We went to the Eiffel Tower! Finally!

So this week has been one of the craziest thus far on the mission. Monday we just had a nice relaxed P-day oh except for the fact that we went to grand place to check out all the stuff for Noel and it started pouring. It seems that every time I go out without an umbrella I get soaked. I ended up just putting my glasses in my pocket. My hair was literally dripping on the metro. I looked like a mess, it was great.

Tuesday we went out and taught this super cool guy named Fabrice. I must admit it was one of the best lessons I've been apart of. We just testified of the truthfulness of the book of Mormon. If anyone could have felt the spirit in that room they would be changed in an instant. It really shaped my week a lot. Some times I have difficulties using some of the more complicated grammar in French. I found myself flowing and just using the subjunctive like it wasn't anybodies business. The most often used subjunctive trigger is afin que. I use it in prayer a lot but I was just talking and it made sense and I just used it. It's hard to explain on here, but it is an awesome feeling. I feel like my ability to understand everything really skyrocketed this week. There must be some people praying for me back home haha.

Wednesday was a very frustrating day. Our whole day got shot because we got stuck with an elder waiting for his companion at the train station. So frustrating. We ate some great fries though. Belgium is all about beer, chocolate, fries, and peeing babies haha. It's great. I love it. It's like every time i see mannekin pis i see little Crew or Fin just peeing away! Haha.

Thursday was so super awesome that I would need to put like 4 more adjectives to describe the awesomeness. we woke up at 4 which was not so super awesome because we had to catch a train to Paris. The best part about it was we rode first class with the zone leaders. That means we got free breakfast, yay! i had some yummy speculoos sandwiches. yummmmmm. when we got to paris we had 3 hours till the conference started so we went to the Eiffel Tower! Finally! It is just really huge! I feel like i'm actually serving in the paris france mission now that i've seen it. The conference with the leaders of the mission was so dang cool. There were a lot of good things presented about being a successful missionary. It isn't about baptisms it's about loving people which was really cool.

Each week I like to pick a different Christ like attribute and work on it. This week I picked charity. Now before this week I though charity was just giving to people who are less fortunate. If you look in bible dictionary that proves to be totally wrong.

Charity is the pure love of Christ. It is the love that Christ has for the children of men and that the children of men should have for one another. It is the highest, noblest, and strongest kind of love and the most joyous to the soul (see 1 Nephi 11:23)

I love this definition so much. This is an excellent scripture. Sorry i couldn't pull up the bible dictionary one but this works too. But really this week I have tried to focus on really having that pure love like Christ did. It's really shown me a lot. Shown me how much the people I love actually do mean to me. I invite all of you to study a Christ like attribute each week and try to apply it in your lives. It helps a ton.

The other days kind of dragged on till Sunday where we got invited to eat at an Italian guy's home. His name is Antonio and he has a wonky eye but i think he may be my second favorite person i've met on my mission

So as people around me know, I love Italian food so much. I was so excited to go eat. We had such good food like wow like honestly wow it was so good i nearly died from joy. Rapture. There's a good way to describe that food. But the food got stumped by what happened after. So we shared a scripture from Alma, it was alma 7:11-14 I believe. Now one line stuck out to me big time while we were reading this. It's weird because we read the scripture a lot because it's about the atonement and I just never really took much though to it. Anyway, it just talks about being born again, nothing we don't hear all the time. But for me I felt I really needed to put a lot of emphasis on this part about repenting and being born again. The wording is a little different in the French one though. When my time came to testify of this scripture I just said that I was so thankful for the opportunity we have every day to literally be born again. It hit me like never before the truthfulness of that statement. We really can be new people everyday because the lord has suffered for us. It was so strong that it made antonio cry. It was hard hold tears back for me. Maybe it was the thing we all needed. I hope all of you have the chance to read those few verses in the next week and really apply the atonement in your life because repentance is such a wonderful gift we have. use it. As missionaries we use it daily.

I almost forgot to mention that I gave my first blessing to a sick person ever. And it was in French haha. So scary. There was this lady at church who is apparently having a really rough time with some things. We were just all chatting in the foyer after ludovic got the priesthood. Oh ya ludovic got the priesthood and it was the coolest thing ever. so samuel grabs me and said we needed to give a blessing to this lady. So we just went and I almost forgot the words and it was scary but i ended up ok haha

There's me on a soap box for a little while, sorry! Ha really this week has been so great and so quick WOW!
I love you all.
Avec Amour
Elder Oliverson