Week 25

Christmas eve with frere boissery

basketball earlier today

supppp!

 This week has been really fun with christmas and all! We've been doing a lot of door to door and singing at peoples houses! We've met quite a few families and been getting quite a few pass backs too! Were going to keep singing christmas songs for people at their door even though christmas has passed cuz it has been working so well haha.

 i guess ill tell you how christmas went down too. On Christmas eve we worked up until 6:00 and then we got to go over to a members house for the rest of the night. We went over to the Boissery's house. They're a young couple, the wife is from America and hes French, they're super cool! they also had a few friends over that prefered speaking english and so we just spoke english the whole night! It was super fun!

On christmas day we got to go over to another familys house with the other elders from our appt. They also fed us a really good meal! that night we got to skype and that was super awesome!

Christmas season is amazing as a missionary! its awesome to be able to bring others to christ especially during this time of year!


CHRISTMAS PHONE CALL

We loved getting our call from Dres.  He called us Christmas day from a member's house who also has a missionary daughter out in Switzerland.  Dres and his new comp each spoke to their families at the same time in separate rooms.  We used Skype and got about 90 minutes total to talk to him.  He looks great!

He shared his testimony and the First Vision in French.  His French sounds amazing.  It is really beautiful and his accent is great.  We busted out the guitars and banjo and played him Jesus, Savior Pilot Me.  Dorothy and Ray (Dres' grandparents) came over as well as two of his uncles, Tom and Digger to the last 30 minutes or so of the phone call.  It was just great to hear his voice and watch him talk and move.  Having our whole family hang out together was just great!


For Christmas, the mission president let the missionaries sleep in and watch a cartoon movie.  Dres said he slept in until about 9:00 and it was so great.  Then he got to go watch Ice Age 3 at a members house, "We watched ice age (in English) with an 80 year old french lady who doesn't speak a word of English. It was the funniest thing ever"

"We watched ice age (in English) with an 80 year old french lady who doesn't speak a word of English. It was the funniest thing ever"

"thank you all again sooooo much for the presents!!"

Week 24

The Empey family has a Christmas tradition that Grandma Dorothy Orton came up with and does every year.  All the cousins and family get together and make "candy trains".  Dorothy sent all the stuff for Dres and his companion and roommates to make them too.  They loved it.

suppppp. hey thanks so much for those videos! they're sweet! im sitting here in the cyber cafe holding back tears just having watched  you guys play paranoia.

skyping.... so i will be at this members house to skype at around 7pm here. I'm not sure if elder jacobson will be going first or me so i might be calling at 8pm or a little later. i will be able to send you emails that day off of members phones and whatnot so i'll let you know if things change and once they are more certain. I'm totally fine with anyone you would like to be there. it is totally fine if it is just the imediate family or if other people are there. its whatever you want.

i sent a package to you guys last p day so hopefully it gets there before christmas. i had a hard time finding cool stuff to buy and thinking of specific stuff for everyone so its kinda just a bunch of random stuff.

i got grandmas package the other day. it was soooo sweet! the other elders loved it!!!!!!!

Week 23

supppppppp! the update for this week......

Toward the begining of the week we visited lots of members and amis cuz Elder Davis was going home. On Wednesday morning we went into Paris for transfers. We got there kinda early so Elder davis and I looked through Notre Dame real quick haha. We chilled at the Saint Mairie chapel for quite a while figuring stuff out. they have a thing called Paris P Day for all the missionairies that are going home right then so Elder Davis and I said our goodbyes :( and he went off and did fun paris stuff. Elder Davis is sooo cool! I miss him a bunch already! our appt just isnt the same without him. so i had to wait at the chapel for quite a while cuz my new comp was coming in from the far east part of france. he got there at like noon and we ate up there real quick and headed down to evry. His name is Elder Jacobson. he is really obedient and a really good missionary. he was talking to everyone on the train ride down here and we found a new family from it!! we have taught them once since then and will be seeing them again in a few days then they said they would come to church too!

