WEEK 82

SALUT TOUT LE MONDE!!!! Comment ça va?? Premièrement, je voulais vous dire que le printemps ARRIVE!!!! Le soleil sort chaque journée et on peut presque sortir sans une veste. C'est merveilleux! J'ai oublié combien que j'aime le printemps. En tout cas, je suis heureux:) ma semaine c'était très bien! Avec beaucoup des expériences qui m'aide à grandir, et je suis reconnaissant pour chaque occasion que mon père céleste me donne pour changer et m'améliorer. Merci pour vos prières envers ma famille et moi. Je peux dire que je les ai ressenti et je sais que j'ai l'aide d'en haut. Merci pour votre foi et pour votre désire d'aider ma famille pendant cette période de la vie. Et, juste pour vous dire, vous avez tous un bonjour d'Emmanuel et Claudette:) ils vous aiment et ils sont reconnaissant pour vos prières et pensées:)  (Hello world!!! How is it going?? First, I wanted to tell you that spring is coming! The sun comes out every day and you can almost get out without a jacket. It is wonderful! I forgot how much I love spring. In any case, I'm happy :) my week was very well! With a lot of experiences that help me grow, and I am grateful for every opportunity that my Heavenly Father gives me to change and improve myself. Thank you for your prayers for my family and me. I can say that I've felt them and I know that I have the help from above. Thank you for your faith and for your desire to help my family during this period of life. And, just to tell you, you have all a Hello from Emmanuel and Claudette :) they like you and are grateful for your prayers and thoughts :)

LUNDI SOIR

So after emailing today, we went home and changed and then headed back to the church to have our family home evening and our weekly meeting with the ward mission leader. Tonight we had a lesson given to us by Soeur Mazy on building a celestial home. She told us that she had felt inspired to do something like that because Emmanuel and Claudette are getting close to doing that. Haha it was really good. Claudette was also asking me all about my family asking how they were doing and all that. She is pretty worried about them all and she told me to not give up. She keeps telling me to be strong cause she knows that everything is going to work out. It was a good family night. I love this ward!

MARDI

Today went by pretty smoothly. Haha there were only a few bumps in the road. First off, I wanna share something funny that happened. So last night the phone started ringing in the middle of the night. I thought it was the alarm, cause when I got over to turn it off, I touched the phone and it stopped ringing. So I thought it was the 6:20 alarm, cause we have one that goes off at 6:20 and one at 6:30. So I opened the curtains and then went and hopped into bed and waited for the second alarm. Anyway when I woke back up I thought to myself, 'it feels like it's been hours since the alarm went off!' So I looked at my iPad and it was 5:55 and I was like what?! So I got up to look at the phone and turns out that some blocked number had called us at 12:30 AM and that was what woke me up last night haha. So that was funny. Anywho, today we had district meeting and so when we woke up we got out the door to catch our train. The normal train that we were supposed to take was canceled and so we had to take another into Brussels and then to the little town of some elders in the district named Braine l'Alleud. We started off the day with some contacting and it went well. Haha no one really wanted to talk to us, and so me and Nelson were just walking around all morning trying to teach people. Then we went and got back to their apartment for the actual district meeting. Today we had a formation given on the importance of planning and being prepared to teach. It was really good, and made me realize that we always have to prepare for the lessons we are going to teach cause honestly no lesson that we ever teach is ever going to be the same, cause everyone that we teach is different. So it was really good! Then we ate and that honestly took forever cause they made home made 'kebabs' but they weren't all that good and so it just took forever but they weren't too good. I'd definitely rather go to the shop and get one;) haha so anyway we were waiting for a long time to eat and then we ate and while we were eating we were watching a bunch of these funny videos that this kid in the district found on the gospel library app. Haha and let me tell you, the church makes some really funny videos! Anyway when the lunch had finally been made, eaten and cleaned up, it was already time for me and Nelson to go back to the gare to catch our train to make it home for our lesson with Emmanuel and Claudette tonight. We got home and hurried and planned for our lesson, cause we didn't have any time this morning and then headed out the door to meet up with Frere Istace who was going to be helping us out with our lesson tonight. We taught them the priesthood and its auxiliaries, missionary work and service and we had a super good rdv with them and the next time we meet with them we will finish all the lessons and they will be ready for baptism!!!!!!! HALLELUJAH! Lol anyway we had a great rdv and there were no problems haha thankfully;)

