imanuncleencore!

herrrrro!

well, i had a couple of things to write about this week, but then when i got here to do my emails, i just got distracted by the fact that i now have a new nephew named charmander that i don't even remember anymore! that's all sorts of exciting! he's about the right age too cause when i get back he'll be around the age of starting to recognize people so it should be about perfect. even if i've already lost clara cause she's a little punk. i can just picture her holding little charry and being so defensive. you'll have to send me a picture of those two.

well in other news of the week, we have a baptism coming up!! claver is getting baptized the 2 June! so that is way exciting. we're excited for him and happy to have been able to seen him finally get to business. it was reallly cool to see him and all the progress he has made. we started teaching him about 4 months ago, when we first got into villeneuve d'ascq, and we've gotten to make the whole journey with him. that was soo cool to see. you don't get the chance to see people go from start to finish very often. at first he was kinda flakey and didn't really make the effort by himself, but now he comes to church on his own, if he needs a ride, he calls up the bishop to ask for one, and he just really does his part now. it's true that he probably won't be the next bishop anytime soon, but at least he will come. so we are super happy for him. yesterday at church, our ward mission leader gave a lesson on baptism, and it was amazing to see how well he actually understood. there were a couple of questions that were asked that we weren't sure if he knew the answer, but he pulled out the right answer everytime. such a champion. and do you guys want to hear the best part about this whole thing? claver will be baptized the 2nd of June by none other than cedric! how cool is that?? claver told us he didn't care who did anything in his baptismal program, all that matters is that it gets done haha, so we got cedric to do it. so that it going to be soo cool for both of them. claver getting baptized, and cedric getting to do his first baptism! we just feel so blessed to have been able to be here for so long and to see so much progress. i love this place. we have seen so much progress with our ward and so much progress with our amis and just everything. it's just great. i don't ever want to leave. which means that i'm out of here next transfer haha.

so also this week coming up on wednesday, we have a zone conference with elder texiera from the 70! so that should be a cool experience to get to learn from him. and you want to hear the most intense part? elder texiera is going to have personal interviews with a couple of missionaries after the conference, and the other day i got a call from the assistance telling me that i am going to have the chance to have a personal interview with a general authority... crazy huh? so that should be all sorts of cool. not the opportunity that you get all that often.

also, another exciting experience for the week, we had a nice visit from president poznanski and his wife in district meeting the other day. they are going around visiting a bunch of the mission, and they passed by our area, they came on wednesday night and stayed for our ward council, and then the next day they came to our district meeting. so that was cool to have a little mini training from president and his wife.

so voilà, honestly everything is just going perfect over here. we're loving life and i really got to thinking about life the other day, and what i can do to be a better missionary, and i really realized the importance of looking back on life and really evaluating, but with someone else to talk to. i'm not really someone that will talk about deep stuff with people or stuff that really matters, i usually just talk about random stuff to change the subject away from it, so i don't have to be serious. but me and elder andrus had a good talk the other day. i feel lucky to have such a good companion and hopefully i'll be that good of a missionary one day.

anyway, that's life! thanks for the package family! did you try the hichews before you sent them? and if so did you love them? they are for sure my favorites. thanks again! hope everything is going just peach.

gros bisous!

birthday week!

well, i am now officially 20 years old. weird huh. to tell the truth, birthdays start to mean less as less as you get older. i don't feel different at all even though i am now no longer a hooligan teenager and i'm supposed to be all sorts of sophisticated now. life goes on eh? as to what i did for my birthday, a whole bunch of missionary work!! woo woo! so nothing too special, but we did go get a gaufre à la vanille from our favorite pâtisserie meert's and we ate a kebab for lunch. but that was mostly because we just didn't have time for anything else haha. we had 6 lessons planned for that day. so we were pretty excited, we were set on getting members there for all of them and everything. so we call the night before and get them all confirmed, and then guess what happens? we get a 3/6 for the day. it couldn't been the best day of the mission easily, but then we had to have some baufffy amis haha. but c'est pas grave, on va les voir un autre jour on espère.

