Week 83

Super busy but awesome week! We had four exchanges and they were all here in Brussels!


Tuesday- we had district meeting and then did a "day of finding."  President wants us to consecrate a day to finding new Amis every week so our district leader made it a little competition and gave us a bunch of brochures. First one to hand them all out won a cake. Elder wells and I won 😏

Wednesday - we were on exchanges with the Spanish elders. We had a few rendez vous and a meeting with our ward mission leader. We ended our exchange in the evening and started another exchange with the liege elders. I was with elder Hein and we ate dinner with the young adults at the church and then went to a rendez vous at an Amis house.

Thursday - we continued our exchange with the liege elders. We had a few rendez vous throughout the day and then took the liege elders to the train station. Right as they left the assistants came in for an exchange. We went and passed by some houses that said we could come back. This one African guy yelled at us for a good 10 min out of the window, it was pretty funny though, we were kind of egging him on.

 Wednesday morning we switched comps and I went with elder McBride. He's a super cool dude! After getting lunch with the other APs and elder wells we went to a rendez vous with this guy named Sylvain. This was only my third rendez vous with him but he likes us a lot already.  After our lesson he handed us a sac with two pairs of army books, they were too small for me so elder McBride took them. We were really grateful and elder McBride saw a guitar in the corner and was like "can we play you a song in return?" Sylvain handed me the guitar and I played blackbird while we both sang. After i played paranoia in b flat major. At the end of the song he grabbed a sharpie from his desk, took the guitar, wrote something on the top, and handed it to me telling me he wanted me to have it. I was totally in shock. I was kind of hesitant to accept it but he insisted saying he hasn't played it in years and he would rather that I use it. It was super nice of him! And it's a pretty nice guitar too!

ill get a picture with him next week. The assistants left shortly after and then the elders from Nivelles came in shortly after. I started with elder Ashcraft and we had a few rendez vous that evening. 

Saturday- we switched companions during the exchange and I was with elder McDonald, he's the district leader and he's a really good dude. We went out contacting in the morning, taught a few lessons on the street and found a new ami. We went down to nivelle after so I could do a baptismal interview for one of their Amis that's getting baptized next week. He was a super cool guy! 

Sunday- church went well. After we just did a bunch of planning cuz we had met so many people thought the week that we needed to get in can't act with. 

Week 82

Yeah so we had transfers this week. Elder Reiss left early Wednesday morning.  The day before, Tuesday he said goodbye to a lot of people. Do you guys remember our ami from liege? François? He came up to Brussels Tuesday afternoon to get some lunch with us and say goodby to elder Reiss. It was fun seeing him again. We had a few rendez vous with our Amis and then went and got dinner with the young adults. There's a bunch of young adults here in Brussels and they're all super cool!

On Wednesday elder Reiss hopped on the train to Paris and I went on an exchange with elder motiuk for a few hours. We did a bit of planning and a bunch of contacting, met some cool people. We went and picked up our new comps at the train station. I took elder wells to the appt and then we went to a dinner appointment with a part member family, the one that loves motorcycles.

Thursday we had a pretty open day to go out and work. We had a few rendez vous, one with a guy that recently started coming back to church, he taught us some tai chi, pretty sweet. We also went to the albacite families house to have dinner with them. That's Kurts family, the super cool 20 year old.

Friday we woke up early and went down to mission council. That was really good. The missions making some big changes and it's going to be really good. It takes a bit of time to actually get things going but it'll be good. We got back home with just enough time to plan and eat some dinner.

Saturday we had a meeting with the district leaders to talk about their responsibilities and how we're going to do stuff this transfer. We had a little bit more planning to do after and then had a little band practice at the church. There's two member girls who wants to do a little street performance playing church songs and have missionaries

pass out cards and stuff. They asked me to play guitar. They are super good singers! We don't know when we're going to do it yet but I'll send some pics when we do.

Sunday went well. A big portion of our day gets taken up by church because it starts at 11h30 and gets over at 14h30. We had a rendez vous with an African guy down by the train station but he stood us up, classic. We went to a members house with elder Bringhurst for dinner and that was awesome!

Overall great week 😊

Love elder empey 

Week 81

So we got the repertoire for transfers on Saturday. I'm going to staying in Brussels 😊 but my comp elder Reiss will be leaving on Wednesday 😔 he'll be serving in Rouen. It has been awesome serving
with him, he really is an awesome dude!  My new comp is going to be elder Wells. I don't know if you guys remember him but we lived in the same apartment my last two transfers in Metz. He's a good hard worker so I'm excited for that, it'll be good.

