4/29

hey!!!!!!!!! 

So Brussels was pretty good.  Nothing big happened. No shakira. I got a gaufre and we saw the little peeing dude.  All Elder S______ had to do was sign a paper and take a fingerprint. So after that we went and got lunch. I took some pictures.

This week was also "helping hands" (giant churchwide service project for Earth Day). It was SUPER fun. It wasnt like in Chico where the  whole stake is there with a big fleet of missionaries. Just the 6 missionaries from charleroi and the 2 wards of charleroi. The entire morning was a clothing drive. People have been donating their old clothes the last couple weeks and we sorted them out. It was CRAZY. Some of the stuff was pretty gross.

In the afternoon, the wards invited an orphanage to come play with our primary kids and stuff. I played soccer with a bunch of 5 to 11 year olds. I beasted them. jk. We all had a lot of fun and I passed a lot. We also played Frisbee. Then we served them a big nice meal and gave them each a big bag of candy. They were SO happy and that made me pretty happy.  I wish I would have done more big service projects before the mission.

My new companion and I get along super well. We are kind of having success. We not finding new amies but we are finding people to teach- some people who used to not progress.or people who just moved here from Switzerland and were inactive. So things are going pretty well.

I'm pretty sure our soccer team will be good next year. I'm a lot stronger than i was when i was 18, so i just gotta work on my other soccer skills, but I'm going to be a lot more aggressive and confident....that's for sure. 

So I dont know if you've seen it or not... but the church made a new video for Easter called "Because of Him" I EXHORT you to watch it. Honest, I tear up every time. and so has everyone we've shown it too.

well as you can see, it was a fun week... but not too much happened.

4/21

Well to start off, happy Easter Monday... over here they don't work on the day after Easter.. so no shopping or email places are open. I'm emailing from a members house because they were nice and told us that nothing is open.

 

My new comp is Mexican and grew up in West Valley, Utah. He's pretttty funny. He's in his 4th transfer. His name is _______ and his mom might only speak a little English.He said she'll prob understand if you try to talk to her tho. He writes her in Spanish... and I'm learning TONS of Spanish... It's cool. I like him.

 

My talk went alright... I forgot my notes at home on Sunday morning and I realized that as I was sitting down in sacrament.... bad news. The bishop asked me to address my talk to the youth to try to get them to go on missions... but I mostly just talked about Jesus.

 

The north of Belgium speaks Flemish.. Its pretty much just the same language as the Nederlands... but in the South they just speak french, but weirdly they use different words to mean different things.. like the use the word for "to know" instead of "to can" so sometimes they'll say "sorry, i don't know how to come today" and that's just weird to me.. but its funny. They also say numbers differently. To say hello you still say bonjour... or salut.

 

So we talked to the bishop and s_____ (the 9 year old we're teaching) is going to be baptized pretty soon. He does not want a big service.. he just wants to do a little thing with just the missionaries and his dad and the bishop.. because he's still a little traumatized. His dad and him have come the last 4 weeks in a row.. and his dad gave the closing prayer in sacrament and another less active lady we have been working with has been coming and she gave the opening prayer.

 

I would love to do the politics thing with Josh Cook again.

 

HUGE MIRACLE happened this week and last week I guess. well a last week a member who used to live in this ward who moved to France called and asked us to help her old parents in the yard, but we never  got ahold of them.. and a couple days later she called back and said "yo have you talked to my parents?" I'm like.. no sorry. she said that the reason that they didn't answer was cuz hes in the hospital with a hemorrhoid. but he asked for a blessing so on Friday elder Beck went and gave him a blessing. SUPEr cool dude. He's one of those guys who makes you feel like a better person just by talking to him. so so nice. and we left him with a Book of Mormon to read. He told us he was having surgery on Monday and to come back a couple days after the surgery. So on Thursday this week we went to stop by and see him. He was BEAMING. I don't think I've ever seen a smile that big. I was like "hey, how was the surgery?" He said that on Friday night.. a couple hours after the blessing they did a scan and there was NOTHING wrong. The hemorrhoid closed up. So he didn't even need surgery and on Friday morning he checked out of the hospital. boom.