As to news here in villeneuve. we are currently just working our bottoms off. people always tell you that a mission is hard, and it's true that you work hard and get tired hard, but it's definitely not complicated or difficult hard. i love it. just the fact of getting home and knowing that you left nothing out there is such a good feeling. mission life is great.

our amis at the moment are as follows: claver, who has a baptismal date for june 2, hopefully we'll be able to get him completely ready for that. or more precisely, especially for him, hopefully he can get himself prepared for then. but we're still working with him. we'll see. tianwen wei, who is our chinese friend. he came to church for the second time yesterday and he liked it again. he just keeps steadily progressing along. he's a champion. and then we have a bunch of other amis that aren't quite to the worth writing home stage yet. we'll see where they go and if they stay and then i'll give you the update. all of our amis though, are all just young adults. we target them so bad and it's so much more fun. they are so much more open and they are just all our best buddies. all of our amis are just our best potes. i'm definitely just coming back and hanging out with all of them someday. we'll go drink a sprite together haha. and go clubbing. at soccer clubs. we did have 4 amis at church this week though, so that was pretty stellar. we sure do get blessed. story time.

so last week on p day, we decided that we were going to go play some ping pong at the church (sidenote, i was the champion in case anyone was wondering haha) and so we get there and start playing around, there are a couple of members there and cedric, our recent convert was there too. so we are just playing around, and then out of nowhere, this guy walks in and shakes everyone's hand, i just figured that it was someone from the other ward or something, and then he kinda starts asking some questions. and he's standing over by cedric, and so he starts answering the questions. question like what is the place and such and such who are you such and such. so at first, we think about answering the questions, but instead, we decide to leave cedric, our newly baptized pote to answer them to give him his first missionary experience. it was so cool and so funny. he's such a champion that one. so anyway, we end up playing ping pong with this guy and talking, and we got his number, he came to family night that night, and then he came to church this sunday. it was so cool to have someone just fall into our hands. turns out that ping pong is the best finding method there is haha. so at church, just a side note, he wasn't a huge fan of sacrament meeting because they didn't really talk about jesus as much as he was used to since there were other topics for the talks, but then he had a good time in sunday school in our amis class, so we did get a rdv with him this week. he's a cool guy.

anyway, i'm running out of things to say now and i'm gonna fall asleep at the keyboard for some reason. but, i love you all and thanks for the birthday wishes! hope you all have the best week ever.

gros bisous!

--
Elder Matthew Meyers
7 rue Blanche apt 34
Lille 59000
La France

the day after mothers' day

hello!!

well first off, it's been a long time since i talked to my family, so a little shout out to them! sorry about the non videoness of the skyping the other day, but that's how life is sometimes. i tried and tried but i couldn't figure it out. i think it was cause the ipad doesn't work, neither did the other tablet for the video, and i actually found out that the computer that i was trying to get to work wouldn't connect to skype because as it turns out, it wasn't connected to the internet. haha so that's the story about how you didn't get to see me. sorry. speaking of which though, thank you for the great idea you had mom for the call. i honestly didn't have any ideas of what to talk about. it was kind of just "oh hey there. we're talking now, but i don't really know what to talk about" but it was good to see you too. clara is huge. when did that happen. she's doing n'importe quoi now haha. so funny. she would say mike's name instead of mine for the first time. what a punk. and missy is having her baby soon too! that's intense. i'm excited to be an uncle again. and when this kid gets to about the age of actually remembering people i'll be home so mike won't have a huge head start on me. the punk. both of them haha. so yeah, i just talked to you, so i don't have really anything much to say, but just want you to know that i love you and hope that you are doing just peachy! it was nice talking to you for a little bit even though dad doesn't love me and wasn't there, but i at least love everyone else in the family! haha jokes dad i love you too! don't fret. at least you had a half decent excuse. so voilà. i don't really know what more else to add, things are going great here and i'm still loving it. oh also, to answer a couple of questions. as to elder andrus, i swear i thought i told you think before but maybe not, he's from idaho, idaho falls to be exact. if aunt lorrie has done any geneology before, he goes back to a milo andrus a little while back who was quite the polygamist and had about 10 wives or so. elder baby andrus was also related to this same milo andrus. haha so there's a little of his geneology. and about chocolate. i'm actually not too sure. i don't eat it all that often because i waste my money on pasteries instead of chocolate, but a couple a brands that are pretty good are cote d'or and lindt. i think that still some of my favorite chocolate that i've had are those lindt lindor balls. they are so good. oh another side note, i've developed this taste for dark chocolate here too. before i didn't like it at all, but now i'm a huge fan. the chocolate is a lot better here. so yeah. i hope i answered all of your questions, i just skimmed over your email and will read it later, so if there is anything that i missed, just super bold it with capital letters next time haha. so yeah. that's life! i love you! ciao!

