week 50

Aight to finish today's journal entry. We got back from the zone conference with our I pads and we went to the church to set them up. After setting them up we called this potential ami that the other elders gave us. He said he was free and the moment and we could meet with him at his room in the foyer. We went over and it was him and his two friends in this tiny room. We found out that they are all Hindu but they want to learn about christianism so we taught them the basics. They also might want to become Christian? Maybe?

We also ran into our Sierra Leonian ami, Michael, while we were there. Just for a little background, things were going well with him but for some reason he got kinda angry with us, I think it's because we brought up baptism, so we had lost contact for a couple weeks but were finally able to see him last week and we just expressed our love for him and now we're on good terms again. He loves seeing us now and so he was happy to run into us at the foyer. I don't know if he'll progress soon but were going to keep teaching him.

Love you all

Elder Empey

Week 49

Dres' best buddy and our dear family friend Navy Dalton returned home today from his mission in Denver, Colorado.  We love you Navy!!!

we went and explored that fort again today and i dont have very much time left :/  but... we are supposed to be getting ipads this thursday so im going to be able to email a lot easier and fill you in on all the details and whatnot. 

this week was pretty solid. one crazy little story to share

we got a referral from the other elders at the begining of the week and went to go pass by his house. its up in an area of town called woippy and it can be a little bit sketchy sometimes. we went up there and found his appt building, we walked into the front door and pressed the elevator button when this punk came to the front door on a moped (around 20 years old), he started yelling at us telling us to leave because its a "muslim neighborhood and theres no christians there" i told him we had a friend that we were going to visit but he just kept yelling at us and drove his scooter into the building up to us. i told him he had no right to tell us to leave and he grabbed my shirt and started pulling us out of the building.we let him walk us out of the building and we started walking away. he left on his scooter and this other muslim guy who watched the whole thing came up to us and was telling us how that kid cant tell us to leave and we have every right to go visit our friend, he said we could go back in and if that kid came back we could let him know and he would help us out. we ran up to the guys floor but he wasnt there so we booked it out of that neigborhood before the dude could see us again.

we helped one of our amis moved this week and that went really well. his friend who was helping too got super frustrated at this car that was in the way of his van so he lifted the back of the car up and pushed it out of the way. big strong dude  

hope you guys have a great week! love you! oh and happy fathers day dad!!!!!!!!

love elder empey

Week 48

it has been a long but solid week. this last transfer we had quite a few amis but they all seemed to come to a stall in progression halfway through the transfer. some of them have been dropped and some have come back into the game. anyways, we started of this week/transfer in need of some new people. we started off the week with lots and lots of finding, contacting and porting. its been getting very warm and humid so that was a little bit sucky but im sure it could be worse. throughout the week we found a couple people with some potential but for the most part we werent seeing a bunch of success. we tried other ways to find people, trying to get in contact with ancient amis, finding less actives, calling old potentials, but we didnt seem to get much out of that either. 

it seems to be that after all we can do is when we're lent a hand and someone is put into our path. Two different members each brought a friend to church! one lives in our sector and the other in the other elders sector. they introduced them to us and we got to hangout with them throughout the meetings. by the end they were showing lots of intrest and said they would love to hear our message. it was soo sweet! now that i look back on it, this whole week pretty much feels like the first week of my second transfer in the field. i remember elder davis and i looking so hard for people to teach and then it was on sunday when bernard showed up at church. that would be pretty cool if everything worked out the same as that did!

for p day today we decided to go look for a fort. we tried to check out this one but it was pretty lame and so decided to look for another one. we walked a good couple miles and climbed up this hill and found this sweet old fort at the top. we didnt spend much time up there but i think we're going to go back next p day. elder wells saw some metal sticking out of the ground and pulled it out, it turned out to be this sweet old sword thing. maybe its just an old gardening tool but we like to think its a sword :) 

elder quist got transfered and left on wednesday. elder wells now has a new companion, his name is elder johnson and hes from portage utah, hes a cool dude. 

love ya! have a great week! 

Week 47

so last p day right after i emailed you guys we got to go to verdun with our friend Pauline. it was super sweet! Verdun is a city not very far from metz where a big world war 1 battle took place (pretty sure it was ww1, maybe the second) anyways, the battle went on for around 9 months and lots of people lost their lives (i forget the number but i wanna say somewhere close to 600,000) its a pretty well known spot and it was really cool to visit. we visited a couple of memorials and and two different forts.

I'm just going to share another cool little story from this week. We had a few hours one day where we didnt have anything planned so we were about to go out contacting when we decided to pray first and pick a specific part of the city we were going to go to. We decided on this one part of town called Pontifoy. we got over there and started talking to people. after a little bit this guy approached us and asked if we were the mormons. he brought us over to this appt building and started talking with us, he told us about how he had visited utah and the salt lake temple. after talking for a bit a lady, a friend he was helping at the moment, came out of the building. we started talking to her and found out that earlier that same morning she had gone to talk to a priest so that she could be baptized because shes going through a rough time right now and feels like baptism is something she needs. shes in the procces of moving so we got her number and said that we could help. im really hoping something can come from it, i guess we'll find out. 

so sorry but i dont have much time to write anything else. hope you guys have an awesome week! 

oh btw, the transfer just ended and i will be staying here in metz for at least 6 more weeks 

that also means i am in my 8th transfer 8/16   pretty crazy

Week 46

Elder Siedow with Dres in the background

sup!

