Week 59

It's been a good week, nice and busy. It was elder baldwins last full week as a missionary so that has been exciting, he's going home on Thursday and I'll be getting a new comp. 

On Tuesday we went down to visit the Brest district meeting, that always takes up a good amount of our day because the train ride is like 2 hours long. That was good though. 

On Wednesday we had our own district meeting here in Rennes and then we went down to St.
Brieuc for an exchange. I was with elder Sanchez, he's a really cool guy. We helped them move an apartment and went contacting in the rain for a few hours. 

They came back with us to Rennes and we did another exchange. I was with elder Maono, he's from Tahiti and is francophone, that was super fun. We met some cool new people during both of the
exchanges.

On Saturday we got the repertoire, that's the thing that tells us where we are going to go if we are being transferred and who our new comps are. My new comp is elder durant, he is either from Minnesota or Montana, I forget. 

Yesterday was elder baldwins last Sunday in France, pretty crazy!

Week 58

No letter this week, cuz Dres didn't have time on P day. He was hanging out with me and amber!  (This is court btw). His mission president had given him permission to have a visit from his parents if they're in the area. We visited Paris first and ran into his mission pres and his wife and 15 or so missionaries at the Paris ward house. They had just finished a street display and the Pres was taking the missionaries for frozen yogurt. They invited us along. Some of the missionaries knew Dres very well and one was an old companion. They were really excited to meet Elder Empey's parents. 

After visiting the Versaille Palce, Amber and I drove out to Rennes where Dres is. We were nervous and excited to see our boy. He is doing awesome and is such a great missionary. We spent a couple hours on his P day at Mont St. Michel. This is Dres' second time with Elder Baldwin. Baldwin trained Dres. And now Dres is sending Baldwin home!  Dres still has til June 22nd, 2016 til he's done. 

We also took them grocery shopping. We wanted to help them clean their apartment but only missionaries are allowed to go in there. The best part next to spending time with Dres, was watching him teach love and serve. We went to two appointments. One was with a young man from China who is living in France for school. He doesn't speak French. So the whole lesson was in English. His name is Andy. He has been in the hospital for 3 months for complications from a knee surgery. He joined the church about 4 months ago. Sweet sweet man. 

The second was a man from Congo who spoke French and 5 other languages but no English. We got to listen in and share our testimonies and thoughts. Hearing Dres translate and so eloquently speak French was awesome and beautiful. 

Dres did have time to mess around earlier last week at district meetings he is over as the zone leader.

Thanks for loving a supporting our family and especially Dres. He is an amazing young man and an awesome missionary. We are very excited to see how much he grows in the final 10 months and have him home for good in June. God is good. Life is good.

Thank you. 

Court (Elder Empey's Dad)

Week 57

Hey so I don't have a whole bunch of time time to email today. We went up to fougere and saw this sweet castle today, I'll send some pics.

This week was good. We had zone conference which made things pretty busy. Elder Baldwin and I set up interviews with president and we did all those Thursday and then we did the conference Friday.  After the conference we did an exchange with the APs, Elder Latin, my old comp, is the new AP so it was fun being able to chill with him. I did my exchange with elder hall and elder admaya, they're in a three man right now cuz elder halls about to go home. It was super fun! They're all studs.


Saturday, we went to Brest to do a baptismal interview, that went well too. On the train ride home we met this magician. He did some card tricks for us and then we started talking about religion and stuff. It was like a 2 hour train ride and we talked with him the whole time. It was a super good discussion.

Love you all 😘

week 56

We went on a couple of exchanges this week. After district meeting I went down to Vannes with elder Stephenson and elder Baldwin stayed here in Rennes with elder gagnon, he's from Quebec. That was fun, elder Stephenson and I missed our train and then almost missed the second one too cuz we got the wrong tickets, but it was cool because, because of all of that we met this old guy that has a Mormon friend and we were able to teach him. The rest of the exchange was good, elder Stephenson is super cool! We came back to Rennes to exchange back and elder Baldwin and I found out that all the busses were down for the day because of some security issue so we had to walk from the gare to our apartment a couple of times, which is a good couple of miles, throughout the day. It kinda made some of our rendez vous hard to do but it all worked out. 

The Brest elders came in today as well for another exchange, they live pretty far away so we did a double exchange where both equipes were here in Rennes. I was in a three man with elder Bayer, from Michigan, and elder young, from Utah. That was really fun, we met this really cool Colombian dude who lived in the U.S. For four years and knew the Mormons through South Park haha. We also got to go to this thing at the church called P.P.P (ping pong, pancakes, pensée spirituelle (spiritual thought)) a couple of our Amis came and that went really well.  

Thursday, we exchanged back and elder Baldwin and I had to check some stuff out at the prefecture for my second year legality, we had a couple rendez vous that were good today as well.

Friday, we got to do some service at a non members families house. We went early in the morning and helped the dad get this big tree stump cut from its roots and pulled out of the ground for a good three or four hours. They fed us a nice lunch after 😊

Saturday, we got to have lunch with a member family, it was a bbq and there was another family that came too. we met this African guy this week who wants us to sell this product for him over in the U.S. We were like "alright, we'll come check it out, but we get to share our special message with you, deal?" He was down so we went to his house on Saturday and he had us taste some of this African yogurt that he wanted to sell us, it was actually alright, we each bought a tub and then tried to share a message with him but he wouldn't let us so that was lame, he just wants to make money off us so we probably won't go back hah.

Week 55

Solid week, we got to go down to another districts district meeting in our zone on Tuesday. That was down in Brest, which is right on beach, the furthest West Point of France. Brest looks like a super pretty town, I'm stoked to go do exchanges down there. We also had our district meeting with our own district here in Rennes. There's 10 people in our district, they all seem really cool. 

We've got this super cool ami right now, he is 19 and from Romania. Our equipe has been meeting with him for about a month now and he is super solid. We get to meet with him a couple of times every week. He is super sincere and just really wants to do what's right and follow God. He's been meeting with some other churches but just told us that he doesn't feel the same with them as he does with us, he said he feels the spirit super strong in our rdvs and during church. He's a super cool guy! 

There's a pond right next to our appt so if we see any good skipping rocks throughout the day we put em in our bags and skip them at the end of the day on our way home