 

I still find it weird that I will only go to church 5 more times in Europe... then its home.

 

How are the playoffs going?

 

ok, I'll give a talk on Jun 8.

 

is spud home? that's weird.

 

remember at my 8th grad graduation the doves? that was funny.

4/14

So, when you're feeling and following the spirit... things are GOOD!

We worked pretty hard doing those flyers this week... and still nothing, but it was a REALLY fast week.

On Monday night, G______ cut our hair (the girl from the family just reactivated...) it was a pretty good cut but she used scissors everywhere... not a real problem, but I'll probably need to get another pretty soon.

On Tuesday, we went to Namur for district meeting. Namur is a super cool city. There's a big pretty river and a huge citadel on top of a hill in the middle of town, but district meeting is pretty lame. No one in the district is that friendly or interested in talking. sooooooo district meetings are kinda a drag.

There was an old RM visiting here this week so we saw him a couple times. He was hanging out with Patrick. He made me really want to get an iphone when I get home. He was a super geek and admits it. Elder B___ and him talked about zombie movies for forever.

We visited a TON of less active members this week and 2 of the families came. It was legendary! I dont want to brag but Elder B___ and I should get a gold medal from all the stuff we've done this transfer.

A member in France called us and asked us to help her old nonmember parents in the garden... and we couldn't get ahold of them for a couple days.. and then she called us again and said "actually, you cant help them anymore cuz my dad got a hemorrhoid" so she gave us all the information to go give him a blessing. SUPER NICE old guy. I really like him. He's having surgery today and we're going to go visit him later in the week. 

On Saturday, we visited a family that met the missionaries a billion years ago. Back in the day just the mom was interested and the dad said no. When I first got here we passed by and they were super happy to listen. The dad read a book about God and it talked about the Melchezidek priesthood. It said, "if you ever meet people who hold it they will be the "happiest and most powerful people in the world". The first time we went, we blessed their home because they were fighting a lot... the second time (Saturday) we gave his wife a blessing. He FREAKED out when he noticed that we used the Melchezidek priesthood. He said back in the day, when the missionaries came, his ears and spirit  were closed... but now they're open.

The kid that we are teaching said that he wants to get baptized but he doesn't want a ceremony... he just wants it to be his dad and the missionaries and his brother and the bishop. So we'll do that for sure. His family and the other family I just talked about both came to the baptism Saturday night. The other ward had a baptism on Saturday night. They liked it.

Then on Saturday after the baptism, we went to the B______(the girl who cut our hair)'s house for a FHE. It was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH FUN. I love their family so much. We laughed sooo many times. On Sunday G______ bore her testimony about coming back to church and how much we (the missionaries) helped her. It pretty much made my mission. She cried a lot... luckily, I had tissues.

I'm sad that Elder B___ is leaving. I really liked him! but im getting a new comp named Elder S______. He's going to kill me.  (That just means that he will be William's last companion...in this mission, maybe all missions, a missionary in their last transfer is a "dying" missionary.)

It's weird that I'm in my last transfer. 

What do you mean everyone is excited to have me back? Yeah, I'll give a talk on June 8th. What's the topic?

 

I'm giving a talk next week. I'm not that excited about it. It's Easter Sunday so I want it to be good... you know?

well....

4/7/14

Can you say BEST CONFERENCE EVER? I loved it so much. It was mad good! I really liked pretty much all of the Apostle's talks. I really liked elder Zwick's. I was kinda bummed that Elder Christofferson didn't say anything about us either... but the atonement of Jesus Christ is more important than a shoutout hhaha.

I'm almost a hundy percent sure that I'll stay here until the bitter end. I don't imagine prez doing something that crazy.

So of all of the families that we are teaching... guess how many of them were available to see us last week? Not even one. They were all busy all week.  It was crazy! but we still saw some people and one of the families that we reactivated had us and some other less active members over for a FHE. The daughter of that family is studying to be a haircutter, so she is going to cut our hair for us.

We had a ward family history party this week. It was pretty boring. It was a lot of people making their accounts and struggling to come up with passwords. The young men were having their mutual at the same time and they peeked their heads in and asked us to play bball with them because they were getting bored with 2 on 2. So we got to throw down on some Belge kids for a little while. It was fun. They really liked playing with us.

