Monday- we had planned an FHE at the home of our DMP (ward mission leader) and we were both so stoked because him and his wife are the power couple. He was an AP in Australia for 8 months and has just recently returned from his mission. She was also an STL in England and has also just recently returned. We couldn't think of a better place to have an FHE with our amis adil and ashna. We went in there and had the best crêpes ever with some yummy soup as well. After the tasty part was over we got to the nitty gritty and we taught about faith and prophets. My comp and i had decided to do faith and we'd left prophets to our dmp and his wife. OF course they nailed it! I can't tell how grateful i am to have such super awesome ward members as the ward members here in V-Dascq. I'm especially grateful for my super smart, super cool, super ripped dmp. what a stud!
We'll skip to wednesday. We woke up early with 10 people in our apt to try and catch our train to paris so we could make it on time to the conference with Elder Kearon. We ended up being a little late but that was alright, they only had to wait an extra 15 minutes to take the picture.. woops! After all that Elder Kearon addressed up and it was awesome. He touched on so many key points that i felt i needed to hear at this time in my mission. my 5 month mark is creeping up and i totally needed all the counsel he gave me. what an inspired guy. It was awesome to see how he kept us all laughing and kept things light while also making things super spiritual and great for all of us. it was awsome to see everyone that i hadn't seen for a while as well. i feel like this conference will really give the mission the boost it needs.
Here comes thursday. Well thursday was a bit of a weird day. we went about the day as normal and in the evening we were porting and i received a strange call. as soon as i saw the number i knew it was from the US and more particularly from good old cache valley. i answered and my mother said hello elder oliverson it's your mom. weird. She then proceeded to tell me that my grandfather had passed away. It was really hard for me to take at first, especially now that both my grandfathers are dead and they were both such big examples for me. Grandpa O had always been there to encourage me with my sports and always let me know when he'd seen me in the paper. He always had some good advice and i cherished the sundays we spent with good ole glen and francine. His health had been slowly failing but i still held on to the promise that he made when i saw them for the last time before i got set apart. He told me that he would wait for me to come home before he passed. After the call ended and i had that thought in my mind we had a choice as to whether we finish the last 20 minutes of porting or just call it a night. i told elder jones that i didn't want to go back. we did a few more doors and my voice was a little shaky. i felt stupid but we kept going. we finished one side of the street and i said that i just wanted to do one more door. we did the first door on the next side of the street and a guy rejected us so we decided to walk back to the metro. on our way down the street i just wanted to knock on one more and we did and a lady answered. i decided i wanted to approach this one and straight away she recognized us. she let us in and we taught her a little bit about prayer and prayed with her. she is the mother of one young girl and had a husband who had to work graveyard. she said she was very interested in our message and she gave us the times we could come back. it was amazing to see how the lord blessed us when we kept working.
Friday was a good day but i was still a little bit down from the bad news. we had a special conference with Elder Kearon and all the zone leaders and STLs. it was really cool to see us take special points that had really struck us from wednesday and see how we can make the new vision mission out of those. we had an excellent conversation and the spirit was really strong. when we got back to lille we decided to go porting again. we found a new road in a place called croix and hit that up. we knocked all night and the last door a lady let us in. she had taken the lessons over 20 years ago and she really likes us. She also had children who were less than interested but that's ok.
That's what happened this week. we see that the lord blesses our efforts and it's sweet. I love my mission and i love lille more than any place, it's a close race between brussels, st die, and tours ;) haha
1 comments:
Elder O, It is interesting you have had to deal with this experience, I had a similar experience back in 2007, when my mission president told me Grandpa Sid had passed. You never really know how to take it and he made that same promise that he would wait for me to get back from my mission before he left this earth. It was a sad day, but the plan of salvation definitely helped in that situation and on a mission you don't really comprehend what has happened because we are so busy. Just thought I would tell you that because you are handling it very well and are a Great Missionary!
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