A Wonderful Baptism...

hello hello

this week went by reasonably well.  then sunday came around, we  were pretty excited for audreys baptism. we had a member family pick her up and drive her to church.  i went over to shake her hand, and she told me she was not ready... joobies audrey, quit being a diva already.  i had her come with me and we stood by the baptismal faunt and we talked about it for a while before church started, she had called her mom the night before and told her she was going to get baptized, and her mom was surprised and not really ok with it, sheesh, even though audrey is 31, anyways audrey was super sad and worried that her mom would never understand and that she started doubting if she was ready for baptism; i did a little "review" with her to check for her testimony, still rock solid. she went to relief society and i went stressing out to priesthood.

         right after priesthood i went straight over to find her, and just told her straight up, you need to decide right now 100 percent if you are going to get baptized and endure to the end, i talked to her about her mom, in time she will come to accept it, and the best way for her to accept it is to see the change in her daughter after her baptism, audrey chilled out alot, said yes, and was super super happy from then on, joobies, divas these days.

           the baptism went by great, alot of people stayed for it after sacrament meeting, we had a less active member we have been working with give the talk on baptism, audrey started balling her eyes out, almost as much as mom when we start looking at old photos ha ha.  i baptized her, it took her a good 5 minutes to come down into the faunt, she was up in the bathroom with the sister missionaries crying for a while ha, it was a happy cry though, so its all good :)

            special musical number with violin and piano, LEGIT.  and then ate some good food afterwards. all in all it went really really really really well.  i was super happy for her, she has changed alot, its been a battle, tooth and nail the whole way, a roller coaster of emotions and  yes's and no's and crazy hard questions, but i would just bring it home with the SCRIPTURES, like it says in my patriarchal blessing... interesting.

            anyways i got one more week left here in versailles, need to go hard :) and then i think i might get transfered out to bretagne france for a few transfers then back up to belgium for the rest of the year... yeah i think that sounds pretty good

anyways much love, talk to you all soon

Winding Down in terms of Time, but NOT in Terms of Effort...

So anyways, this week was good, well Damba will not be getting baptized this transfer most likely... we will continue to see him and meet with him, he is having some family problems and we can never see him. But Audrey is getting baptized!! oh wow what a miracle, like seriously i wish i could explain everything to you, she is super super super legit, the ward LOVES her.   She asked me to baptize her... ah joobies i cant say no to that :)  we taught her law of chastity, tithing and word of wisdom this weekend, she accepted it all.  she came to church and i went with our ward mission leader to help her find baptismal clothes after sacrament, in the hall she told me she was so happy she wanted to cry and she will probably cry a lot on the day of her baptism; i told her to let it rain with those tears, may as well fill up the font half way and let her fill up the rest, joobies shloobies.  Everytime she starts talking about how she met us at mcdonalds she starts to get all teary eyed ha ha. she is super nervous though, so i told her a little story, "audrey 6 months ago, while serving in le mans, i received a phone call informing to me that i needed to make up my mind if i was going to go home a transfer early for school or stay out till after the end, my comp and had already chosen to go home early, i really really really did not know, then i dreamed that i was home after my mission and i was talking with mom and crying and asking her why i did not stay out the extra 6 weeks, when i woke up i prayed and knew without a thread of doubt that God would put someone on my path the last 6 weeks that was looking for the gospel, there was no doubt in my mind,voilà" she was all good after i told her that... no worries :)

We had an out of control crazy african rendez vous, ha ha i will have to tell you more about that later, i recieved alot of praise afterwards from the members who came to teach with us, come on boys help me stay humble here ha ha:) .... it was just a bible bash

i got my plane ticket info a couple days ago... yikes

anyways all else is well, we are going to the louvre today, for the 4th time for the me ha ha ;) ca va

much love

talk to you soon

Trying to Fit it All In....

bonjour tout le monde

had a pretty good week this week, however it just clicked in my head that my last weekend in france is a stake conference, and thats the weekend that we had planned on getting our investigator damba baptized and inviting the others for the same date september, but classic other church meeting get in the way of when we want to have baptisms joobies, so i have to figure something out, maybe just baptize him on saturday before the saturday session, we will see.

             we taught audrey again a couple time this past week, it went super well, she knows its true but is having a hard time commiting for the baptism.  before our last rendez vous, i told my comp, she is going to cry this rendez vous... and she did. haha she came to church which was great, so that is going good

             constant, another ami came to church as well, he is super cool and really like the church meeting, we knocked on his door a few weeks ago, he said it was like God knocked on his door in one of our later rendez vous; good stuff good stuff

              on friday we went over to visit a couple we have been teaching, sandra and patrick, i had to say what needed to be said, chastity, if you want to get baptized you either have to get married or move out, they took it ok i guess, they understood, but they are not really doing anything to make the necessary changes..

             anyways that is about it, i really really hope this whole stake conference thing doesnt ruin too much stuff the last week of the transfer, we will see.  the days are going by too fast, thats messed up, i try not to think about it too much, i always thought i would just be out here in france as a missionary for the rest of my life, nope. mais c'est pas grave

thanks for everything, much love

what do you guys want from france? 

just thought i would ask. Mariah??? ha ha

A GREAT week...

