Baptism and Calling Home

Mother's Day Skype

This week was a lot of fun, in part because I was able to talk to my family for mother's day, which was great and uplifting thing. I love getting to see some of the changes that go one in my little brothers and sisters. The day before that was also fantastic, one of the highlights of the week by far. One of my companions, the one who comes from Denmark, served in a small ville called Annecy about a year ago, and when he was there, him and his companion found a man who was open and willing to learn, and already knew quite a bit about the church before having spoken with the missionaries. Because of communication problems, and a couple other small things, they lost contact with him, and were unable to continue teaching him. However, a year later, the Elders in Annecy right now contacted us and told us how this man had refound them, and had become a fantastic progressing ami, and was going to be baptized, and had asked that my companion and his old comp be there as well. His old comp was already back in the United States, but because we had some supplies and errands to take care of in a ville not too far away from Annecy, President Roney gave us special permission to be able to go to this baptism.


It was a wonderful experience, really cool to see how touched my companion was, how happy and joyous the man who got baptized was after the ceremony. It didn't hurt that for us bystanders, everyone was happy, because the baptism took place in the lake around which the ville is situated. Annecy is known throughout the mission as one of the prettiest villes as well, partially thanks to this lake, so everyone I think was in a little awe at how beautiful it was. The baptism was wonderful, and the rest of that weekend went well too, ending in my Skype with my family, so all was great. This week itself was nothing too special, aside from a crisis we had with all the cell phone lines in Switzerland shutting down randomly. We are still trying to figure out the problem with the company, but thankfully most of the lines are back up and running again. All is well here in Lyon, my companion had a haircut today, and the best part of it was because he likes his hair a lot, we went to a coiffure, and I spent about 45 minutes to an hour talking to one of the people in there about our church and what we were doing there, so it was well worth the time, even though it took a little while. I love getting to be a missionary, we talked to a man last night on the subway system, and even though he wasn't interested to learn more, he really thanked us because we had helped him understand a lot more about who we were, and why we were there. It's things like that which make me happy to be here and enthusiastic about being a missionary.

Up All Night and Solving Airport Crises

Monday was when all the missionaries going home had their final interviews and such, and somehow everything ran a little later than normal, so in between getting everyone out to President's house, getting them back for the night, then going back to the office and loading all their luggage into the van, we didn't get home until about 2:10 or so in the morning. We had to be out the door and on our way to the airport the next morning at 4 in the morning, so we didn't sleep, just wrote a bit in our journal, and then showered and changed, then got back in the car and headed off to the airport. We were a little tired at first, but it wore off pretty quick at the airport, or at least for me, because everything seemed to go wrong.

Note the Time

I was in charge of getting all of the Americans and one German sister onto their flights, and everything with the German sister went fine, but we had a ton of issues with the Americans. All the machines where we were supposed to check them in for whatever reason didn't read the passports, and kept saying that we didn't have tickets. I frantically worked with the helper lady, seeing as we were already running late, and finally we got everyone into the line, waiting for the baggage check, where the lady said they'd get their tickets. I sprinted over to help the German sister with her final things, then sprinted back to get back in time to help pay for all the second baggage fees for all the Americans just in time for them to board their flight, and then sprint across the whole airport to grab a cell phone that a Finnish sister had accidentally forgotten to give back to us.

Surprise Birthday Party

All in all, kinda stressful, though the rest of the day was ok, despite the fact that right after that whole situation me and my companions were drifting hard core in and out of sleep for a few hours before the new missionaries got there. However, Thursday was my birthday, and it was fantastic. My companion had a bunch of missionaries in Lyon go to the institute without me knowing they even knew about my birthday, and then got me there on some excuse, where they threw me a surprise small birthday party. It was a ton of fun, and everyone was happy. After that, my companions and I went out to lunch with the assistants to a great taco place in Lyon, and had a ton of fun. After some last minute office work, we went out to our sector and taught a great lesson over the Savior to one of our amis, one of the best parts of the day, and then went out again to dinner with the mission nurse, one of the best people I've met on the mission. Overall, it was a fantastic week, and my birthday was a ton of fun, in the morning I got to read all the letters my family sent me, which might have been the best part of the day. I love everyone, and hope everyone had a good week as well, au revoir!

