well, in case anyone was wondering, transfers came and went, and there is nothing different here for me. me and elder andrus are staying here together in villeneuve and our zone isn't changing too drastically. so all in all we're happy about the changes. we're happy to be staying together.
today on the other hand, not so happy. mostly just tired. so to start it off, yesterday was day light savings out here, so we missed a whole hour of sleep. it already feels like we never sleep, but then they took a whole nother hour away. how rude. then, to add to it, today we had to make a trip to paris. elder andrus had to his legality, cause he was officially illegal here in france for a couple of days, and he realized it so we had to get down there. we wanted to get there first thing in the morning, so we took the early morning train. we woke up at like 4:15 and took the 5:50 train. so we are just pooped. we got up there to the legality place, waited in line for about an hour, and then turned right around and headed home. so we had a nice bunch of wasted hours there. hoorah.
so as to the next couple of weeks. we are going to be running so hard. we have so much stuff planned for the zone, cause the first time around we were probably a little more focused on our own ville and secteur instead of as much about the zone. we knew things weren't going very well, but we kinda just talked about it instead of actually doing something. but we got a little reminder from the assistants, and we're ready to go out and do some real work with them now. sure, our secteur is probably going to suffer a little, but we have to do something. we have a lot of little small towns in our zone and the missionaries are kinda just giving up a little out there, so we're going to make some trips out there to spread some good cheer. or at least show them how tired we are which will hopefully inspire them to be more tired haha. so yeah, life is pretty good.
here in villeneuve d'ascq, the work is going nicely. elder andrus and i work together well, so we're working hard and making some progress. our ward is still as great as ever, and we love it to death up here. we had a really cool rdv the other night with a chinese kid. his name is wei, and he's just great. he speaks english and french, but he says he speaks english better, so we taught him for the first time in english on sunday. i love chinese people. we had like the perfect first rdv with him and taught him about god and prayer, because he didn't have any christian background at all, and challenged him to pray every night. so we're excited to see how it went. he said he was touched during our prayer at the end, so we're hoping the he keeps progressing along. our next rdv is on saturday, so we're pretty stoked.
conference this next week! that'll be fun. i always look forward to conference. it's a big change from when i was home ha... i think before, i just looked at it as a vacation from going to church. a prolonged church meeting split into different parts that i could sleep through... but now, it's like the best part of the year. i love listening to talks and getting so much out of it. the only bummer, which isn't that much of a bummer at all, is the fact the hopefully we're going to have a ton of amis at coming to conference, so we're going to have to watch it in french. which is good, but it really isn't exactly the same. in english, you can really get the tone of their voice and the passion in it, but with the translation it's not quite the same. but quand même. we're excited.
well voilà i'm about to fall asleep at the keyboard, so ima say bye now. hope everything is going great out there and that you have just a super duper week. ha love you!
-- Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy
59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
Monday, March 26, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
transfer 5 comes to a close
SALUT mes potes.
welp, instead of asking rhetorical question to start this off, i'm just going to start talking about my week.
alors, this week was pretty good. we had a couple of amis at church, so that was cool. we have one new guy that is sweet. his name is cedric, he was found in valenciennes by the elders there, and then passed to the lille elders because he said he lived in lille, and so they taught him a couple of times, fixed a baptismal date, and then they passed him to us since they found out that he lived in our area. so we will have our first rdv with him this week, but he came to church, and he's pretty solid. so we're excited about that. our other baptismal date is slowly just trickly off the planet... he isn't really engaged at all and i think it really turned him off once he realized the commitment that it takes. cause we were just completely straight up with him. we don't want to baptize someone who is just going to stop coming to church the moment we stop following up with him... so i'm not sure if he's going to get baptized or not. we'll see i guess.
in other news, elder andrus is still a gimp. he's still just hobbling around on his crutches, so that's fun. he's gotten pretty good at them though, so it really doesn't hinder us at all anymore. he just looks funny and that's it. we get the sympathy vote too so that's a bonus. story, yesterday, we were on our way home from a less active's house, pascal mansuy, and we have this problem. instead of just taking the route that we know will get us home, we are always trying to find a quicker route. so instead of just going home the way we came, we tried stopping like 5 bus stops early because we thought that there was a metro there. we soon found out that that was not the case. so we started walking around aimelessly, and this is almost 9 o clock, so we kind of have to hurry home, so first we try knocking a door and asking where the metro is from there. obviously they didn't know or else didn't want to help us, so we kept walking and stopped the next person we saw. they told us where it was, but they said that it was about a kilometre away, and since my gimpy comp had crutches, they offered to drive us haha. it was stellar. so we accepted the ride and they dropped us off right at the metro entrance. so it does have it's benefits. on the down side, they weren't too interested in the gospel.
