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