The vision of the mission

This week we ran all around and just tried to find new people to teach and tried to help the people we are teaching progress towards baptism.

 

monday was a great day. so the vision of the mission is to talk to everyone all the time no matter what. so we were coming back after eating waffles with a companionship in our zone and we were on the metro. i walked on and stood by a man who had a weird box and i swore that i heard a chirp from the box. i thought nothing of it and just stood on the metro. the second chirp caught my attention and then i looked at the man. he shrugged his shoulders and said to me, "c'est la vie.' after this we began talking and i found out that the guy had picked up a bird from the side of the road and he was going to hide it from his landlord and nurse it back to life. The conversation was in heat so we had missed our stop and gone a couple too far which ultimately took 15 precious minutes of our p-day. in the end we fixed an apt with the guy and we went on our ways. we went to his house and he told us he had the bird in the pantry and that the landlord would never find it. We then began to tell him about what we do as misssionaries and all about the book of mormon. He then engaged himself to come to church. Sunday he came half an hour early to church and just sat and waited. After church he told us that he didn't know about all the things he heard and that he was going to call us in a week. That night he called me and we talked a little and he flat out admitted that he really liked church but understood nothing at all because the translation wasn't working. We have another nice rdv with him this wednesday

 

tomorrow we get to see the new vision for the mission and what our goal will be for the end of the year. i really love the mission goals because i love the unity we all have when we have one single thing for which we are working. it's a great thing and i think this next one will be even better!

Elder Oliverson

Baptized Fabrice!

What a great week! for starters i have to give a shout out to my el salvadorian bro in law. Ricky we ate some papousa on monday and it was sooooo goood! but now let's get to the stuff that matters. 

This week we solidified the baptism of fabrice by actually baptizing him. He has changed so much and he loves Thomas s Monson. We watched the talk with him where Pres. Monson tells the story about when he lit the weeds on fire as a kid at his cabin. he loves how modern all the stories were. that's why we call it modern day prophet right? well his baptism was a nice service and everything went smoothly from there. he was so happy on sunday when he got to church and he actually started singing the hymns. he said that since he was a member it was his obligation to sing the hymns now even if he doesn't like singing. oh great! i think all the members need to have that type of attitude.

We also found a sweet brazilian family. we taught the mother and the son and the mother said she will be baptized, the son was a little more hesitant. She is super nice and has lived in brussels for 9 years. it's fun to see all the different cultures out here and to hear all the stories about why people came and how things are going for them.

mission council friday was a super great opporunity to feel the spirit and see the direction in which the mission is going. now we're getting a whole surge of new missionaries so we are focusing on finding. we are focusing on talking to people everywhere at all times. this is the most perfect thing and just some more proof that the people leading this mission truly are inspired. i had been thinking about this for a while because between strombeek and louise people don't like to help one another out. i think that if we're all contacting in the different areas of brussels the work will get going even faster and we will see even more baptisms.  the theme for this transfer is.. I love brussels! all around you see the shirts the say i (heart) brussels so i thought it would be cool to get everyone going on that and having us love brussels. this means we will contact all over and not let it matter whether we are in strombeek or louise. It's so true that everyone loves brussels

much love

elder oliverson

 

 

 Papousa

 

Fabrice

 

 

 

the Legacy of Elder Adams

 This weeks ends the legacy of Elder Adams. I'm glad that we can all say that he died well. We had one of our best weeks this week and it was cool to see how well elder adams died. 

We didn't have the chance to see the apostles in paris but surely the mission felt their presence and we felt it in brussels no doubt. All week we had super spiritual experiences with all our amis and it was just so good. Unfortunately fabrice didn't get baptized this week but now we're planning for next week. the only thing that was stopping him is the person that he wanted to baptize him had to work so we moved it another week. i was sad that elder adams couldn't see our miracle ami get baptized but it has been a good run with him anyway. oh fabrice!

This morning during the call that all the zone leaders do president poznanski shared some super awesome news with us. We are now in the top ten missions in all of europe. Our mission has had enough baptisms to reach the top 10. this is something that was never expected to happen in the france paris mission. This is a statistical proof that the work is accelerating so fast and so well in the france mission. Also the number of active members in europe has now reached over 100,000. I love to see all these European saints and all the great things that are happening right now. Isn't it the time for everyone to get out there and serve a mission?

I found out today that i will be receiving a young zone leader next transfer. he is brand new as zone leader just like i was last transfer and i'm super excited to tear up brussels with him. 

This week elder adams let me read a nice book called "the challenge" and it's really changed my mission. I feel that everyday i need to be out challenging people to be baptized and to know christ in their lives. i'm so happy to do this work and i really don't have much time to write but i love you all and i'll send a nice long e mail next week

Becoming something that i'm not

From Brussels with African love. This week I had to battle having a sickness while also just trying to work my bum off getting everywhere... It was great. We had some good success finding new amis, we found 4, and it was so cool to get to teach the restoration 4 times because every time i do i just remember how much joseph smith did for us as a prophet and how awesome it is that i can share it with people who live thousands of miles away. so crazy isn't it?

Monday we climbed our way to the top of a large cathedral in brussels, second biggest cathedral in the world, and as Elder Adams and I were looking over brussels i could only say one thing, "Look at those batiments, man i bet we could port those for days." Translation- look at those giant appartment buildings we could knock on those doors for days. Truly the missionary has sunk into me and i guess there's really nothing that i can do about it. I get a chance to look over a beautiful city and i spend my time looking for places to work, it's great. I remember when my trainer elder thomas told me that one day i would become something like this and i thought, me? no never. but i guess that's just what happens when you're comitted to doing something.

Our week got a little frustrating when our ami with the baptismal date didn't have time to meet with us but we talked to him on sunday and it was a good time. he said he'd still really like to be baptized this saturday and he knows we will have to see him twice before that can happen. He is a great guy and we have already fixed a RDV with him this thursday. I see a real change in him and that he really understands the process for repentance which is really cool. Last sunday he met with his ex wife to apologize and fix any wrong that he did when they split up. now that's real repentance.

Last night we had an interesting night that i can only name, African Night. We have an ami who is the only person in her family who isn't baptized and they love the missionaries and evidently the missionaries love them too. Them knowing that My companion was leaving they decided that we needed to have an African Night. We set up a lesson before where we taught the restoration and then we ate some Foufou which is an African delicacy. The real shocker is that after the lesson, after we'd testified of the restoration and we'd really all felt a strong spirit the girls and the mother went to change and came out in all their African apparel. We listened to gospel songs in Linghala which is the native tongue of the people in the Congo. It was so much fun to spend a night with a sweet family so African and so converted to the restored gospel.

with love

elder oliverson

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