week 50

Aight to finish today's journal entry. We got back from the zone conference with our I pads and we went to the church to set them up. After setting them up we called this potential ami that the other elders gave us. He said he was free and the moment and we could meet with him at his room in the foyer. We went over and it was him and his two friends in this tiny room. We found out that they are all Hindu but they want to learn about christianism so we taught them the basics. They also might want to become Christian? Maybe?

We also ran into our Sierra Leonian ami, Michael, while we were there. Just for a little background, things were going well with him but for some reason he got kinda angry with us, I think it's because we brought up baptism, so we had lost contact for a couple weeks but were finally able to see him last week and we just expressed our love for him and now we're on good terms again. He loves seeing us now and so he was happy to run into us at the foyer. I don't know if he'll progress soon but were going to keep teaching him.

Love you all

Elder Empey

Week 49

Dres' best buddy and our dear family friend Navy Dalton returned home today from his mission in Denver, Colorado.  We love you Navy!!!

we went and explored that fort again today and i dont have very much time left :/  but... we are supposed to be getting ipads this thursday so im going to be able to email a lot easier and fill you in on all the details and whatnot. 

this week was pretty solid. one crazy little story to share

we got a referral from the other elders at the begining of the week and went to go pass by his house. its up in an area of town called woippy and it can be a little bit sketchy sometimes. we went up there and found his appt building, we walked into the front door and pressed the elevator button when this punk came to the front door on a moped (around 20 years old), he started yelling at us telling us to leave because its a "muslim neighborhood and theres no christians there" i told him we had a friend that we were going to visit but he just kept yelling at us and drove his scooter into the building up to us. i told him he had no right to tell us to leave and he grabbed my shirt and started pulling us out of the building.we let him walk us out of the building and we started walking away. he left on his scooter and this other muslim guy who watched the whole thing came up to us and was telling us how that kid cant tell us to leave and we have every right to go visit our friend, he said we could go back in and if that kid came back we could let him know and he would help us out. we ran up to the guys floor but he wasnt there so we booked it out of that neigborhood before the dude could see us again.

we helped one of our amis moved this week and that went really well. his friend who was helping too got super frustrated at this car that was in the way of his van so he lifted the back of the car up and pushed it out of the way. big strong dude  

hope you guys have a great week! love you! oh and happy fathers day dad!!!!!!!!

love elder empey

Week 48

it has been a long but solid week. this last transfer we had quite a few amis but they all seemed to come to a stall in progression halfway through the transfer. some of them have been dropped and some have come back into the game. anyways, we started of this week/transfer in need of some new people. we started off the week with lots and lots of finding, contacting and porting. its been getting very warm and humid so that was a little bit sucky but im sure it could be worse. throughout the week we found a couple people with some potential but for the most part we werent seeing a bunch of success. we tried other ways to find people, trying to get in contact with ancient amis, finding less actives, calling old potentials, but we didnt seem to get much out of that either. 

it seems to be that after all we can do is when we're lent a hand and someone is put into our path. Two different members each brought a friend to church! one lives in our sector and the other in the other elders sector. they introduced them to us and we got to hangout with them throughout the meetings. by the end they were showing lots of intrest and said they would love to hear our message. it was soo sweet! now that i look back on it, this whole week pretty much feels like the first week of my second transfer in the field. i remember elder davis and i looking so hard for people to teach and then it was on sunday when bernard showed up at church. that would be pretty cool if everything worked out the same as that did!

for p day today we decided to go look for a fort. we tried to check out this one but it was pretty lame and so decided to look for another one. we walked a good couple miles and climbed up this hill and found this sweet old fort at the top. we didnt spend much time up there but i think we're going to go back next p day. elder wells saw some metal sticking out of the ground and pulled it out, it turned out to be this sweet old sword thing. maybe its just an old gardening tool but we like to think its a sword :) 

elder quist got transfered and left on wednesday. elder wells now has a new companion, his name is elder johnson and hes from portage utah, hes a cool dude. 

love ya! have a great week! 

Week 47

so last p day right after i emailed you guys we got to go to verdun with our friend Pauline. it was super sweet! Verdun is a city not very far from metz where a big world war 1 battle took place (pretty sure it was ww1, maybe the second) anyways, the battle went on for around 9 months and lots of people lost their lives (i forget the number but i wanna say somewhere close to 600,000) its a pretty well known spot and it was really cool to visit. we visited a couple of memorials and and two different forts.

I'm just going to share another cool little story from this week. We had a few hours one day where we didnt have anything planned so we were about to go out contacting when we decided to pray first and pick a specific part of the city we were going to go to. We decided on this one part of town called Pontifoy. we got over there and started talking to people. after a little bit this guy approached us and asked if we were the mormons. he brought us over to this appt building and started talking with us, he told us about how he had visited utah and the salt lake temple. after talking for a bit a lady, a friend he was helping at the moment, came out of the building. we started talking to her and found out that earlier that same morning she had gone to talk to a priest so that she could be baptized because shes going through a rough time right now and feels like baptism is something she needs. shes in the procces of moving so we got her number and said that we could help. im really hoping something can come from it, i guess we'll find out. 

so sorry but i dont have much time to write anything else. hope you guys have an awesome week! 

oh btw, the transfer just ended and i will be staying here in metz for at least 6 more weeks 

that also means i am in my 8th transfer 8/16   pretty crazy

Week 46

Elder Siedow with Dres in the background

sup!

so for p day today a member is taking us out to Verdun so i dont have much time to email. its only been since wednesday when I emailed you guys last so theres not a whole bunch to add.

thursday- we went up to luxembourg to do an exchange with out district leader. we got to do some service and help a family that was moving. luxembourg is super international and there are a bunch of american members, the family we helped was american and all the people helping were english speakers, so that was really fun and kinda weird too hah.

friday- we stayed up in luxembourg today. there was a 15 year old boy that passed away a few days ago and the funeral service was being held today. they wanted missionaries to come help with it so our district leader got permission for our district to come help. it was a really cool experience but really sad too. 

saturday- we have this new ami thats from armania and we got to visit him. hes going to be moving soon and we are going to be helping him with that. he understands our message very well and seems like he'll be progressing soon. we had a couple other rendez-vous that went well and also did a lot of porting

sunday-church was really good. since we were in luxembourg most of friday we ended up doing our weekly planning today instead. Frere raymond invited us over for dinner, he is the coolest! 

stay sweet