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!)

 

LUNDI SOIR 

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 🏻 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

 

 

 

WEEK 94

Salut à tous! Cette semaine c'était la semaine des grèves.....sérieusement. C'était horrible. On n'a pas pu faire grande choses à cause des grèves. On a marché par tout, et c'est aujourd'hui, la première fois que j'ai vu le soleil toute la semaine. Et il fait chaud!! Ça me rappel de l'année dernière....WOW. Neamoins, nous avons essayé quand même de travaillér notre mieux! J'espère que vous l'aimez:) (Hi all! This week was the week of strikes... seriously. It was horrible. We could not do great things because of the strikes. We walked all the days, and today is the first time I saw the Sun throughout the week. And it's hot! Reminds me of last year... WOW. Nevertheless, we tried to give even our best work! I hope you like it :)

 

LUNDI SOIR

Well tonight we had family night and because there is a strike going on, we didn't even leave the church after emails, we just stayed there and had family night. Soeur Mazy shared a lesson tonight that was on looking at the glass half full, an article I guess just recently given by Uchtdorf and it was super good. She said that life for her recently had been super hard and she's been looking at everything super negatively, but when she read this, she decided to start looking at and for the good in everything. It was super good. We also played ping pong and ended the night coming home with Chung. 

 

MARDI

Well we'd heard that the grève of the buses was supposed to be yesterday, and so because of that, we didn't do our grocery shopping yesterday cause we wanted to have a bus to be able to bring our groceries home. But we woke up this morning to no buses and no trains. And the grocery store was 2 km away.....so what did we do? WE WALKED! Stupid grèves....we got up and had our studies and then after we had finished with those, we went and made our way to the grocery store. Since it was 2 km away, it took us about an half and a half to go there, shop and make our way home. It was a little annoying. But we have to make do with the situations that come our way! So when we finally got home, we took lunch and then we headed out to go and try to renew our bus passes, but as soon as we got to the place to do that, we remembered that they were on grève as well...so we couldn't even renew our bus passes. So since they were on grève, and they said not all lines were canceled, only some, we decided that since we had a rdv with Wilmy and Allisson tonight and the trains weren't running, our only option/hope of being able to get to their house tonight was to take a bus. So we trucked our way all the way up to the church. Haha let me tell you that that was not just an around the corner trip from the gare! It legit took us just about an hour to there. It was a fun time let me tell you. Nothing better than trucking along in the rain all the way uphill. Good times:) so we finally got to the church and we got to the computer and looked up bus times and it told us that all other buses that we could take to their house were canceled, but it didn't say anything on the bus that we wanted to take, so we kind of just assumed that it was going to be still running. So by this time, we had about an hour and 20 minutes until the bus was supposed to leave, so we started to make our way to our house so that we could get something in our systems and then we made it to the gare. We got to the bus gare and we were just sitting there waiting and all of the sudden the phone rang, so we answered and it was Wilmy saying that we shouldn't worry about coming to their house tonight and that we could just move the rdv to Thursday when the grève should be over. So we changed plans and to end the night, we went to this little area and we ported until it was time to go inside for language study and dinner. We weren't able to do a ton of stuff today and that's cause of the stupid buses! Who knew we depended on them so much! Lol but we did what we could to make our time efficient

 

MERCREDI

So today we were really hoping that the grèves were over. But because life isn't that easy and because it would make too much sense for the grève to just end, they were still going on haha....bummer deal huh? We had to go another day with no transportation! But it's ok. Maybe this is how I'm gonna lose all my weight?? Having no choice but to walk?;) we got up this morning, and because of the grèves, our district leader was able to get permission from president Babin to have a skype district meeting. So we weren't aware that the grève was still going on, so we decided to get up and head to the bus place and try to renew our passes, but we got there and saw that the grève had prolonged, which is making us think that it's gonna be going on for at least a few more days... So from there we went and had to do the same thing as yesterday and walk all the way up that huge hill back to the chapel. Haha it was not a quick walk either. But we survived and sooner or later we made it. Just in the nick of time too! Just as we were walking in the doors to the chapel, I got a phone call from elder dudfield asking me what my skype info was so that he could call and get us on. So we got in and we talked about becoming a unified district today. We fixed goals on how we can become better unified and it was interesting cause not that I don't love my district but like haha we see each other once a week, if that. Is there a ton more that we can do?? Maybe it's just my pessimistic viewpoint on things idk but whatever. When we finished we made our way all the way back to the apartment and then took lunch and then we went out into the pouring rain and contacted. Which isn't the greatest thing to do in the rain cause surprisingly, not a whole lot of people love to get stopped in the rain and talk to random people and get soaked lol. So it was interesting. The weather has been nasty rainy all week so far and we haven't seen a ton of success. But we got a call from Braine telling us that they were on their way to Namur, cause they needed their phone haha so they'd been waiting for trains ever since the end of district meeting. So we went in for dinner and language study and just as we were about to leave, they showed up for their phone, cause they left it last week when they brought us here. We left and made our way to the Badoux's house so that we could go to our rdv with Bernard and Claude that we met last week! The older couple! It was nice but tonight they turned out to be just that, nice. It was kind of a bummer when we had a member with us, we shared a good hour together, we were able to teach the entire restoration, and then they told us they were pretty busy and they'd 'call us' when they had time to see us again. So that was a bit of a let down, but we left them with our testimonies and a Book of Mormon and then we headed out and made our way home for the night.

