Nothing better than a French Christmas!

woah i was sooo sick this week. but before all that.

Christmas and chrismtas eve was so great here in lille. we went to the deron's and it was awesome. they allowed us to invite a family that we're teaching over the 24th and we had a ball. our amis were a little awkward at first and then they realized that every member doesn't wear a badge and contact people in the street. we ate a yummy raclette and it was totally a french 24th which was one of the greatest things ever. the 25th only got better. we woke up at 9:30 and it felt super late. then i remembered that normal people wake up at that time.. woah i'm a missionary. we went back to the deron's and had some yummy toast with spreads. i totally ate caviare (fish eggs) and it was totally the grossest thing i've ever eaten ever! but i tried it and i was a trooper. after the eating was done we pulled out these like spit wad things. i totally had no idea what was going on. then there were these tubes and we just had this war where we spit them all over and it was great. i got shot and one lodged between my glasses and my eye. the sisters have all the good pictures and my camera won't let me send pictures over the internet so you'll have to wait for it. but that was basically all the fun that happened on christmas

after christmas was the sickness. the 26th i started feeling a little sick but i had a streak going of never staying in so there was no way i was going to break it. we went out and worked during the morning and the afternoon i could barely make it. i was dizzy and lightheaded and let's just say that my stomach wasn't feeling the best either. even in all my dizziness we managed to teach a lesson and do 2 solid hours of contacting. i came home and it started to just be really really cold which was weird because i was wearing my coat and there were 2 heaters on me. we called the mission doctor and she was super concerned. she told me there was no way i could go outside and that i was to stay in. this killed me. but i made the mature decision and stayed in. i got some medicine and things were fine after that. i ended up having some sort of stomach infection. the worst thing was that my streak was broken. oh well. with me being sick it's been interesting because i'm supposed to take it easy at nights. we've worked as hard as we could with me being sick and it's been oh so good.

sunday was a day of firsts for me. i tried for the first time foie gras (duck innerds) and snails. i must say they were both really good and i enjoyed them. i like the french culture and i'm glad i got to have a french christmas. the belg one was great but like come on it's france! vive la france!
elder oliverson

Merry Christmas - Life is good!

woah too much cool stuff happened this week. the christmas conference was fillled with many wonderful treats and surprises. i love our leaders in the mission so much and i just know that they are so dang inspired. we're having so much fun as a mission and we are all making huge strides. when they played the slideshow of all the baptisms in the mission this year i just got the chills everytime and i got so many good memories of all the great times i've had. all the hard work totally pays off and a mission is something to which you can compare nothing

this week we had so many tiny miracles happen. to start off this transfer all of our amis dropped us.. every single one. so i came into a ville where it was necessary to start from square one. the only one that stayed was the one who had a baptismal date and we successfully baptized him and he is in the act of preparing for a mission. it was so cool to help him get baptized and see him make that first step toward salvation.

so back to all the amis who dropped us. we set up rdvs with people only to arrive with sticky notes on the door saying that they didn't want to see us anymore or that they wouldn't be able to see us for a long time. so we went out to do some finding and oh yes we found. we turned a week that looked impossible to have a lesson into a week where we taught over 10. now i know that the lord is being way to nice to us over this christmas season. we got to sing with all the members at centre ville in lille. it was so much fun. it was so funny going up to the people and having them say, please go away we want to listen. i got a lot of people who thought i was from canada so it looks like my accent is improving little by little. then a french missionary with whom i did an exchange told me that he totally sees where people think i'm canadian... i guess it's still francaphone though...

this week has been spent wrestling with the elders in the apt. i'm the undefeated champ and i've had some incredible take downs. the aps are going to come soon so i don't know if i'll be able to defeat both of them but i will try my best. i'm a little sick so he might get me but that's ok. the mission is great and i love to savor every moment here. everyone has that spirit of noel so merry christmas to all! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

elder oliverson

Au Revoir Brussels!

Last week in Brussels. That's a really sad line right there. but i guess you never know. i thought for sure last time was my last week in brussels but the lord let me come right back! but who knows. 

This week was a great week overall. We made a lot of progress and i feel super good about the condition that i'm leaving brussels. we saw michelle and aimé who are the 2 dates that are here in brussels and they were great. they've been just doing everything they need to to prepare themselves for baptism. One good thing about the transfers is that i'm going to lille. it's only 30 minutes away so i'll be able to come back and see all the baptisms of the people i've taught. It's weird that it's only 30 minutes away and it's in a completely different country. no more belgium elder oliverson i'm totally french now. woo hoo!