The rest of our week has been really good. We've been doing quite a bit of porting and contacting. for porting we have been caroling and its worked pretty good! We have been let in a few times and have gotten a new family as ami's from it. I thought more people would let us in cuz all we ask is to sing for them but they always say no and i have no idea why! i feel like if I had two kids from a different country show up at my door wanting to sing I would love to hear them sing a christmas song with funny accents but i guess thats not the case for these people. thats okay though.

hmmmmmm is there anything else i want to share.......... i dont really think so

heres a pic of elder davis and I with Samuel. he's super cool. and one in Notre Dame

love you all :)

Week 22

hey i dont have a bunch of time today because we're going to go into paris in a few minutes :D

yesterday was fun, we pretty much spent the whole day with the mission president and his wife.

Bernard baptized somone on saturday!!!! the other companionships ami! it was so sweet!!

I'll talk to you guys next week :)

Love,

Elder Empey

Week 21

Dres ran into his trainer, Elder Baldwin, at a conference in Paris

Ben got the Priesthood

heyyyyyyyy hows everybody doing? this week has been good :) no crazy experiences or stories so i guess ill just give you a little overview of the week :)

we got back in touch with some old amis this week, Samuel and Admaya. They're super cool, i taught them once with elder Baldwin when i first got here in Evry but after that couldn't find much time to meet with us so we lost contact a little bit until they saw me in the gare (train station) on Sunday i think it was. They said that they missed our visits and wanted us to come over again. we've seen them a couple times this week and they're actually super solid. they could totally be baptized soon except they aren't married and cant get married until next year so the elders that will be here then will get to do that. oh and they speak English so that's fun :)

we've also been meeting with Alberto quite a bit too. He's 19 and LOVES his bible. our rendezvous with him can get just a tiny bit out of hand some times when he wants to argue doctrine in the bible but other than that he's cool

we also met this young African lady in the park. we went over to her house and she had invited 5 of her cousins to the rendezvous too. It went really well! and two of them came to church yesterday

OH! we got the police called on us earlier this week haha! we were porting in a neighborhood and someone thought we were thieves or something and called the police. they pulled up next to us and got out of their car but it was all chill. we just explained that were missionaries and they told us to just be careful about knocking on doors when its dark outside, and left.

the whole mission is doing "Christmas contacting" so we center our contacting and porting on christs birth. So we started going caroling for porting! Except...... no one has even let us yet haha. we've only been doing it for a couple days but I'm pretty surprised that people still say no when we just ask them if we can sing a Christmas song for them. I'm sure at least one person will let us in this week so ill tell you guys about that next week :)

Thanks for all of you emails and whatnot, i love it! oh and thank you for my awesome little Christmas tree! its so rad! we decorated it on thanksgiving. also the elders say thank you for their Christmas countdown calendars! :)


love and miss you all

Elder Empey

Week 20

FIRST BAPTISM!!!

 

This week has been awesome!! Bernard got baptized on Saturday!! It was sooo awesome! He kinda just showed up at church about 2 months ago and hasn't missed a Sunday yet! He's friends with this lady in the ward so during that time Elder Davis and I were teaching him a couple of times a week at her house. The baptismal service started out a little bit rough cuz he missed his bus and got there a little bit late but it was all good after that. Our ward mission leader baptized him and then the confermation was yesterday during sacrament meeting. It's so cool to see investigators take that first step in following jesus christ by being baptized. He is such an awesome, humble, loving, guy and he wants to do his very best to follow Jesus.

We had a couple of other cool events this week. On Thursday we all went up to Versaille for a mission conference. It was pretty sweet! Elder Cook was there and gave a pretty sweet talk. It was also cool cuz every single missionary in our mission was there too. It was super cool to see an apostle speak and also see old friends from the MTC and whatnot.

We also got a chance to go down to Dourdan for a day and do some work down there. We went looking for less actives and did some contacting. Dourdan is pretty sweet, its super old, french looking, and has a massive, old, cathedral! super sick!

