Week 74

What a great week

Highlights:

On Tuesday night we took a train up to Brussels and stayed the night next to Elisabeth Parc with the four Brussel elders. Early the next morning we took the metros to the Norby's, a missionary couple, and Elder Norby drove us down to Waterloo for some legality stuff. All we had to do was talk to a doctor for about two minutes and he signed some papers then we were good. Elder Norby took us all out to McDonald's after 😊  He drove us back up to Brussels and then elder Reiss and I took a train back to Liege. 


Wednesday night: we made candy trains! Thanks grandma! 

Christmas Eve: a member came and picked us up and took us to this member that just barely moved into our ward. They had all of their stuff moved over but it was all just sitting in one room and bunch of stuff needed to be taken up to the attic. We helped him for a good portion of the day. He just moved from the Dutch speaking part of Belgium and he speaks like 5 languages. He had 3 cute little daughters. That night we went with the other elders to a families house from their branch. They were super cool. They have a son that got back from his mission not to long ago. He restored old pedal bikes. They fed us a big meal and we even ate escargot (snails) they weren't too bad. 

Christmas: we got to sleep in! We opened presents and then walked around the ville a little bit. It was raining but not too cold. The other elders left to go eat lunch with a member family and elder Reiss and I went to McDonald's hah. That night we took a train to a little town called trois-pont where a recent convert member family came and picked us up. We got to skype home and then we ate a big dinner with them. They are super cool. 

So when we weren't doing Christmas stuff or legality this week we were out on the streets finding some peeps to share the Christmas spirit with. We found a cool new ami from Congo. He plays gospel on the guitar. We also have been meeting with our ami François, he has been doing great! He's such an awesome guy

Love you all! 


Elder empey 

Week 73

It's been a good week. The weather has been oddly warm the past couple of days, it's been nice! Nice enough not to need to wear a jacket.

Tuesday- we had district meeting at the church and then we went to a rendez vous with this guy named Abraham. He is a 75 year old Belge man who was baptized about 25 years ago but then started studying the koran and was going to mosque instead. He recently saw the liege 2 equipe (I'm in liege 1) and he decided he wanted to start coming back to church. We have met with him a couple of times and boy have we heard some stories. This guy has done some crazy stuff. He was in a concentration camp for 4 years because his mother was Jewish, he was a

parachutist for the army, he was a press photographer and travelled the world taking photos, he's travelled around the US, and a bunch of other stuff. He's a cool guy.  We also ate at a cool members family house that night

Wednesday - we had a rendez vous with a new ami "Dan the man" we sent out a mass text to all the contacts we didn't know in the phone a while ago asking if they were interested. This guy that was marked Dan Romania replied and said we could come over. We got over there and he opens the door and he's this tall pale Romanian guy that looks like a vampire, pretty sweet. I gave him the nick name "dan the man" and he loved it. He lived in the US for a while and so he was speaking English to us and told us about all his adventures, meeting Michael

Jackson, going to the US, going to prison and escaping from prison then having to go back for a long time, pretty exciting. We fixed another return rendezvous and are going to see him Saturday.

Thursday -I don't know if I have anything to share about Thursday, nothing too exciting, just a couple of rendez vous and contacting

Friday - we met with a new ami in this pub, it was kinda hard to talk and stuff but we met a lot of his friends and one of them is really searching for God right now and we are going to try and meet with him.  The APs came up from Paris to start our exchange that night, we picked them up at the gare and then got dinner together. It was fun hanging out with elder lattin that night, he's a fun dude

Saturday - I was with elder lattin for the exchange and it was super fun. We went out contacting and talked a lot about the mission and what not. He's going home in like a week. We were supposed to see Dan the man but that got cancelled and moved to Monday night. We ate lunch and talked about zone stuff then we took them to the gare. We had a Christmas party at the church that night and our ami François came. It was quite the event. People had put a lot of work into it. All the missionaries were part of a choir and the nativity was acted out by

members with little pauses where we would sing. We all ate after that.

Sunday - church was good. We had to give a last minute lesson in our gospel principles class because there was no teacher but it went really well cuz Abraham was there and made lots of comments hah. We got to go eat at François house after and have a little lesson. He is such an awesome dude! Love that guy!

I hope you all have a very merry Christmas! Can't wait to skype! Love you

Elder empey

Week 72

This is our ami Francois, he is golden

This is Elder Orton.  He said that his grandpa and Grandpa Ray are cousins.

This ones gunna be a shorty 😁

We had a great week! We have been getting busier and busier but that's a good thing.

This week we went down to Paris for a Christmas conference with our zone and two others. We had to wake up at like four in the morning to get down there in time and then we missed our train afterwards so we had to exchange our tickets, all the trains were filled until 8:25 so we had to take that one and didn't get home until like 11.

We've been getting in contact with a lot of old Amis to see if they have any potential or desire to progress and been doing lots of contacting and whatnot to find some new Amis. We have one super solid guy right now that has a baptismal date and is progressing super well!  I don't think I have ever had an ami as solid as he is. I love meeting with him and seeing him progress.

Hope you all have a fantastic week! Love ya!

Elder empey

Week 71 - Familiar Face

Elder Empey go to see Wade Bringhurst!  He is a friend from high school that was in the band 5ive Seasons with Dres!  Elder Bringhurst is in the Holland mission which covers the Dutch speaking portions of Belgium.

Elder Empey and Elder Bringhurst in Belgium together!!!

Liege

comp Elder Riess

This was our week of exchanges. Just like last transfer how elder durant and I had to go to like 4 district meetings and do a bunch of exchanges we did that here as well. This week was a lot easier though cuz we only have 3 districts in our zone and they are a lot closer.

Monday night we went down to nivelle and stayed the night down there. We went to Charleroi the next morning for their district meeting. I got to see elder quist, an elder who I lived with in Metz.  We went back up to nivelle and did an exchange with the elders there.  We spent another night there and then went up to Brussels the next
morning.

We went to the district meeting in Brussels and then started another exchange just after. We worked all day and then the other elders wanted to meet us at a resturant for some dinner and guess who was there! Wade Bringhurst! They surprised me! It was super fun seeing him! He recently got to Brussels and I'm going to be here in liege for a good while so I'm pretty sure we could see each other again, we go up to Brussels pretty often.


We came back to liege the next morning, now we're on Thursday. We went to our district meeting and then started an exchange here in Liege with the elders we share an apartment with. I was with elder motiuk, we had a good time. Did a good bit of contacting and porting. 

On Friday I was back with elder Reiss and it was a normal day for us. Finally. We had a rendez vous with one of our Amis that we gave a Book of Mormon last week. We showed up and asked if he had read any and he told us that he has read half of it! That is the first time that has ever happened to me! We fixed a baptismal date for him. I'm pretty stoked! 

We had a few rendez vous on Saturday and did a good amount of contacting but I can't remember anything interesting that happened 😁

Church was good on Sunday. Then kinda the same dealio as Saturday after that. 


So yeah 😊 that was my week 


Love you all!