 

JEUDI

Well today was just another day in paradise haha. And by that, I mean we STILL were on grève and there were little to no trains, but however we were lucky enough to have caught a train going to a rdv tonight. So that was a blessing! We got up this morning and had studies and then when they had finished we went and contacted. We decided that since we had that rdv tonight that got changed from Tuesday to Thursday that we'd go to the gare and look at train times and see if any of them were running. So there were some trains running, and when I say that, I literally mean just some haha not a ton at all were going, but there were no buses at all. So that just meant that today was going to be another walking day for these 2 missionaries in Namur! It's really sad, cause without the buses and trains, we really feel like we can't get a lot done, because of the fact that we have to walk everywhere, and to be able to do things in a timely matter, that means that we can't do a ton of contacting, cause we have to make sure we are on time. So since the gare couldn't give us any information on the things that we needed, we decided to make our way to the church and see if there was anything on the website. So off we went and we contacted who we could, but there wasn't anything really that happened. When we got up there, we got online and all the website told us, was that the grève was still going and that there wasn't really any predictions on what was working and what wasn't. It was a pain. The church isn't exactly around the corner! So it takes some time to get up there and back haha but anyway, when we'd finished we left and we started to contact and we just walked around til we needed to go into dinner and language study. When we had finished with those we went and headed to the gare and just as we got to the gare a train came up going exactly where we needed to go! #blessings!! So we went and caught that bad boy up to Allisson and Wilmy's place. For some odd reason, I don't know why, they don't like to come and get us from the gare. They like us to walk to their house which is a good 20 minute walk and so while we were going, we made the best of it. And how?? There was a speedometer and we decided to see if it could read elder Anderson running, just like Michael Scott on the Office. And it did! Haha elder Anderson ran past it at 25 km/hr! Haha it was one of the greatest moments of the week haha then we found a field of sheep and had to take some candid selfies and videos with them. When we got to their house we had a good lesson with them on the priesthood and it went well! We think Wilmy is interested in getting the priesthood so we tried to base the lesson on him tonight. It was a good one. We then were offered a ride home in Allisson's new convertible! Haha it was a fun ride.

 

VENDREDI

Today was one of the most productive days that we've had all week! But I feel like I don't have a ton to share because of the fact that it was weekly planning. We didn't get to finish cause we had a rdv with the girl that we met last week named Christine! It was an awesome rdv and I've got myself a new friend. Haha she seems really cool and it is going to be interesting to see how she progresses in the gospel. We got up this morning and we had some studies and then we finished by heading out the door to go contacting, but as we were walking out, I looked at my bedside table and remembered that I had received a little care package from mom this week and she'd sent me a little present for Emmanuel and Claudette. So I felt like we needed to call them and ask if we could stop by and see them for a minute so that I could give them the little present from Karin. So we called and luckily, they were both home! So they told us we could come over really quick and give them the present. The 'quick' visit that we wanted to have this morning turned into a 2 hour discussion haha! It was so good to talk to them again. They are doing great. They are both so humble and so thankful that God has blessed them with the opportunity to have the gospel in their lives, and that they have been able to find jobs to take care of their family. But just like everyone else, they have their problems and they've asked us to keep praying for them so that they will be able to keep away from Satan's lies and temptations. They need the strength, just like us all:) so keep praying for them, ok?? After we finished up with them, we headed home and we took lunch and then after that, we started up our weekly planning. We weren't able to get a whole lot done cause we had to leave in the middle of it to find Christine's house! We were supposed to be having it at the church, but because of the grève, we had to change and so we got to her house and she let us right in and we went up and things just seemed to click! We were able to talk to her all about school and how it's going and she was able to open up to us and tell us more about her religious situation and about what really happened with her sister and we shared with her the plan of salvation and she kept asking questions like, so there is only good here? And, this is so much different than anything I've ever been told! She then invited us back over TWICE next week! It was a blessing! We finished up and headed home for dinner and then got all our stuff ready for the youth night and went and headed up to the church. When we for up there, we found that the normal members that take care of it, weren't there tonight and they'd forgotten to tell the new ones that he'd invited the missionaries haha so it was just a little less than awkward. We helped make the hamburgers and then ate with them all while hanging with the members which is always a blast, especially in this ward!! I also got an iMessage from my mom today telling me that the test results from the CAT scan of my dad came back clean and that he is CANCERFREE!!!! It was amazing to hear. To all who don't know or question it, #FASTINGWORKS. Our Heavenly Father loves and blesses us!!

 

SAMEDI

So today was also pretty chilled and laid back. I'm happy to announce that the grèves seem to be coming to an end!!!!! There are some buses that seemed to be running today and we stopped by the gare cause we needed a train today, and there were so many that were running!!! That made our day pretty great already. So we got up this morning and we studied and then made our way out to go contacting. We finally got a street lesson today! And that was great cause it was the first one we got all week haha. We also were walking and happened to walk past the place where we are supposed to renew our bus passes and it was open! So we went and renewed them and saw that some bus lines were running! I'm not gonna lie, I felt so free! I was like, FINALLY!!! Lol we then went and crossed the street and checked the trains and there were a ton running. The reason we needed a train today is because last Sunday, they announced that there was a multi-stake conference that would be happening this Sunday, and since Namur doesn't have satellite, we needed to go to a different building. And something that made me ever more sad, is the fact that we'd asked s few members for a ride Sunday morning, but they all told us they weren't going:( so that meant that we needed to go in tonight and lose some time working, so that we could get to another missionary apartment for our Sunday meetings. Anyway, when we found out that we'd be able to get a train tonight to get into Braine, we left and got some frites and then headed home for lunch. After lunch we restarted our weekly planning and got it all finished up. We were planning for some lessons and for the first time, I think ever, if not in a really long time, I felt like I legit got some ideas from the spirit on how to legit teach someone. It honestly was a super cool experience! Maybe it's just been a while, but it was super cool to be able to feel that way. When we finished planning, we took language study and dinner and then we got all packed up and headed out to go and catch a train into Braine and spend the night. Missionary sleepovers are always the greatest;) when we got into Braine we walked to the apartment and then ended the night with some late night stories

 

