WEEK 74

Cette semaine c'était la meilleure!!!! Je ne blague pas. C'était merveilleux. J'ai passé une très bonne semaine et en plus, je suis allé à Paris pour la meilleure conférence jamais! C'était incroyable. Aussi nous étions très occupé tout la semaine! Donc ça c'est bien aussi. Voilà ma semaine! (This week it was the best! I kid you not. It was wonderful. I spent a very good week here and more, I went to Paris for the best conference ever! It was amazing. Also we were very busy all week! So it is good also. This is my week: )

 

LUNDI SOIR

So here in Namur on Monday nights the ward has family home evening and the missionaries go and share a message each time. So tonight after we'd finished emails, we went home and changed and then headed out to the church where we had family home evening. There aren't a ton of people who come but it is still good! We started off with some ping pong and let me tell you, we have a member here who #GETSINTOIT haha he was all over that big table slamming that ping pong ball lol. Then we went on to do the lesson for the night and I shared a message on obedience and it went really well and there were lots of stories that were shared from the members and why they believe that it is so important. Which always helps to drag the thought along a little bit;) then we ate a little snack and made our way home for the night.

MARDI

Today was full of finding!! Haha we walked a ton and had all our rdvs fall through. Ok we had one rdv planned for the day and it fell through...so that was a blow. Because of that we literally were finding all day long. It was long but we made it through. We woke up and had some studies and then made it out to do some work. Right now I feel like elder Nelson might be a little bit in robot mode for missionary work...ya know? Like always walking the same route and only talking to 1 in 7 people, silly things like that. So I'm like not trying to crush his dreams and make him feel like I make all the choices, but I'm trying to get some variety in to what we're doing. And it kind of feels like he might be a little bothered by that. So I'm just going slow;) we changed it up a little bit and went into actual Namur. Our apartment is on the very end of Namur facing the neighboring town named Jambes which is where it sounds like most of the missionary work gets done. SHOCKER. Seems like the missionaries have always gone to work straight out of their apartment. Lol it's hard to get those guys motivated to go other places sometimes! So we went out and were contacting and found a few people who seemed a little bit interested in getting to know us and we even fixed a rdv for this Friday with this random lady and exchanged numbers so that was awesome. We then walked and talked to more people and eventually made our way in for lunch. We have a conference in Paris this Thursday and we were eating lunch when we got a text from the ZLs telling us where we would be sleeping over and so when we finished lunch we headed to the gare to look at train times to make it tomorrow night for our sleepover. The way the train system works here in Belgium is SO much different than in France haha it's gonna take me a while to get used to that. Then we just went contacting for a while and got caught in the rain and saw the prettiest rainbow! Haha obviously we went looking for gold and obviously we took pics. Belgium is beautiful. Then we came in for like 15 minutes just to take a bathroom break and grab a drink and whatnot before we headed out for the rest of the night when the elders from the apartment that we will be staying at tomorrow called and said that they wouldn't be able to meet up with us til later so we headed back to the gare to look at other train times. Then we had a dinner appt with the ward missionaries and so we made our way there and we were having Raclette! I decided that I am going to buy a raclette machine before I come home and we are going to have raclette parties in the US cause it is one of my favorite meals here. It's potatoes and melted cheese and some meat that you cook on a tray right in front of you. It's awesome! And YOU make it yourself. So it's really fun! We had a great time with them and they wanted to go over the ward list and so we started that and after an hour and a half of going over it, we finished 5 out of 6 pages....but we had to leave to be home on time! Haha so we are going over again soon! AMERICAINS! GET READY FOR A RACLETTE PARTY.

