Pictures from Week 7

Me and Elder Riche-Brule

Me, Beebee and Mei

Beebee is so funny!

Our Board of Namurites

Our District

Elder Ensign (he just left the district)

Us and Beebee

Us and Mei

Odette's Baptism

Refreshments for the Baptism

The Ward Brought All These!

Week 7

Bonjour

Well last week was a pretty crazy week--it started of with an exchange. I went and spent a night in Liège and we did a lot of contacting. It is pretty funny how each time you contact someone it gets less and less intimidating. So after the exchange I got back to Namur and we hit the ground running, it was a really busy week because we had a ton to do to get ready for Odette's baptism on Saturday. The ward really pulled through and helped us out a lot. We went on Friday and spent a few hours getting the church ready and then Saturday went early to fill up the font. Elder Adams baptized her and after she just kept saying, "I feel so great and so much closer to Heavenly Father." It was great and a little tiring. It is stressful when you have your normal missionary work on top of organizing something and trying to get everything ready and the ward involved. I was super excited for Odette and I definitely felt the spirit so strongly at her baptism. It really got me excited to get back out there! That night one of our Amis took us out to Chinese food! It was so stinking good after not having Chinese food for 3 months! It made me miss Hunan Village so bad! Oh well I have my bread, cheese, chocolate and Belgian waffles.

So the reason I wrote today and not yesterday is because in order to be legal in France you have to have a medical appointment. So yesterday we went to France and on the way our train got delayed for an hour and a half because a different train hit a person. So all the trains were backed up so we finally got to France, ran to my appointment where you have to get a chest x-ray, they check your blood and weigh you. Well I go in to see the doctor for the last part of the exam and he asked for my immunization card so I gave it to him and the first thing he said was "Do you drink a lot of coke?" I said, "I used to." and he said, "You should stop." Then he asked if I exercise and I replied and said sometimes and he said what do you do? So I answered and then he looked at me and said, "Well you are overweight. No more cheese, no more bread, no more soda and no more pastries." Yeah that lasted for about an hour til I got to the gare and bought a coke and a pastry! Haha! But it was kinda funny and kinda rude because after getting chest x-rays and blood drawn and being late because of the trains and all the other stuff for the appointment that's all he said to me. I laughed as I enjoyed my pain du chocolat bread which is like a croissant with chocolate in it and drank my coke. So we missed our train home to Belguim and we went and talked to this lady and she was way cool and hooked us up on a new train for free! I am pretty confident that that was a tender mercy of the Lord cause if not we would have been stuck in Paris for flipping ever!

Alright I am almost out of time but here is a quick story that brightened my day. So we were getting on the train and finding our seats and there was an old Australian couple trying to get in their seats and their luggage put away and they were in the way, so we were waiting patiently and he looked at us and says, "Is that your seat?" and he pointed to a seat and we said yeah. He said quickly after looking at our plaques, "No that is Jesus' seat so you better hurry up and sit down!" Everyone here reacts differently when they see the plaques. The Africans nod and say how much they love Jesus. The Belgians avoid you and the Australians crack jokes! Gotta love life as a missionary! In fact the other day we were going to do a service project so we had our tags on but they were not as obvious and its weird now not to have people staring at you!

Well things are going good! We are going to go out and try and find some new amis this week because a lot of our current amis have kind of stopped progressing. I am excited to hopefully find some new people to teach. Also since we just had transfers the people that entered the MTC right about the time I was leaving just got here. It is so cool to see how much you progress in 6 weeks.

Well this letter was scatterbrained and not very spiritual but things are going great! I am starting to really like teaching and seeing the amis progress and pray for the first time and stuff. It is my favorite! Odette is now starting to do missionary work with her family which is so exciting to see how her example can affect her family! I am excited to see where things go with her family. Well that is it for this week.

Love you all

Elder Lerdahl

The Road of the Old Good God

The Road of the Old Good God

Week 6: Surviving Transfers

Hey everyone!