DIMANCHE

Well we woke up this morning not really knowing what was going on for this conference type thing we were supposed to be having. None of us even knew about it until last week when they announced it in sacrament meeting. So none the less, we got up this morning and we all got ready and ate and then headed out to go to church. We got there and everyone started showing up but sadly there were no members from Namur that came:( I was a little sad but whatever. What do you do?? When the time came to start the meetings, we all gathered together and started the broadcast, which was pretty much made up of the best general authorities EVER! We heard from Patrick Kearon (my BFF), Bonnie L Oscarson (another personal acquaintance;) ), Gerald Causée (who I'm going to go find after my mission to speak French to!), and D Todd Christofferson (whom I personally have no personal connection with....but still!) can you even believe how awesome this conference was?! I had a lot of favorite talks and insights from them all, but I want to share the one that had the most meaning to me today. It almost brought me to tears, the spirit was so strong!! Gérald Causée talked all about temples. Obviously, because he's French, lucky guy, he spoke on the temple in Paris. He mentioned how it was a dream for him to move to Utah and have the Draper Temple just out his window, when in France he had to drive, sometimes 2 days just to get to a temple. He said they had visitors from France with them recently and that during breakfast, they stood up, looked out the window, saw the temple, and when they turned back, had tears in their eyes and said, 'Do you know just how lucky you really are?' He talked about the chance we have of receiving more temples on the earth today. He told us he NEVER wanted us to take for granted the temple and that it should always be a blessing for us to just SEE them. And that's when it hit me. I'm supposed to work at the temple when I get home. I know the Lord wants me there. I'm excited to be able to do it! He went on to talking about families and the importance of the family in temples and how when we focus and try to live our temple covenants, our family becomes stronger and more important. But then he made the inverse comment, of when we focus on our families and have the spirit continually with us to guide us, our temple covenants become stronger and more important. He told us that when life gets hard, when we want to give up, and when we think we can't do anymore, think of our families. Do better for them. Cause the blessings of the temple will only bless us. During his talk, I reached into my bag and pulled out my temple recommend and just held it. I was on the verge of tears! (I think missions turn you into a bigger bawl baby to be honest haha I'm so emotional. LIKE ALL THE TIME.) it was such a powerful talk and I'm hoping to be able to find it online sometime soon! Then there is a member in the Nivelles ward who designs swimming pools and has hoodies for his business and the other week, the elders were wearing them and I asked if I could buy one from him and they asked and he said he'd just give me one!! So after the meetings, he gave me a hoodie!!! I love it! Then we went and got to the gare to catch trains home. So when we finally got home, we went and got changed and were taking lunch when the phone buzzed and it was Romuald texting us and canceling on the rdv for tonight....so that was a bummer! We then spent the rest of the afternoon contacting until we came in and did our paperwork for Chung. But as we were outside walking around and about to come in for the night, we heard a familiar ring which just happened to be the ice cream truck! So we ran down like little kids and got us some ice cream for the walk back to the apartment. I ended the night with a quick phone call to the Delsyppers and it was super good to hear from them cause it had been a while since we'd talked!

 

Comme je vous ai dit, les grèves cette semaine m'ont tué! Je ne peux même pas croire combien il y en avait! Mais bon, espérons que nous avons fini avec tout ça et nous pouvons travailler dans la paix! J'ai appris que nous avons tant de choses dans la vie que nous avons besoin, et nous ne réalisons pas combien nous les avons besoins jusqu'au moment qu'elles sont parties. Alors cette semaine je vous encourage à chérir tous dans votre vie. Le soleil, vos voitures, votre AC! Ils sont tous les bénédictions d'un père aimant. A la prochaine!!  (As I told you, the transportation strikes this week have killed me! I can't even believe how many there are! But hey, I hope that we end with all this and in this city, we can work in peace! I learned that we have so many things in life that we need, and we do not realize how much we need until such time that they are taken from us. So this week I encourage you to cherish all your life. The Sun, your cars, your AC! They are all the blessings of a loving father. Ahh next week!)

 

Elder Libby

 

 

 

 

 

 

WEEK 93

BAH! Cette semaine. Elle est déjà finie?! C'est bizarre que j'ai moins que 9 semaines qui reste en mission. Pour vous dire, j'ai bien reçu mon recommandation pour aller au temple!!! Ça veut dire qu'il faut qu j'y aille bientôt! Je suis impatient d'y retourner. Je vais vous dire tout d'abord, je n'ai pas pris beaucoup des photos cette semaine. Il me semble qu'il n'y avait pas beaucoup qui s'est passé...alors désolé pour le manque des photos! J'espère que vous aimeriez mes expériences de cette semaine quand-même! (BAH! This week. It is already over? It's weird that I have less than 9 weeks remaining on my mission. To tell you, I have renewed my recommend to go to the temple! I will need it, as I go there soon! I'm eager to go back. I'll tell you first of all, I did not take many pictures this week. It seems to me that there was not much that has happened... so sorry for the lack of photos! I hope that you would like my experiences this week anyway!)

 

LUNDI SOIR

So we were asked to give the spiritual thought tonight and elder Anderson told me that  he felt like we needed to give it on the spirit. So we went in not exactly knowing how we were going to be doing it, but we knew that the spirit would take over. We went in and just started and immediately the tone in the room changed, and we were prompted to start talking on learning by the spirit and how it happens. It was so cool! The lesson went great and we were able to answer questions from Allisson who is kind of less active. It was an amazing lesson.