Things are going great! i hope you all have an awesome week!


love,


Elder Empey

Week 19

Dres has not sent any pics this week.  But this is kinda funny.  He told us he was getting a new missionary in his apartment this last week.  So I noticed on his missionary Facebook (France-Paris-Mission-Babin, link on the right of this page) that his new Elder in his apartment is Elder Jaxon Carson from American Fork  He is to the left of the Elder with glasses.  I love that his new comp, Elder Ireland is photo bombing in the window.  I Google stalked him and his family.  Elder Carson has a cool blog too.  I'll include it below. 

 Elder Carson's blog

Dear Family!

Happy Birthday Mom!!!! I hope you have an awesome day!! you should be getting a letter soon ;)
 

So we got a new elder in our appt, Elder Carson. He's brand new; from Spanish Fork Utah, and super cool! We played a couple of pranks on him when he first got here. Elder Ireland told him he only spoke french and then when they got to evry he took him to our appt saying it was a referral. Elder davis pretended to be french an i told him that i just moved here from america and dont speak any french. he gave me the whole first lesson and his personal book of mormon and said he would just come get it later haha. they left and then came back and we were back in missionary clothes and he was pretty suprised. elder ireland and davis kept pretending like they only spoke french for 2 more days after that.

Everything is going great with our amis. Ben is going to be getting baptised this saturday!!! im so stoked for that!! hopefully everything works out good. We still need to teach him a few more little things and get an interview with the district leader then we're good. I'll send you guys pictures and tell you how it worked out next week.

hmmm anything else happen this week......... not really. It's been raining a bunch so thats kinda sucky. but other than that everything is sweet!!!

love,


Elder Empey

Week 18

Dres sent us this letter and it was AWESOME.  He gave us tons of details about his life as a missionary and little "Random Facts".  He talked about little jokes that he, his companion and the other Elders in his apartment talk about.  He told us about this testimony and how much it has grown.  We LOVED it.

"here's a pic of me giving elder Ireland a hair cut LOL"

So today the library is closed and so we have to do our emails in this little ghetto cybe cafe haha which means i probably wont be able to write very much. Today is the first day of my 3rd transfer! which means I'm not a "blue" anymore! Wednesday will be the day when people get transferred around but ill be staying here in évry with Elder Davis for at least another 4 weeks for sure and then I might be moved to a different city but ill probably stay another 8 weeks after that.

There was only one change made in the appt. Elder Roth is leaving to a different city and Elder Ireland will be training a "blue" he in Evry! im so stoked to have a missionary in the appt that's newer than me! makes me feel old and experienced in the mish ;) we don't know who he is yet but we have a whole bunch of pranks planned for when he shows up in 2 days haha. Since Elder Roth is leaving we went to a sushi buffet today, i think that's the first sit down restaurant I've been in since I've been on my mission so that was pretty fun

Its been a solid week. Our investigator Ben is super solid! Hes super humble and really wants to "give himself to Jesus."  He was supposed to get baptized this next Sunday but there's an activity going on at the church that day so we moved it to Saturday the 22.

I hope everything is going good at home! Glad you guys liked my letter :) here's a pic of me giving elder Ireland a hair cut LOL

Love,

Elder Empey

Week 17

Last Week's P-day in Paris

okay so its been 2 weeks since i emailed you guys cuz last p day elder Ireland and I went into Paris to see all the cool sights and we didn't have much time to email.

Paris was super fun! We left right after personal studies and got up there at 11 and spent the whole day running around to different sites! we saw the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, and some other cool old buildings. We also met some American members from Kaysville at the Eiffel Tower.

Things have been going pretty good with our amis. Except there was one ami we had that had a baptisimal date and everything but then he told us that he decided to go back to his old church :( the rendezvous right before that was super good too! the spirit was so strong! he said that he has felt a huge change in his life and i gave him a blessing for his knee that he has been having problems with and he said he really felt the spirit. I think he got excited about being baptised and all and told his friends about it and they probably talked him out of it or something. He was super cool and it made me really sad that he didnt want to meet with us anymore. We have a few other amis that were working with that have baptisimal dates though also so im super excited for those! One of them is supposed to get baptised next saturday! He's a really cool guy from Cameroon and he speaks English!

I hope everything is going well at home! I love you guys!