We haven't had a lot of time to do very much finding lately because we've had so many people to teach... but this last week was a lot of fliers and porting.

I dont think that I've grown in the last 2 years. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've lost a couple inches. The french people have beaten me down.

Its true... prez packer wasnt looking very good.

The SVU coach still hasnt contacted me... should I be worried?

I went on an exchange to Namur this week. I spent the entire day walking around and contacting.  My feet got SOOOO tired!!!!

Patrick says thank you for the little note. I had to translate for him, but he liked it.

Elder Beck and I found a ripped up soccer ball and in the mornings weve been kicking it around. Its super fun.

So I know a little while ago I said I was sick of wearing church clothes.... its worse now haha, but I'm pretty sure I can make it. I have tons of ties.. but somehow I'm sick of them alllll!

People talk about that plane alll the time here. I guess its a really big deal. I dont know because I never see any news or anything.

3/31

hey whats up?

This week was kinda slower than usual, but a lot of good things happened. We are teaching like 6 families and they are all doing pretty well. 

We are teaching a guy and his 2 sons. He has been inactive for awhile because he works on Sundays because he needs the money cuz his wife left him, but we have been becoming super tight with his sons.  His sons are 10 and 9 and super hyperactive haha, but they have came to church two weeks in a row. The 9 year old kid's baptism wasn't valid when he was 8 and then he freaked out and didn't want to get dunked again... and he hasn't wanted to. But this week at church the dad said, "Hey, do you want the missionaries to come over and talk about your baptism?" and he smiled and looked excited.

Another family we are teaching we had a way awkward moment. They have an autistic son. Its not even that big of a deal. I really like the kid. He is really really nice.Well this week, we went over to his house to invite him to the Easter egg hunt that's going on at the church. They had some friends over. We weren't even planning on staying that long.. but they told us to sit down. One of their "friends" wanted to BATTLE. He was rippin me about American public schooling and Israel and the 12 tribes and Obama and stuff. I didn't want to say anything rude.. but I finally was like "hey dude, when I lived in America, I was a teenager... I don't know ANYTHING about Israel... I went to public school, and I'm pretty smart... I don't know anything about what Obama is doing because I've lived in France for the last 2 years... and you're so drunk" and they were like... hey yeah... go away and never come back. Turns out 2 of the people who were there were actually their friends... and the random drunk dude was someone they've never seen before, but after he left we actually were able to have a really good lesson :)

We did a lot of porting this week. Well, we did that flyer thing that I told you guys about, but so far (we've done 200) and no one has said that they even read it. A couple people said they saw it and didn't read it, but most of the people were like "nope... didn't see anything"... maybe we have a mail robber in Charleroi.

This week we had an elders quorum activity... We cleaned the church. Elder B*** and I cleaned all of the windows in the whole church. It was pretty fun. The bishop and his brother looked like they were hungover.. so I asked them why they looked so bad. They played Lord of the Rings online until 330 in the morning. So the bishop kept saying super lame jokes. At one point he got a 15ft squeegee and twirled it around he head screaming "I AM DARTH MAUL!" in a funny belge accent. He is such a cool guy.

I'm super excited for General Conference. We are not going to stay up all night though. I hope that they announce a temple in Chico and I hope one of the authorities that has visited will give our mission a shout out.

We are seeing a lot of signs of spring, blossoms everywhere! and its getting pretty warm, but not at hot as Chico.

I haven't seen that many famous things in Belgium, especially not in charleroi.  There isn't anything here to see. 

I really don't know what major I'm going to go for. I remember one time grandpa telling me that the world has need of man nurses... maybe that. 

There is a kind of apple that I really like. Its called a pink lady apple. I don't know if they have those in America or not but they taste like pink lemonade.

That's really cool that I have my flight plans now. Does prez brown know yet so that he can release me? 

I got Sister Mason's letter and a couple from some friends, but besides that not too much. I think everyone forgot about me by now.

Max says that room 323 is money in the bank! so I'm excited for that.

I don't have Ivan's email address. Spud comes home in a few weeks.