My New Home!


 We also found many great amis this week. we had some time to do contactng and the lord blessed us so much. there was one hour of contacting this week that tops all other hours of contacting on my mission.

here's the story:

so we had fixed a rdv with one of our amis and he decided that instead of coming at 1 like we'd planned he was going to come at 4.. ok cool well now we are stuck at the church with nothing to do. so i said a little prayer to myself. in my mind i thought of a passback that we had in a part of brussels called madou. quickly i told my comp and we headed off to the pass back. well the pass back wasn't there so that was kind of a bummer.  the street was barren with only one man so i talked to that one man. he was very interested in a restoration of the church of jesus christ. he was free at 5 in the afternoon which worked perfect because we were set to be at the church at that same time. still having time to contact we went down a road and then the magic happened. in 1 hour of contact we got 7 numbers and fixed 3 rdvs. i'd never seen that kind of success in my life and it all spouted from that one little prayer i said while sitting at the church. prayer works!

the rest of the week was filled with lessons and just lots of fun. we finally got in contact with carmelina again and she's getting back on the trap of baptism. we had a fun night at their house and it just a great thing to see them before i leave.

the final thing i'll tell you about is Levani. Levani is a guy that was baptized a year ago. he has some issues but he really likes the missionaries. tuesday morning we get a text telling us that levani missed one of his injections for his psychological problem and now he's in a type of lockdown asylum. All he wanted to do was read the book of mormon and all that good stuff. he is a great guy and we went and read with him. he told us that he wants to change. it's been a year since he's been to church and he wants to come back. i left him with a parting gift of a white shirt and tie and some pants that i had. it feels good to give to someone like him and i hope to see him in the future

stay sweet

elder oliverson

So many things to be thankful for...

 woah the week of thanksgiving has come and gone. the week started off pretty well and kind of set the note for the rest of the week. i had the chance to go on an exchange with a cool missionary from Guadeloupe. he has only been converted for a short time but he is such a good missionary. so they have an ami in whom i've taken a lot of interest because i had the chance to teach just one day. so this exchange elder bananier (translation in english is elder banana tree, that's his name!)  told me that we were going to a member's home to teach Landrine (his ami). i was super pumped and he asked me what we should teach and i was just like, the lesson of baptism of course. he didn't know what that was, mostly because i made it up, so i quickly taught him. now i will let everyone know that the lesson of baptism to this point went 5 for 5. it was batting 1000. we were all prepared and the members were prepared as well. Landrine came and we gave her the lesson and the spirit was so thick and she said she wasn't sure if she knew the church was true the first time, but no worries the baptismal lesson takes care of that. we had her all squared away and then she agreed to be baptized but the date wasn't sure. so we'll count that as a walk for the baptismal lesson. still batting 5 for 5. overall it was a great lesson. i've never seen a harder head than landrine and she still accepted. 

Wednesday we ended the exchange and headed straight to a rendez vous. this one was with our ami michelle who is a 19 year old guy and is super cool. we had a pretty good lesson where we just kind of reviewed the retablissment and it was like pretty solid. we asked him if he knew that all this was true and he said he didn't know 100 percent. we read with him a little paragraph on how we can know that it's true and he expressed some of the fruits of the spirit. Filled with the spirit and the baptismal fire from yesterday i pulled out the scripture that sets up the baptismal lesson and we set a date for the 20th right on the spot. thanks to the exchange i knew that the 20th was a friday and that's the day the ward does baptisms. if it hadn't been for that i wouldn't have had any idea whatsoever. exchanges actually are important. ha

thanksgiving was a good time to sit and enjoy but honestly the whole time i just thought about doing missionary work. we watched 17 miracles as a zone and it was really good but the whole time i was just thinking about all the people on the road who need the gospel. uh oh. looks like i'm going to be weird when i get home. oh well

Friday we had a nice little surprise as well. so michelle usually brings his friend aimé with him. we got a call friday from aimé telling us that he wanted to "sign up" for baptism. well we knew we could do that so on saturday we fixed a rendez vous and he came to sign up. we taught him the retablissment and he also was just feeling some strong spirit so we fixed the 2 friends for the 20th of december. it was super funny. i guess aimé actually went to church every week in the congo. he's awesome

the week ended with stake conference and this was a stake conference just a little bit special. 2 area 70's were there because they were calling a new stake president. during a meeting with all the adults in the stake they called up the zone leaders of brussels. this was weird so we went up in front of everyone and they gave the crowd 15 minutes to drill us with questions about missionary work and how members could do it as well. i was cool but my comp was really sweating. overall we did a good job in answering and it was pretty fun.

great week!

elder oliverson

The Belg Life!