Love, Elder Empey

(I asked how his French is going)

French is aight, I feel like I can almost understand everything and then speaking is quite a bit more difficult. I can always get my idea across though.





​

Week 16

 P-day in Paris with Elder Ireland

Paris

Love padlocks on Ponts de Arts

The Louve

Arc de Triomphe

Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame

Hey, so Elder Ireland and I went into Paris today and we just barely got home so I can't send a long email but I'll just try to upload some pics.

Love,

Elder Empey

Week 15

Eating crepes for a whole week.  "Don't worry though, we bought a bunch of healthy stuff to put into the crepes ;)"

We have kinda lost a few investigators, some because they don't want to continue lessons and others because we just cant get a hold of them, cant do much about that, but we're going to keep trying. We have found another super solid ami though! hes a 27 year oldish African that lives only 5 min away from us. we found him on Tuesday and we've already met with him 3 times and he came to church yesterday! He's super cool!

This week we also got to go up to Versailles! A lady in their ward was getting baptized and she wanted Elder Davis to do it so that was pretty cool!

hmmm no other big events this week. We've been doing some door to door more recently and found some families that are going to let us come back. Had a few other lessons with some of our other amis.

Oh, we decided that were going to do a week long crepe diet in the appt :D So were only going to eat crepes for a whole week haha. Don't worry though, we bought a bunch of healthy stuff to put into the crepes ;) so ill have to let you know how that goes next week.

Love,

Elder Empey

Week 14

Seine River near Evry

Elder Davis and Elder Empey

 http://eldergavindavis.blogspot.com/

This week has been so awesome!!! I feel like we worked super hard and then we could see it all pay off at church yesterday!

        

On Tuesday we went to see a lady in Longemeau that we were referred to by a member of a different ward. We were able to get a baptismal date the very first rendezvous!!! and my first baptismal date yet! the member of the other ward has talked to her quite a bit about the church so that helped a lot. we set the date as November 9!

        

 On Wednesday we went to visit a less active family and while we were waiting for them to answer the door we heard someone singing "how great though art" in some African language and so when no one answered the door we went and knocked on their door and they let us in and we were able to teach them the restoration then we sang with them after haha

        

On Thursday we had zone conference up in Paris. i love going up to Paris so much, there's always super cool motorcycles hah

      

We have been spending quite a bit of time in Evry Village this week, its down by the seine river and the buildings and streets are super old and french looking! on Friday while we were down there we met this 75 year old french guy and gave him a gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet and set up a rendezvous for the next day

     

So on Saturday we went and visited Karl (the old french guy.) the lesson went good and we were able to get him to pray for the first time ever in his life!! it was super cool!

Church was awesome yesterday! a couple of the the people we invited showed up and then also this random African guy. i stayed with him throughout church and got to know him. he kept saying how happy he was to be there and how everyone is so happy. i asked him if he would like to become a member and be baptized and he said he would love to! so were going to start teaching him the lessons and he'll probably be baptized pretty soon!

Love,

Elder Empey

Week 13

Dres makes Grandma Dorothy Orton's famous caramel popcorn

Dres making popcorn

Making caramel popcorn

Dres gets new companion

Thanks to Dres' awesome trainer, Elder Baldwin.  Oh, Dres cut his own hair, not bad!

Elder Empey with some investigators

suppppp! another solid week here in évry! on Wednesday me and elder Baldwin went in to Paris to make the exchange. he left on a train and i got to chill with all of the brand new missionaries and go see Notre Dame with them because elder Davis was still AP kinda and the APs always take the new missionaries down to Notre dame their first day, so that was fun. Elder Davis is super cool! Once we got back to évry we started looking for people to teach. He's super good at talking to people and super persistent! We have 2 new amis, Pivan and Mr. Pandi. We found Pivan in the park, hes this older french guy that looks exactly like the main character on "master of disguise" we've had 2 lessons with him so far. he's Hindu, which is pretty strange for a french dude, and he kinda comes off like he only wants to learn about Mormons with no intention to progress toward baptism so we'll have to see how things go with that. We met Mr. Pandi on the street in juvisy, he told us he was busy right then but we could go to his appt an hour later. we taught him the Restoration and he seems interested. were going to see him again on Saturday.

hmm... what other stuff happened this week... on one of the trains we found a guy that's a member but hasn't been to church since he moved into the area so were going to start working with him too i think. conference was super awesome!! we watched the first Saturday session late Saturday night and then watched priesthood and 2 other sessions on Sunday.

