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.