Serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in northern France, southern Belgium and Luxembourg.

Monday, April 27, 2015

So many things

You guys. So many things are happening. I hardly even know where to start with all of the things.
First of all, Danielle! You're so married! Congratulations!! I thought about you guys all day Saturday. I'm so happy for you.
Secondly, shoutout to Danielle (again) and Paige, congrats on graduating! So exciting!
Third...we get iPads this transfer! This will make the work progress so much. I'm really excited.
And one more thing...Elder Wheatley is being transferred to Belgium and I'm training a new blue missionary. I get a son!! I'm so excited, you guys don't even know. On Wednesday of this week I became a dad.
This past week was a rollercoaster. We had around 18 lessons scheduled with people, and about 2/3 of them fell through. Seriously, just a week full of frouges. On Friday, we had planned a whole day of splits with two 16-year-olds in our ward, meaning I go the whole day with one of them as my comp and Elder Wheatley goes the whole day with the other as his comp. So we had scheduled

Then, the night before, he called us to cancel because he had some internship somewhere. (He didn't find this out sooner?) So we were stressing out because we had all these appointments and not enough people to meet them all. We ended up cancelling one and rearranging our schedule to fit in the rest...and then...one by one, all of those rendez-vous fell too, except one. And I was just so mad at the world. I was mad at our member because he cancelled last-minute and screwed up our plans. I was mad at all the people who cancelled on us. It took a while for me to realize that a lot of it was my fault (I should have called ahead way in advance and confirmed all of our rendez-vous), and the rest was out of my control and not worth being mad about. As I finally humbled myself and prayed and asked for forgiveness and strength and energy, we went to our one remaining RDV and had an awesome lesson. The Spirit was there, and all four of us felt it. I was still mad at myself for not being diligent enough to create a better missionary day for the other young man with us, but it was more of a determination to be better for the next time.
overlapping rendez-vous because we could do that now. #efficiency. But we weren't doing it for efficiency, we were doing it because one of the 16-year-olds has no love for the gospel, and unless he gets some awesome spiritual missionary experiences he probably won't choose to go on a mission.
The next day we had a musical fireside that Elder Wheatley and I had been preparing for a couple of months. After hours of preparation and planning and exhorting and practicing and reminding and matching-tie-buying we finally had a great evening where the Spirit was super strong. But we had aimed to have all the members come and bring friends, and...they didn't. We went to almost every home and helped people think of three people they could invite, and then none of them managed to do it. We had just one non-member there from ward members' efforts (compared to about 16 amis or less-actives brought by the missionaries). If you're reading this at home, work with the missionaries! You have to help them. Preach My Gospel says over and over that members should be a missionary's main source for finding new investigators. A missionary will arrive in a new area knowing no one. On the street, we have no idea who might be ready for a gospel message. But you do. So help them. Do it for me.
Anyway, a few good things did happen from the fireside, like amis meeting members and one guy finally agreeing to take the lessons from us. So no (more) complaints there.
Love you guys!
Saying goodbye to my 'father'

Our family friend, Ysabelle Daage, came for a visit


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