Thanksgiving chicken dinner

Well, the week is finally over. I guess we will start on Tuesday with our exchanges.

Tuesday: So we had to exchange companions for a day and I was more than a little nervous. Elder Garcia, who I would be exchanging with, might be a little strange. He is nice, kind of, but strange. We made the exchange and then it was just me and him. Immediately he just took over and started replanning everything that elder thomas and I had planned to do. It was very frustrating. The funniest thing that even happened was when he got angry at these people for calling us Jehovah's Witnesses. Man he has a temper. you just had to be there.

Wednesday: We had our lovely zone conference on Wednesday and it was just wonderful. President and Sister Poznanski are such great people. I'm very pleased to have them as our mission leaders. After the interviews and training we had a lovely Thanksgiving chicken dinner. It was about as good as thanksgiving gets in Brussels has. Even though it was only Wednesday. Then came the time for the chicken bowl. Now correct me if I'm wrong but a whole zone of missionaries playing football sounds like a recipe for disaster. I knew there was a blown knee waiting to happen. Luckily we all survived and we all ended up muddy but jovial. I tried playing quarterback without my glasses but that didn't work out as well as i hoped. i blame the people for not catching the ball. I mean i guess the worst place to hit them is in the hands isn't it? This ended and without even thinking twice me and elder thomas were on our way to tie any loose ends we had with ludovic. It went smooth as usual and he passed his interview with flying colors.

Thursday was a lovely day of course. We celebrated our American heritage with my first taste of Macdo. yuck. I payed more euros than i should have for something that was certainly sub par. Well now i will try my hand at quick and see if anything better comes from that. I sure hope it does because I was not pleased at all with the European Mcdonalds. I'm shaking my head while writing this, that's how bad it was. After some hardcore work we had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner lined up with the best family in the whole wide world. they are the curtis family and they are so awesome. It was just so much fun having another chicken dinner. ha. so much fun. When we were stuffed to the point where buttons could burst we lined up to take a picture. I was put in the most awkward situation i've had on my mission. 3 of the curtis kids tried to sit on my lap. contact with children is a very touchy subject in the rules of a missionary. We are to avoid things like holding kids and having them sit on our laps like people avoided the plague. So i threw both my hands up and showed that I could take no part in this lap sitting that was wanting to be had. it was funny and i feel bad but rules are rules you know. I am very grateful for wonderful families like them and for all the wonderful members of this wonderful church. everything is wonderful

the next to days just went. they were just days. i likened these days to the 23rd of december. it's not christmas and it's not christmas eve so you are just looking forward to all the wonderful presents that are to be had.

No worries, Sunday was certainly like Christmas. We prepared all the stuff for the baptism and i prepared my talk on top of all that. I really had so much going on that I went up there gave my talk and we soon after left the chapel. Nearly all of our investigators were at church and we also found a new one who is looking to (I'm using his words right here) "do what that guy did" that guy he is talking about is ludovic and doing what he did is called baptism. Ludovic brought his mom which was so cool. she really liked the spirit there and decided she wanted to see us and be taught. It is just so awesome seeing ludovic's testimony grow. Ah I can't even describe the feeling. I'll describe it as cake. Cake is really good. I just said cake so you could put in your mind whatever cake you want. and the best part about this cake is that it is super healthy for you. So you have this super delicious healthy cake and you just eat it, all of it, and it's that feeling when you've eaten the right amount. Ya that's how his baptism felt. It almost felt surreal. When we gave him the holy ghost it was also just such an awesome feeling. this feeling was like getting a free gps system because really that's what the holy ghost is. It's like we said, "Here Ludovic have this gps system that will guide to anywhere and tell you anything you need, oh and it's free." If we were to look at the holy ghost as some technological gift the overview would be something like this

Can tell you anything you need to know concerning your life
Can guide you to make right decisions at all times
Works as long as you have faith
Will always be there if you keep yourself worthy
Can be charged every sunday when you partake of the sacrament
Is very simple and easy to use

Wow now that does sound too good to be true doesn't it?

All joking and lame analogies aside it was one of the greatest days of my life. Just the spirit during the whole day was choice. It is something that I hope to feel a lot more in the future. ludovic is a great example to me. I'm very proud of his decision.

Just a few pictures

The Craziest week of my life, and the glory days of playing football.

