Call me Bond, Jason Bond.

this week elder and foley and i had many adventures, some adventures that brought me back to the days of my young rebellions in little ole cache valley. running from lesson to lesson really tires a missionary out so one day me and elder foley decided we needed to partake in the trademark of tours and head down the secret alley, diagon alley we call it, and purchase a large pastry. yes it is true there is a place in tours that sells pastries that are 3 times the size of every other pastry. tours is famous for a pastry, and this is being translated into english, called a religious. the special thing about these pastries at the special shop is they are about 5 times the size of a regular religious, they are huge! with all that being said we bought those and there is a picture that should represent the utter horror of eating a pastry that large. in the middle of these delights there is something very similar to chocolate pudding. the outside is just a flaky crust thing and chocolate on the top so that should give a little backing for the picture.

besides teaching and finding amazing new investigators we also had to be a little sneaky to find us some less actives. we took a train to a small town called amboise, probably about the size of hyde park, and evidently there was a castle smack dab in the middle. we had our work brains on so we penciled, "see the amboise castle," on our list of p-day/non hardcore work activity things to do. that's also beside the point. the point is there was a less active and we had taken a train to get to this little town of desolation and we weren't leaving till we saw this less active, after our lesson of course. we arrived at the house and it looked like a scene from a missionary horror story. there was a long grass patch in front of this house that had been matted down by the numerous passing of the car that sat in front of the closed shed which we could see was used as a garage. debris of all sorts like the man made path and an unleashed dog lay barking beside the car. we looked on this horror from the gate and rang the doorbell. now as i have explained before the doorbells in france all have these stupid phones on the inside that connect and you talk through a speaker. we rang that while standing on the outside of the gate and no one answered. typical. at this point is where my rebellious youth paid off in missionary work i immediately said, "let's jump the fence." knowing myself and knowing elder foley this idea was not farfetched at all. his eyes lit up and he smiled and said, "After you my friend," taking the iniative i jumped the fence and walked down the path, covert ops style of course. to make a long story short we found this family and shared a short message. they were extremely grateful that someone would come and see them and had health reasons why they had not been attending church. they said they'd come and we left happy. This just brought to my memory all the trespassing and mischieft i did when i was home. it's true, our whole lives we have been prepared for our missions. luckily i had a sweet companion who would trespass a little to save a soul.

this brings us to sunday which will be the more serious part of this blog entry. there is a recent convert in tours who we are super good friends with, his name is emmanuel. we taught a lesson to him and the other 2 recent converts on fasting and fast sunday during church. when it came to the talk of fast and testimony meetings he said, "missionaries never share personal experiences in their testimonies, it's always just; I know the church is true and that God loves us." elder foley and i took this personal and we both told him we would share personal experiences. i decided to share an experience that probably this person doesn't remember or hardly ever think of. I remember one day my wonder chuffed english brother in law came to my domain (for those of you that know me my domain was the basement, i'm sure close friends smile at that) while i was watching tv. He came in with his usual approach of being polite and asking what i was watching. then i remember him saying so clearly that he regretted not going on a mission every day of my life. for the longest time it baffled me why he said that because at this time in my life i really wasn't thinking about a mission too much. For some reason every time i though about a mission i was brought back to spencer and that conversation we had in my basement. i decided to share that as the base of my testiomony and then share how grateful i am for all the wonderful influences in my life such as my other brother in law dick, or ricky as we like to call him ;), and my dad as well as the examples of people's lives that i have seen that don't serve missions. but really i thought about that with spencer and i never realized what an impact one sentence could have on a person. who knows if i would be here right now if spencer hadn't pointed out the regret from not going. for a number of months during my mission it still baffled me as to why he would say that, but after some talks i have read and the recent scripture studies i have done i have totally found it and i am grateful that my goofy english brother in law told me that while i was probably watching sportscenter or arrested development. once again i am so grateful for all the wonderful examples in my life. i wish i could name them all but i just can't. hopefully spencer doesn't mind getting called out over my blog, i believe apart from my family i have 6 readers, haha! I love you all and till next week!
Avec amour,
Elder oliverson

 Before

After (-:

 The jungle!