MERCREDI

today went by super well! It was super fast and we were super busy all day long. Our rdv that we were supposed to have yesterday got moved to today and so we were pretty booked cause we already had a lunch appt and another rdv with a potential investigator. So we woke up this morning and got our studies done. I am almost done with the New Testament! It will be the first time that I've read it and let me tell you that I am a little confused on Revelation...but I'm not telling myself that cause I'm also following along in the student guide for institute and at the beginning of the commentaries for Revelation, there is a quote from Joseph Smith that says: '"The book of Revelation is one of the plainest books God ever caused to be written" Though it is rich with imagery and symbols that are not always easy for readers in modern times to understand, the themes of the book are simple and inspiring.' And so after I read that I've tried to tell myself that I can come to understand it....as you can tell, I'm having just a LITTLE bit of difficulty trying to convince myself that. I wanted to have the New Testament done by the new year, but some things just don't work out like that. So we made our way out after studies this morning and contacted to our lunch appt at the WORLDS BEST PASTA! Haha it went well. The member is really nice and I'm gonna have fun meeting with him weekly;) then we had to go back to the apt to drop off the leftover pasta from elder Nelson cause he's a wimp and didn't eat it all;) JUST KIDDING. I LOVE MY COMP. After we'd finished with that we went out and did some contacting. We walked all around and talked to a very passionate man saying that if we wanted to talk to him about religion he'd win. He said that we believe in Jesus Christ to be the Son of God and I said yes and he said well that is NOT possible cause God doesn't have a wife. And if he did have a wife, they would have had more kids. So as I tried to stop him so I could explain a little, he just went on and on saying how there is no way it's possible and so I stuck out my hand and said AU REVOIR. LOL. It wasn't worth our time. So we kept walking and met this man who told us he was an optimist and didn't let anything in life get him down and so he talked to us, let us pray and took a card! So we'll see what happens with him:) then we headed to the chapel to meet with our potential. His name is Jean Claude and he was super nice but seemed kind of crazy. Haha he said he wanted to meet with us cause he was curious but I told him that we were here to help him change his life and that we'd meet with him if he was willing to try out what we have to share and he told me ok, and that he'd be there on Sunday! So that was awesome haha we'll see where that goes too. Then we headed to these one investigators house! They are African and you'll never guess where from. RWANDA! If I baptize these people, it will be the 3rd and 4th Rwandans that I baptize on my mission!! Haha I might as well have been called to Africa. These 2 were super nice though and she just had a baby and so I made the joke that if she gave me the baby I might run off with it and before I knew it she was up and went and got the baby out of the nursery and brought him out to me for me to hold him! Technically that is not allowed, for missionaries to hold babies, and I guess she didn't know I was joking, so I held their newborn baby and just fell in love. Haha the new pure little spirit of this little milk chocolate baby was just so heavenly and I wanted to cry. For a little moment I felt close to heaven. I could just feel nothing but joy for this little baby as he was clenching my finger with his fist! he was so cute. Then we left and headed home to take dinner and pack up to leave for the night and then left the apartment to go catch our train to make it into Brussels for the night to make it to Paris tomorrow!! We got into the little ville of Braine l'Alleud and guess who is serving there? The one and only elder oldham from Davis High school haha I'd never talked to him before but we spent a large portion of the night talking and got to become good enough friends;) we are in the same district so it will be fun getting to know him!

JEUDI

Well I experienced the BEST conference in the mission that I have ever experienced today. Elder Kearon is such a special man and I can testify that I know he is called of God to preside over this area of His kingdom. I feel very blessed to have been able to attend the conference in Paris today. We didn't get tons of sleep last night due to the fact that we were all talking and up til the wee hours of the night. Haha literally all day I was running off of like 2 1/2 hours of sleep;) it was fun. We woke up super early to catch our train to Brussels and then our train to Paris. They are REALLY cracking down on safety here! Like we had to bring our passports and they scanned our bags and made us walk through the things like at airports haha it was crazy, but good so no complaining haha. We got into Paris and to the chapel in downtown Paris and it's been like 6 or plus months since I've been there and so all the construction had been finished and it was super fun to be back! We met up with all the other missionaries and ate some pains au chocolat and were waiting for elder Kearon and the Babins to arrive. Then we got seated and they came in and we started and honestly it was such an amazing conference and I just wanted to share a few things from it that touched and helped me as a missionary

Sœur Babin shared her testimony on how we have rules in the mission to protect us and that she knew that if we followed the rules 100% that we would receive blessings 100%

President Babin said something that REALLY touched me. He told us that the temple in Paris is OUR temple. He said if it belonged to anyone, it was the missionaries because it is thanks to the missionaries that we are getting a temple here. He told us that he was thankful for the work of the missionaries and used the example of John 15 where the savior talks about the vineyard and compared it to us and it was really great.