so. as to the work here in villeneuve d'ascq, it's going pretty good. nothing too exciting to report, but we're just trooping along. we got baufed like 6 times this week, so that was good. baufed for you that don't know means they didn't show up to the rdv because they are baufs. which is the noun for the verb to bauf. a synonyme for the word baufy could be flakey. bienvenue à la france eh?? haha so voilà mostly our week in a nutshell. we had a couple of exchanges, so that was fun i guess, even though i'm not a huge fan of exchanges because i'd rather just stay with my comp here in villeneuve, but whatever. i feel like i'm way to young to teach anyone anything, so i'd rather just stay and learn.
anyway so there's my week in a nutshell. hugs and kisses and have a good week! love you all!
salut!
--
welp, instead of asking rhetorical question to start this off, i'm just going to start talking about my week.
alors, this week was pretty good. we had a couple of amis at church, so that was cool. we have one new guy that is sweet. his name is cedric, he was found in valenciennes by the elders there, and then passed to the lille elders because he said he lived in lille, and so they taught him a couple of times, fixed a baptismal date, and then they passed him to us since they found out that he lived in our area. so we will have our first rdv with him this week, but he came to church, and he's pretty solid. so we're excited about that. our other baptismal date is slowly just trickly off the planet... he isn't really engaged at all and i think it really turned him off once he realized the commitment that it takes. cause we were just completely straight up with him. we don't want to baptize someone who is just going to stop coming to church the moment we stop following up with him... so i'm not sure if he's going to get baptized or not. we'll see i guess.
in other news, elder andrus is still a gimp. he's still just hobbling around on his crutches, so that's fun. he's gotten pretty good at them though, so it really doesn't hinder us at all anymore. he just looks funny and that's it. we get the sympathy vote too so that's a bonus. story, yesterday, we were on our way home from a less active's house, pascal mansuy, and we have this problem. instead of just taking the route that we know will get us home, we are always trying to find a quicker route. so instead of just going home the way we came, we tried stopping like 5 bus stops early because we thought that there was a metro there. we soon found out that that was not the case. so we started walking around aimelessly, and this is almost 9 o clock, so we kind of have to hurry home, so first we try knocking a door and asking where the metro is from there. obviously they didn't know or else didn't want to help us, so we kept walking and stopped the next person we saw. they told us where it was, but they said that it was about a kilometre away, and since my gimpy comp had crutches, they offered to drive us haha. it was stellar. so we accepted the ride and they dropped us off right at the metro entrance. so it does have it's benefits. on the down side, they weren't too interested in the gospel.
so. as to the work here in villeneuve d'ascq, it's going pretty good. nothing too exciting to report, but we're just trooping along. we got baufed like 6 times this week, so that was good. baufed for you that don't know means they didn't show up to the rdv because they are baufs. which is the noun for the verb to bauf. a synonyme for the word baufy could be flakey. bienvenue à la france eh?? haha so voilà mostly our week in a nutshell. we had a couple of exchanges, so that was fun i guess, even though i'm not a huge fan of exchanges because i'd rather just stay with my comp here in villeneuve, but whatever. i feel like i'm way to young to teach anyone anything, so i'd rather just stay and learn.
anyway so there's my week in a nutshell. hugs and kisses and have a good week! love you all!
salut!
--
Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy
59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
Monday, March 12, 2012
salut salut!
hey hey! welp, this week, in all honesty i don't really have much to report. we had a lot of good lessons, and we're still finding some new people out here, and life is going pretty good. we're working hard and doing our best. we had exchanges with the APs this week, we read an interesting talk together. it was called the 4th missionary. and i've read it before somewhere but i can't remember where. but it was really good and we're trying to apply the things we learned in it. it basically talked about not doing missionary work because we're supposed to or something like that, but really giving our whole heart, serving with all our heart might mind and strength, really just turning our will over to God, and then, we will really find the joy in missionary work. and it's so true. some days, being a missionary is the greatest thing in the world, and all i want to do is share the gospel, and then others aren't so hot. but that is really the difference. so that's what we're working on this week/fortherestofourmission. in other news, at this point, we have one baptismal date, his name is claver, and he came to church yesterday! i think he had an okay time, but on the down side, he may or may not have slept through priesthood ha... so that was an exciting occurance. nothing more you can do but just laugh about it. the members here are still the best people in the world. we went to eat and someones house yesterday, and we're in the middle of setting up a golf date now. there is a golf course right next to his house, so we're going to go play golf with him and his less active brother some time. we're so excited. hopefully it works out. other than that, i can't really think of anything else exciting that happened this weeeekk..... so voilà quoi!
life is good here in villeneuve. still loving every minute! love you all and hope everything is just stellar on the home front! bye bye!
-- Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy
59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
life is good here in villeneuve. still loving every minute! love you all and hope everything is just stellar on the home front! bye bye!
-- Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy
59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
Monday, March 5, 2012
let it snow!!!
salut!! comment ca va tout le monde?? j'espère que vous allez bien. ca va super ici à villeneuve d'ascq! la nouvelle de la semaine c'est la neige! au jourd'hui il y a au moins 6 inches et il continue à neiger. c'est trop bien. moi j'aime bien.
anyway, IT'S SNOWING!!! up here in the north of france, i finally got my first good snow storm of the mission! we woke up this morning and elder andrus opens the blinds of the window and we looked out the window and what did we see? POPCORN! nope. actually snow. and the flakes were huge. it was great. at first when he told me it was snowing i didn't believe him, cause he tells me that like every morning, but this time we really did have snow. big large flakes of it. hoorah.
so as for news of the week. nothing too exciting has happened. we did set a baptismal date the other day, but then he didn't come to church, so i'm not sure how serious he is.. we still have no one coming to church, but hopefully that'll change soon. we're working on it. this week was great though. we had zone conference in paris, and that's always way good. we got to hear president and the assistants tell us what's what and we learned some good stuff. tomorrow is actually mission conference, aka the meeting where all of the zone leaders go to paris and talk about the mission, so that'll be exciting i guess. i'm not really sure of what goes on in one, but should be interesting. sure i'll learn something.
so we can't really say that the snow was a really big surprise. it's always really gloomy weather up here, but it hadn't really rained until yesterday. and it rained. we went to church and came home and ate and then we went out to do some porting. so we got off at our metro stop and started to walk towards our porting area and it started to rain. kinda a nice misty rain at first and then it picked up and up. by the end, we were just porting our little soaked hearts out in a nice little torrent of rain. it was quite the adventure. we were pretty darn wet by the end, and when we came home we made ourselves a nice bowl of popcorn to warm us up. popcorn fixes everything right? right. so yeah! that about sums up anything exciting that happened this week. i went to valencienne on exchanges this week, and that was fun. it reminded me a lot of mulhouse because the trams were exactly the same and it was about the same size of city. it was nice to be back home-esque.
well, i think that about sums up the happenings for the week. still loving it out here in wonderland and we're still just put putting along. speaking of put put, there's a driving range that we always go past when we take the trams here and everytime we pass we're super tempted to go hit some balls. so that may be a pday activity someday soon. on verra. alors c'est ça! have a terrific week and à la prochaine! au revour!
Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy
59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
anyway, IT'S SNOWING!!! up here in the north of france, i finally got my first good snow storm of the mission! we woke up this morning and elder andrus opens the blinds of the window and we looked out the window and what did we see? POPCORN! nope. actually snow. and the flakes were huge. it was great. at first when he told me it was snowing i didn't believe him, cause he tells me that like every morning, but this time we really did have snow. big large flakes of it. hoorah.
so as for news of the week. nothing too exciting has happened. we did set a baptismal date the other day, but then he didn't come to church, so i'm not sure how serious he is.. we still have no one coming to church, but hopefully that'll change soon. we're working on it. this week was great though. we had zone conference in paris, and that's always way good. we got to hear president and the assistants tell us what's what and we learned some good stuff. tomorrow is actually mission conference, aka the meeting where all of the zone leaders go to paris and talk about the mission, so that'll be exciting i guess. i'm not really sure of what goes on in one, but should be interesting. sure i'll learn something.
so we can't really say that the snow was a really big surprise. it's always really gloomy weather up here, but it hadn't really rained until yesterday. and it rained. we went to church and came home and ate and then we went out to do some porting. so we got off at our metro stop and started to walk towards our porting area and it started to rain. kinda a nice misty rain at first and then it picked up and up. by the end, we were just porting our little soaked hearts out in a nice little torrent of rain. it was quite the adventure. we were pretty darn wet by the end, and when we came home we made ourselves a nice bowl of popcorn to warm us up. popcorn fixes everything right? right. so yeah! that about sums up anything exciting that happened this week. i went to valencienne on exchanges this week, and that was fun. it reminded me a lot of mulhouse because the trams were exactly the same and it was about the same size of city. it was nice to be back home-esque.