Out to Eat

Massive Mission Conference

This week was incredibly hectic and a ton of fun for us! the beginning of the week was fairly normal, except for Monday, President had the Assistants, us, and the senior couple equip in the office all over at 10 in the morning for a large planning session, for the massive mission conference we had this weekend, and for the next transfer coming up. It was really good, we were able to get a bunch of stuff planned, and able to coordinate everybody. Then afterwords, we had what is called President's Pday.

The last Pday of every transfer, President lets all the missionaries serving in Lyon come over to the mission home, which has a big ol' back yard, and play all kinds of sports and stuff after eating a lunch together, it was a lot of fun! After Monday however, life got hectic really fast. We had to plan for it, and then finally, the massive mission conference was there. Friday we helped transport tons of food out the chapel, and then buy and transport 200 pizzas for the missionaries that night for dinner. After a crazy night with quite a few phone calls for random situations with the hotels, we finally got everybody off the big buses, done with the pizzas and socializing, and in their hotel rooms, and got home and to bed at about 12:30. The next morning, we woke up at 5, and went and picked up a massive order of breakfast pastries, and transported it all out the chapel.

Then, the conference happened. It was absolutely amazing. We had Elder Nielson, who spoke at the last General Conference, and his wife, plus Elder Kearon of the 70 with his wife there. It really surprised me, I thought that the conference would be all about the little rules and details about the iPads, however, far from that; it was a very spiritually uplifting experience, something I guess I should have expected with General Authorities coming. They talked about and emphasized throughout the conference the power of agency. They testified that these tools can be used for tremendous good if we use them wisely, and can really help us in our missionary work if we let them. It truly was a great conference, they testified about the power we have and the light we can bring to the world with these tools, and really helped us all get excited and ready for them. I hope everyone had a great week, and I want to invite everyone to think about how maybe, without being offensive, we can share the church through the u



se of social media, and subject that was brought up again and again in the conference. I hope everyone stays safe, and keep the faith!

This weekend we'll be really busy driving in and around Switzerland, delivering some supplies and replacing a bed and a refrigerator, so we won't have time at all tomorrow for Pday activities, so we're doing our emails today! This week wasn't the most thrilling or exciting week, we spent some very long days completely at the office keeping up with all the workloads, and making sure everything stays ok in the mission. This week, for whatever reason, we had a couple of sticky situations rise up, the reason we spent almost two full days not leaving the office, but we got them all figured out eventually. We had first year legality appointments for all the new missionaries who just came in this week, which was fine, but the best part of the week was Leadership Council on Tuesday, where we spent the whole time discussing the best ways to help our mission adapt to the usage of iPads, which will be arriving in about 2 weeks for all the missionaries.

The thing that I most remarked on, and studied later, was the comparison President Roney made to our iPads and the vision of the tree of life. He reminded us about how in the vision of the tree of the life, the iron rod that leads to the tree is right next to the dark ravine, the river of filthiness. He told us about how with this new iPad, we are walking right alongside a cliff and dropoff very much like what is described in the vision, how much potential the iPad has for evil, while at the same time for good. He asked why we thought the Lord would put us right alongside this river of filthiness, why in our lives we are always so close to evil, why would the Prophet, First Presidency, and the Twelve Apostles give us the iPads when there is so much potential for bad? The answer is because the Lord, and his representatives on this earth, trust us. He has given us the way to stay pure and to keep pressing forward, He has given us the iron rod, in all aspects of our lives. He knows that although we have such a terrible ravine next to us, we can have a firm grip on the iron rod, and always stay true to Him, despite the temptations that may arrive in our lives. It was a comforting thought to think about, that despite this danger, we truly are safe if we follow His teachings and help ourselves be safer on the road to salvation.

