Monday, June 13, 2016

WEEK 95

Bonjour à tous!! Pouvez vous croire que cette semaine est déjà finie?! Moi, non plus. Mais bon, c'est comme ça la vie. Cette semaine c'était bien passée. Je ne peux pas me plaindre. Cette semaine qui vient, nous allons savoir les mutations! Cela me fait peur parce que je crois que je vais être muté et je ne veux pas partir. Mais parce que c'est les mutations, et celui qui vient c'est ma dernière, je vais vous demander d'arrêter à envoyer les lettres et colis! Je n'ai que 7 semaines qui restent en mission, alors au lieu de m'envoyer quelque chose, vous pouvez venir et me rendre visite dans quelques semaines:) alors, j'espère que vous aimez mes aventures cette semaine!!  (Hi all!! Can believe you that this week is already over? Me, either. But hey, it's like this life. This week it was well spent. I can not complain. This week coming, we will know my last transfer! This scares me because I believe that I will be posted and I do not want to leave. But because it is transfers, and this one it is my last, I will ask you to stop sending letters and parcels! I only have 7 weeks that remain in mission, and instead of sending me something, you can come and visit me in a few weeks :) I hope you like my adventures this week!)
 
So tonight was a good night. All except we missed our bus getting back up to the church for FHE. But that's ok. Seems to be that that happens a lot;) tonight we had a good meeting with Chung where we are really getting serious about this bbq that they are going to be having the weekend after I (most likely) leave. Then we had a good lesson tonight that was taught out of the 'Come follow me' booklet from the church that was mostly just focused on applying the gospel in our lives. We were given the assignment from our district leader to bring the main meal for district meeting with a theme of Chinese. So the first thing that came to my mind was to call Emmanuel and ask if he could bring home some leftover Chinese food from work! And he said yes! So tonight he gave us this huge tub of Chinese food and said, 'if you ever want more, just tell me!' I can't even imagine leaving these guys here. My heart is going to break when I have to say goodbye.
 
MARDI
Well since we were pretty sure that the grève was over, but not for sure, we started off our morning getting up and out trying to make it to the gare to make sure that we got a train into Charleroi for district meeting. Today we also were going on exchanges with our district leader so that was another thing we had to look forward to. We got up and out and found out that all the trains seemed to be running just fine! So we caught the next train into Charleroi and when we got in, we met up with all the other missionaries and we all climbed on the bus and headed up to the chapel. This is where classic Charleroi kicked in. Haha whenever we go to Charleroi there is something bound to happen and today's was when the elders forgot to bring the right pair of keys to the chapel! Haha so we got there and realized that we were locked out of the chapel. Lol so our district leader decided that we could just go to the Charleroi elders apartment and have district meeting there so that the Chinese food could hear up as well. Cause like no one wants cold Chinese food right? So we hopped on the bus and little did we know that he also meant that he wanted to do district meeting on the bus! Lol so we all were doing our district meeting riding through the ghetto town of Charleroi haha #callusgangstas when we got to the elders apartment I put the food in the oven and then I was volunteered to do some practice teaching in front of everyone and was given an A+ for outstanding performance on giving a baptismal invite. Me and Anderson rock Fisted hand sign🏻 then we ate and finished cleaning up and we headed out with Nivelles to go and start out exchange. I was with my district leader first and it went fine. We got home and hurried and planned out a little bit and then headed out and contacted. He is a contacting machine! He was talking with everyone. It was good. We talked with tons of people and I felt a little bad cause I feel like he might be a little too hard on himself. Which is normal, I mean we all want to improve. But he was a good missionary and he taught me that I need to look for more referrals from people and to NEVER be scared to ask God for direct guidance by asking him direct questions. Something like, not asking Him to please help me know where to go, but more ask, should we contact or go to a less actives house. It was a good learning experience for sure. Then we switched up and I got to go with elder Taylor! Which is always a blast. For some reason he didn't get the chance to send off his emails yesterday, so we ran to the church really quick and sent those off, to find someone at the church who was the guy over all churches in Belgium! He was super cool and told us that his budgeting is low and I asked what for and he told us to get the churches here all up to date. So out of curiosity, I asked by how much and he said.....17million €. Haha I was thinking like 500€ lol. Anyway we talked for a while and then headed out to get to a rdv we had! We went to this one investigators house who had made us dinner and we got to talk with her and her boyfriend. Then in the middle of dinner, the power went out because of the pouring rain outside! Haha it was pouring! So we pulled out some candles and had some candlelit dinner. It was fun. She was something we like to call an 'eternal investigator' meaning that she doesn't want to give us up, but also doesn't want to progress all that much. So anyway, when we'd finished up there we had to go and pick up the other elders and then take the member home that was with them and then we headed in for the night.
 