 The Belg life! Well this week i didn't eat any fries or waffles so it was an odd week for a true Belg man like me. I can't believe i've spent over half my time in the field in Brussels. For sure i'll have to come back here and visit some of my favorite spots. But i think my time may be running rather short. Back to France with me. 

This week we had a nice zone conference with all the missionaries in Belgium and it was just so much fun. Sadly, the chapel's heating decided not to work so we were all kind of freezing. It's ok because we all understood the message anyway. Find families! that's the message. It's a lot easier said than done but we are doing are very very best. 

After all the crazy stuff was finished it was time to get back to work and i've found that this transfer Friday's are our lucky days. Friday morning I was sitting in the foyer while my companion was teaching himself how to play the piano just waiting for a man named Renaud to come. While i was sitting there an African man came to the door and this was very strange because it was rather early in the morning and there weren't any other missionaries there. I opened the door and the man told me that he'd gone to the office of tourism to find out where our chapel was. He'd heard from a Muslim friend he has that we were a church with good values and that you can often find young Americans out on the streets preaching the good word. So we thanked Heavenly Father for the nice muslim man and we started teaching this guy, Jean Pierre, in the church. The only thing was that Jean Pierre had showed up 5 minutes before Renaud had planned to come. Luckily, Renaud was late so we had time to teach them both. We engaged Jean Pierre to come to church and Renaud accepted to be baptized when he knows it's true and also to come to church when he isn't working. Sunday, Jean Pierre kept his engagement and he came to church. After these Rdvs we had another planned with our ami Jean Martin. We've been having some troubles with him but the Rdv was smoother than usual and we even got to eat some spicy potatoes with him! WOO

Sunday was also a really great day. We had Jean Pierre at church and also we had our other 2 amis who are 19 years old named michelle and aimé. They are both from Congo and while i was sitting next to Michelle he asked me how the baptismal process works. I told him that he needed to gain a testimony of the restored church and then just follow the lessons and he'd be good. He said he wanted to start the process. I guess it didn't understand that with our former Rdvs we had already started the process. Oh well after church we took him and aimé with one of our members who is also from Congo and we had a powerful lesson about the restoration of the church. This week we are planning to fix baptismal dates with them because they have a strong desire to be baptized so why would we deny them the right? After this great lesson we had another wonderful chance to talk with an ami who is also 19 years old named Olivier. We had a really cool member with us and he helped us a lot because Olivier is having cold feet about his baptismal date. The member was baptized 5 years ago and he told Olivier about how he had the same experience. The lesson ended with us all deciding to pray and find out which date is the right one for him and then next week setting it. Hopefully everything works out how we planned. We had the chance to end the night with a family from Equador. Their son recently received his mission call to madrid spain and so it was fun going to eat some good latin american food with them. One thing I love about brussels is the fact that we can see members from all over the world. From Russia to Latin America and everywhere in between. I do miss the great French members though.

That was my week

Elder Oliverson

Baptisms for everyone!

 what a fast week here in brussels. we had our exchanges with the assistants on monday which went by super fast, mostly because they were really short. I will tell a little story from monday night. So i was with Elder Coffey who is an assistant and we were heading home from a different part of paris and we began to talk with a lady on a train. she was a scientologist but super open and really nice. our stop came and we both kind of panicked and just jumped off train without getting the ladies number. we were both pretty bummed but there was nothing we could do because the train was off. luckily we gave her a book of mormon so we weren't as ashamed in ourselves. we got out of the gare and elder coffey checked his pockets and realized that there wasn't a phone in any of his pockets. he ran back into the gare trying to find the phone and he didn't get it. i bet you can guess what happened next.. yes i called it from out international phone and the lady on the metro answered. we met her the next day and got the phone back. luckily the lord knows we're young and gave us another chance

the baptism of una was the next big ticket this week and it was super good. the ward came out and supported and una was loving every second of it. we had to do the act of baptizing him twice because the guy baptizing him forgot the lines but other than that everything went super smooth. it was cool because the person i trained (Elder Eldredge) actually found him. so basically it was like an alley oop. he throw the ball up and i dunked it. haha. but really it was cool because he came from strombeek and gave a talk and everyone was really supportive. things are really going so well in Brussels except it's getting to be really cold. i'm sure i probably whined about the heat and now i'm whining about the cold. i love the cold just not when it's rainy. the dry utah cold is certainly where it's at. well i guess till next week

elder oliverson

 this week i'm going to start off by google translating the e mail that i wrote to the mission president this week!