 

MARDI

So I kid you not, nothing happened today. Haha there was nothing really cool or anything super life changing happened. We were able to go contacting and we were able to teach a lesson to this super cool lady, but the only problem was that I asked her, TWICE, if it interested her to maybe meet up again and talk a little bit more and both times she hurried and changed the subject and started to talk about something else. GAH. ITS SO FRUSTRATING SOMETIMES. Not that I want to control everyone, but I just wish that sometimes people would say yes. Gah. So this morning when we woke up we made our way to studies and then when we went out contacting and we found a few new fun stores that we'd heard about from other missionaries but never been to so we are going to have to try those, then we contacted the really cool lady, which now looking back on it was a super cool experience cause she was like one of the only people outside at the time! Haha we then went and made our way in for lunch and then since yesterday at the chapel they were replacing the carpet (oh ya minor detail haha) and because we heard that the power at the Liège chapel was out, and we were supposed to be having zone conference there tomorrow, we decided to go up and check to see how the carpet was coming along and if there was power in our chapel in case we all needed to come here. So all was going well there and spoiler, we didn't have to come to Namur for zone conference. So after we just contacted and walked around until it was time to make our way in for language study. When we'd had language study, we then needed to make our way to the gare so that we could pick up the elders from Charleroi cause they were going to be spending the night with us. So we got to the gare and while we were waiting I noticed this group of guys just sitting there and speaking English and so I asked where they were from and they were from England! With their stylish English accents and sounding all cool and stuff haha they told us that they were on an athletics team and that they were all runners. Come to find out that they were on the English National Team and they will be trying out for the olympics in just a few weeks!!! I thought that was so cool! I told them I swam for 10 years before my mission and they were asking some questions about that and if I went Pro or not;) HA. They didn't really ask about our message when we told them we were missionaries and then their ride got in and they left. So imma be watching for them during the olympics!! Then Charleroi came in and we headed home and ate some dinner and ended the night with some jungle speed.

 

MERCREDI

Today was zone conference and it was my last one for my entire mission....haha wow just writing that is super weird! My last one...wow. We were all under the impression that I was going to be giving my 'dying testimony' today but for one reason or another, it didn't end up happening and I will be doing it next transfer in a smaller conference. Which is ok with me;) I don't need to talk in front of a billion people that I don't know, twice;) just kidding. My homecoming won't be only people I don't know. Haha! We got up this morning and we went and made our way to the gare to make our train to get in bright and early to Liège. We got on the train and during the train I was reading this newspaper that I found and it was saying that Christopher Nolan is making a movie about Dunkerque and the huge battle that went on there during world war 2 and as I read it I was like, wow haha who'd wanna go see a movie about that?;) but at the same time I was all, DANG! I lived there for 6 months! That'll be cool to see! I'm wondering if he's gonna be going in and using the real monuments and stuff. It'll be cool to see. Then we got to the gare and met up with the other missionaries and we got to the chapel. We had some super cool formations today and a big theme today was being bold. Being bold in our callings, being bold in our work, being bold. It was cool to hear all the different formations given to us that made me realize how much I need to be more confident. I especially liked the comments from Soeur Babin and how she was encouraging us to persevere and not give up on ourselves or on people. She was telling us that we need to be sure to let people know our purpose and why we are here. It was a good formation! She even teared up a little bit, which made it even that much more powerful! We were sitting eating lunch when elder slaughter came over to me and told me of some of the things that my mother has been posting on Facebook......haha let me tell you I need to have a talk with her!;) He was telling me how much fun it has been to be friends with her and be able to communicate the way that they have. His wife was also ecstatic when I said that we would come back and see them after my mission. Haha after all of that, I had a meeting for the missionaries who are going home in the next 12 weeks, and we talked about putting our faith in the lord to direct our paths. It was good! Then I had the chance to meet with president Babin and get a new temple recommend. It was so amazing to sit with him and talk about it. He is such an amazing man and I've absolutely loved working with him for the past 2 years. After all that, we went and caught a bus to get to the gare to make it home. It was a long day there!! When we got home we had about 20 minutes left to work so we just made a few phone calls and called it a night.

 

JEUDI

So tonight made me super happy! I honestly felt like today was the most productive day that I've had in a while. We saw some really cool miracles that made me realize that Heavenly Father watches over us. I was a little depressed about today, not going to lie, cause it was a finding day all day long, but by the end I was sure thankful for the chance that I got to go and find people. We got up this morning and we had our studies and then once we finished we headed out the door. We were supposed to be meeting up with Patrick for lunch, but he called last minute and canceled cause he had too much work. So we just filled out morning with some contacting and it was hot and I was sweaty and I wanted to go inside, but as I was thinking all these thoughts, I all of the sudden thought of the Sisters formation yesterday in zone conference. They talked about handing out book of Mormons and how we should be holding them in our hands as we are walking, and do it with a smile. So I pulled out my Book of Mormon and that's when I put my smile on and God put Christine in our path! We started to talk and she told us how her sister recently passed away and how she was confused by it cause she was in perfect health and how she was a little skeptical on the existence of a god because of it. So I all of the sudden thought to share Alma 40:11-12 which talks about the state of the soul between death and the resurrection, so I pulled that out in the Book of Mormon I was holding and shared it with her and she looked at me and said, 'that is beautiful. I hope that is true!' We gave her the Book of Mormon and we will be meeting with her next Friday at the chapel to explain more! It was incredible! We then went and got some frites for lunch and headed inside to eat. After lunch, we had about 2 hours left of work cause we were supposed to be having a rdv with Wilmy and Allisson, so we went out and contacted. During that time nothing too amazing happened, but we were able to talk to a couple people! Then we came inside and took dinner and language study and then we were just about to head out to catch our train to their place when the phone rang. It was Allisson and she was telling us that they had to cancel and I didn't really understand exactly the reason, but it was ok. We then decided to go out porting. We made it to a neighborhood that we had never been to and we started to knock and of course there were grumpy people telling us that we should only come back if we ever have anything important to say, so to that we say, this is important! Haha but we knocked on a door and Claude answered! Her and her husband, Bernard, are an older couple that have been to Salt Lake City a few times but didn't know a ton about us. So they invited us in, gave us some apple juice and we began teaching them very simply the restoration. When we were about to finish, we asked them if they'd be interested in ever coming to our church and they said.....YES! You all need to take a minute and realize just how miraculous this actually is. Old people here are all so stubborn and always say that they are too old to change. But these two were like why not! Maybe we'll like it! They said that this Sunday was impossible but that they would definitely come, and they seemed really interested in the BBQ that we are having in July. So when we were about to leave, they told us we could come back next week and then Claude mentions, 'If you have any friends you want to bring with you, please do!' So we left them with a prayer and called up the Badoux's and asked if they would be able to come and they said yes! We are going to see Bernard and Claude next week as week as well. It was a great day!!!