200 Pizzas

Our normal Saturday Pday got postponed so we could help set up a senior couple apartment two and a half hours north of here in Besançon. It was a fun road trip, though it was the second time we were up there in four days. We had gone up on Thursday after our District Meeting to set up the first load of stuff, then came back late late that night, did some normal office work the next day and then bought the last stuff and took it up the next morning, and put it all together for the majority of Saturday.  Earlier on in the week, we had another road trip, this one to take down an apartment in Carcassone, about four and half hours south of Lyon. We left on Sunday and drove until Montpellier, then finished the drive the next morning and spent that whole day taking the apartment with the help of the Elders down there, and then driving back up.

In charge of ordering a truckload of pizza

It was a ton of fun, though really exhausting week, we got see a bunch of missionaries that are lots of fun, and help out a bunch of people. Our District Meeting was also lots of fun, the whole meeting was much more of a discussion, talking and reviewing the second chapter of Preach My Gospel, which was really interesting and helpful for us all. Possibly the coolest part of the week was today at church though, during the mini Ward Council we had after church was finished. The ward had taken a big trip to the temple during the week, something difficult for many members, seeing as the temple is in Switzerland, and not close. The bishop bore a powerful testimony in sacrament on the temple, and how he had seen it change and help the lives of the members who had gone. During the Ward Council, he announced he had strongly been impressed during the visit, that the ward should go from just one ward temple trip each year, to two. This was a big announcement, and they started making preparations immediately. It was a large testimony to me about how important the temple is to us, and seeing the sacrifices that these members were making to go there made me appreciate it all the more. I miss getting to go to the temple often at home, and want to invite all those who are able to go as often as they can. Je vous souhaite une super bonne semaine toute le monde, au revoir!

General Conference and Long-Distance Teaching

This week was fantastic, and largely in part to General Conference last weekend. For a missionary a General Conference is always fantastic, and this time especially so I feel. All the talks and messages shared held things for each of us, and I really feel like they helped me here. It's a wonderful opportunity to listen to a living prophet as well, and hear his words for our day. In any case, the weekend was great. So was Monday however, it was my Mission President's last interview conference of his mission, where he goes around the mission and does a Zone Conference with every zone, during which he has a personal interview with each missionary. It was wonderful to get to talk with him in that setting, seeing as he's so busy and not always around normally, so I made the most of it, and learned a lot.

Service with the Members

The conference was all about trusting the Lord, and moving forward with faith, even when maybe we can't see the end result. It was really good, and was a message I think many of us needed to hear, wonderful for his last interview conference. I had a really cool opportunity this week to help missionaries in Turkey help teach a man through Skype. He was from the Congo, a French speaking country, and they needed help translating and helping him understand the finer points of the gospel. It was really cool to see how truly connected we are, him coming from the Congo, us being in France, but the teaching going on in Turkey. The missionaries there are few, there are only 12 in the entire country, so the odds are not high of finding him, but they did, and now we get to help teach him, really neat experience for me. We had another lesson with a young guy who was leaving the next day for Montpellier, but it was really cool, when he had talked with my companion two days earlier he had said that he really liked it, and that he would bring a friend to the rendez-vous. He ended up bringing 2! We had a really fun rendez-vous with them, they were young and open, and they all ended up asking us for the Book of Mormon, which was really cool. Other than that, nothing too out of the ordinary happened this week, today me and my companions went to this huge, really neat wall painting here in Lyon. It's massive, and we took a ton of photos. Hope everybody can take some time to read some from General Conference, have a great week, au revoir!

Office Responsibilities and Kidney Stones

Life here in France has definitely gotten more interesting since I've been called to serve in the mission office. I'm learning a whole lot of new things about computers, printers, legality, and train tickets than I ever thought I was going to on a mission.  The church is implementing a new system for keeping track of all the cars for the mission, and I'm in charge of cars, so all of sudden I have a whole ton of stuff to do trying to register all the cars we already have into the system and all the legal drivers and such, so it's been a fun few days. Hunting down the last invoice records and maintenance forms for the cars, as well as updating all the new forms in the computer and getting them sent out to all the drivers in the mission along with all the normal stuff like train tickets and helping out with conference preparation has kept me very busy this week, so that was good. I'm also learning how to manage my time more efficiently, we're still missionaries and we still have time to go proselyting, so we try to organize our days carefully so we can get the most out of the time we have for contacting and visiting members and less actives.