--
Elder Matthew Meyers
7 rue Blanche apt 34
Lille 59000
La France

transfer times!

well i'm sure everyone is just so excited to hear about transfers, so i'll spill the beans. well, we had exchanges with the APs the other week and we were talking to them and he pretty much told us that we weren't going to be staying together because that would mean that one of us would have to stay for 4 transfers and that would be kind of a lot, so we were pretty much banking on the fact that one of us would be leaving. but guess what? if that didn't give it away already, we're staying for 3 together in VDASQC! cool huh? and honestly we're so excited. this ward is just so amazing and elder andrus is a way good missionary so it's fun to work together. we work hard and we're getting to the point where we can finish each others.......... food. so that's a bonus haha. but yup so there's the big news! on the other side, there will be some changes. instead of two companionships of elders in lille, there are now going to be sisters in lille, so that means we're changing apartments! the sisters of lille are now going to be taking our apartment and we are going to be moving into the apartment in lille with the other lille elders. so that should be exciting having a 4some. so there ya go. we're having no changes really, but we have to move anyway. that's the one thing i didn't want to do. packing is the worst. so today we've pretty much just been getting ready for transfers. getting everything cleaned spotless for the sisters. the metcalfe couple, the couple missionaries here, are at our house right now in the middle of painting our bathroom and such. so that's fun. right when we leave, they finally fix up the place haha. silly spoiled soeurs haha.

 so this week was just amazing. we had a knarly week. sunday was probably the best sunday we have ever had on the mission. it was fast and testimony meeting, and it was the best meeting ever. throughout these whole two transfers, we've really just been trying to help the members to do missionary work and we've been doing a lot of stuff to get them moving, and this meeting, honestly almost all of the testimonies that we had were about missionary work and the experiences that they have had. they are all just so great. we're so spoiled here in our ward. we honestly have probably the best ward in france. so they all bore their testimonies about how they have had some great missionary experiences and we just heard a bunch of miracles today and to hear them share it out in front of everyone else was even better. it's going to help the ward catch even more on fire. so voila. we just feel super blessed to be able to serve here. for three de plus. hoooooray.

well, in other news, i'm not really sure what to say. we're going to play tennis and basketball today, so we're pretty excited. should be an adventure. if we don't break anything haha. mais bon, c'est pas grave. it builds character right? right.

 to the fam bam, so about mothers day calls. we are going to be skyping, and the time will be from 6ish-6h30ish my time. so if you could be there on skype at around that time that would be terrific. so that should make about 10ish your time i think? so expect a call around that time. hopefully i'll have a phone i can call you before to tell you i'm on, but if not, just be ready haha. so hopefully that works... if not, i'll talk to you at christmas haha. okay so there you go. just to tell you, there is a change of address there at the bottom so keep your eyes on that. other than that, nothing too special. love you all so much and hope you guys are doing as much missionary work as my ward here! salut!

 -- Elder Matthew Meyers
7 rue Blanche apt 34
59000 Lille
La France

last week of transfer!

(Editors Note:  Elder Meyers sent a two sentence email saying he had to go to Paris with his companion and didn't have time to write this week. The next day, he sent this).

well, as it turns out, today we got a couple of minutes to write since we didn't really have a pday yesterday and all of our rdvs canceled for the day. also, we can't really do much cause today is national workers day off or something so no one is working today. including all the metro people. so there are no metros or buses or anything today. hoorah. so in a little bit we're going to have a nice long walk into lille so that we can teach someone. so that's exciting.

as for the news of the week. nothing too fun happened. we had exchanges with the APs this week so that was fun. elder hall, the one that i went with is dead in 10 days. less now. so that's pretty sad. the poor guy is heading home in about a week. oh là. i'm happy that i still have time left. okay so as for mothers day which is coming up, i'm not really sure what we're going to do yet. if we can talk to someone and get computers and such, then we'll skype, but if not, we'll just call. so we'll see i guess. sorry haha.

so i don't really know what to say. nothing too great happened this week and i don't have much time either. sooo... oh actually one thing that was really cool, cedric got to bless the sacrement on sunday! so that was super cool. he came all dressed up in a suit and we helped him tie his tie and then just smiled all throughout the meeting as he sat up there and he blessed the sacrament. he's such a champion.

welp other than that, nothing much to say. love you much and we'll find out about transfers on saturday, so i'll keep you updated. i'm for sure getting a new companion, but other than that i have no idea. we'll see. well, i love you all and hope you have a stellar week. gros bisous!

--

Elder Matthew Meyers

223 A05, blvd De Valmy

59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ

La France