Week 12

Dres with his companion/trainer, Elder Baldwin, and the bishop of the Evry ward and his family 

 Elder Empey is already getting a new companion!  Elder Davis is from Seattle.  He is currently the AP and his mission ends in December.  I've already stalked him on Google and found his blog

 http://eldergavindavis.blogspot.com/

I think this is the way they find out where they are getting transfered?!?

whassss upppp!?!? so stuff that went down this week..... we had the last district meeting of the transfer on tuesday. wednesday i cut my own hair for the first time, it actually looks pretty good ;) on thursday all of the blues and their trainers met up in paris and all of us blues went and did our first year legality (ofii) while the trainers went contacting in paris. it was super awesome cuz i got to see my whole mtc district! elder sherren is sooo rad! i forgot how funny he is! on friday we got to go over to the bishops house for a mangez vous. the bishops familly is super cool! sunday was a fun day. theres a lady from oregon in our ward and she brought us root beer from the US!

alright now ill share a little spiritual story from this week. so toward the first of the tranfer we found this super cool lady that let us into her house and teach her a lesson. we gave her a BOM but she said that she cant read french very well, only speak it, because she is from ethiopia. she told us the language that she spoke and we looked quite a bit for a BOM in that language, we ended up with 2 diferent languages that were close and we picked one of them. we took it to her house just the other day and it ended up being the right one! she was soooo happy when she saw that we had one in her language! she started reading it right then!

love and miss you all!

elder empey


oh! i forgot something, im getting a new comp. we all thought that elder baldwin might be getting transfered because he's been in evry for like 6months. my new comp will be elder Davis i think hes from washington state, he'll get here on wednesday. he is actually an AP right now! im super excited to be working with him, im sure ill be able to learn a lot!

ahh daddio youre the best!!

i was able to go on a computer at the curch last sunday and see the videos that you have sent so that was awesome! you can just keep sending them how you have been and ill be able to see them every once in a while :) maybe once we get ipads it will be really easy to see them idk we'll find out as we go

sorry my emails arent very detailed theres quite a few emails to reply to and im still not very fast on these french keyboards. maybe if i have time this week i will send you a letter with the usual day to day schedule and other stuff



Mom

I love hearing about all this stuff soo much! thank you! i can already see just a little bit of what dad said about how life back home almost seems like a dream or something like that. seeing this stuff and hearing these stories makes it more real which i love!

btw i always do middle splits in my bed when im trying to get to sleep ;) (in response to Dotty's email about practicing her splits in her bed so that she can do them when Dres gets home)

i think you and dad should try and give greg and kristi a run for theyre money ;) im sure isa would love it ;) (in respose to Greg and Kristi Taylor's face painting and intense school spirit at the SCHS Warrior's games)

if you find out where lane johnson is going let me know, i was wondering that just the other day

Week 11

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DRES!!!  19!!!

wassss uppp!?!? thank you sooooo much for the birthday packages! and tell grandma thank you for hers too, it had the most perfect stuff in there, i was about to buy shoe shine stuff but right before we went to the store i got her package and there was some in there! I loved that book you guys made! its perfect!

it has been an awesome week! we got a new ami who is super solid! We actually first contacted him like the 2nd week i was here, we gave him a book of mormon but he didnt want to meet with us again. Then just the other day we ran into him again. He doesnt believe in god but he really wants to so he's willing to try anything we ask him to do like read scriptures and pray! oh and he plays the guitar too! super cool guy!

the district leader had to go on an exchange with my comp this week which meant i got to go with his comp, elder congerton, who has also only been out here in france for 5 weeks haha we managed to get by though. we were able to get our point accross while contacting and teaching a few lessons he had planned for the day, it qas pretty rough but funny too.