The Missionaries from Texas (including Sister Roney)

We actually got to go to a whole lot of members' houses this week, and had dinner in many homes, less actives as well, which was really good. One of the less actives we got to see was really really interested in family history. We shared a message about the family and we all shared some stories about our own families and testified of it, and afterwards he took a real interest in family history, the member there was a consultant, so it was a wonderful surprise for us, hopefully he comes to church tomorrow. It's such a great feeling when you can a change in someone's countenance while talking about the gospel, and when the Spirit is there is magnifies our message, and we've seen it touch people's hearts. We also had our district meeting this week here in Lyon, and it was really good. My district leader is one of the coolest elders on the mission, and he's a lot of fun. It was really good meeting as well, we talked and reviewed all over our goal setting, which is always fun, and then talked about how we can be more effective in our mission right now with all the tools we have. We talked a lot about the talk by Quentin L. Cook called Choose Wisely from last conference, emphasizing how important our choices can be, as long as doing the little things day by day that will help us achieve our highest goals, and keep us on the right path to take us to heaven. It was really interesting, and I printed off the talk, I really liked it and invite everyone else to read it as well.  I'm really enjoying being here in Lyon, and liking the office a whole lot.

On Sunday my companion Elder Pedersen confirmed that the back pain he'd been having over the week was kidney stones, and so we went to the hospital to make sure he didn't have a blood infection or anything like that. He was in a lot of pain, so it was kind of rough, though he's doing ok now a week later. We had to make a couple of hospital trips this week, which took some time, but everything is ok now, he's alright, all the stones are gone. Tuesday we had a fun service project, where we went out and helped a member family mow their lawn. Because it was so overgrown and tall, we couldn't do it with normal lawn mowers, so did the entire thing with edger type things, which was interesting, but surprisingly fun. Though I guess most things can be fun with fur other missionaries around. The coolest part of the week though was yesterday (Friday) evening. The night before while planning we decided the biggest goal we wanted to get for the next day was to find a new ami.

Fun with the Office Elders

Because we're in the office, we don't have nearly as much time to find or teach people, so we really wanted to find someone in the two or three hours we would have the next day.  We went searching fairly fair in our sector the next evening to track down a referral one of the other equips in Lyon had given us, and we couldn't find them, even though we got into their apartment building. So we decided to just start going door to door in the building, and the second door we knocked on was this nice guy who let us in. After talking for a little while, we got onto a really good lesson with him, and were able to fix a follow up rendez vous with him for the upcoming week! We were so happy to have our prayers answered, he's a nice guy who's open, and we're excited to start teaching him. For the spiritual thought of the week, I read a poem this morning in personal study that I really liked, and made me think really hard about what I do on a day to day basis. It made me think of the Primary song If the Savior Stood Beside Me, and I really liked it. Here is a poem about it.


If Jesus came to your house
To spend some time with you,
If He came unexpected,
I wonder what you’d do.

Oh, I know you’d give your nicest room
To such an honored guest
And all the food you’d give to Him
Would be the very best.

And you would keep assuring Him
You’re glad to have Him there–
That serving Him in your home
Is joy beyond compare.

But when you saw Him coming,
Would you meet Him at the door
With arms outstretched in welcome
To your heavenly visitor?

Or would you have to change your clothes
Before you let Him in
Or hide some magazines
And put the Bible where they’d been

Would you hide your worldly music
and put some hymn books out?
Could you let Jesus walk right
in, or would you rush about?

And I wonder – if the Saviour
spent a day or two with you,
Would you go right on doing, the
things you always do?

Would you go right on saying, the
things you always say?
Or would life for you continue
as it does from day to day?

Would you take Jesus with you
everywhere you go?
Or would you maybe change your
plans for just a day or so?

Would you be glad to have Him
meet your closest friends?
Or would you hope they stay away,
until His visit ends?

Would you be glad to have Him
stay forever on and on?
Or would you sigh with great
relief when He at last was gone?

It might be interesting to know,
the things that you would do,
If Jesus came in person, to spend
some time with you.