The opposition continues this week but we managed to keep our date of baptism . In a busy week it was too good things. I got the testimony of the persistence this week. There was one week on the port to port in a neighborhood not far from us. We knocked on the door of a family of Sweden . The woman told us that it was not possible to enter , she said that the missionaries often go but never return . She invited us to come back when her husband was there. This week we came back and told us to come back in 45 minutes. It was great because we had an appointment with another family in the same street . We made an appointment with another family and we came back the third time. She said they were not interested in the message. They were left with a small card and we continued the week. Thursday we received a phone call of Brother Bernard makes communications church in Brussels . He told us that a woman sent him an e email asking if we could come back and share the message . We came back and did a little how to start teaching . This week we will share the proclamation of the family with them!

as you can see crazy things happen all the time in the mission. this week was busy and we got to watch our amis meet the members at the ward halloween party. It was fun to see the members just talking to our amis and letting them know how welcome they were. Great week.

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

Holy spirit fill us with your POWER!!

Another week has come and gone and we're sitting here wondering where the time went. What's a week in Brussels without a wonderful African experience to start things off. So we have one ami named Olivier and he is the guy who is a branhamist which is totally crazy. This week we went and saw him and his mother was there for the RDV. We decided that we'd get her up to date with things and we watched the Joseph Smith movie, the short one that lasts 19 minutes that is. After watching that my companion asked a simple question of, "What do you think about the movie?" the lady replied in a very unique way, she asked if she could sing. Personally I was taken aback by this request but we obliged and she sung us a little tune that went like this:

Holy spirit give me your power, she sung this line 3 times

Holy spirit show me the path, she sung that about 5 times

and then she really dropped the bomb with this next line and accompying dance move

HOLY SPIRIT FILL US WITH YOUR POWER!

It's important to know that when she said US she put her hands out and did a move where she swayed back and forth, almost hitting me in the face because i was in the seat right next to her. She then ended the song and we sat in silence for about 10 seconds till she said amen. We all said a solemn amen agreeing that we had just experienced the things that start basic voodism and we went and taught the lesson as planned.

We stumbled out of that RDV and headed directly to another one where we taught our sweet baptismal date Fabrice about all the fun things that have to do with the ten commandments and the law of chastity. He took it very well and it was super fun. It was also super hilarious to see my companion try to work an Ipad. Fabrice wanted to know if there was an app where he could get the scriptures on his Ipad. My comp was all over that and I watched him for about 3 minutes struggle to find out how to use the Ipad. Oh boy i wonder what another year in the mission is going to do to me. He is currently complaining that the missionaries in his ward in California all have Ipads. We've had lots of talks about how we're a dying breed of missionaries. We're the breed and age that went out and talked to people and had no idea that there would ever be an Ipad in the hands of a missonary. Honestly i'm so thankful that i get to be here right now and i couldn't even imagine my mission without the endless hours i've spent trying to find people who are interested. I love it!

This week we had a weird chat with one of our amis and her family. This amis is the only person in her family not baptized and after she has her baby she'll be baptized, but that's beside the point. We were talking a little about the protestant church that they went to and they were telling me the things that went on there. Never before in my life had hearing about other people's practices make my testimony of our church stronger but that this point it did. I'm not going to go into the specifics but all that RDV long while we were talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ I just kept thinking about how blessed we are to have a prophet who is really inspired from God and who know what's best for us as a church. Today I studied modern day prophets and it was just another testimony builder for me that really we're guided by a real prophet or else our church would have apostalic practices like the churchs who try their best but don't have that restored authority. The church is true!  

Tomorrow is zone conference and we're going to have a fun training on being yourself and doing missionary work at the same time. It should be fun and it's one of the things that i think all missionaries need to work on.