MERCREDI

Today went by pretty well. My mind has been running all over the place lately, but I think today I woke up and things just seemed to be normal. I don't know haha I feel like everything might have just felt like they were there and I just had to deal with it. So anyway it was good. So I got up and we had our studies and I'm getting so close to the end of alma haha! It honestly just feels like you get to the end of alma in the Book of Mormon and you're gonna be able to finish it;) haha but I'm getting close!! After we'd finished up studies we headed out to go contacting. It went well this morning. It's kind of hard when everyone just shoves you off haha but whatever. It's a bummer but we have to ENDURE TO THE END. So we were contacting for what seemed like a really long time and then we went and got some frites for lunch. On the way in I checked my email and I had an email from mom telling me about the fast that they were doing to be having for dad tomorrow and I thought dang it! We have our rdv with Patrick tomorrow! So I finished up my frites and started a fast for the rest of today and the beginning of tomorrow. After we'd finished up with lunch, we went and we contacted again and taught this one Asian girl who seemed really interested in the restoration and the fact that we believe in modern day prophets and then when we asked if we could maybe meet again sometime she said no.....haha who does she think she is getting our hopes up like that and then nothing...? Lol jk anyway we then went and had to catch a bus up to the church cause we had fixed a *super sketchy* rdv with this potential haha it was like almost not even worth going because we knew she was going to not show up. But because we don't want to the ones ditching out on others, we went! And we were about 20 minutes early, and we left about 30 minutes after the rdv was supposed to be and tried calling her about 3 times....haha but that's ok. We win some and we lose some. So anyway when we left it was already time for dinner so we went in and Nelson ate while I just kind of sat around and played around on my iPad and whatnot. And then we wanted to go porting. So we went out and we caught a bus and while we were on the bus, I remembered that Pauline had told me that if we ever did a family fast that she wanted to know, and so as we got to the neighborhood, I called the Royers and I got to talk to Soeur Royer and Pauline and it was so good to talk to them. I seriously am so blessed to have people like them in my life. So anyway we ended the night by knocking out a whole neighborhood! Both figuratively and literally! Haha we taught 2 lessons but nothing too crazy, they both told us that there was no need to come back...so anyway, like we learned earlier, you win some and you lose some!

JEUDI

Today went by pretty speedily! Haha it wasn't too bad of a day. We saw some good success today. I honestly just love going to lunch with Patrick. It's honestly something that I look forward to each week. It's really good food and it's a really fun time with him. So it's always a good time when we get to be with patch;) haha today we were going to go running, but as I got up and was saying my morning prayers, I remembered that I was fasting and didn't want to go running and come home and be PARCHED for the rest of the morning and so I asked elder Nelson if we could postpone it for tomorrow haha. So we got up and we got all ready and got to studies and they went well. I'm trying my hardest to catch up in my French Book of Mormon, but I'm literally so far behind that it's going to take me FOREVER to catch up haha. I'll get there sooner or later. We got a buzz at the door today that was a package and so elder Nelson answered and the man never came upstairs and so we went down to see him and turns out that he just left and left us a slip that has my name on it and we have to go tomorrow to get it...so thanks to the person that sent me a package!!;) no just kidding, I think it's the Books of Mormon triple combinations for Emmanuel and Claudette for their baptisms that we ordered. But we'll see tomorrow when we can go and pick them up! We then went out and went contacting and made our way to the pasta place with Patrick! It was super funny cause we got there before him, but because we go every week, and we always get the same thing, the people know who we are and they know what we want. So we got there and we were waiting when someone that works there noticed us waiting outside and came and said hello and told us we should come in and get a table while we were waiting for 'the big boss' cause it was going to get busy soon, like it always does. Haha! Then we went and sat down and the cook looked up and saw us and yelled, '2 4-cheese pastas?!' Cause he only saw us 2 haha we told him we were waiting for Patrick and we'd be ordering soon. It was funny. When patch got there we ordered and ate and it went well. I really like spending time with him. Then we had the afternoon to work! So we went and we did some contacting and it went well. We talked to lots of people and taught a couple lessons and one of them looked promising. The only bummer is, when people say they'll give you a call, that always means, I'm gonna forget about you in about 3 minutes haha so that's a bummer. We also had planned to go and see Josiane today cause we didn't have time last week and she got up to hear her testimony this last Sunday and she said, 'I'm a little mad with the 2 young gentlemen cause they didn't come and see me this week.' Haha so we made it a point to try and see her this week. We went and met up with Chung at her place and knocked and.....no answer. Haha she wasn't there sadly....so we turned around and headed out to do more work. As we were talking, we realized that we hadn't even put together a baptismal program to show Emmanuel and Claudette how it would work out so we went to the church and hurriedly put together an example and then went and got some frites for dinner and then went and met up with the Mazy's and finished up our lessons with Emmanuel and Claudette!! The spirit was SO strong tonight as we talked about the temple and marriage and had Frere Mazy, who is a temple sealer, explain his calling and talk about sealings and it was just an amazing night! They cannot wait to go to the temple and be sealed as a family!! I am so excited for them!