MERCREDI
So to be completely honest, today when we got home to Namur, it was so hard for me to get the motivation to get out and do some work. Haha I have no idea why, but it was hard. All I wanted to do was stay inside. But we got out side and I'm glad that we did cause we witnessed a pretty great blessing from Heavenly Father today when we did. We got up this morning, actually we were woken up this morning, haha I say that cause I was awakened by our district leader walking around the apartment at 6:20 and he woke me up in the middle of a great dream! I was just about to get into my new car that I got;) haha so I was a little bummed I wasn't able to get in the car. Anyway we studied and then had our little exchange comp inventory thingy and then we needed to get going cause our district leader had to go into Charleroi for a baptismal interview and so we went and we caught a train into Namur. When we got home we got a phone call from Emmanuel and Claudette telling us that they'd gotten us more Chinese food and they wanted us to come and pick it up. So we went and got that and came home to drop it off and then we went out contacting. We were walking around when we remembered that we needed to go and pick up elder Anderson's dry cleaning that we'd dropped off on Monday. So we went and got that and then headed home so that we could drop that off. Then we went out contacting until we had our rdv with Christine from last week. We got to her house and rang and called and texted, but she'd never answered.....:( she bailed on us this time:( it was such a bummer. So instead of teaching Christine, we went and we had an afternoon full of contacting. We were just walking and we stopped this one man and he told us that he was completely atheist and that he wasn't interested. Then elder Anderson just took over. He started to talk about life and our purpose and asked the guy a few questions and he answered positively and so Anderson asked if he could give him a brochure on the plan of salvation and the guy said yes. So we stood there and told him that it had helped us in this life to know our purpose and who we are and why we are here and we were just testifying when he asked, 'So do you guys have meetings where I can come and learn more?' We told him we'd love to meet again if he wanted and he told us that would be great! We are meeting with Renaud again on Saturday! It was super cool. Then we went inside and got a drink of water cause it was warm ahaha so we went and did that and then had a feeling that we needed to go to this ville named Profondeville and so we went and ported there and didn't really see anything, but there was a stand full of the famous Wépion strawberries! Haha so as we were walking out and making our way back to the bus stop, we stopped and got us some strawberries.
 
JEUDI
Well if you haven't guessed from the amount of times that we've been out contacting this week, almost all of our investigators have fallen off the face of the planet. Haha we are currently back into the groove of finding new people to teach and contacting all day everyday. Which is a bummer, but also we know that it's what we need to be doing. So first and foremost, I want to apologize for the brevity of the rest of the days, because literally all that we did was contacted haha! So we got up this morning and I was so looking forward to going to lunch with Patrick! It had felt like it had been forever, so it was something I was super looking forward to. He called and confirmed for it and then just about 10 minutes later, sent us a text telling us that he had and emergency come up at work and it was going to be impossible for him to leave today and that we would definitely do it next time. I hope that's true cause next week will be the last time that I will be able to go with him! I can't believe I'm going to be leaving Namur. Anyway, we then decided to adjust our schedule and go contacting this morning instead of lunch with Patrick. So we went out and we contacted and we had walked past a movie theater here in Namur the other day and I'd seen a poster for finding dory (which is probably going to be the first movie I see in theaters when I get home!!) and I wanted to go and ask if it could be possible that I could by a poster from them, cause apparently we can do that in the states?? (How am I just figuring this out?!) so we went and walked by the theater, but there was no one at the stand and I'm not even sure they were open yet, so I'll just go another time. Anyway we came in and we took lunch and then after lunch I called Emmanuel and Claudette to ask if we could stop by so I could give them the conference Liahona that I'd ordered for them and they told us that today was a little crammed for them, but that we could stop by tomorrow. So we then headed back out and walked and talked. We got talking all about stories from home, like school trips and friends and stuff and so that was of course really fun to think about. Life back at home was fun in the good old days! I will never forget how fun it was to go driving around Kaysville and blast the music in the car with all my friends while flying down Main Street haha. Anywho, we sooner or later needed to get inside to take language study cause tonight we had a rdv with Wilmy and Allisson and it was honestly the greatest! Probably the best lesson that I've had with them so far. Anderson wanted to share a conference talk by Elder Stevenson called 'Your Four Minutes' which talks about us getting ready for our big performance, or living with God in the next life. He did a great job and Wilmy and Allisson literally opened all the way up. I've never been that in depth with them. We figured out the real reasons they are living they way they are and now we think we might be able to get somewhere with them to help them! It was an amazing lesson. We finished off the night with a fun little spin around town in the convertible again haha it was fun.
 
