Charleville early in the morning
Hello everyone! This week has been full of stuff, wow! The last three weeks of my mission have felt like the best. Although a lot of difficult things happen and I have a lot to work on, I felt really inspired with all of the advice and counsel I got from our mission leaders, apostles & prophet, and encouragement from those back home. Plus we worked hard this week and I always feel happy being able to give a solid effort.
A family night with our Bishop's family started off our Monday. We shared a spiritual thought, played games, and they let me play their ukelele and piano! In the morning we woke up early and took two trains to Brussels, Belgium for our zone conference. I felt really grateful to hear the advice of our mission leaders as it was exactly what I felt I needed. I was also very grateful to see some of the missionaries I had served with, such as Elders Rollins and Sanchez. And Mom and Dad, I got your package from February, and I love the sweatshirt and cards, thank you! We are, as a missionaries, working on following the spirit in contacting, and I definitely know we need it because we're doing God's work, and it's got to be done in his way with his power.
This great lesson we were reinforced with received some awesome application the next day on our exchange in Charleville-Mezieres. This is a city that reopened to missionaries a few weeks back, so there are plenty of curious people that have heard that the 'Mormons' are back. The exchange was amazing, and I had fun with Elder Brown, who will return in three weeks to Utah. We had fun getting up to a village on the hillside, so beautiful, and after we had done our work up there we went to take the bus back to town, which unfortunately didn't come. So we took a jolly hour walking back to the main city, and we ate dinner that night with the Wilsons. They're a couple with a cool conversion story from Canada. We spent the night and got up early to get back to St. Quentin. Throughout the week we had the opportunity to teach out Ami T. He is a person who's last ten years have really turned him toward the gospel. He has true humility and desire in his eyes to have the truth, and we got to invite him toward that with a baptismal invite this week. We felt really good about the invite, the spirit was there, and he's preparing for twenty-fifth of April. The coolest part is that we had the opportunity to have a really kind member family there in the lesson, it was the Desmedt family and the father and the seven-year-old son came and wore his dad's mission tag. It was really fun.
Later in the week we got to watch conference!!! I loved it, and I think my favorites were Uchtdorf's atonement-based one, and Wilford B Andersen's dancing to the music of the spirit of the gospel. It's true that the motions mean little to nothing if we just do them with little to no spirit. Such an experience happened friday while we were contacting. The weather was lousy and not many people were out and I just felt confused, so we decided to pray. As we did, we felt like we should go visit an older lady in the ward. As we arrived she was happy to have us because she could not figure out how to watch conference on her computer and well, who knows how to work computers better than young men like missionaries? She really was thankful for our help and company and I was happy we did what Heavenly Father needed us doing at that moment. I also enjoyed eating lunch outside the church with the sisters between conference sessions we went outside because we aren't allowed to be in the church alone with just us and the sister missionaries, and no members were there, but we had fun eating outside. I want to say how grateful I am for atoning, enabling power, because I need it every day out here. Despite the performance we have, we all can and must use the atonement if we want to be happy. I have a hard time changing, but witht atonement I believe I can become better over the long run. I love you all have a great week! Review conference!
Coconut cream pie with homemade crust
selfie on the train
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