Everyone is different, but it all works out in the end.

this week we had to cram a whole bunch of stuff into a little space of time so you know it was exciting. we started off the week just running around and doing all the errands we had to while also teaching people whenever we had a little bit of free time. we taught one of our amis in his church and he is now pretty open to changing and coming to ours which is a super big blessing because he is pretty involved in his willam brenham stuff. william brenham is a guy who claimed to be the prophet elijiah so you know that we've got some crazy work to do with him!

other than that we set a baptismal date for the 6th of september with a great guy who just moved into this area of belgium. he met the missionaries 20 years ago and never understood what the book of mormon was so as soon as he did he was all set for getting baptized the problem is we can't see him as often as we'd like and we're really taking our time so that he fully understands everything. he is such a cool guy and his family is great. 

the exchange we had with the assistants was awesome as well. i learned so much from elder hall and he is such a cool guy. i'm so happy that i have this chance to see the mission from such a different view and to learn from everyone around me. it's fun to see that all the leaders in the mission are so much different and everyone can do their work in their own way and it all works out in the end. the mission vision is a sweet one about following the spirit so it was cool to see it and to do it with elder hall who is president's right hand man. it was a fun exchange to say the least

I love the mission

crazy week. so crazy. so all the sad goodbyes were said in st die and i headed off to brussels on wednesday. i don't think i've ever been so excited to go to a new area before in my life. i guess you couldn't even call it a new area because i've already been there before. we got there and i must say that it started as soon as we got off the train. everyone needed metro passes so we rushed to get all that then we rushed to teach someone. basically we're the errand runners for everyone and honestly i love it. i love being so busy the whole day long. i wish i could live the rest of my life just going and doing. it's so much fun and it's so spiritual as well. we go from spiritually packed lesson to spiritually packed lesson and i love every second of it. 

we see such wonderful things. one day we had planned to teach a less active member. when he showed up to the rdv he brought his son. his son actually isn't his son. his son is his friends son but his friends died in the war in rowanda. he brought him to us and told us that he wanted to find the right path and that he knows the church is the way for him. he is such a nice guy and i'm happy to teach him. it's cool because as a zone leader we see how things are going throughout the whole mission. today i experienced my first conference call and it's cool to see how all the things trickle down from the top. i can really say that our mission is in a state right now that it's never been before. things are really picking up and i give a lot of credit to president poznanski as well as the group of missionaries that have left or are about to leave. this group consists of elder foley, elder nielson, my companion right now and many others who are excellent. i really believe that with president poznanski's example that these missionaries helped changed the view of the mission and i'm so happy to have the chance to serve with another person from that group again. there's already been 2 missionaries from that group that have helped me a lot and i think elder adams will do the same thing. 

as of right now i love life and i love the mission. maybe i could do this forever. i love being busy and always having things to do. if i did choose to do this forever they'd have to let me grow a mustache though. it's funny to find myself in the exact same spot i was a little more than a year ago and it's funny to see how much i've changed but also how much i've stayed the same. 

till next week

elder oliverson

Back to Brussles! I'm a zone leader!

Well this week was one that had a sad start. our ami anne decided not to get baptized for probably the dumbest 3 reasons i've ever heard in my entire life, well it's technically 2 but there are 3 things that bugged her: she told me she thinks that joseph smith used the word of wisdom and the law of tithing to gain power, she thinks that jesus didn't come to earth to establish a church therefore there can't be a restoration of anything, and she also said that nowhere in the bible does it say that tithing should be 10 percent. those 3 reasons were all excuses for the fact that she wouldn't admit that she was addicted to coffee. so sad to see her go like that but that's the life as a missionary.

this week i found out that i'm going to have the wonderful opportunity to serve in brussels again!!! i'm so happy for this chance to go back up to the place where i started. it's funny because it's kind of like a full 360 on a year. i started here and now one year later i get to come back. yes i'm in louis which is the other side but i will have so many opportunities to see some of the fruits of my labor. as a zone leader i will get to go back to strombeek on exchanges and that is so awesome. there are so many people there that helped me so much when i was younger in the mission so it'll be cool to see them. also i might even get to see ludovic get married. that would be too cool. 

i'm so glad that i got this chance to serve in the wonderful ville of st dié all the people here are so great and i'm glad that i could leave this place in a state that was better than when i came. we have been finding wonderful families and really it doesn't matter where you're called on your mission you can find people if you have faith and if you work hard. that's one thing i learned from st dié