Well the craziest week of my life is now over. I guess I'll start on Monday. Monday we had this lesson with Christian. Christian is a French speaker who Elder Thomas had met with once before. He has had a really hard life and loves American stuff. Anyways, we taught him a cool lesson about some of the gospel principals and in the end we committed him to baptism on the 8th of December! He works a lot so we will have to see if we can meet with him in enough time to teach him all the lessons.

Wednesday: Wednesday we had a lesson with Natacha. We brought a really cool Priest aged kid with us named Jeremie. We taught her prayer, reading the scriptures, and keeping the sabbath day holy. After our lesson Jeremie told us he now wanted to serve a mission after talking with us for so long and seeing that we were actually people. It was way cool to see that happen. After this Elder Thomas and I walked to our tram so we could finally go home (Natacha lives way far away) to our surprise there was just a van sitting in the middle of the tracks. We were both very confused at how the van got there and what they were going to do to get it off. All the sudden there comes two enormous trucks and also a garbage truck. Why the garbage truck was there I do no know, but it was so I feel the need to mention it. They pulled out these huge chains and drug the van off the tracks. The van was off the tracks and now I could see a couple, who was on the tracks, making out. Now call me crazy, but I don't think the middle of the tracks is somewhere where people should be doing that. My vision quickly turned to this man standing about 10 to 15 feet away from us. He looked super suspicious and so i gave him a little more than a glance. Turning so that I could see him from the front I saw that he had A HOOK FOR A HAND. Yes, it was true he had a hook for a hand. He was a regular Buster Bluth if I've ever seen one (any reader who knows who buster bluth is without searching it deserves a special something, so e-mail or write me and i'll send you something) Thomas doubted that he truly had a hook for a hand but we did our detective work and came to figure out that he truly did

Friday: Elder Andersen was so awesome! Ah! He really built our faith. Afterwards we were about to miss our train so we briskly walked to a train to connect to our (I like to call these trains bullet trains because they are really fast and because i can't remember the name) bullet train. We were on a metro which connected the 2 when we realized we had 9 minutes left. by the time we got off the metro we had 5. we sprinted through the train station. And by sprinted I really mean sprinted. I felt like I was back in my glory days playing football. I was juking people out left and right. They had no chance. I may have thrown a few bows here and there, but i made it to the train nonetheless. Me and Elder Thomas were the only companionship that made it. We were left with 2 other elders and a sister. the rest had to take a train at 10:00 and got home at about midnight. I think that our companionship can be deemed as most athletic in the district. Maybe we should take a new route in contacting and just challenge people to athletic competitions and if they lose they must hear every lesson from us. After that the spirit will just take over and we will have baptisms left and right. I have played the scene of me running through the station numerous times. I think I might need to drop all the baseball offers and try out football, I mean sure I'm super small and didn't play my senior year, but I can juke out standing pedestrians like nobodies business! Ha!

It's been a great week and we get to baptize ludovic in 6 days! I'm super excited! We have a turkey bowl this week and a member is feeding us thanksgiving dinner so I'm super excited. I also ate a baked potato! We have this awesome senior couple from idaho called the Okelberrys. They cooked us dinner and I ate bacon and a baked potato. They are so awesome and I am so glad to have them. I am actually e-mailing from their computer right now. I am blessed I love it I love you all I love the church
Avec Amour
Elder Oliverson

I made the NEWS!

http://www.rtl.be/videos/video/421074.aspx

I will never look at a bath robe the same.

well the longest week of my life has finally come to an end. ha it was so dang long i nearly died, i made it though just so i could write my faithful readers. i understand that people are actually reading my blog. this surprise is pleasent as well as, surprising for lack of better words. i also have come to the knowledge that oodles of people are putting their mission papers in. hooray!!! prepare yourselves and get ready to be rocked because it is surely a rude awakening. ha but i love it.

this week i had a run in with someone i now hold very dear to my heart. i dont know the least bit about her and i dont know her name, but she will always be with me. you may think im talking about a long lost love or someone i fell in love with, but that is quite the contrary. i will now tell the story of this person. porting is an act that can be compared to taking the act, or going to get your driver's license renewed. porting, or tracting as the non frenchies would call it, is going door to door and just trying to present the message of jesus christ. you see, and smell, all different types of things during this act. you get the door slams, you get the people holding off their dogs, and more often then not you get the lazy europeans speaking to you through their stupid little speaker. i am proud to say that this story involves porting and none of that stuff. we knocked on this door, and nobody answered, typical right? we began to walk away when we hear the door open and out steps a lady. the thing that was different about this lady was that she was in a bath robe, sopping wet. i honestly had no idea what to do. i just sat there and looked. she said

sorry i was having my bath what did you need.