 

VENDREDI

Well today was just a normal day in the craziest place ever. Haha no Namur isn't that crazy, but it does seem like there is always something going on. Today we found out that there is a grève (strike) going on with the trains, and it is very possible that it could be going on until next Tuesday. Ahhhhh. So the reason that this is annoying is because we were supposed to be going into Nivelles tomorrow morning to have a finding day with the district there and with the trains not running, it is literally impossible for us to get there. So anyway, we got up this morning and we had our studies and then we got ready and headed outside and walked around and contacted. Today there was not the crazy amazing success like we had yesterday, cause people are just too busy sometimes haha it's sad really. But the sun was out and I was cooking a bit and all I know is it was hot and there was some sweat in places I shouldn't be sweating. Haha! We got in to eat lunch and during lunch, we got a phone call from our district leader telling us about the grève and so we decided we'd go and see if it'd be best for us to go in tonight to Nivelles but when we got to the gare, the lady told us that it would be impossible for us to get from Namur to Nivelles. She said that getting to Brussels was maybe possible, but Nivelles would not be possible until Tuesday at the earliest. So we called the district leader and told him and said we'd do what we could to get to Brussels and then Braine could come and get us with their car. So we left the gare and headed home to weekly plan, which was awesome today cause for the first time in forever, we had more than just one person to plan for!!! #tendermercies When we'd finished that up we took language study and dinner and then decided we'd pack our bags and head up to the church where we could get on the computer and look to see if there were any updates on train times to see if we could get to Brussels. So we got there and the site was no help, but we went and hopped on the next bus to the gare and decided we'd wait til there was a train going into Brussels, cause it only made sense that if there are trains running, there would be one to Brussels. When we got there we sat and waited and all of the sudden, a random train came on the board that was going to this little village in the middle of the ward boundaries for Nivelles! So we called up Braine, and said come and get us and we went and caught out train to Ottignies! When we got on the train, the controller came and looked at our tickets and we got into a nice conversation with her about the grève and she explained to us that it happens just because people aren't happy with anything. She said they all are just unhappy with their job, so they strike against everything and just don't show up to work. She said it bothers her, cause they accepted the job so they should work and that she was ok with it and she decided to come to work, cause she knows people depended on the trains. It was good to have someone that caring about others stop and talk to us. She then told us she wasn't sure if we'd be able to catch a train tomorrow back to Namur.....haha😬😬 when the guys from Braine picked us up we just headed to their apartment and finished the night off with some frites and talking;)

 

SAMEDI

Well today went alright for the most part! We were able to make it back to Namur! Haha they had to drive us home from Braine, but that's ok! We had a good finding day there and we were able to help. At least I hope so! Haha we got up this morning and we went and made our way to the chapel to start off our finding day. We got there and all the members that were coming to help showed up and we started out. We all got our specific tasks on what to do and where to go and then left and went downtown. They had planned to have a table that was going to be holding a big Book of Mormon and all this stuff and so we got there and started to set it up and this guy that owned the store right behind the place we were doing it came out and told us that we weren't allowed to do it haha so we moved across the street and then the officials for the city market came and told us that unless we had official papers saying that we could do this from the city, that we weren't allowed to do it. So we just left and went contacting around the city instead! It went well! We were able to give a Book of Mormon to a guy and talk to a bunch of people. I went on an exchange with this member from Nivelles and he was BOLD! Haha like legit he was telling people that would say they weren't interested, 'Oh, is it because you saw Jesus Christ written on my friends badge?!' I was just like DUDE!! You go! Haha I have always wanted to do that, but because I wear that badge, I'm not exactly allowed to talk to people like that haha! Anyway, we finished and made our way back to the chapel to finish off the day with the members and then we all sat and ate as missionaries and while eating we decided we would go and check to see if the grève had finished or if there were any updates online and so we did and there was nothing and they were saying that since it was Saturday they were already less than normal but then with the grève they were just almost not running at all. So we were a little worried that we were going to have no way home, but we called the mission office and explained the problem, and they gave us permission to have the elders from Braine give us a ride home in their car and so we went and finished off our day with those guys and then we headed back to Namur! It was a fun car ride. It's not everyday that I get to ride in the car and so I take advantage when I can, cause I just love driving and I can't wait for that again!! Anyway, when we got home, they had to use the bathroom and so they came in and we talked for a little and then they left and we went and made our way to our rdv with Romuald, his son and Dydy. It was a super great rdv and they'd even read the restoration brochure and were super ready to learn more about the Book of Mormon which was awesome cause that was exactly what we were going to talk about. We explained the story of the Book of Mormon and gave them each one and they told us they were going to start reading and praying about it!! So when we left, we had a couple missed calls and it was Braine from their France phone number and they were telling us that they'd lost their Belgium phone and wanted to know if it was in our apartment, and so we got home and found it....and the next time we see them is next Wednesday! Haha😬😬 looks like they're just without a phone....

 

DIMANCHE

Well today was pretty slow. Because of the nasty weather, we weren't able to do a ton and it was a bit of a bummer haha but that happens. We needed to improvise and do something else to be effective with our time. But in other words, church today was great. We got up and got all ready and made our way out to catch the bus and right when we got out of the apartment building and the bus passed right before us....haha we are super good at missing that bus!! So anyway we started walking and we got to this hill that we have to go up to get to the church and I always do fine until the hill and then just like usual, I died haha I was so hot! Anyway, when we got up to the top of the hill, when all of the sudden heard a horn and turned to see the Badoux's who offered us a ride the rest of the way! So we got in and because our hearts were pumping and we were all warmed up, we started to fog up the windows in their car lol! We got to church and had a good day there. Right after sacrament meeting, Soeur Halushka came up to me and told me that she had been thinking me a lot this week and she wanted to know how much dad was doing and that she has been thinking and praying a lot for my family, and that (selfishly) she's praying that I will stay here in Namur for my last transfer;) she is such a cute lady. Anyway, the rest of the meetings were really good as well. We had Romuald and his son that came to all 3 hours of church and let me tell you haha he LOVES to talk. It was an interesting couple of hours. But he seems to be super interested in what we have to say and so we'll see where those interests take us! After all the meetings, we were talking with the Mazy's and they told us that they had some bottles full of water for us, and they wanted to take us home so that we could take in the water with us. So we got in the car and they took us home and we got our water into apartment and we had lunch. After we'd finished up with lunch, we did our studies for 12 week and then we were about to go outside, but from the time we'd left the church to come home all the way up til now, it had been pouring rain and there was nobody outside so we started to work on the area book. We were writing down things in papers and making some phone calls and all that fun stuff trying to wait out the rain, but by the time we knew it, it was already time to come in for the night. So we finished out the night with some last few papers and cleaning up our apartment.