Elder Kearon is just one of my favorite people. HE IS SO DANG FUNNY. Honestly he is just so nice and he made me feel like a million bucks. One topic that I noticed coming from him ALL DAY LONG was the fact to just stop worrying. The little things don't matter! We are gods children and if we are doing what we should and following the example of the Savior we have no need to fear. So he encouraged us to LITERALLY forget ourselves and go to work. A quote that I absolutely LOVED that he said and that I'm going to make a sign for it or something was "Celebrate the pain au chocolat moment in which you are living.' Honestly he was just telling us that we are serving God. He loves us and he blesses us. The good and bad days will come, but we need to celebrate the pain au chocolat moment in which we are living. Isn't that cool? Haha I thought it was great and I'm going to live off that motto for a while. Towards the end of his messages he told us 'If ever there is a time that the gospel needs to and will spread in France, it is right now because of the construction of this temple.' He told us that he has a vision for these people and he knows that people are prepared for this message of the gospel. It was honestly an AMAZING conference. Maybe you just had to be there to feel the spirit, but it was amazing! And I didn't ever get tired!!

So during the day we had a split for lunch and during of course I was with all my friends! I took some fun pics. Then after the conference had ended I ran up to Elder Kearon and asked for a picture and he told me 'Yes, if it's fast cause I don't want everyone to do it!' Haha so we ran fast and grabbed Soeur Redd to take a picture of us. I also spent the entire conference sitting next to the Wilson couple! Do you all remember them from Metz?? The first senior couple I met! So obviously we had to take some fun pictures! I also noticed that like a gajillion of the people in my group were all at this conference and so we got all of them together and took a picture cause it is probably the last time that we will see our sisters:( haha so that will be a good memory. We then got going to make our train home and just like this morning we had to scan our bags and show passports and stuff haha but we got the train and got into Brussels and headed home to Namur for the night. I was so excited to get to my own bed! After running off of only 2 1/2 hours of sleep I was tired!! On the way home we walked past a kebab shop and I was too tired to make something for dinner and so we stopped there and headed home where I ate, showered and went straight to bed

VENDREDI

So this morning we woke up to find.......SNOW!! And a lot of it!! It was a fun little surprise haha we woke up and were exercising and I walked past a window and white over all the houses and so we got really excited. We then studied and then right after we had a rdv with the ward missionaries to finish going over the ward list to find out who needed to go where and who was going to visit who. So we went on our way to their house but I had told them that this time I was going to bring drinks and so we stopped by the grocery store to grab some drinks and when we were going through the checkout stand I set the buzzers off....haha so people came to us and made me show my bags and empty my pockets and we came to the conclusion that it was probably my 'new' coat that had a tag somewhere....oh la. So we got to their home and spent the next hour or so going through the list and once we'd finished she made us some dang good omelettes!! (Funny side note, as I just spelled omelettes, I realized that it's probable that it is a French word...lol I'm gonna try to figure that out) so we sat and ate with them and then we had to get going cause we needed to do weekly planning. It had been snowing since we left our apartment and so there was a lot of snow on the ground by now and so it was a very slippery walk home! But we got there and came inside and started our weekly planning. It went well, but as usual it just took forever to finish. When we finally had finished we had about an hour left of work and so we decided that since it was cold, dark, and snowy that going out and trying to work wouldn't have been the best use of our time. Even though the last thing I wanted to do was stay in the apartment a little bit longer haha do we just opened up our area book and made some calls to finish up our night. And it went well! We talked to lots of people and they either told us no thank you, or fixed a rdv! So we are getting good at cleaning out the area book;)

SAMEDI

Well today we had quite a great day to be honest! Haha it was full of work and went really well. I'll tell you what, it is so weird when you wake up on time, AND EXERCISE. Cause honestly I can wake up and just sit in a chair and do nothing but I am like pretty tired during the day, but the last 2 days I've worked out and I feel so awake and good the rest of the day. Elder Kearon told us to do it and, you are going to laugh at me, but the spirit just testified to me that I need to do it! So I'm glad I do cause I feel so much better!! Studies this morning went really well! I am getting so close to finishing the book of revelation! And then I'll be done with the New Testament so I am pretty excited about that! For language study I have decided to follow the counsel of I think it it was Harold b. Lee?? He told us that if we read the Book of Mormon all the way through in a foreign language we would be able to speak the language, so I'm going to do it in French before I get home! Then we went out contacting and talked to a few different people who were interested to talk to us but not interested to meet again. Being on my mission I've decided that that is the most frustrating thing about this work. People are interested in who we are, but not what we have to bring and it is SO hard to interest them enough to get back to see them. I'm still trying to figure out how to do it haha and I probably will my whole mission. So we then went and tried to drop by one of our investigators houses but he didn't answer the door even though I'm pretty sure I heard noises coming from the other side:( we then made our way home for lunch and this afternoon we had a rdv with another one of our investigators that I had never met before. So after lunch we went out contacting until the church. We got there and waited for him to show up and he never did which was a bummer. So we had a dinner appt with some members after that so we went and caught the bus to make it down to catch another bus and while we were waiting for the bus, he called and canceled on us cause he was in Brussels all day and it just wasn't going to work out with his schedule. So we did what all missionaries do when appts fall through and we went porting! Haha so we went and ported up an area that elder Nelson led us to. We were in an apartment building ringing sonnets when this one lady walked in. She told us she had just tried to go to mass but there was none at the Catholic Church she had gone to so she came home. We told her we were here tonight to share a prayer and message with her and after some serious contemplation lol she told us to come up. So we went up with her and taught her the restoration and prayed with her. She understood really well! But then she told us she wasn't sure if she'd want to meet again....I SWEAR! Haha I don't know what I do wrong lol she took a Book of Mormon and she told us when she was done with it she'd call us and give it back, so we told her she could keep it and she laughed and goes no I'll call you....so ya. We then left her with a prayer and headed home for the night

