Monday, July 27, 2015

Week 54

Dres is back with the same missionary that initially trained him a year ago, Elder Baldwin







Friday July 24: oh shoot, it's been a good while since I've written in here. I've been pretty busy. So last Saturday I found out that I would be serving as a zl in Rennes with elder Baldwin, crazy! He trained me! So i was busy with packing and stuff since then. Lots of members invited us over for meals cuz I was leaving. Dinges, royers, johann, Olivia. Metz is sweet! Since I've been here in Rennes I've been super busy. 

Saturday July 24: alright, so time to catch up,a bit. Important things that have happened since I've been her in Rennes. Transfer day was Wednesday, I went into Paris with elder wells, elder Siedow and Johnson stayed in Metz, the two equipes got combined. They're going to be super busy! Transfers were fun, I got to see a bunch of old comps/roommates/Mtc buds. Elder Baldwin took a while so I got to talk to them quite a bit. Mainly elder Pratt and elder Latin. Elder Baldwin and I caught up on the train ride here. Didn't have much time to do anything once we got here. We did stop by a recent convert named Andy, he's Chinese and rad. Thursday morning we had to wake up at 4:30 to go into Paris again for mission council. It's for all the ZLs and STL (sister training leaders) president and the APs give formations and talk about mission stuff. That was fun, seeing how the mission works and all. I was kinda nervous cuz I was just surrounded by all the super stud older missionaries who can speak French super super well and whatnot, I kinda kept quiet the whole time. During the ride home we discussed what we thought about it and what we would pass on during the district leader training. I re-realized that elder Baldwin and I have pretty different ways of thinking. I can sometimes get frustrated when people don't think the same way as me but then I just realize that it's still good, just different. When we got home we had a rdv with a kid named Marian, he's 19 and from Romania. He looks like quite a punk but he's a cool kid, he believes were the right church and wants to be baptized, just isn't quite ready yet. We taught with a member named bob, he's from New Caledonia and super cool, while we were waiting for Marian to get there him and I were talking a bunch about guitar, motorcycles, and New Caledonia. Friday we stopped by bishops house to grab a forum. He seems pretty cool but he's going to be on vacation for three weeks so I won't see him/get to know him for a while. We contacted this African guy that's going to become a pastor on the bus, he was cool. We had our weekly planning sesh. That took a while cuz the other equipe that was here in Rennes got closed down so we just acquired all their Amis. We taught this guy named Bruno, he kinda just complained to us about stuff and we taught about sabbath day and how coming to church will help. We had another rdv at the church with an ami and a member coming, the member was this old African guy that's an anesthesiologist 

Sunday July 26: the dude never showed up to the rdv so we shared a little spiritual thought with the member then while we were leaving him with a prayer elder brockbank walked into the chapel. He went home a couple days ago so it was really weird to see him, his family picked him up I guess and he was with them showing them around the different villes he served in. Elder brockbank is a stud. We talked with him and his fam for a bit then we came back home for dinner.Saturday we had a district leader training meeting. The two district leaders and the stls came to our chapel and we talked about some of the things they talked about at mission council. We also gave a formation on diligence. 

Monday July 27: after that meeting we had quite a few rdvs scheduled but none of them went through. One of them was supposed to work out but we saw this old lady that needed some help and it took to long and we didn't make it to the rdv on time, I personally feel like we should have taken the rdv over helping the lady but ca va. One cool thing that happened today, we were walking on the sidewalk and I looked into a laundromat and saw a young French woman reading a book that looked like it might have been the bible. We kept going and got into this park and couldn't decide where to go from there, I felt like I should have talked to that lady so we went back and started talking to her, she was about 25,we talked about the Book of Mormon with her and she was really interested, we left her with a prayer and our card. She's moving next week so I hope we can get her set up with the soeur Missionnaires in her new ville. SundaySunday was good. We went to church and all the members were really nice. I presented myself in sacrament meeting. There's quite a few young people in this ward. Some members gave a a ride home afterwards. We finished our weekly planning sesh. We had a rdv after but that fell through. We decided to pass by some of the Amis of the other equipe that just closed but we kinda just got lost instead. We taught this older dude on the road and then also met this Ethiopian guy at a bus stop. We also stop by andys, he is super funny. We taught about the word of wisdom and also gave him the sacrament. He had a surgery on his knee that went wrong and now he's in this rehab place for a while. There's a pond right next to our house and so while we were walking around today we kept our eyes open for flat rocks and then we skipped a couple in the pond as we were coming home πŸ˜Š

