Oh the week of ups and downs...

 Oh the week of ups and downs. the whether pretty much set the standard for how our amis were going to act this week. One second it was sunny and the next it was super rainy.... The one great thing is that i'm staying in brussels!!!!!!

the week started off and we got to see all of our main amis. They were all doing super well and things were just looking so great. Carmelina went into the hospital one wednesday and apparently had just the cutest baby girl ever. she named it Nellya after the baby's grandmother, Nelly. We've yet to seen it but that's ok because we're going tonight to have a little family home evening.

Our ami who has a baptismal date is really starting to progress and is getting better every time we see him. He has officially stopped smoking and hopefully stays in line just until his baptism. it was great to see him make the resolve to quit and then see how the hand of the lord plays a work in everything. He is super cool.

Fabrice is just blowing my mind more and more with how much progression he is making since being a member. We taught him about member missionary work this week and he told us that he knew he needed to do it. The elders who speak spanish will be teaching with him this week because they have an ami who lives not too far from Fabrice. I sat by Fabrice this sunday during sacrament meeting and to my surprise he was taking notes! He said he loved the talk so much that he needed to write down all the scripture references. what a guy. He is also working really hard on his wife to get her to be baptized. she's really against it because her mother is a preacher of sorts in Congo and she's been raised that way her whole life, but she's got too many good ifluences around her now. i think she'll be baptized soon

one thing that really shocked me was the way a couple of our amis reacted who had been progressing extremely well. They both told us that they would never be baptized and that they already had been saved by the catholic church. It's sad to see that but i guess the lord puts trials in our way to make us stronger. we are going to try and teach them both about the restoration of the authority even though i've explained it about 10 times. 

The zone isn't changing a whole ton this transfer but it was super cool news to know that my son(Elder Eldredge) will be training so i will receive a grandson. it's funny because my grandfather was trained where i was trained and now elder eldredge will train where i was trained. how interesting. it's cool that i get to be there zone leader for at least one more transfer

all is well here!

Elder oliverson

 Well another week has passed by in brussels and lots of great things have happened.

this week we set a baptismal date with one of our amis named una. he is a big black dude and he loves the gospel so much. after we fixed the date with him he just kept thanking us for giving him this chance and he kept telling us how we were really inspired messangers of god. i don't think i've ever had anyone be that grateful for a baptismal date. there are still lots of thing he needs to work through and his date is the 16th november but there is one thing for sure and that's his desire. he really wants to be baptized and we are so blessed to have him as an ami.

our super great ami carmelina will be giving birth this week and that's super cool to hear as well. she will give birth monday and then we're going to go see her baby. i sure hope that i can stay here and see her be baptized but i guess that's a little bit out of my control.

although i've been very sick this week it was a really good week. we're seeing our amis progress and things should be super great here next transfer. we have a lot of good potentials and a lot of family potentials as well. right now we're teaching a couple of families who are not yet completed as well as one family with a young child who is 8 months old. it's cool to have the family vision in the mission and to see it all come together with all of our missionaries finding and baptizing families. gotta love it. 

well that's all i have for this week

elder oliverson

And the mission goes on...

i need to be short this week but i will try to get in a good experience.

so sunday we had one of our amis come to church, well we had 2 but basically i'll tell you about this one ami. he came about 25 minutes late and then he sat up about 6 rows in front of me. i was in the back with fabrice talking to him about his wife, which is another story for another time. the meeting was closing and people were giving what we thought to be the final testimonies. then i see our ami get up and start walking to the front to give a testimony. he got up there and we were already over time by 5 minutes. he salutated everyone and began to tell a story about this wife and how there son, dieumerci (translation; thanks god) was born. really i can now see why they chose the name for this child because it was truly a miracle that he was able to be born without problems. he then gave a typical joel (his name is joe) response and ending to his testimony, it went like this-Dieu est là il est là et, il est là. translated being-god is there, he is there, and he is there. 

What a true statement by such a nice humbe man. The members loved it i loved it everyone loved it. You could say that joel really made a great first inpression. during our gospel principals class he actually filmed all 35 mintutes of it on his phone. It was super funny but he wants his children to watch it. Hopefully we can get his whole wife involved because they're a family that would only help the church!

Elder Barr and Jason

The vision of the mission

This week we ran all around and just tried to find new people to teach and tried to help the people we are teaching progress towards baptism.

 

monday was a great day. so the vision of the mission is to talk to everyone all the time no matter what. so we were coming back after eating waffles with a companionship in our zone and we were on the metro. i walked on and stood by a man who had a weird box and i swore that i heard a chirp from the box. i thought nothing of it and just stood on the metro. the second chirp caught my attention and then i looked at the man. he shrugged his shoulders and said to me, "c'est la vie.' after this we began talking and i found out that the guy had picked up a bird from the side of the road and he was going to hide it from his landlord and nurse it back to life. The conversation was in heat so we had missed our stop and gone a couple too far which ultimately took 15 precious minutes of our p-day. in the end we fixed an apt with the guy and we went on our ways. we went to his house and he told us he had the bird in the pantry and that the landlord would never find it. We then began to tell him about what we do as misssionaries and all about the book of mormon. He then engaged himself to come to church. Sunday he came half an hour early to church and just sat and waited. After church he told us that he didn't know about all the things he heard and that he was going to call us in a week. That night he called me and we talked a little and he flat out admitted that he really liked church but understood nothing at all because the translation wasn't working. We have another nice rdv with him this wednesday

 

tomorrow we get to see the new vision for the mission and what our goal will be for the end of the year. i really love the mission goals because i love the unity we all have when we have one single thing for which we are working. it's a great thing and i think this next one will be even better!