hello hello

this week was a pretty good week, went by really fast much to my dismay but it was pretty legit. emillion is doing great, she came to church, long train and bus ride for her, but she did it, it was really good, shes doing fine, we saw her twice and come to find out her son in law is one of the student of the member who came to teach with us, so the member frere ya called him out and kind of told him what was up, the church is good, so stop being a noob and he invited him to church, so its all good ha

               we had a great sunday as well, 4 investigators at church, the sister missionaries kept on asking me what are secret was ;) ha ha i just told them well about 10 percent of the people who say they are coming actually end of coming so you can do the math, go talk with some peeps! we have a baptismal date with one of them, damba, he is a really cool guy; super super humble, just need to stop smoking, hopefully we will be seeing him tomorrow.  Audrey came to church which was a bit of a surprise, a couple days ago i was standing in mcdonalds ready to get my grub on with my big mac, i noticed this chick that was staring rather obviously at my pack, so i'm like ça va? long story short we start talking, she is african, but born and raised in france, real parisienne, she looked a go go dancer in one of snoop doggs music videos, anyways she was super happy to meat an american and told me she wanted to come to church, and she did, ha ha during my lesson during second hour; i got called by frere ya to give the lesson, there was a good 15 people in the classroom; the subject, people of the covenant, so i talked about covenants for a while and quickly turned that into a lesson about baptism! haha because thats whats up.  i got a bit of nudging from the boys, saying well done on bringing a hoochie momma to church aha, we passed her over to the sisters..

               all else is going well, i got to see one of my baptisms from last year in cergy, chantal, met up with us in versailles, it was good to be able to talk with her, and catch up, wow one year already, we were both pretty shocked at that

              

anyways thanks for everything, talk to you all soon

much love

A TOUGH Day...

hello hello

this week was pretty good. but probably the hardest sunday of my life, hardest day of my life joobies. on my way to church walking; called emillion to make sure she was on her way because she was getting confirmed this last sunday, i was on the phone with her, and right away from the tone of her voice i new it was not ok, she said she was not coming because she didnt want to leave her kids, her kids are being the devil and trying to convince her not to continue, we saw her the day before and she was great, her kids who are like 30 didnt even want to join us and were being super immature in the kitchen when i invited them to come join us.  anyways i was distraught.. i wanted to throw up almost, but i talked with her on the phone for a good 15 minutes and finally got her to promise me that she was going to come and get confirmed and recieve the holy ghost, she is so torn, but she came and got confirmed, i ended up doing it, because the member didnt want to, geeze.  but i had a couple members who she is close with reeally talk with her, i think things will start going better now. i had to give the lesson in priesthood while we were figuring this all out, and then, she called telling me she forgot her bus pass so i had to find a member that had a car and drive us up there, it was out of control, but its all good now, i will be calling her tonight to go and see her on wednesday.

    my lesson went well though ;) haha and we had a couple other amis that came, so that was good

i am at the mission home now, just had my interview with president and his wife, went well.  yesterday me and my blue went out to teach this family that lived over by all these big bats, we had eggs thrown at us from the windows, probably muslims... haha but i did some legit judo dodging

anyways thats about all, talk to you all soon, much love

thanks for everything, and all the advice, it helps alot

bisous bisous

A Baptism...

hello family

this week was pretty good, emilionne got baptized on sunday, it was awesome.  we finally decided to just go ahead with everything and have her get baptized on sunday; so we saw her almost every day the week before the baptism. we asked her this past thursday who she wanted to have baptize her, i told a bunch of members that she knew that would happily baptize her, she said she would prefer if we baptized her, what a surprise ha, so i told her elder sughroue would be happy to do that for her, he didnt understand what i said until after the rendez vous, but he was pretty pumped when i told him after, he said he didnt think he would baptize someone for at least the first 6 months of his mission

the baptismal ordanance went by smoothly, afterward she had the opportunity to bare her testimony; and her two sons and their wives came, which was cool because they were all really catholic, and didnt really want their mom to get baptized, but when she bore her testimony, she said, i know my kids didnt really want me to get baptized again, but i followed my heart and did what i know is true.  i thank the missionaries. one of her sons started to cry a little, it was good to see ha. once the kids saw the church and met the members and us, alot changed

we had a few other investigators come to church; one of them named ricardo and his french wife, so that was super cool.  he invited us over to eat at his place, it was super good, i did plenty of magic tricks, it was too much fun haha

everything else is going well, i got news that i will be spending my last transfer here

so all is going well, now we just need to get back to work and get some baptismal dates fixed, we some serious potentials.

so everything is going well. thanks for everything i appreciate it

much love :)

talk to you all soon

Summer Time...

hello hello

it has been a hot week and a long week, and our preparation day is almost over already; pretty ridiculous.  we did fix a baptismal date this past week, its a bit shaky but we will be seeing her, more ofter now so hopefully we can get that one going well soon.  not much else is really new, we still do alot of finding, contacting and porting, lots of bat porting, finding tons of people but none of them really progressing and vacances have started so everybody in france leaves on vacation for like a month which does not really help things.  a family did invite us over to have some crêpes on sunday evening so that was a nice break from the normal flow of things.

we took the metro into paris today, gonna hit up soldes while its the last week, thats all the shopping i wanted to do, then i will be good until the end of my mission

i dont know if you got the photo i just sent you of dominique, what a cool dude, found him doing some bat porting in strasbourg two weeks before i left, cool to see that his baptismal date stayed sure and now he is a member of the church; good for him and even better for the ward (they need it)

as to answer your questions about what i want to do after my mission, i dont know... alot of people have asked me, i need to give it some serious thought, i will figure something out, school yes, rugby yes, have fun with the fam yes, but the rest i do not know, i dont even know whats majors exist, i will probably set up some kind of appointment with a byu counselor see what i like and see what would be the best options to take, so yeah i will let you guys know what i think of next week

anyways much love, thanks for everthing

talk to you all soon

bisous bisous