well, i think that about sums up the happenings for the week. still loving it out here in wonderland and we're still just put putting along. speaking of put put, there's a driving range that we always go past when we take the trams here and everytime we pass we're super tempted to go hit some balls. so that may be a pday activity someday soon. on verra. alors c'est ça! have a terrific week and à la prochaine! au revour!
Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy
59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
Monday, February 27, 2012
salut!
hey there people! well, i'm not really in the mood of writing an email today, so it's probably gonna be short. here in villeneuve d'ascq, things are going just great. we honestly had such a great week here. the only problem is that i can't just worry about myself anymore.... now i have to worry about the zoneski. alors, we got done with our week and we ended up with 5 new amis and just a terrific week, and then we start getting in the stats for the other people in the zone and oh là. it was pretty bad. and so now i'm just sitting here wondering what we did wrong. because it was this week too that we went around to all of the districts and gave them a little training. the only reason that we are here is to get everyone excited about missionary work and to inspire them to do their best, and we obviously failed pretty hard haha. so yeah. last night me and elder andrus just tried to figure out what we're doing wrong and how to fix it. being a zone leader is no fun. i already have enough to worry about when i just have to work on myself. so that's a little summary of the week.
on a brighter note, the 5 new amis that we found are all super sweet. 4 of them are young adults, and the young adult program in our ward is way good, so we're excited for that. they are all just really sincere and really have a chance to go somewhere. so it's pretty sick.
i still love serving with elder andrus. he's a super good missionary and we have a lot of fun. we both think we're really funny, and most the time our french friends don't, so we have fun trying to dig each other out of the holes that we make haha.
well, i don't really see anything else to write about, so à bientôt! je vous aime!
Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy
59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
on a brighter note, the 5 new amis that we found are all super sweet. 4 of them are young adults, and the young adult program in our ward is way good, so we're excited for that. they are all just really sincere and really have a chance to go somewhere. so it's pretty sick.
i still love serving with elder andrus. he's a super good missionary and we have a lot of fun. we both think we're really funny, and most the time our french friends don't, so we have fun trying to dig each other out of the holes that we make haha.
well, i don't really see anything else to write about, so à bientôt! je vous aime!
Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy
59650 VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Villeneuve d'Ascq!
herrooo!
well how are you everyone. so to start out, i love villeneuve. the ward is great and i love my companion. we get along super well. but before we move on from that, i'm just gonna say i still miss elder andrus version 1.0. we had a lot of fun together and he's a stellar kid and a good missionary. ima miss him. cry.
so here we are in villeneuve, and we were just so excited to get started. the first night we went to ward council, and it was so good. the leadership here is all stellar and we are really excited to get things going here. the sisters here are great, i'm enjoying it so far and they are helping us out a lot seeing as we know nothing about the city yet. just as a little background, the missionaries here before us weren't the best. when we got to the apartment, it was the dirtiest thing that i've ever seen. there were still crumbs allll over the floor and the table hadn't even been wiped off. also, all we heard from any missionaries who had served in villeneuve was about how bad the apartment was. but when we got there, it's actually not that bad at all. the only problem was that the missionaries before didn't take any care of it at all. it was the dirtiest thing on the planet, there were things broken cause they didn't take care of it, but other than that, it's just fine. we spent the first couple of days cleaning because it was absolutely unlivable, and now it looks really nice. i have no complaints at all. and the ward is just great, we had a really good time on sunday getting to know them a little, and i'm really learning a lot already. elder andrus is a stud. he's from idaho falls, and he's a baseball player. there you go dad. but he's super funny and we get a long really well. we think we're pretty funny too, even though most of the time everyone else doesn't haha.
so to answer some pronounciation question. villeneuve d'ascq - veelnuv dask. that's as close as i can get haha. and lille - leel. if you still have more questions, i'm sure there is something on the internet that can tell you about it. as to a summary of the zone. well. we have 4 missionaries out here in villeneuve (that's me! and sisters). 4 in lille. we share a ward building for the two wards of lille and villeneuve, so that's an adventure. valencienne has 2 out there, st quentin has 2 also. 2 in calais, 2 in amien, 2 in arras (sisters), dunkerque has 2. and that's it. so there are 20 in our zone. our area here in villeneuve goes from the edge of lille on the east to belgium. we have a little part of belgium in our area so that's fun.