 

On nous a dit qu'il y aura une grève encore aujourd'hui et avec la pluie, on a reste dans l'appartement encore toute la matinée. Alors nous pouvons dire que nous n'aurons pas une sécheresse cette année-ci en Belgique! Pour vous dire, je vais bien. Le seigneur me protège. Il écoute à mes prières, et il me surveille. Merci pour votre tendresse envers moi et ma famille. J'espère que cette semaine, vous passeriez les bonnes expériences, et que vous aurez l'esprit avec vous! Je vous aime!  (We were told that there will be a strike today and with the rain, we remain in the apartment all morning. We can say that we will not have a drought this year in Belgium! To tell you, I'm fine. The Lord protects me. He listens to my prayers, and hears me. Thank you for your tenderness towards me and my family. I hope that this week, you would pass along good experiences, and you'll have the spirit with you! I love you!)

 

Elder Libby

 

 

WEEK 92

Pour commencer aujourd'hui, j'aimerais bien vous remercier pour vos prières! Cette semaine j'avais un peu dure de persévérer lol. Il y avait pleine des fois quand je voulais arrêter, mais mon collègue était inspiré de me rassurer de tout les bénédictions que l'on voyait. Alors merci pour votre confiance en nous! Et merci pour vos prières d'emmener les bénédictions envers nous. J'étais fortement touché cette semaine par votre foi! J'ai bien reçu mon itinéraire pour rentrer chez moi cette semaine aussi! Alors ça c'est chouette aussi! Cette semaine qui vient, je vais avoir l'occasion de renouveler mon recommandation pour le temple. Et j'ai hâte pour cet entretien avec Président Babin. Déjà ça fait 2 ans que je suis allé au temple....WOW!! 

(To start today, I'd love to thank you for your prayers! This week I found it a little hard to persevere lol. It was full of times when I wanted to stop, but my colleague was inspired to reassure me of all the blessings that we saw. So thank you for your confidence in us! And thank you for your prayers to bring blessings to us. I was strongly affected this week by your faith! I received a copy of my itinerary to go home this week! So it's good also! Coming up this week, I'll have the opportunity to renew my temple recommend. And I look forward to this interview with President Babin. Already it's been 2 years since I went to the temple... WOW!)

LUNDI SOIR

So today was also another holiday here in Europe. Haha I remember from last year, almost every other day in May is a holiday and so since it was a holiday, we spent almost all of our PDAY at the church. We finished up emailing and just chilled waiting for all the members to get there for family home evening and playing around with the ping pong table and stuff. When everyone got there, we pulled out jungle speed and we played some jungle speed with some of them and Frere Mazy LOVED it haha. A little too much in my opinion! It was funny to see him playing that. We had a good lesson tonight on the importance of the hymns and how they can speak to us and Soeur Pironnet had us all go around sharing our favorite hymns. It was good:) 

 

MARDI

Well today flew. Legit it went by so fast. But days like that are good! It was such a fast day! So today we woke up this morning and we got ready and headed out the door to make it to district meeting. To be honest, we weren't really looking forward to going because we got a new district leader and we'd heard only bad things about him...so we were a little hesitant on going. He'd already told us that from now on we weren't allowed to have a meal at district meeting anymore and so we were all a little confused. His reasoning was the fact that it takes up too much time, but if you think about it, we still have to take an hour for lunch no matter what....so we had decided that we were just going to go out to eat after with the elders from Braine l'Alleud. We got in this morning and found out, after 3 transfers of me being here, we can take a train that gets us in a little bit later, but allows us to catch a bus DIRECTLY around to the church and gets us there on time for district meeting still. So we're going to start taking that one. When we caught the train, the other elders met up with us there and we all rode up together and got to the chapel in Charleroi, even before the missionaries from Charleroi got there so we had to wait for them. We just sat there quoting movies while waiting and then when they got there we went in and started. Sadly to admit, the rumors of our district leader were true....he kept mentioning how he wanted us to pretend that we were our own mission, and not pay attention to the Paris mission, but become part of the Nivelles mission.....haha he was telling us how the other district here in Belgium have 7 baptismal dates and how we only have one and how he knows we can do better, so we needed to..we were all just kind of like ok....he seems to be a 'if you don't have good statistics, you aren't a good missionary' missionary...which is sad, cause if I'd based my whole mission on that, I would be a failure haha. Anyway, once he'd finished we walked out and we headed into downtown Charleroi and found a kebab joint and sat and talked about getting married and to be honest, I felt the spirit more during my conversation with these guys in the kebab shop than I did during district meeting. Haha! It was honestly a really good conversation. Then we went and caught a train home and we went grocery shopping since it was a holiday yesterday. I love going shopping when everything is cheap! It's seriously the greatest to walk out with your bags full of stuff! Haha when we'd gotten home and dropped off our groceries, we went and contacted until we had our dinner appt. Chung, his wife and Soeur Pironnet invited us over for dinner and games tonight and so when we needed to go catch the bus, we did and we went and ate and played Yahtzee with them for the night. It was super fun! I hadn't played Yahtzee in forever! And I sucked it up and lost by like a million points but it's ok! Haha we had fun.