The ward here in Brussels is just awesome! There were a few times we went to members' houses to eat and they had invited a non member friend to introduce us to. On Tuesday we went and taught a lesson to a guy we found in the area book and one of the young adult guys came with us. His name is Kurt and he's super cool! After the lesson he went out contacting with us and that was super fun and funny. 

We have some awesome Amis right now the only problem is that some of them have a hard time keeping their engagements, like coming to church. We have this one family of three from Africa who are super awesome. The rendez vous with them are awesome but it's hard to see them very often and that makes it hard. We will have to see how things go. 

I think it's been raining for the past month and a half but this week we finally had a couple of sunny days, still pretty cold, but sunny. 

Love you! 
Elder empey 

Week 80

Dres bought an old camera at the market and took these awesome pics

We had a couple of exchanges this week. The elders from Nivelle came up here to Brussels Tuesday and stayed for most of Tuesday and part of Wednesday.   

Later Wednesday we hopped on a train down to Paris and then to Versailles for our exchange with the assistants. That went really well. We did a whole bunch of contacting with them, taught a lot of lessons, and found some new Amis. We caught a train back to Brussels Thursday evening. 

Friday was solid,a couple of our rendez vous were cancelled but we were able to find a couple new Amis and teach quite a few people just while contacting. We met with Claude, the guy that just kinda showed up at church cuz the Charleroi elders invited him. He lives out pretty far and it's going to be hard for him to get to church every week but I guess we'll have to see what happens. The Brussels sisters had a baptism Friday night and that was awesome. Some guy that elder Reiss contacted and invited the day before showed up and loved it. He went to Paris the day after so he couldn't come to church but should be there next week. We also found a new ami evening, Benjamin. He fixed a rendez vous with us for the very next day. That lesson went really well and I could see him progressing well.

Saturday morning we contacted this guy sitting on a park bench. He had a cat sitting on his lap, I tried to touch it but it bit my hand, drew blood, haha, we found out later that it was a wild cat that lived in the park that he was buddies with. We met with a really cool guy Saturday night, we found him in the area book.  He's met with missionaries quite a few times and wants to travel over to salt lake to see what Mormons are really like. The problem is that he has never even been to church yet. We told him he doesn't need to go to salt lake to find out it's true it would probably be a good idea to check out church first before even thinking about a trip to salt lake. He was a super cool dude though, he took us to a restaurant and got us cokes and one of his friends came and joined us half way through. He is super busy but is going to see what he can do to get to church.

Church was really cool, it was fast and testimony meeting since last week was ward conference. One of our Amis bore testimony on prayer!  Last week we invited him to pray for us so we could find people who are ready for us. He did it and we really did see some miracles. It was really cool to see him bear testimony about it and the members loved it. There was a Mormon.org referral that we hadn't meet yet who showed up for the last hour, he seems really cool. We ate at a member family's house that night and they were super fun! The boy is 20 and he is hilarious! They're from the Philippines.

Week 79

Don't have a whole bunch of time to email today. So I'll kinda just give a summary of the week. It was a really good one. Again, we didn't have a whole lot of interruptions so we could work hard and things went really well.

We have this one ami who, during our first rendez vous, had no desire to join the church. He was actually kinda going in a completely opposite direction. We've been seeing him every week and it's really cool to see the change he has made. He came to that movie last week and loved it! Our last rendez vous with him was really good and at the end we asked him to pray for us so we could find those people who are ready for the gospel and he was really touched that we asked him to help us with that. We've seen a few little miracles since and I'm sure it's thanks to his prayers and any others who pray us.

Sunday was awesome. When sacrament (first hour) started we had no Amis there, we were pretty upset because there were quite a few people who were planning on coming. Right when we thought no one was going to come roger and his family walked through the door, we were so happy to see them there! Then latter during sacrament I got a call from a guy that missionaries contacted in Charleroi (south part of Belgium) and had invited to come to our church. He wasn't quite sure where to go so we ran and picked him up at the metro stop closest to the church.

Today we went to this really cool market. Apparently it's world famous. It's called Marché aux Puces. There's a bunch of old cool stuff. Elder Bringhurst went with us and bought a little guitar for $10 haha pretty sweet. We ate some Greek food with him and his comp.

That's all for now.  Love you guys