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

Week 8

 

Dres with one of his sweet friends, Kim Gubler at the MTC

 

 

 

 

This week has been pretty good. On Tuesday I went on an exchange with the district leader Elder Ricks, the district leader. He's an awesome missionary! We talked to every single person we saw and taught a bunch of lessons! He's super good at french too! People thought he was french. 

Wednesday we switched back, me and Elder Baldwin did some porting (door to door) and found this awesome old lady from Ethiopia. we taught her a lesson and gave her a book of mormon, i'm pretty sure she'll become an investigator but we wont be teaching her, the sisters will. 

Thursday we had a bunch of rendezvous planned, they all ended up cancelling but it was still an awesome day because we ended up finding quite a few people by contacting and gave them lessons instead. 

Friday was kinda rough, we had some rendezvous set up but none of them showed and we couldnt find anyone else to teach either. 

Saturday we helped a less active familly move furniture, we also got to go out to this pretty little town Saint Germain-les Aparjon to find a guy that we were reffered to by the Saint George Temple! Pretty crazy huh!? I think he was on vacation in St. George, was at the visitors center, and told them he'd like to know more. We only had an adress and no phone number for him so we just had to go to his house but noone was there :( 

On Sunday I was asked to introduce myself and bare my testimony in sacrament, that was kinda scary doing it in french and all. We also taught an investigator that night, Edward, he's a super cool guy from Nigeria. We teach him in English so thats cool. 

Today we all went shopping at Carrefour, and while we were there we decided that we wanted to see if we could go a full week on only cereal and milk so well see how that goes haha. hope you're all doing good! I love you!

(Answering random questions from me and Amber)

yeah there are other elders in our appt. elder ireland and elder roth. elder ireland is super cool! he was a dj before he came on his mission and hes from canada! we get along really well! hes super funny! elder roth is a convert as of 2 years ago i think. hes into video games and hes got nice style hah. 

food here is alright, some stuff is really weird like milk, it doesnt need to be refrigerated till its opened and it taste A LOT different. 

there arent any other language missionaries here in evry, only french. i did see some chineese speaking elders when i first got to paris though. 

love Elder Empey