VENDREDI

Today was a good day as well. Thankfully I didn't get a phone call from home today;) I just got a lot of pictures. Haha we had a day full of weekly planning, but today during weekly planning we planned a ton for the district meeting that was going to be in Namur, not next week, but the week after and we got a TON planned to have 10 missionaries here:) we're gonna get so many new investigators it's not even funny!! We're gonna rock it. So anyway today we got up and had studies and then we went to go and get those packages that we missed yesterday. One of them was from Julie Jorgensen, Jorgy's mom!!!! It was so nice of her!!! And the other was Emmanuel and Claudette's triple combinations and so I was double happy! And then when we got mail today, the next little part of our order from the mission came and so I had a total of 4 packages that were addressed to me come today!!! Don't worry we got pics;) we then went out and did some contacting and contacted this one girl that was super cool!! She was super nice, from Slovenia and didn't speak a ton of French, but she did speak English and we are going to try and call her next week. It was super cool to talk to someone that cool;) we came in and took lunch and then planned for the week. It was so weird cause this week we had a BAPTISM to plan for! Haha we made lots of calls to different members and stuff and it was really good. We think we have everything planned out and we hope that all is going to work out. Apparently during the last baptism here the water was FREEZING. Haha does that remind you of anything?! Hahaha so we think we got everything figured out for that. We also planned for the district meeting that will be here and thought of all the different areas that we could send companionships and we found some old investigator papers that we are going to give them as they go out and go contacting and we found 5 areas that people could go out to go porting for the night. It is going to be awesome!:) anyway as soon as we figured that out, we took dinner and then we went to our rdv with Emmanuel and Claudette. Today was really chill with them. We just went over to their place and filled out their baptismal records and then watched legacy with them cause they had asked a few weeks ago if there was a movie about the early saints that explains a little bit about their stories and so we told them when we finished the lessons we could watch it;) it was fun. Claudette had predicted the whole movie, except for at the end, when David Walker goes away to war, she guessed he would die and when he comes back *SORRY FOR THE SPOILER IF NO ONE HAS SEEN IT:/* Emmanuel looked at her and said, 'haha! Look you're not God anymore. You didn't see that coming did you?!' Lol it was fun.

SAMEDI

Today went by pretty well....except for the fact that I had absolutely no motivation to work....I have no idea why either...I felt really bad at the end of the day, but like honestly that's just how it was. All I wanted to do was stay in the apartment....I know. #badmissionary anyway. We woke up this morning and we got to studies and halfway through companionship study, we got a call from a member telling us that she was in downtown Namur this morning and that she wanted to take us to get some drinks this morning. So we told her we'd meet her at the gare and that we would love to go and get some hot chocolates or something! So we went out and contacted our way to the gare and met up with her and she bought me a Coke and elder Nelson a hot chocolate and we talked with her for a good half hour at least before she needed to catch her train home. So that was super nice on her part. Anyway we then went and did some contacting til we went in for lunch. So we ate and then we headed back out and went contacting and talked to this one guy who was in the army here in Namur and he was telling us how he might call us one time cause he wasn't sure about anything and he was always posing questions and he might want to learn more. For those of you who don't know, that is the perfect time to talk to someone! When they are posing questions, that is when it's perfect to teach them. So if you know anyone who is struggling with some things in life, or maybe has questions, ASK THEM IF THEY WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE GOSPEL:) don't be afraid. Something else that I've learned on my mission is that the WORST thing they can do is: Say no. Haha so don't be afraid to share with others. Anyway we then had a rdv fixed with Whitey Tidy man and his wife;) haha their names are the Pesesse's, and so we headed out to their house and their son answered the door saying that his parents wanted to call us, but they couldn't find our card and so they told him to tell us next week at the same time. So we then hopped on the bus and headed out to this one neighborhood we thought might be a good area for work, but when we got their we just saw that it was a neighborhood with houses and apartment buildings. So we knocked a few doors while waiting for the bus and then went back down to downtown for the rest of the afternoon. We then came in and took dinner and then went and ported to finish up for the night. It was a good night. We'd been to an area that we'd never been to and taught one lady on her doorstep and she told us that we could come back in a couple months if we wanted.