other news, elder andrus likes to be lazy. haha no i'm just kidding, but, he does have tendonitis. bummer huh? so his left foot is all swollen and the doctor told him that he needs to stay off of it for at least a week. so we just got here and are all ready to work and to turn things around here, and then that happens. so these last couple of days we've just been sitting around the apartment being bored. and making our apartment really clean since that's the only fun thing to do. so yeah, we're ready to get out. but, this next week we have to go visit the three district meetings in our zone, so we're going to be out and about. we got him some super lame french crutches (since they don't use normal crutches, they are more like canes) and we're managing. since we haven't been getting out though we've been doing a lot of area book work, so we have a lot of things set for this week, hopefully it'll go through. as for the area, we weren't left with much. we're kinda starting over here so we're pretty exciting about it. it'll be fun.
well i don't really know what else to tell you, and we're kinda pressed for time, as it turns out, pdays as zone leaders are not fun. we have so many things we have to get done today. but that's life! welp, love you! au revoir!
-- Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy 59650
VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
well how are you everyone. so to start out, i love villeneuve. the ward is great and i love my companion. we get along super well. but before we move on from that, i'm just gonna say i still miss elder andrus version 1.0. we had a lot of fun together and he's a stellar kid and a good missionary. ima miss him. cry.
so here we are in villeneuve, and we were just so excited to get started. the first night we went to ward council, and it was so good. the leadership here is all stellar and we are really excited to get things going here. the sisters here are great, i'm enjoying it so far and they are helping us out a lot seeing as we know nothing about the city yet. just as a little background, the missionaries here before us weren't the best. when we got to the apartment, it was the dirtiest thing that i've ever seen. there were still crumbs allll over the floor and the table hadn't even been wiped off. also, all we heard from any missionaries who had served in villeneuve was about how bad the apartment was. but when we got there, it's actually not that bad at all. the only problem was that the missionaries before didn't take any care of it at all. it was the dirtiest thing on the planet, there were things broken cause they didn't take care of it, but other than that, it's just fine. we spent the first couple of days cleaning because it was absolutely unlivable, and now it looks really nice. i have no complaints at all. and the ward is just great, we had a really good time on sunday getting to know them a little, and i'm really learning a lot already. elder andrus is a stud. he's from idaho falls, and he's a baseball player. there you go dad. but he's super funny and we get a long really well. we think we're pretty funny too, even though most of the time everyone else doesn't haha.
so to answer some pronounciation question. villeneuve d'ascq - veelnuv dask. that's as close as i can get haha. and lille - leel. if you still have more questions, i'm sure there is something on the internet that can tell you about it. as to a summary of the zone. well. we have 4 missionaries out here in villeneuve (that's me! and sisters). 4 in lille. we share a ward building for the two wards of lille and villeneuve, so that's an adventure. valencienne has 2 out there, st quentin has 2 also. 2 in calais, 2 in amien, 2 in arras (sisters), dunkerque has 2. and that's it. so there are 20 in our zone. our area here in villeneuve goes from the edge of lille on the east to belgium. we have a little part of belgium in our area so that's fun.
other news, elder andrus likes to be lazy. haha no i'm just kidding, but, he does have tendonitis. bummer huh? so his left foot is all swollen and the doctor told him that he needs to stay off of it for at least a week. so we just got here and are all ready to work and to turn things around here, and then that happens. so these last couple of days we've just been sitting around the apartment being bored. and making our apartment really clean since that's the only fun thing to do. so yeah, we're ready to get out. but, this next week we have to go visit the three district meetings in our zone, so we're going to be out and about. we got him some super lame french crutches (since they don't use normal crutches, they are more like canes) and we're managing. since we haven't been getting out though we've been doing a lot of area book work, so we have a lot of things set for this week, hopefully it'll go through. as for the area, we weren't left with much. we're kinda starting over here so we're pretty exciting about it. it'll be fun.
well i don't really know what else to tell you, and we're kinda pressed for time, as it turns out, pdays as zone leaders are not fun. we have so many things we have to get done today. but that's life! welp, love you! au revoir!
-- Elder Matthew Meyers
223 A05, blvd De Valmy 59650
VILLENEUVE D'ASCQ
La France
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