Week 77

Elder Empey's first Skype lesson

Elder Empy's second companion and one of his very faves, Elder Gavin Davis worked with Elder Empey's Dad today in his medical practice!  Elder Davis and his two childhood buddies from the Seattle area are all three recently returned from missions and are premed students at BYU.

We're finally starting to feel established here in Brussels hah. It's been hard trying to figure out the metros and getting around, this place is massive, pretty much like a mini Paris. When we first got here we sent out a mass text to all the potentials in the phone and we've been able to meet with some of them. We met this fifty year old guy that comes from a Muslim family but considers himself Christian, he wants to be baptized into our church but we have a little language barrier, he mostly speaks Arabic with a little of French. We have been able to see him quite a few times and he came to church so he is going to be progressing, slowly but surely with that language barrier. We have a young African guy that is scared of death and when he went to a physiologist she referred him to us. We've started teaching the plan of salvation and I think it's starting to click in his head. He actually lives out of our mission boundaries but he only speaks French and he is the closest to our ward building so we are teaching him through Skype. We met a cool young, Belge, evagalist, guy. He did a mission kind of like us in the south of France. And then there's an older Belge guy that the elders before us were teaching that we were able to see as well. I felt really good about that rendez vous, I think it went really well.

We have been able to eat with quite a few member families here and they are all super cool and seem to love the missionaries! There is a part member less active family that we ate with and when they found out that I like motorcycles they went crazy, they are all obsessed with motorcycles and that's pretty much all we talked about during the dinner. I gave a spiritual thought on cafe racers and how the riders made there bikes as simple as possible getting rid of any extra pieces to get rid of weight and how lots of us make the gospel complicated
with extra stuff and we just need to simplify it, just like Uchdorf did in his last gen conf talk.

We had a conference in Paris with elder kearon. He is super cool! This is the second time he has spoken to our mission and I like him a lot! He is a really good public speaker and teacher. I feel like I learned a lot of ways I can improve my missionary work. That conference was on Thursday and then on Friday we had a mission council with all the mission leaders and elder kearon. We learned even more ways we can improve our own sectors and how we can help all the missionaries in our zones.

Love you guys! Have an awesome week!

Elder empey

Week 76

Our family friends, Shawn and DeAnne Jones, introduced us to a lady who lives in our neighborhood and her stepson who lives in the Brussel Belgium area.  We hope that he gets to see Elder Empey!!!

First off, happy birthday dad! You are the best dad in the world and I
love you bunches! You are the greatest example to me! I miss you and
can't wait to hang out when I get back!

We had to do a lot of cleaning this morning and for that I don't have a whole bunch of time left to email you guys

Just a quick summary of the week. We came into Brussels on Tuesday night. On Wednesday we were super busy helping people catch busses to Paris (there was a strike and no trains were running) and then once the new missionaries came home we had to shuttle them to their new villes. Since Thursday we've been trying to get our bearings in Brussels. We've been making lots of phone call, doing lots of planning, and trying to find people with the time we have left. The members here seem super cool and love the missionaries. I saw Wade at church and I even hung out with him a bit today.

I realized that in the weekly emails I send to you I just tell you about the activities we do every day but I never really tell you guys what my thoughts are about the mission and all that. So... I just wanted to say that I am so glad I decided to serve a mission! With less than six months left I've been doing a lot of reflecting the past couple of weeks on what my mission has been. I feel like I have learned so many things and grown a lot since I've come out. I really do know that the church of Jesus Christ has been restored in our days and we are a part of that church! I have taken this knowledge for granted my whole life but now that I feel I'm starting to understand it more I am just so grateful that it is a part of my life. I love sharing these things with the people here in France an Belgium. it's been hard to see many reject what we say or some that receive an answer that it's true and still decide to not follow. But in the end that doesn't really matter, I know that I am out here doing what I need to be doing and others have their agency to choose.

I love you guys and I hope you have a great week!

Love elder empey

Week 75 - Transferred to Brussels, Belgium

So yeah, I just barely got here to liege six weeks ago and I'm being transferred again. Elder Reiss and I will be staying together but we are both being moved to Brussels. It kinda sad that I wasn't able to get to know the ward and area super well but Brussels seems like a super cool ville so I'm stoked for that. And good ole Wade Bringhurst is going to be in in my same ville so I'll see him all the time!

Tuesday: we had a rendez vous early this morning with our ami Aimé, he's from Congo. He actually has a lot of potential. He read the stuff we left with him and is sincerely searching. We took a bus up to the church after that for a cleaning project. It was almost done by the time we got there and so we just ate some lunch with them. A member drove us into town after and we met up with François in this billiards bar place in town to have a little lesson and a Coke. He's a funny dude. He drove us to a members house after that. We went out to stop by a couple of less actives and we met a guy that seems like he had forgotten he was a member but wants us to come back cuz he's interested hah.

Wednesday: we had district meeting, I made garlic bread, and took some district photos because it's the last week of the transfer. We went to buy some tickets at the gare for transfer day Wednesday but it turns out that there's a strike that day and the day after and there will be no trains running in Belgium. That's going to cause lots of
problems for transfer day. We let the APs know and we're going to have to work something out. We had a dinner appointment down in a town called Verviers so we decided to just go down early and do some work down there. The member came and picked us up and we had dinner with him and his wife. He is American and she is Italian. After dinner he took us to the gare and we took a train back into liege.

Thursday: i went on an exchange with big k (elder kaonohi) and that was super fun! We had quite a few rendez vous. One with Aimé in the morning, he accepted a soft baptismal invite, then one with François, we ate lunch with him, and then we went to Abrahams, a cool 80 year old guy that wants to start coming back to church. We got back with the other elders and went up to a family's house for New Years. They fed us a really good meal and we played uno hah. On the way up I met a cool guy from chile who was interested in learning more about our
message.

Friday: our apartment is pretty close to centre-ville and all the parties going on were pretty loud last night hah. We stopped by a market for lunch and then walked back to the apartment to do our weekly planning. We visited this guy named darios, he's a cool young African member that's living here in liege to go to school. We went out and contacted but there weren't very many people on the road at all, they were all sleeping from the cozy parties the night before.

Saturday: we had to get some tickets for some people to go down the Paris the day before transfers because of this strike going on. We called the senior elder in Brussels and organized how we are going to get everyone to their new villes and stuff. We had a wma meeting and then took a bus into town for a rendez vous we scheduled at 5 with a new ami, we kinda had the feeling he wouldn't show up so we had scheduled a rendezvous at the same spot for just 30 min after and we were right, he didn't show up, but the second guy did 😊 we met these
two African brothas tonight and they were both interested, we fixed a
rdv for Tuesday

Sunday church was good. We said goodbye to all the members. We visited Abraham again and his friend was there again, I think she has a crush on me haha she's like 80 hah. We also got to visit a member family and eat with them

Love you guys 😘

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!