Finishing out strong

this week was a good week but i guess it was a little slow. i had exchanges out the ying yang and it was fun to go to paris and see all the boys and also to see the vision of the mission. we ahve really started to focuse on find families. i really like this vision and totally agree with it because that's what the church in france needs. 

things were good this week and we saw a whole lot of success we taught a lot of lessons, and of course we had some setbacks, but we really pushed on and it was a wonderful thing to see our amis come along little by little. transfers are next week and i'm really trying to push forward and finish this transfer out strong. hopefully we can finish with the baptism of anne and then it will be a storybook ending that's for sure. 

till next week

love elder oliverson

Anne is being baptised August 4th!

Hello everyone! This week was so weird i don't even know where to begin. Monday my birthday was super duper like always. the relief society made me a cake and they all sung and it was just great. the bad news was my comp got a speeding ticket while driving and i might have to pay for half. that's totally not cool. but it's ok i love him anyway. 

The rest of the week rolled on by. Tuesday i had a nice exchange with Elder Bouqet my favorite french companion ever. we had lots of fun talking about the old times and i'm really happy i had the chance to be his district leader and his companion

when i returned to st die is when the work really started. the day of my return we taught chantal and we had a wonderful talk about testimonies. she has a really strong one and sometimes i wish she'd give some of her testimony to me. she's so great. 

thursday was a day of work work work. we ported for 9 hours and guess what, we didn't get let in once. we were really discouraged and i decided i'd lie in bed and read some old testament to lift my spirits a little bit. while i was reading the old testament a call came and it was the elders in epinal. epinal is the only other branch in our region. i thought they were calling with questions about trains to paris for the leadership council but actually they were calling to give us a referral. yes they gave us a family from serbia. at that time i didn't think i could ever be happier than that, i was so wrong though!

Friday we taught our ami anne. Anne is just so great i can't even explain it. we had tried to fix a baptismal date with her but she told us it was too soon. she told me, assuming that i'd be the one leaving, that i wouldn't be able to see her get baptized. it was really a bummer for me because i have been with anne since the very beginning. but i told her that she needed to be fully engaged and that i wanted her to feel fully ready. she also told us she couldn't come to church on sunday because her birthday was on saturday and she was planning to leave st die. we were both a little bummed

saturday we made sure to send anne a nice birthday text just telling her how happy we were to teach her and wishing her a happy birthday. saturday we also saw our referral and they were so awesome. their french isn't amazing but it is still pretty good. we pull up the pamphlets in serbian and have them read a page and then we talk about it while their son translates the words they don't know. it's a long process but they're very attentive and it makes me happy. ha. all their kids are so cute too and i wont lie i really like how they all have black hair and really green eyes, it's cool. 

so Sunday rolls around and elder eldredge and i aren't expecting anything special, except for the ward meal of course. so we were in the foyer of our chapel greeting all the members and we see a green car stop in front of the church and anne gets out. anne can't drive because she is blind in one eye but she had her friend bring her to church. she came in and i shook her hand and she smiled and i asked her how her birthday was and her response was, "I'm going to be baptized." i started laughing and i said, "Oh yes, when?" and she said, "whenever you want." Now at this point i had no idea what to do. i looked at my companion and he was utterly lost. I looked back at Anne and i said, "Ok the 4th of August." she agreed and then began to tell me that she had spent her birthday alone, her mother didn't want to spend it with her and she had received a few visits from her friends but the thing that struck her the most were the texts from us and from our ward mission leader. she said that she knows that we have true love for people around us and she needs to join our church. after church we ate a wonderful meal with all the members and we ended the week on a very high note. 

just another week in st die

love you all

elder oliverson

20 is scary

this week. was a week of much deep reflection about my life. turning 20 is very scary and i don't feel like i'm 20. i remember looking at people who were 20 and thinking they were so big. oh goodness that's not me. 

this week i had the chance to talk to 2 of my favorite missionaries, elder foley and elder nielson. we talked a lot about life and i don't even think i can begin to thank them for all they've done for me. it really also showed me that the old generation is gone and that it's time that me and all of my friends really step it up and start showing the example. i'm scared.

i had the wonderful and also very tiring opportunity to translate for a german family this week in church. the thing about my translation is that one of the members decided to play a prank on my and only spoke in a tense that is used for formal speeches and writing. it made my brain hurt but it also made me realize that i have been so blessed with the gift of tongues. i hope that because of my service on my mission that i can continue to bless people around me with all the things i've learned.