DIMANCHE

TODAY WAS AMAZING. Honestly it was such a good Sunday. I ABSOLUTELY love Elder Kearon and his wife. We had a special stake conference today with them as the guest speakers and it was so good to hear from them. They honestly spoke directly to me. Especially sister Kearon. They were honestly just incredible today. But something else that made this day special was the fact that Emmanuel and Claudette passed their baptismal interviews!!!!!!!! THEY ARE GETTING BAPTIZED NEXT WEEK!!! We are all so excited!! So anyway to start off the day we got up and out to E&Cs so that we could all head up to Brussels for the day. We got up to Brussels and into the chapel and the Mazy's were there and had saved a couple benches for us all right up front in front of the stage. So we were front and center of everyone;) we were saying hello to everyone and meeting new people and all of the sudden Elder Kearon showed up right next to me and said, 'ELDER! How are you?! It's been a while!' Haha I love that man! He then went around to say hello to everyone that was around me and when he got to Emmanuel and Claudette I told him that they were our investigators that were getting baptized next week and he goes, 'Terrific!' Just imagine a really nice and proper English man saying that. I love his accent! Haha anyway the messages started and sister Kearon got up and talked about the trials in life and how we can get over them and how sometimes Heavenly Father sends us trials so that we stretch and grow and that we get them because our Heavenly Father knows that we need the experience. She said that sometimes it is hard to accept the plan of God, but she said that when we are thankful and happy, it's impossible for our brain to worry. She encouraged us all to focus on the gratitude that we have in life and to not worry because God's plan is perfect. I absolutely loved that. Then we stood up to sing the intermediate hymn and I was looking down at my iPad looking at the lyrics for the song and all of the sudden, out of no where, someone was right by my side, with their arm wrapped around me, and their cheek touching my cheek and I heard the words in my ear, 'what are your investigators names that are getting baptized next week?' I then noticed that it was Elder Kearon that came down from the stand to ask me haha! So I told him and he said thank you and then went back up. During his talk he talked about the importance of knowing the greatness of God's plan and always being willing to learn more and being like new members of the church like Emmanuel and Claudette. He mentioned them over the pulpit and it was great. They were just smiling!! It was an incredible conference and the spirit was so strong. We then finished and were talking to everyone and I wanted Elder and Sister Kearon to come and say hello to Emmanuel and Claudette again cause I thought it was super cool how he mentioned them in his talk, so I went and told them thank you for their talks and that they really touched me and then invited them over to say hello to Emmanuel and Claudette and they came and it was tender. Claudette told us on the way home that when she hugged Sister Kearon that is was so special to her and she'd never forget that. As we were standing there with the Kearon's I looked at Sister Kearon and told her thank you so much for her talk and that it touched me and then told her about my dad and how I got a call from home last week and told her what was going on and she said, 'Elder, I promise you I'll be praying for him. Everything will be ok. You can grow closer to the savior through this and don't lose your faith. We all know this is a test for you and your faith to grow.' She then grabbed Elder Kearon and they both then told me to let this experience help me grow closer to the Lord. It was tender. Elder Kearon then gave me his email and told me to email him if I ever needed to, not just for fun;) he also told me to not go sharing it with everyone, so sorry, IM BFFs WITH A GENERAL AUTHORITY;) we have emails and everything. I guess you could say things are pretty serious;) #namethemovie as they were walking out, Sister Kearon came and grabbed my hand and told me she loved me and she would be praying for my family and that everything will be ok. I then looked out the door and through a crowd of people, I could see Elder Kearon's face with a thumbs up and a smile. It was an amazing conference! Then Emmanuel and Claudette went for their interviews and Elder and Sister Norby helped me to find some baptismal clothing. Jumpsuits are so much more convenient than dresses and stuff haha! After they'd finished and passed the interviews, we went and took a couple pictures cause they want a picture of all of us to be on the front of their baptismal program;) it's cute:) so then we got in the car and headed home for the day and when we got home, me and Nelson took lunch and then we went out to work. We had a dinner appt with some members tonight and so we went and looked at bus times and then contacted until we had to go. When we got to the Halushka's we ate and had a really fun night with them. They are such a fun family. We shared 'Is It Still Wonderful to You?' And had a really great message and spirit was so strong!

Eh bien. C'est ça! J'ai que 20 semaines qui restent en mission. C'est bizarre, mais ce matin, lorsque j'étais en train de penser ça, je me suis dit que je peux ressentir que c'est presque fini. Je me disais que pendant ces 20 semaines je dois suivre les conseils dans ma bénédiction patriarcale et 'garder les commandements et apprendre de la vie du Sauveur pour apprendre de son véracité.' Je sais qu'il veut que nous nous rapprochons vers lui pendant les temps difficile. Il veut, et il peut nous aider. Je vous souhaite une bonne semaine!!! Continuez d'envoyer les prières et mails!;) JE VOUS AIME!!  (Well. That's it! I have 20 weeks which remain in my mission. It's weird, but this morning, when I was trying to think of it, I said to myself, "I can feel that it is almost finished." I told myself that during these 20 weeks I must follow the advice in my patriarchal blessing and 'keep the commandments and learn from the life of the Savior to learn its truth.' I know he wants us to come closer to him during difficult times. He wants it, and he can help us. I wish you a good week! Continue to send emails and prayers! ;) I LOVE YOU!

Elder Libby