 

MERCREDI

So last night Meï Chung told us that she's learned to become a massage therapist and some other type of thing that has to do with that kind of stuff...lol I don't really remember the words, but she wanted some help with what she's doing. So she asked if she would be able to practice on us today, cause she wanted to practice on some people who are stressed, busy, need help yeah yeah yeah and she said the best example she could think of were the missionaries haha so we told her yes and she told us to meet her and Chung at the chapel at 11:30. So this morning we got up and we had studies and then we changed into our comfy clothes and we headed up to the chapel, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into haha when we got there, her and Chung were there setting up and we just walked in and she pulled out some yoga mats and told us to get comfortable. So we laid down and she told us that she was going to take our spirits into our consciousness and all this stuff and I was just thinking, sweet! I get a free nap lol! This is the best service ever! Haha so we started this inner journey, and I'm pretty sure that I just fell asleep but after we finished and she'd woken us up, she told me my results, and with the 'journey' we took she said she got out of it that I was definitely in the 'unconscious zone' during the session and that she found out that I had a hard childhood and that the person that was directing me throughout my journey was someone that did something bad to me as a child, and that is what is causing the most stress in my life right now. Now you're all gonna laugh at me, but the only thing I could think of was........Michael Jackson's Thriller. LOL. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW MUCH THAT SCARRED ME AS A CHILD!!!! Lol anyway. It was super weird. She said it was the first out of 3 steps...so we'll see if we do more! After that they'd brought pizza for us and so we sat and ate with them and then we got up and headed home and changed and then headed out to go contacting until language study. We were invited to the De Lauw's house tonight, but they live out in the booneys and so we had to take a train that left around 4:30 so we went out and contacted until we came in for language study. After that we went and caught our train out to the De Lauw's house and it was such a fun night! They have this big beautiful house out in the fields, just 500m from the French boundary! It was fun to be with them. They have a huge movie collection in their house and I saw it and went to go look at it and found Mean Girls and was asking them where they got it cause I'd been looking for it and Frere De Lauw goes, just take it! My present to you. HAH! I was so happy!!! So we ate with them and talked about movies and had a really fun night with them. To end the night, Frere De Lauw gave us a ride home and we were talking all about getting married during the entire ride home. It's hard for me to believe that that is going to be my next step in life....Weirddd

 

JEUDI

I'll tell you, after today was over, I was done. Haha seriously, I was just so dang tired. It was a long day. But I personally had a really cool experience today. It's after these little experiences that I know Heavenly Father really does listen to every prayer, even the ones that go unspoken. Today we got up and had our studies and then we went out and contacted our way to lunch with Patrick. That pasta is so dang good. It is going to miss me so much when I am gone!!! I love it and it makes me sad that soon I'm going to be having to give it up. Maybe they'd give a loyal customer the recipe?? I've already got the frites recipe;) get ready for some Belge frites all you Utahans!!! So lunch today was good and we had a fun time with Patrick. He keeps telling me that he is praying that after I finish in Namur, I can go die in Charleroi, so we'll have to see if his prayers for that get answered! I'm secretly hoping not cause Charleroi is not a pretty ville......lol anyway when we'd finished with him, there was a nice little breeze that was going through Namur that made it just a little bit chilly and so we made it back to the apartment and got my jacket and then we went out finding. We walked all over, we ran a couple errands, and we even talked with like everyone that we walked by, but no one wanted to stop and talk. Ok, one person sat and listened to us and took a card, but it didn't seem too promising so we'll see if anything happens. But then I was just starting to feel really down. I just wanted to someone to talk to and know that the Lord really did put them in my path, so I just started praying and singing hymns in my heart and we were walking and stopped this older lady and I felt prompted to tell her about prayer, so I did and she went on to explain how prayer means so much to her, and how grateful she was for it and how much she is thankful that the lord wants to talk with him. We talked for a good 20 minutes and then when we asked to pray with her she said yes and at the end of her prayer, she said this, and I quote, I'm very thankful you had the courage to stop me and talk to me. You did the right thing to talk to me. Thank you for what you do. I knew RIGHT then that the Lord had placed me there for her at that time. It was a cool little confirmation for me to know that Heavenly Father has a plan. He listens to prayers. And right now for some reason, he needs me and elder Anderson out all day finding. I got a (little less than) pleasing phone call from our new district leader today wondering why our numbers were so low last week and what he could do to make them higher this week. He told me he wants me to get more member present lessons and I told him that that wasn't going to be possible for the moment, cause we need investigators to be able to have those. He didn't seem to like my response haha am I sassy?? After we finished up contacting this afternoon, we went in and took dinner and language study and then went out porting in this little town outside of Namur that I'd never been to to work in. It was good tonight and we got one little lady to let us in to pray and she took our card and told us she'd call if she ever needed some service done! So this little town called Wépion just outside Namur is said to have the best strawberries in the world. While we were out porting there was a little stand and I told myself that I was going to stop and buy some on our way out and when we got there it was closed.......I was sad, but it'll happen sooner or later! Apparently they are like life changing. Haha I'll be sure to take pics of that life changing moment;)

 

VENDREDI

So today was spent mostly doing just weekly planning. Haha it wasn't too eventful and it was spent mostly in the apartment planning, but was good none the less. We got a random phone call today from a random number only to hear the voice of a familiar Frere Adams, who is a well known teacher at the MTC telling us that he was in Namur today and wanted to know if he could come and meet up with us to buy us Gaufres. He served here in Namur a good 3 years ago and so he was back for a visit. So that is always exciting when random members ask to buy you some snacks! (It's the reason why I'm gaining so much weight.......seriously I look like a blimp) anyway we got up this morning and we had our studies and then we went and contacted for the morning hours. The sun is really starting to come out and make things warm so that's always a good thing! We then passed by chez gaby and I realized that it had been maybe a week since I'd eaten frites and so we stopped and I got some frites to eat for lunch and made our way back to the apartment and ate. On our way up, I checked my email to see if I had anything and I did. I GOT MY TRAVEL PLANS! Crazy!!!! So when we got upstairs I called elder Orton to see if he'd gotten his as well and we ended up talking for a while. We then sat and planned for our new investigator that came to church last week cause we have an appt with him at a members house tomorrow and so we planned really well for that and also for the rest of the week and it went well. When we had finished we went and did some contacting to end the night and there was nothing too special about tonight that happened.