DIMANCHE

Today was a good Sunday! Sunday's always go by pretty fast. It's weird how that works. But it's good. So we woke up this morning and got all ready and out the door for church. When we got there this morning we were sitting there waiting for everyone to show up and slowly people started to get there, and today not a ton of people came because of the snow. There wasn't a ton of it this morning, but there was some ice and so lots of people didn't show up cause they were scared of the roads. Which was sad...have you ever been to Utah?!?! Lol jk so ya we were welcoming people in and all of the sudden 2 people speaking English walk in! They told us that they were from Arizona and here on business and that they'd be flying out on Saturday. So they came to our meetings and guess who was the lucky one to translate?? Haha seems like people like to make elder Libby translate. Also a member brought her neighbor friend so we had a special Sunday school for her so that we could answer questions and stuff like that. She told us that she already knew everything and that she didn't need to come to church like us cause she already knew everything she needed to know and that she was already close with Jesus. 🙄 if I had a nickel for every time I heard that I WOULD BE A MILLIONAIRE. LOL so she stood up in the middles of class and told us that she was going to go out to smoke. It was so funny cause after she left, this rather loud member says, 'someone needs to go tell her to stop smoking in the bathroom! I went in to pee and could hear her smoking in the stall and when she came out, she looked up at the ceiling and said Lord, how am I supposed to go in there?!' And then she looks at me and in English she says in like a serious but laughy tone 'elder, she smokes so much!' I died. Needless to say I was useless like the rest of the hour cause I was just dying laughing. The rest of Sunday was good and then we went and caught our bus home and took our lunch hour and then we went and made a list of all the less actives that we found while over at the ward missionaries this week and put all the ones that we are supposed to go and see on our list and then went out to find some. We were walking to one and got to the house address we had and no one answered but a neighborhood lady was walking around and so I stopped her and asked if she knew him and she said, 'No, but let's find him!' She then proceeded to go and knock on about 5 other doors asking around if anyone knew our less active haha no one did and so she told us to go down to this store just down the road and ask the manager, so we did and he didn't know either. Haha that was funny! Then we had a dinner appt with a family tonight. Their name is the Halushka family. They are Ukrainian and super cool! The mom speaks 5 languages and English is one of them and they were just super nice! We got out to their house and talked and ate and it was fun to be with some members. We then shared the restoration as a spiritual thought and in all honesty, it was a train wreck lol we didn't do a very good job and their non active son just started asking questions that just made it hard to concentrate...but we did have a good discussion gospel and we're hoping that soon we'll snag the interest of the son!;) they are super cool though and I had a ton of fun with them tonight!

J'espère que vous avez aimé ma lettre cette semaine!! C'était une semaine que je ne vais pas oublier! Franchement j'ai changé cette semaine. Et c'est pour le meilleur;) j'espère que vous passiez une bonne semaine et on se parlera bientôt:) je vous aime! Souvenez que ce n'est jamais trop tard ni tôt pour changer. Le Seigneur nous aidera:) a très bientôt!! Célébrez le moment pain au chocolat dans laquelle vous vivez

 

(I hope you enjoyed my letter this week! It was a week that I will not forget! Frankly I have changed this week, and it is for the best;) I hope you have a good week and we will talk again soon :) I love you! Remember that it is never too late or early for change. The Lord will help us :) Celebrate the pain au chocolate moment in which you are living! 

Elder Libby