on, we have a killllller ward; if we can just get people to church; it would heeeelp sooo much; so yeah; but he loved it

 

Sunday night we drove out to the Polletts farm again and had dinner; spiritual thought and what not; and then they showed us the bunkers outside; oh wow; we put the cow jumpuits on again and went outside; these huge caves; at first they were quarries for cathedral stone; then in ww1 they were bunkers for french AMERICAN and german soldiers; so on the walls theres engravings of flags of all countries and names and what not; there was a 18 foot hole with a chain that we got to go down; im surprised they let us do it to be honest; waaay cool.

 

But anywho i get along great with the young men here; they are my key to learning the language i tell you what; at church and meeting we just talk and talk its great, its almost just like back at home; we love to mess around, so its great

 

anywho much love; peace out,

 

Hey theres skittles in there!!!

A Good Week...

Very cool, yeah transfers are soon, there like an 85 percent chance that im going to stay in st quentin, but if you wanna wait to send the package; thats fine too, Sounds like rugby is going pretty good at byu and united thats cool.

 

I went on an exchange to Lille last tuesday; very very cool city; the third biggest in the mission i think; after Paris and Brussels, there were alot more people to talk with; and they all werent old either ha

 

The language is coming along slooowly but surely; so thats cool as well.  And we go back into paris AGAIN on thursday; and amiens again for district meeting tomorrow; there is wwaaaaaayy too many of these little meetings; i tell you what sheesh; i was especially dissapointed becuase we had a rendez vous with a younger guy we found; so now we have to reschedule that; joobies.

 

A few days ago while doing some porting in one of those big ghetto apartment buildings, we found a young guy; johnathan; 19 years old, lives with his grandpa, we gave the classic approach and he was nice; gave us his number; He said he loved basketball and the USA and wants to go there; so i invited him to play Bball with us on saturday mornings with the youth of the ward; he was so pumped, buuut now we have things getting in the way so we cant do it this saturday or next saturday; its flippin frustrating, cuz i know if he just comes once he would love it; love the boys; the church; playing bball; buuuttt now we just wait i guess; but we gave him the first lesson this past week and it went really well.

 

Also we met some nigerian immigrants on the bus a few days ago; they spoke english; so we got to talking; they were way chill so we set up to meet with them a couple days later; one of the two showed up; the other guy was doing some legal stuff; cuz they qre looking for legality and work; so we met up with joseph; black; skinny tall guy, we met at the cathedral and walked down to the church where we started talkin a bit; long story short he left africa becuase its a horrible place; his dad was the leader in his church; but then his dad died so he was next in line; but he said the church did weird stuff like animal sacrifice and he refused; so they beat him almost to death; he had this massive scar on his forhead; eventually he was chased out of africa; and he had to leave his family and come to france; 23 years old look for work; living in some kind of government ghetto, so we told him a bit about our church and invited him to read the BOM, he said he would; so its rough stuff, he would say "by the grace of God i am here now; i just want to follow Jesus and turn my life around, but it comes; little bit at a time; our time is not Gods time, you understand?" amen brotha amen, "i have alot to be thankful for; good health... i can walk, but you are very good people, i can see that; you understand? i will read the book"  so we that was intense; technically it was a lesson; and you write that down in your planner; and give it to the zone leaders, and what not; but he for sure tought us more that night, what an inpiration; you almost feel guitly after that; so you just try harder to do more.

 

But yatta anywho, what are the brethren up to these days? and mariah? I am now the all powerful master at church because of my ability to give reeses to whom ever i please, even the adults are starting to come up to me, shmeeglin around for my reeses; i just have to round house kick some peeps to the face hahaha

 

Feed the birds... toppins a bag

 

Thanks again, toodles

Busy, busy...

Suuup G units; (zach is just a unit) hmmm as for my next package... the miracle of forgiveness and the great apostasy by talmage, if you could chuck those in there; thatd be sweet; but other than that; you can choose

 

and yeah i got the all blacks bag thing in the christmas package; thankyou very much its way cool.

 

Faja that is a very good idea; i was having similar ideas, because earlier when i would try to make a list or set goals; they would change the next day cuz i was learning new stuff or changing my views; but now seems just about right; ive got the routine down and what not.  

On sunday bishop told me all about how mitt romney is doing ha; very interesting, i think if obama spent a few weeks over in france he would see what socialism can do to a country haha sheees no good

 

that sounds like a crazy schedule for aaron; sheeesh; i imagine it doesnt seem that bad to him though; coming straight from a mish. his schedule sounds alot like.... my first semester at BYU!! oooh joobies; mono, weights and conditioning in the morning; classes; evening practice; then legends grill.... you gotta do what you gotta do to bring home the bacon, ha je blague je blague, so aaron is doing rugby; thats way cool; how many years will we play together; 1 or 2

 

yeah i would love to see some pictures of back home, scropus especially,

 

My pictrures; one is me in Gare Du Nord in paris; the other ones outside are in brussels; and a belgian waffle; with that famous peeing baby in the background, and me with my christmas present from elder paoletti from perpignan; a perpignan rugby scarf; straight from the stadium itself; prrrretty legit; i wore it the whole day.

 

We have been finding more potential investigators; some of them i feel really good about, so i hope that it things will go smoothy and we will continue to find more peeps

 

much love; talk to you soon