love elder empey

dad you're the best!!!! my birthday was great! I actually opened the BLURB package "birthday eve" cuz i just couldnt wait :/ i love that book sooo much! my roomates bought me a kebab for lunch. kebabs are the best! we get one like every week! im not sure if you know what they are or if youve had one but im sure youll look them up after you read this ;) i do remember that they had the same sort of thing at that greek place in laguna though. kebabs arent even french but they are everywhere here!

how is sam rebman doing? could you find out his email for me?

did you keep a journal on your mission? do you think you could send me a picture inserts from when you first started or letters or something? im just interested to see how you felt when you were first starting your mish.

i love you!!!!!!!!

Week 10

Youtube link

Video Dres sent us a tour of his apartment in Evry.  I uploaded it to YouTube.  His apartment is so so tiny!!

 

Dres and his comp, Elder Baldwin studying

 

Dres and one of his fave Elders in his apartment

Hey!!! 

It's been a pretty good week here in Evry. We got to go to Paris for zone conference on Thursday. While we were waiting for the conference to start  me and Elder Ireland went and got dr. peppers :D and walked down toward Notre Dame but there was a little manifestation going on so we turned around and went back to the church haha.  

Friday was a super awesome day! Me and elder Baldwin were walking in the park and we contacted this guy and he turned out to be an Evangelist pastor. He was telling us how we can only have the bible and no other book. While we were talking to him i was just thinking to myself, wow we really do belong to the true church!! I bore my testimony to him and he told us that he would pray and if
God told him that we were true messengers of God he would give us a call.

That night we taught a guy named Mohamed, his dad was Muslim but his mom was Christian and so was he. We taught him the restoration and he understood really well. The spirit was super strong! I think he'll become a progressing investigator.

On Sunday we taught this lady that we contacted a week ago. It went super well also and i think she'll become a progressing investigator!

love and miss you all!

love elder empey

Week 9

Aparjon

They wanted to see if they could only eat cereal for the whole week.  They did it!!!  Love the ping pong net on the kitchen table!

His desk with pictures of the Savior, his whole fam, friends and pics of his motorcycle.  

Looks like the other companionship says their prayers long enough to fall asleep!

Hello family!

We made it all week on cereal haha it was kinda sucky but we did have dinner at a few members houses so that was really nice. Some other stuff that happened this week: I got to give this lady a blessing, and we blessed her house too. Shes not a member but has been on and off with the missionaries for a while and lifes been kinda rough for her lately.

Had some interesting contacts, one guy we contacted was a kinda crazy turkish guy. He kept trying to talk politics and about some sort of problems between the US and Turkey. I kept trying to tell him that we are here to talk about jesus and not politics but he just kept going. Another guy we contacted was this big, 50 year old, with one tooth, he was hitting on me and my comp haha

We went out to Aparjon a few times. I really like it out there, theres a bunch of cool, narrow, really french looking streets and buildings.

We taught quite a few lessons but we dont have any progressing amis which is kinda a downer. I feel like the amis we do have only like to meet with us because they like to discuss their views but they dont really care about our church. There was a random guy that elder baldwin contacted like a month ago that just showed up to church so there might be some potential there :)

okay so to answer some of your questions mom and dad. so you already know a bunch of stuff about my comp. from stalking him haha. Hes pretty cool. He has 5 sisters and no brothers. He loves fishing, and country music. I would say that me and him have very different personalities, interests, and senses of humor. He is a solid missionary, follows all the rules, and can speak french pretty well. Even though were very different we still get along fine. 

ill send you a vid tour of our appt next week

the members feed us a lot! its really nice! probaby 2 times a week, maybe thats not a lot to other missions, idk haha. the members are sweet! 

i have to leave the library right now, hopefully i can repy to the rest of this email next week. love you! you are the best! thank you for everything!!! oh and i got the two packages :) thanks! i promisse i wont open them till the 20th (the 20th of September is Joe's birthday and we have sent him two packages, glad he got them)

Love,

Elder Empey