 

SAMEDI

Today was a hot and long one. Haha I was POOPED at the end of the night. Honestly, you never know how much just walking around will get you. Haha I was seriously so dang tired. But it was good none the less and elder Anderson reminded me at the end of the night, that we did see a super amazing miracle! Heavenly fathers hands were in our work today. Well like I mentioned I was pooped at the end so that tells you that just like the past month, we spent all day outside working! Haha we walked and walked and walked some more. We did however start off with some studies and then we left. As we were walking around outside, we heard a cry, 'Elders!' So we turned to look at where it was coming from and saw that it was again Frere Adams from the MTC! He hadn't left quite yet but was on his way and was so happy to find us cause he needed to call a couple last members from the ward. So we lent him our phone and we were talking to his friend who turned out to be super cool! He is going to need school to become a surgeon! So we talked a lot cause funny enough that's exactly what I want to do as well! He was super cool. They needed help getting to the Pizza Hut so that they could meet up with a member that he wanted to see one last time before he headed out and so we took them out to the Pizza Hut and then we left them and made our way in for some lunch. When we'd finished eating we made our way out into the blistering heat and we walked and talked and talked and walked and then did it again and still there is just not one person that really wants to talk to us! I don't think I'm that ugly....but I have been wrong before. We went walking on a ton of different roads that I'd never been on before and so I didn't know if they'd be good or not and it just took us to this one lookout over Namur that the Mazy's took us to once and so we sat and looked at that for a while and we even found a new area where we can go porting again sometime so that will be good! We then we're just walking and trying to navigate our way out when we found ourselves in downtown Namur, right next to the McDonald's in the heat and so we decided that we were going to stop for a mcflurry. Haha! I don't know if you all remember or not, but last year, we went to McDonald's like daily to get mcflurries cause it was just so dang hot and so this reminded me a lot of last year. We got in and got our mcflurries and then made our way home for language study. When we'd finished that up, we went and made our way to Dydy's house cause she'd told us that we could invite our new investigator Romuald, who came to church last Sunday, and we could have a lesson there with him! So we got there and not only did we have a lesson, but Dydy had gone and bought a lasagna for us to eat! It was a great night and we kind of got to know Romuald and he told us a little bit of his back story and then we taught him all the way up to Joseph Smith in the restoration and he told us that he thought it could be true, and that all he was hearing was sounding good to him. So we'll have to see how this works out with him.

 

DIMANCHE

Today went well for the most part, except for the embarrassing fact that I was just so unmotivated! Like legit all day the only thing I wanted to do was curl up in my bed and sleep. I didn't want to do anything and it took almost everything in me to just get up and get out of the apartment today. It was hard. Long story short, I am excited for Sunday naps again! Today when I first woke up I was laying in bed and for some reason, I couldn't stop thinking of dads cocoa cake haha (for those of you who don't speak Libby, cocoa cake directly translated in Libby is Coffee cake. Dad makes it for us every Sunday back at home, and every Sunday when it's fresh out of the oven we hear through the intercom in the house, 'Cocoa cake is ready when you are!' It's kind of like our bribe for getting ready haha)  but anyway I was thinking about it and decided to get up and make some. So I did! And as I was sitting there eating it I all of the sudden realized that I wasn't ready for church and I was eating the cocoa cake....haha looks like the 18 years of practice didn't really work all that well. Anywho we headed off to church once we got ready and we walked in and had a good turn out today where Romuald and his son came! So that was a bonus! We had some good meetings today and during the gospel principles class, they were all trying to figure out what lessons that they could teach that would easily go along with the lessons we teach Romuald during the week so that was awesome. I got a little worried when Frere Badoux just out of no where looks at Romuald and goes, are you ready to commit for the rest of your life to this?? I was like WOAH! We haven't even asked if he wants to be baptized yet! Haha but Romuald answered just saying he wants to know more before he makes any decisions. So that calmed me down! After all the church meetings we made our way home and got some lunch down, but the whole time we were just sitting there like ehhhh what to eat..? Haha we were just really unmotivated for some odd reason. But when we finished lunch we watched the 12 week videos that we needed to watch and then once they'd finished we forced ourselves to get dressed and up and out of the door to go and work. Haha it was hard but soon enough we were outside in the rain walking and talking. We kept getting stopped by a bunch of drunks that kept asking if we were Jehovahs witnesses and they kept asking for some money from us and all that fun stuff, so when we'd had enough of contacting, we went to the gare and caught a bus out to go porting. When we got off we just started knocking and we knocked on this one lady's door who told us she knew who we were and she already had a Book of Mormon and that she wouldn't mind if one day we came back and shared a little more! So that was cool. When the night came to an end, and it was still raining, we made our way home and did some paper work to end our night.

 

Alors j'espère que vous avez aimé mes expériences cette semaine! Il y avait pleine des hauts et aussi pleine des bas, mes en tout cas, j'ai survécu et je sais que j'ai le soutien de continuer. Alors cette semaine j'aimerais bien vous souhaiter une belle semaine, rempli de tout les bonnes choses, et j'espère vous pouvez partager votre témoignage avec au moins une personne! Ça changera votre journée. Merci pour tous ce que vous faites! Keep on keepin on yo!  (So I hope you enjoyed my experiences this week! There was full of highs and also downs, anyway, I survived and I know that I have the support to continue. So this week I would like to wish you a nice week, filled with all the good things, and I hope you can share your testimony with at least one person! It will change your day. Thank you for all that you do! Keep on keepin' on yo!)

 

Elder Libby:)