VENDREDI
Well today was just kind of a weird day haha. We felt like really out of the loop all day and we were doing lots of weird stuff and it was just weird. But that's sometimes life I guess right?? We don't always get what we expect is coming haha. We got up this morning and we'd slept in....haha oops. So we hurried and got ready and made our way to studies and had some good studies and then we headed out to go contacting. I'll tell you what. The people here in Namur just all seem to be too happy. Like we go and try to talk to them and they all say no cause things in life are going ok, why change them? They're all in a 'If it ain't broken, why try to fix it?' Kind of mood....its a little rough, but also I'm grateful that they are all so happy cause it makes me really grateful that at least they aren't miserable, you know? Anyway we were contacting for a while and nothing was really coming of it, so we headed into the apartment and got the Liahona for Emmanuel and Claudette and headed over to their place. When we got there, we got let in and walked in to see the Mazy's just sitting there! Haha we were like oh haha hey. Wazzup? Haha it was like we'd walked in at an awkward moment or whatever, idk it was just weird for some reason! But they said that on their way over they'd seen us walking and contacting and had honked 3 times trying to get our attention, but neither of us looked at them! Haha so that was funny! We gave them the Liahona and we then headed out and made our way home for lunch. After lunch, we started weekly planning and got a few things out of the way when we needed to leave to make it to our rdv with Christine, cause we'd fixed a rdv with her last week for today and Wednesday. So we left and got to her house and waited for a while, but she never answered the door or the phone....AH! So that was a bummer. We then went and stopped by Dydy's house so that we could drop off a Thank You note for her help with Romuald and his lessons. So we went and did that and then headed home and finished up our weekly planning. When we'd finished that, we decided to take dinner and so we'd just gotten up to go make something when the phone rang. It was a sister in the ward who's dad had just gotten out of the hospital that morning and she was running a little late and was wondering if we could run over to the pharmacy and pick it up before they close in the next half hour. I emphasize run for the following: she gave us the address and I hurried and plugged it into my iPad and the pharmacy we needed to go to, IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF NAMUR. Now something you need to know about Europe is that there are pharmacies, LITERALLY, on every corner. You cannot miss a pharmacy. And her parents house is not too far from our house, but this pharmacy was literally on the other side of Namur! Haha so I tell her, 'Well we are going to try to get there!' So we book it! We legit were running trying to get to this pharmacy and just as I turned the corner, the doors went down saying they were closed.....so Anderson says, GO KNOCK! So I run up to the door and I knock and pound until finally someone came and opened up seeing we were sweating from running and gave us the drugs this guy needed haha! So long story short, we got them, we just had to run 5 kilometers to get there haha! The things we do to serve members. She then showed up, told us thank you and offered us a ride to the church for the youth activity we were going to. So we went and made our way there and no one ever showed up haha....we were just out of the loop again. So we caught the next bus home and came home for dinner. It was a weird day!
 
SAMEDI
Today was a little bit more normal than yesterday. It was good, even though the only thing it consisted of was contacting and walking around. We did however teach a street lesson which was awesome! Things are going slow here for the moment, but the are going. We woke up late today because of the alarms, but when we got up we hurried and got to studies. We went and headed out contacting after we'd finished and we were walking around when we met this lady who let us talk to her and said that it was cool to have been able to talk with us for a little bit, but other than that the message of the gospel didn't really interest her. So she let us pray with her and then we went on our way. We were on our way home when we remembered that it was the weekly market going on in downtown Namur! So we went and decided to take some of our lunch time and go see if there was anything worth looking at haha. I realized as we were walking through that I don't have a wallet for when I get home so I might need to be getting me one of those. Anyway other than the wallets there wasn't anything really that interesting to look at so we went and made our way in for lunch. By the time we finished, we had 5 hours left of the day, once we'd taken out dinner and language study, and since it was fast Sunday tomorrow and we started our fasts right after lunch, we just decided we'd go out for the 5 hours and try to give our best and come in during the later hours cause here in Europe, it's really hard to knock on doors after 8. I don't know if I've ever been let in after 8. So we went and did that. We made our way out and we went contacting. Lately I've noticed that I'm getting really lazy at my contacting and I'm not really talking to everyone that I can and that I'm just slacking off a bit, but today I made myself! While we were walking and talking, I was trying to stop everyone. It was good and we had some interesting conversations with people, but still there was nothing that happened. It's a little bit of a bummer to stand and talk to people for a while but then have to walk away with nothing out of it. But such is life. We then decided that it was time to get out and go porting and we felt like we needed to go up to this neighborhood up by the church, so we hopped on a bus and went out porting for a couple of hours. It went fine, I mean not a ton of people answered their doors, but the funniest part was about a half hour before we left. We were just walking and all of the sudden it started to POUR. Like I don't mean rain, I mean POUR. So we decided we'd run back to the bus stop for a minute and wait out the rain. We ended up waiting under the bus stop for the whole 30 minutes and the rain continued to POUR for the rest of the night. Haha even by the time we got into bed, it was still pouring.
 
