Compiegne

hey!!

well we made it!! we're safe and sound here in compiègne, and everything is just going dandy. where to start though....

so, as to the work in compiègne, when we got here, there had been a recent baptism of about 6 months of this kid who had seen the book of mormon musical and decided he wanted to be baptized haha. too good. he's a 14 year old kid who watched the musical somehow and then looked up the hours of church online and then from there he came to church and was baptized about a month later haha. too good. but other than this kid, there hasn't been really anything going on for the last little while. it was time for a whitewash. not cause they were bad missionaries or anything, it was just cause they had been here for a bit and they had already told themselves that nothing works and yada yada so voilà we're here! and honestly, it's soooooo good. i love it here. so many things to report though. hmm. maybe i'll just go day by day.

so wednesday, we got here into compiègne around 3-4, and from there we got to find our appartment. the other elders had drawn us a little map and elder reed had a little explained it to me before leaving, so we found it easy enough, but it was still quite a challenge to get all of our stuff there. here's the thing. so one of my suitcases has broken already (the duffel bag looking one) but there was an old suitcase in our appartment in caen that wasn't it terrible shape, so i did a little surgery on it and got it ready to go. oh ps, you know the vacuum bag things that you can use to pack and stuff? i wish i had those here. so we actually went out to look for them the other day, but couldn't find anything so guess what we used instead which worked actually surprisingly really well? just garbage bags haha. stuffed everything in them and sucked the air out and voilà. works like a charm. anyway, back to story. so i get all backed, and we leave the appartment in caen. we walk out the door, walk about 10 meters, and guess what breaks? the handle on this suitcase haha. and that wasn't even what i repaired. (which means my repair job was terrific btw). so it now no longer has a long handle for pulling it and the short handle is already broken, so all there is is a small handle on the side. but, on the bright side, this suitcase is one of those 4 wheel ones, the only problem is that it only has 3 left haha. but, what we did is we tied my scarf around the handle on the side and we pulled it around like that the whole day haha. it was so ridiculous. de plus it had only 3 wheels so it fell over all the time and everything. it was gnarly. but finally in the end we made it there. we'll see if i decide to buy a new one or not. probably too much work. and i should probably only move like once more so it's probably not worth it to waste money on something that will be convient for like 2 days. anyway we'll see. so back on the story, so we get to the appartment, and it was pretty bad... dishes in the sink still and pretty dirty, so that had been our project for any extra time that we have had over the last week. in the mornings or nights or dinner time we just clean. but anyway, so we get home, set down our bags, and get out finding people. that night, we had a terrific night. we fixed about 5 rdvs and got like 7 numbers in the hour or two that we had. also we contacted this girl that i will tell you about later. then later, we get a call from a member and she says, did the other missionaries tell you? tell us what? that you are coming to eat here tonight. nope. well come! okay. haha so we ended up going to the bishops house that night and that was great. it was good to be able to get to grips a little with everything with them. so that was pretty much our day on wednesday.

thurday we had a nice trip down to melun to start doing district leader responsibilities. i did a baptismal interview down there and of course i don't really know paris that well, so we took the train that takes like like 1h15 minutes instead of the one that takes 30 minutes to get out to melun. it was an adventure. but we got it all done and this man william was baptized this weekend. hooray! so anyway, we get home, and then we do a lot of finding for the rest of the day. that's mostly our plans for quite some time here until we get the teaching pool built up. but we're already making a ton of progress. we've fixed a ton of rdvs and not all of them have gone through, but by the time we are done here, this place is gonna be paradise.

friday, we had some cool things happen, did some contacting, taught a lesson on the street, got a new ami, that kinds of stuff. nothing too exciting to report on.