this week i saw the role of recent converts in helping new people have friends at church. out recent convert chantal took it on herself to befriend our ami anne. she sat by her at church because it was off translating and i looked over and saw her answering questions and doing things i would normally do. i'm so grateful for the blessing chantal has been in my life

Chantel and us

Chantel Baptism

Still dosent like fishing

Hard work always pays off

Great week in the promised land of st dié. we have worked really hard this week and have actually seen a whole lot of success. it's crazy how like when you work you find success. we were porting and we probably knocked on 100 doors in a single night. everyone was either gone or just didn't want to talk to us at all. i was getting fed up. i saw a lady walking in the street and i started talking to her and she totally called her husband and we set up a rdv right there. so we went and they invited a friend as well. these people are evangelical so they looked at the book of mormon as if it were a snake. after some explanation everyone there said they'd take a book of mormon and read it. we have another rdv with them this wednesday so i hope things are going to go well.

another one of our stellar amis is anne. she is so nice and she just loves all things spiritual. this week we saw her and taught her the plan of salvation which was really good. at the end of the rdv she told us she couldn't come to church because she was having people over and she needed to be a good host. we told her we understood and we went on with our week. saturday morning she called me and told me how much she really wanted to go to church but it was too far for her to walk and she needed to walk her dog so it would be hard to do both. thanks to the wonderful branch members we were able to get her a ride and she came to church and loved it once again. 

this week we have to go all over the place so it will be a crazy week once again. hopefully i'm still alive to write another blog entry.

loves

elder oliverson

Ami came to church!!

This week was sweet in good old france. we worked really hard all week and i was feeling kind of discouraged because nothing happened. we taught lessons but they weren't super great to be honest and the amis just weren't really into us this week. needless to say it was tough at the beginning. but friday everything changed. we had a lesson with our ami whose name is anne. she is a super sweet lady but she just wasn't showing much progress. we had just given her the bom and as homework we gave her the introduction to read. we started the lesson as usual by her giving us some exotic fruit flavored syrup in our carbonated water. i was taking a casual sip after asking her if she read the bom. she promptly told me that she read it and that she was going to come to church because she prayed and god told her to go to church. i choked on my syrup and carbonated water and then i was speechless after. my companion hadn't understood what she said and the member with us just looked at me while i tried to search for words to say. i told her that i was at a lack of words and that i couldn't even explain the joy i was feeling. needless to say she came to church and loved it

at church another crazy thing happened. now in st die there aren't any black people in the branch and this sunday whilst welcoming the members to church i noticed a black man walk in and i started talking to him. come to find out he's from switzerland and his soon to be wife lives here so he moved here. he brought his wife to church with him and we should be starting teachings soon. all i can say is that the lord answers prayers

Chantal has been baptised!

The best week ever!! So we got chantal baptized and it was an excellent time. After i baptized her she started crying in the font and i didn't know what to do at all so i just walked out and started changed... it was awkward but i guess that's what happens after 10 months on a mission. This week we have been doing a lot of hard work to find people to teach. I just keep thinking back to chantal and how she was found through really hard work and being a little bit pushy. on her teaching record it says 100 percent athiest but now we can say she's 100 percent christian and that is honestly the greatest gift anyone could give me for my 10 month mark. 10 months have really flown by and in these 10 months the mission has changed so much. i'll write more next week so i hope you're all doing well

Joshua 7

Woah! This week blew my mind! Of course we listened to an apostle of the lord and he just told us straight up how it was. He makes it sound so easy to just baptize people, and honestly it is. I know that if we are doing our part it doesn't matter where we are on our mission, or in our mission for that matter, we can baptize people. It's really up to us and our worthiness. So simple. Elder Ballard talked a lot about how we are conduits for the spirit. We are the link that brings it to them. This is where worthiness comes in. I was reading in Joshua and it talks about the Israelites after they took Jericho. They were commanded not to keep anything from Jericho, they were commanded to give it all to the lord. There was a man named Achan who took some gold and silver from Jericho and of course he didn't tell anyone. Joshua sends soldiers into Ai directly after that and they get beaten by an army of lesser power. Joshua is taken back and doesn't understand because the Lord promised him they would take all the land of the caananites. The Lord then tell Joshua that somebody had disobeyed and had taken spoils from Jericho. All in all the army couldn't win because they weren't obedient. It's the same way with us. we have to do all that we can to have the spirit and to help people understand and recognize when they're feeling the spirit.