Monday, July 20, 2015

Week 53

Olivia Dinge invited us over for lunch the other day, this is her son, he's a stud 

This is our ami AndrΓ©e. She's pretty cool

Transferred to Rennes as a ZL



Dres has got to be in this awesome city of Metz for over 6 months and LOVED it.  He is sad to leave the awesome members and people there.  Thanks for being so good to him there!!!


Last week of the transfer! Pretty good week at that too. We had quite a few rendez vous scheduled and almost all of them went through. Don't really have any crazy experiences to share though. It was just a solid week.

We did meet a guy that claims to be a prophet, taught him twice and he's going to call us after he reads the Book of Mormon and gets an answer about it.

The royers invited us over for dinner, they're the coolest! It was elder wells and my last time with them and they gave us these cool Polaroid pictures 

Oh, other big news. I'm going to be transferred to Rennes as a ZL and my comp is going to be elder Baldwin! Yeah that's right, my first comp in the field. Crazy huh?

Monday, July 13, 2015

Week 52



(I've just taken some sections of Dres' journal entries.  So, it may not all make sense.  His mission has given all missionaries iPads, so he is having tons of fun with the emoticons!!!)

 ...so after studies we went to the gare to head up to Luxembourg for our district meeting.   We went to the church to meet with Michael but we gave him a call and he said we could come to his house. We got there and after praying with him he told us that he has decided that he wants to be baptized! I was so happy. He gave us this big ol long shpheel on why and It was awesome. We set a baptismal date for him for the 1st of August (I'll probably will be gone by then but that's okay) we also read Moroni 6 with him. After the prayer he asked if I could cut his hair haha so he took his shirt off and I cut his hair for him, it was fun haha I think I did a pretty good job too πŸ˜ŽπŸ˜ he was impressed. 

...By then it was time to come home and eat some dinner. I made a cheeseburger πŸ˜† all in all we weren't able to do much today but the one rdv that we did have was great! I feel like we've even got a stronger relationship with Michael now.


...We left the church and elder Siedow saw my water bottle on the wall, I was sooo stoked! I saw the cool Muslim, German, student, in the bus. He said someone stole his identity. Now I'm chilling in the appt with my foot in a little disinfectant bath cuz I've got an ingrown toenail.


Monday, July 6, 2015

Week 51

We were sent this picture by a member in France over Facebook.  It is of the Fourth of July ward party that the missionaries put on for the ward with a BBQ.

Dres was able to baptize this cute girl, Stacey Dinge, yesterday!

 





Dang it has been so hot this week! its been up in the 40°  i think
thats close to 100° F and its been super humid as well. on tuesday our
district leader gave a super good training on how we can be mre
effective and efficient as missionaries. one thing we talked alot
about was working out of the area book. elder siedow and i realized
that we havent used the area book as well as we could be so we've been
working out of there quite a bit this past week.

we also had a bbq with the ward which was super fun! we spent all day
setting it up, it was american themed, and it was on the 4th of july
so that was cool. a bunch of members, amis de l'eglise, and other non
members came! it was super sweet! there was a little show after the
bbq and i played a song on the guitar.

I've been in Metz for almost 6 months now and the transfers coming up
in about 2 weeks so I'm guessing I'll probably be transferred soon.