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