so for p day today a member is taking us out to Verdun so i dont have much time to email. its only been since wednesday when I emailed you guys last so theres not a whole bunch to add.

thursday- we went up to luxembourg to do an exchange with out district leader. we got to do some service and help a family that was moving. luxembourg is super international and there are a bunch of american members, the family we helped was american and all the people helping were english speakers, so that was really fun and kinda weird too hah.

friday- we stayed up in luxembourg today. there was a 15 year old boy that passed away a few days ago and the funeral service was being held today. they wanted missionaries to come help with it so our district leader got permission for our district to come help. it was a really cool experience but really sad too. 

saturday- we have this new ami thats from armania and we got to visit him. hes going to be moving soon and we are going to be helping him with that. he understands our message very well and seems like he'll be progressing soon. we had a couple other rendez-vous that went well and also did a lot of porting

sunday-church was really good. since we were in luxembourg most of friday we ended up doing our weekly planning today instead. Frere raymond invited us over for dinner, he is the coolest! 

stay sweet

Week 45

Hey! we're taking our pday today (wednesday) cuz we had a whole bunch of stuff going on the past two days. im just going to go through the week and give you little highlights/summaries of each day :)

tuesday (may 19)- last night the luxembourg elders came down and stayed the night and today we are on exchanges. Im with elder christensen, hes a cool dude. one cool thing that happened today: we went out to go porting and showed up in this neighborhood with a bunch of possible ways to start heading. we werent sure where to go so we said a prayer and then tossed a flower in the air to see what way it would point (neither of us had any impressions so we resorted to that) we went that direction and started knocking doors. after a few rejections we came to this house and an older guy came to the door. he brought us into his garage and we started talking to him. he was a super nice and cool old guy (around 80) he shared a lot with us and cried a few times while doing it, he was soo sweet. we explained the book of mormon to him and gave him a copy but then had to run to catch our bus. we told him we would come back to help him in his garden so im hoping we can do that soon

ok i might not to be able to be as descriptive for these next days, i dont have much time left hah

wednesday- we had our district meeting in luxembourg and it was super sweet! we did it next to this old fort that 

overlooks the city, pretty cool. we did a lot of contacting with not much success after we got home. we had a rendez-vous with a less active and right before we got to her appt building we started talking to this cool college student, i think were going to meet with him again.

thursday- we had our dmp meeting up in thionville and then did some contacting up there afterwards. we met a family of 5 while porting a couple days ago and they invited us over for dinner tonight. They are super cool! they have 3 sons with the ages of 19 17 and 14 and they are all super cool, one of them plays rugby so we tossed the ball in their back yard for a couple of minutes too!

friday- not much to share about today, hah sorry

saturday- we visited our sierra leonian ami today and that went really well. last saturday we were contacting by this park and talked to a guy but he was in a hurry so he asked if we could meet at the same spot today. we showed up and he was there! we shared the restoration with him and he understood it all really well. we are going to see him again next saturday too!

sunday- we ate at a member familys house tonight and it was really fun. the dad just barely got a new guitar and was showing it to us, its pretty sweet. church was good but other than that, not much to share about today either

monday- today we went down to nancy for interviews with president and soeur Babin. those were really good. i love our mission president, hes a really cool guy and i respect him a lot! we also got to have our family home evening with a member family that we do every monday. they did a little bbq for us and it was awesome! they are sooo cool!

tuesday- we went to zone conference down in nancy today, that was really good. the training were super good and i feel like i learned a lot. they focused on the teaching cycle and how to better prepare our lessons.

today- we went and visited a cemetery this morning :) 

Week 44

having a hard time remembering everything that happened this week so i guess i'll just kinda go through each day and see what i can remember

tuesday- On our way back from district meeting we saw a recent RM from the ward, he asked if we had any rendez-vous and if he could come. after doing a little bit of contacting we met back up with him in front of the train station and taught one of our amis. he went out contacting with us for a little while after the rendez-vous and that was really fun. he's a super cool dude! it was trash night and while walking through centre-ville to get back home i found a sweet painting in the trash and  took it home :)  

wednesday- I taught our little family home evening/institute for the older single people in the ward. im decently confident in my french but sometimes when im up infront of people i loose half of my vocabulary hah it was still good though. we were walking around a bunch today and doing a lot of contacting, pretty tiring

thursday- we had our wml meeting in thionville. after, we went out contacting in thionville, we want to try to find some amis up there so we can teach with the members that live up there, there arent a whole bunch of members here in metz so its hard to teach with them. we met a couple cool people and taught a few lessons on the road. 

friday- one of our amis invited us over for lunch, that was fun and they made african food. its actually pretty good, i didnt think i would like african food when i first got here but i kinda like it now. we also saw a less active today, our lesson went really well and it seems like were becoming good friends with him. he does little concerts in paris from time to time, he plays guitar, pretty rad. his wife whos a non member seems to be warming up to us as well so we'll see where that goes

saturday- today was pretty solid. we got to teach another one of our amis with a member and that went really well. we're going to start a quit smoking program with him this upcoming saturday. while we were out porting this lady aproached us and was asking a bunch of questions about mormons, she seemed really interested and ready for us, we got her number and will be seeing her soon :) there was another dude that let us in tonight that was super nice! he invited us to come back for dinner this next thursday! 

sunday- today was pretty long. after church we went out and did a whole bunch of contacting/door to door with no succes. hah thats all i pretty much have to say about today hah 

hank! i hope you had an awesome birthday!!! youre such a rad dude!!! 

love elder empey