Elder Oliverson

Baptized Fabrice!

What a great week! for starters i have to give a shout out to my el salvadorian bro in law. Ricky we ate some papousa on monday and it was sooooo goood! but now let's get to the stuff that matters. 

This week we solidified the baptism of fabrice by actually baptizing him. He has changed so much and he loves Thomas s Monson. We watched the talk with him where Pres. Monson tells the story about when he lit the weeds on fire as a kid at his cabin. he loves how modern all the stories were. that's why we call it modern day prophet right? well his baptism was a nice service and everything went smoothly from there. he was so happy on sunday when he got to church and he actually started singing the hymns. he said that since he was a member it was his obligation to sing the hymns now even if he doesn't like singing. oh great! i think all the members need to have that type of attitude.

We also found a sweet brazilian family. we taught the mother and the son and the mother said she will be baptized, the son was a little more hesitant. She is super nice and has lived in brussels for 9 years. it's fun to see all the different cultures out here and to hear all the stories about why people came and how things are going for them.

mission council friday was a super great opporunity to feel the spirit and see the direction in which the mission is going. now we're getting a whole surge of new missionaries so we are focusing on finding. we are focusing on talking to people everywhere at all times. this is the most perfect thing and just some more proof that the people leading this mission truly are inspired. i had been thinking about this for a while because between strombeek and louise people don't like to help one another out. i think that if we're all contacting in the different areas of brussels the work will get going even faster and we will see even more baptisms.  the theme for this transfer is.. I love brussels! all around you see the shirts the say i (heart) brussels so i thought it would be cool to get everyone going on that and having us love brussels. this means we will contact all over and not let it matter whether we are in strombeek or louise. It's so true that everyone loves brussels

much love

elder oliverson

 

 

 Papousa

 

Fabrice

 

 

 

the Legacy of Elder Adams

 This weeks ends the legacy of Elder Adams. I'm glad that we can all say that he died well. We had one of our best weeks this week and it was cool to see how well elder adams died. 

We didn't have the chance to see the apostles in paris but surely the mission felt their presence and we felt it in brussels no doubt. All week we had super spiritual experiences with all our amis and it was just so good. Unfortunately fabrice didn't get baptized this week but now we're planning for next week. the only thing that was stopping him is the person that he wanted to baptize him had to work so we moved it another week. i was sad that elder adams couldn't see our miracle ami get baptized but it has been a good run with him anyway. oh fabrice!

This morning during the call that all the zone leaders do president poznanski shared some super awesome news with us. We are now in the top ten missions in all of europe. Our mission has had enough baptisms to reach the top 10. this is something that was never expected to happen in the france paris mission. This is a statistical proof that the work is accelerating so fast and so well in the france mission. Also the number of active members in europe has now reached over 100,000. I love to see all these European saints and all the great things that are happening right now. Isn't it the time for everyone to get out there and serve a mission?

I found out today that i will be receiving a young zone leader next transfer. he is brand new as zone leader just like i was last transfer and i'm super excited to tear up brussels with him. 

This week elder adams let me read a nice book called "the challenge" and it's really changed my mission. I feel that everyday i need to be out challenging people to be baptized and to know christ in their lives. i'm so happy to do this work and i really don't have much time to write but i love you all and i'll send a nice long e mail next week

Becoming something that i'm not

From Brussels with African love. This week I had to battle having a sickness while also just trying to work my bum off getting everywhere... It was great. We had some good success finding new amis, we found 4, and it was so cool to get to teach the restoration 4 times because every time i do i just remember how much joseph smith did for us as a prophet and how awesome it is that i can share it with people who live thousands of miles away. so crazy isn't it?

Monday we climbed our way to the top of a large cathedral in brussels, second biggest cathedral in the world, and as Elder Adams and I were looking over brussels i could only say one thing, "Look at those batiments, man i bet we could port those for days." Translation- look at those giant appartment buildings we could knock on those doors for days. Truly the missionary has sunk into me and i guess there's really nothing that i can do about it. I get a chance to look over a beautiful city and i spend my time looking for places to work, it's great. I remember when my trainer elder thomas told me that one day i would become something like this and i thought, me? no never. but i guess that's just what happens when you're comitted to doing something.

Our week got a little frustrating when our ami with the baptismal date didn't have time to meet with us but we talked to him on sunday and it was a good time. he said he'd still really like to be baptized this saturday and he knows we will have to see him twice before that can happen. He is a great guy and we have already fixed a RDV with him this thursday. I see a real change in him and that he really understands the process for repentance which is really cool. Last sunday he met with his ex wife to apologize and fix any wrong that he did when they split up. now that's real repentance.

Last night we had an interesting night that i can only name, African Night. We have an ami who is the only person in her family who isn't baptized and they love the missionaries and evidently the missionaries love them too. Them knowing that My companion was leaving they decided that we needed to have an African Night. We set up a lesson before where we taught the restoration and then we ate some Foufou which is an African delicacy. The real shocker is that after the lesson, after we'd testified of the restoration and we'd really all felt a strong spirit the girls and the mother went to change and came out in all their African apparel. We listened to gospel songs in Linghala which is the native tongue of the people in the Congo. It was so much fun to spend a night with a sweet family so African and so converted to the restored gospel.

with love

elder oliverson