my companion replied with typical missionary lingo

she replied. no i was having my bath and i cant see you now. but you can come back another time

this was a mixture of awesomness. yes a woman had answered the door in a bath robe and she was wet and it was weird, but she said we could come back. thats the first person who ever said they could come back. obvoiusly im more jovial than my companion about this. well i got on the computer late so thats all i can even write, i will write more next week. love you all be safe 

 

elder oliverson

It is true! I love French food!

this week has definitely been eventful. tuesday we had a rendezvous with ludovic and it went about as well as it possibly could have. by that i mean we engaged him to be baptised on the 25th of november!!! it was so cool the feeling in the room when we asked him. his friend, samuel, helps us teach him and when we asked the question and he accepted you could just feel love in the room. love that you just dont feel anywhere. ah i wish i could re create that feeling and like keep it in a stinking bottle so whenever im depressed, and im definitely depressed from time to time, and just have it. ludovic is such a cool guy. he already has a strong tesimony and knows what he has read about the book of mormon very well. he is smart enough to point out the holes in the catholic religion, thank heavens, and sees how our church truly is the church of christ. its a good feeling to have someone like him this early in the mission... who says european missionaries dont baptise? that isn't true at all!!

i love french food so much. i love being a little frenchman with my pointy shoes walking with a baggette for lunch. although the city is filthy its cool to know that we have something that definitely changes the lives of people. theres a lot of dutch people here in brussels but its mostly french for any of you who were wondering. and for all you byu fans out there reading... noah hartsock is in my ward!!! so tell rick to contact him and tell him to feed us. ha ha. the ward is split half english and french because of all the americans that live in brussels. overall its a really cool ward.

now for the stuff i find funny but my mom might find scary. so there are a lot of muslum people in my area. and by a lot i mean that you can walk for an hour and a half and only see muslums. by a lot i mean that you can look in the shops and some of the mannikans are wearing those muslum head dresses. goodness you'd think i could spell mannikan it's a stinking french word. anyways. ya there are tons of muslums. and for the longest time there was a wall spray painted by our apartment that said vive israel. if i can get my camera to work i will put up a picture of it. basically i have no fear out here. i dont know why because my french isnt quite fluent yet, but one night i just decided i wanted to take every single door we were knocking on. and i did. lots of people are lazy here in europe and like to have cameras and little speakers so they don't have to answer the door but can still speak and see the person they are talking to. i like to carry around a book of mormon now. it attracts attention on the metro and is a good follow in if we ever stop a non muslum person. which is hardly ever. so when the person turns their camera on and the light is shining in my face i usually use the bom to "block"the light. ha its really funny my trainer always tell me to stop.

ive also started speaking with young women more. i am trying very hard to not lose my ability to communicate with members of the opposite sex. usually the girls seem excited to talk to me till i tell that i have a message for them about jesus christ. then their faces fall and they just say maybe next time. ha its funny because my trainer think im bold for doing that.

nothing extremely crazy has happened. we've been working hard and having some good success. i hope to hear from everyone who reads this at one point of another.

oh wait i have one story that was pretty funny. so after the awesome baptismal date with ludovic we had this lasagna which might have been the better thing i have ever had. i was eating away and then samuel asked if i cooked well. although i though that he asked if the food was good. with a half full mouth a said loud and proud, oh oui oui tres bien. he asked oh what do you cook. at that point a realized that id make a mistake. everyone laughed at me and i just sat there and giggled along as well. ive learned that laughing at myself is the best way to go. nobody cares. everyone knows ive been in europe for 2 weeks. we also eat each with this one armed guy who looks just like perry chirstensen. minus the gold chain. he is really funny. there is a lady in the ward named souer grandfils who fed us this week. she forget the pizza was in the oven and burnt it to a crisp. she is pretty old and helps with the missionaries a lot. i love most the ward and everyone seems to love us. well have a good week i love you all and oh ya..... GO GIANTS and sv girls v-ball as well! woot woot