DIMANCHE
TODAY WAS SUCH A GOOD DAY. DID YOU ALL KNOW THAT I LOVE THE ROYERS?! Just in case you didn't know that, I do. For those of you who don't remember, the Royers are the family from Metz, the reason I was sent there, I have no doubt in my mind. I have been emailing back and forth with Gilles for my whole mission and a couple of weeks ago, he told me that they were planning to come and see me once more before I left for home. Since we didn't know what transfers were going to do to us, they decided to come here to Namur and pay me one last visit, and I am SO HAPPY that they did. It was like being home, not going to lie. They are family. My literal French family. I'm so happy that I got to see them again! Anyway their visit this week was honestly the highlight of my week. All the other days this week pale in comparison. So we got up this morning and I was sure to not miss the bus! Haha missing the bus would have resulted in our tardiness to church and I wasn't gonna do that on the day that I had some special visitors;) we got to the chapel and we started welcoming people in when the Royers pulled in! We sat at the doorway and talked for a while and it was super good to see them again. We then headed into the chapel and started sacrament meeting. Because last week was the conference with all those leaders from the church, we had fast Sunday, which meant that since next week is stake conference and I'm probably going to be transferred, this Sunday was most likely my last Sunday in Namur:( so for fast and testimony meeting I got up and bore my testimony and told them how lucky I was as a missionary to be here with them during these last 6 months and how lucky I was to know why Heavenly Father needed me here, and I held it all together!! I was pretty proud of myself to be honest lol. Anyway we had the rest of the meetings and they went well and then the Royers had brought some food for us all to eat and so got the food and we went into the little side room and we all just sat and talked and it was so good to just sit and catch up!! There is so much going on in life that it was weird to see what they knew and didn't know and the same for me. We were able to sit and talk for a good 1 1/2 hours and just make jokes and talk. It was fun cause they were saying how when I was in Metz I couldn't speak, better yet make jokes, but now I was able to make jokes and defend myself and all that. Haha it was so good. When we had finished up we went and we hopped in the car and they gave us a ride home and we were able to sit at our apartment and say goodbye and give some last hugs. I can't believe that this could have been the last time I see them for a whole year again! That will be hard, but it will be so good to see them again! Anyway when we finished up with them, we went inside and as we got inside it legit began to rain again! Like POUR! And so we decided that it was a good time to take our 12 week studies. When we'd finished that up, we went out and contacted for the rest of the night and it was off and on rain, so there weren't a ton of people outside, but we did the work anyway! I couldn't think of a better way to end the week! Honestly it was the greatest. I am so blessed.
 
Eh voilà! Merci d'avoir lu mes expériences de cette semaine! J'espère que vous l'avez aimé. Comme j'ai dit, ce n'est pas la peine à perdre les lettres et colis, alors s'il vous plaît, arrêtez de les envoyez! J'aime bien quand je les reçois, mais je rentre bientôt alors vous pouvez venir me voir dans quelques semaines:) j'espère que vous allez bien et que cette semaine, ça ira pour vous. Je vous aime!!! À bientôt!  (Well this is it! Thanks for reading my experiences of this week! I hope you liked it. As I said, it is not worth to lose the letters and parcels, so please, stop sending them! I like when I get them, but I get home soon so you can come and see me in a few weeks :) I hope you are well and this week, all my work will be for you. I love you! See you again!)
 
Elder Libby
 
 
 

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