saturday, the money day. okay so here is the thing. here in compiègne, we have a car. but the thing is that at the moment, we can't really drive it. i am too old to be able to drive, until i go to belgium and switch the license, and elder christensen can't drive a stick haha. we found that out today. we got all of the papers ready and did everything so that we would be able to use the car today, and then we get the car, and we first go to the church parking lot to see how his driving skills are. and in the parking lot he did fine, but then we took it out on the road, and that was quite the experience. he has only driven stick once in his life though so it's completely normal. but let's just say that after killing the car about a hundred times and people all around us honking and the car smoking quite nicely, we made it back to the church and left the car there. she's probably going to stay there at the church until i figure out how to get a license cause he doesn't want to drive at all and the car doesn't want him to either haha. so that was an adventure. on the bright side, both of our coats and the inside of the car smell nicely of smoke and unhealthy car haha. oops. ça va aller. but anyway, so we are there at the church, and as we are about to walk out, a family drives up. members. the family azika-eros. she is russian and he is from congo. they have 3 kids and they are just super cute. anyway, so they come up to do the cleaning at the church, and they were kinda hurried we could tell so we offered to help them. at first they said no it's okay but then we said we are going to help you, and they said okay. so we stayed there and helped them clean for about an hour and they were really grateful. their kids also love us so that's pretty good too. so as they were leaving, we told them that we were planning to do some porting in the area, and asked if they had any suggestions on where to go. they said to go in a certain direction and so off we went. to the road right next to the church where you would think that the missionaries had already ported a million times. but not so. so we ported down this road and we met this lady that told us that she would like to come to church one day but not this week. so we're gonna pass by her again later. but then we kept going and got to natalie. and natalie is a champion. she is a lady in about her 50s who has a couple of older daughters and 3 granddaughters. so we talked a little over the intercom, but then she said to come up. so she came down to let us in, we went up, and we had about a 10-15 minute talk with her about god and prayer and everything. she knows there is soemthing there, but she doesn't like giving it a name. so we taught her a little and just had a nice time with her and at the end we asked her what she was doing tomorrow. she said nothing much, so we invited her to church and told her how great it was going to be. so she said okay we'll see how i'm feeling when i wake up tomorrow and we told her okay we'll see you tomorrow. and she laughed and we said bye. now, this brings us to sunday.

sunday was so great. so we show up to church at 9 o clock, the first ones there, and wait for the members to show up. they start filing in and we start greeting them and introducing ourselves and such and they all seem great. then, out of nowhere comes natalie. she shows up and tells us that when she woke up this morning she just couldn't not come today, she just had the feeling she should, and so there she was! so we start talking to her and then comes the best part, a member come up and just pounces on her! she starts talking and tells her about relief society and how the girls are all together and then whisks her away into the room. and then this member for the rest of the day is just her best friend and sits with her everywhere and is just too good. sr. malca. so all in all, by the end of the day, she has had a great time and talks to us about how she would like to maybe bring her daughter and granddaughter next time. soo great. so we are going to see her on friday to answer her question about what is the difference between our church and the catholic. so that'll be great.  it was just so sweet to teach someone the night before and have her come to church the next day. especially when we have nothing going right now. the ward loved it too. speaking of which, the ward loves us. honestly they are so on board. i don't think the relationships with the members and missionaries has been super good before now, but we went all out on member relationships and they are so great. we were just really excited to be there and they have caught the excitement and we already feel like we've been here for a long time cause we are already really great friends with them all. i've discovered that it's all about asking them for things. as you ask them to make sacrifices, they feel the spirit and they want to help more and they feel good about being able to help. it's like that quote by joseph smith about sacrifice. hopefully you know which one i'm talking about. anyway, so that ward is great, the city is great, and life is great.

now as to elder christensen, he is a super good young missionary in his 4th transfer. he's from salt lake area from a little town called i don't remember haha. he just tells people salt lake. i think maybe like east milcreek or something. who knows. anyway, so he's a really young missionary and he reminds me a lot of me when i was his age in the mission. i got put with elder andrus and i just ate up everything that he did. and also beat myself up about how i wasn't as good. so he is kinda beating himself up that he isn't good at anything right now, but he really is and he's learning a lot so that's good. he's a good kid. i feel a lot like elder andrus must have when he got me. hopefully i can help him as much as he did for me.

it's weird for me to be a senior companion for once. this is really the first time that i have been the "senior comp" cause every other time before that we've been co-comps. the only other time was with elder andrus baby, but we were both just as lost as eachother so that was pretty much co comps too haha. so it's fun i guess. the ward loves us and the work is started already to take off, so hopefully we do well. we'll see.

anyway, voilà sur moi. i don't know what else to say and i'm sick of being on a computer, so i love you all and hope you have a great day! a plus!