Joshua 7

I'm so happy that we got to see Elder Ballard. Talking with members of my district on the phone after you could hear the fire in their voices. We have a goal as a mission to baptize 100 people before Elder Oaks comes in September and I'm so glad that we can contibrute to it here in St. Dié. I'm so happy for chantal and for how much she's changed in her life

till next week!

Always remain worthy of the people you convert

this week was another super week in st. d. things are just going so well here i'm so happy to be serving right here right now.

this week we saw chantal numerous times and each time she just continues to amaze me. she has read all the teachings of lorenzo snow and george albert smith books and she just keeps blazing through. we gave her all our liahonas, which is european for ensign, and she's read like 7 of those as well the gospel principals book. i won't let her see d and c yet or else she will have read the whole standard works before her baptism. she is amazing. she's talked to us a lot about her patriarchal blessing and also about how she wants to go to the temple. i think she is the type of person every missionary dreams of and i'm just so lucky to have this chance to teach her. gotta love it. 

this coming week might be one of the best weeks of my mission. besides the fact that the work is going so so well here we also get to see an apostle tomorrow, tuesday. i've never been so pumped for anything in my life. elder ballard will be able to shower us with his knowledge and i have questions that need answering so i hope he can be inspired to help me out a little bit.

i was reading in preach my gospel and a line really struck me, it says something like: always remain worthy of the people you convert. it just got me thinking about how lives can never be the same after missions and how they should never be the same because you need to always be changing and progressing.

i also found a nice little scripture in my readings of the old testament that i really liked. it's in deuteronomy 2:7 and i think it make me really reflect on missions because sometimes it feels like we have been in the dessert (i'm not sure if i spelt that correctly in english) and we don't know if what we are doing is correct or not

The days feel like Minutes!

this week has been pretty normal but also super awesome. the days seriously feel like minutes now and it's really freaking me out. 

tuesday i had an exchange with one of the zone leaders named elder adams. it was super fun and we found a cool evangalist lady who is pretty interested. not bad for a days work.

in case any of you were wondering i now drive stick and i'm pretty much the boss. it was sketchy at first but now i've really got the hang of it and i'm pretty clutch (ha ha get it) in every situation. that's just a little about my driving skills. yes i still speed from time to time but i'd rather not get a ticket on my mission so i try not to do that anymore

Chantal is basically the best ever. she finished the lorenzo snow book and we presented her an intense 7 days quit smoking program. she's been following it and hasn't smoked since we saw her at church yesterday. sweet! I just can't believe how much she changes every time we meet with her. it's true! the gospel blesses lives and will make you happier i see it all the time. woah! i'm so excited for her baptism! yay

we were porting one day and we found out way into a little apartment building. we call them bats in france which is short for bâtiment so i will refer to it as that. we ported the whole bat and didn't find anything till the last door where a lady opened up. there were kids running everywhere and it was crazy. we talked for a little bit and i found out she way 27 with 6 kids. she looked 40 at least, mostly she just looked tired even more tired than us missionaries. but she said her parents had never really taught her the gospel or anything about religion. she said it never really interested her till she saw her children. it really makes me think of all the times i've taken advantage of how awesome it is to have so much religion in my community back home. makes me cringe as well at all the times i've just taken advantage of all the wonderful blessings right in front of me when there are people who haven't had that in their lives. oh well it takes a mission to realize things like that. i'm just thankful for my family and the wonderful community i grew up in. 

on the 11th we have the wonderful opportunity to go see an apostle speak. elder ballard is coming to our mission and there were only a selected number of zones who got chosen and ours was one of them. i'm so excited to get to listen to an apostles again. that's 2 times already on my mission. woah! i remember when i was getting ready to leave everyone told me how difficult the french people were going to be and how hard this mission was. but i can truly say that our mission is doing things that it's never done and it's definitely starts up top with President Poznanski and all our leaders are so sweet and i'm so happy to be in this mission. not because i'm on france and it's a sick place but really because i know i have a purpose here and that we were all sent here to boost up france. no it isn't easy but that's alright! I love our mission so much! like i said the days feel like minutes and every week just flies by. oh man it's crazy

love you all

elder oliverson