Well its official--I have survived my first transfer! It's crazy how fast the six weeks went by! As I looked back a little bit last night it amazed me to see how much and at the same time how little has changed. My French has improved a lot but I still have a long way to go until I am comfortable talking. It's funny how after six weeks I still pray everyday that I can have the gift of tongues and the confidence to speak. It''s been getting better and better thanks to the Lord! I hope that by the end of my 2nd transfer that I can speak with confidence and that I can speak with more ease. I think that as I speak more and more that it will definitely happen. 

So with transfers being this week my district is changing a little bit. We are unfortunately losing Elder Ensign ( yes like the church magazine I laughed the first time I heard it) he is going to France and we are getting another blue which I am kinda excited for because I will still be a blue ( like greenie but here it is blue ) but I will be the older blue so it will be better I hope ha ha! Other than that, not much changes. I have 6 more weeks with my trainer and then they split us up and one of us will move to another ville!

This last week was the toughest week we have had as far as ami's go. One ami told us she has no desire for eternal life and just wants to die and turn to dust. Another ami accepts and is living every commandment we give him but refuses to get baptized because his momma never taught him to be baptized ( the guys like 50 so that's been ridiculous ).  All of the others are just not coming to church (Matt is a lucky guy with 12?? coming to church) This transfer we taught 92 lessons which for Europe is pretty good and only had like 9 or so come to church in 6 weeks. I am determined to drag these people to church if we have to! On the upside we have a baptism set for this Saturday! For a lady named Odette. She use to be Evangelist and is about 50 years old. The missionaries taught her about a year ago and were a little pushy so she stopped seeing them. When Elder Adams got here 12 weeks ago they started teaching her. She has a strong testimony and I am pretty confident she will be baptized this Saturday! I am super excited because her grandson went to church with her and loved primary!  He is like 9 or so and when we were at her house yesterday he told us he wants to get baptized. So we have a new ami who has the desire to be baptized! The hard part with him will be teaching him so that he understands, but I am looking forward to it! I should have some pictures of the baptism next week in my emails!

So other than the excitement of Odette getting baptized not much is new! I am starting to get more comfortable with the ward here which is really important! Members are so crucial in missionary work.  I am almost finished with reading Doctrine and Covenants and am looking forward to starting the Old Testament. It will be hard but I think I can learn a lot. I am also gonna start "Our Search for Happiness." Elder Adams borrowed my copy and loved it so I am looking forward to reading it. On the 27th I go to Paris again and will be doing legality so I have to go see the doctors. They sure are picky here with legality! I feel like this letter is super scattered!

So I have two funny stories! The first one is we got contacted the other day while walking home ha ha! We sometimes get contacted by Muslims-- it's fun stuff! So anyways this guy started talking to us and was like, "Yeah I am Muslim but I want to convert to your religion and just started telling us about himself and how he wants to come to church. So after a while his buddy came and started talking to him and us and the guy's name is Abdel held out a bag and said, "I have smokes and alcohol do you want a drink?" and his friend said, "They are Mormons-- they don't drink or smoke and he looked at each of us shut the bag really fast and said "inderdit! je peut arret" which pretty much means " not allowed! I can quit." It was so funny! We have an appointment with him on Wednesday so we will see how that goes! He is a funny guy but I dont know if we will teach him for long. 

The second funny story is we were walking down the street and right in front of us this girl was walking with two friends and was texting and there was a pole like a street sign on the sidewalk and so her friends stepped to the left to miss the pole and she walked right into it! She hit her head so stinkin hard! Everyone on the street heard it! So after we saw that she was relatively okay we were trying not to laugh because we are representatives of Jesus Christ. And across the street there where some people just rolling and we couldn't not laugh so we had to turn and walk down an alley and wait because it was so stinking funny!  Poor girl, but it made my day!

Well that's about it for this week. Not a whole lot has changed we just need to get everyone to church and if we do that we should be able to make some progress! I hope that everyone had a good Father's Day and Aunt Charisty and Uncle Jeff, Happy Birthday! I hope you both had great days! Hope you all are doing great-- thanks for all your support! I love getting all the letters and emailsI

Elder Lerdahl

Week 5--McKenzie is a slacker and forgot to put it on last week!

Hey Everyone!

This last week was a pretty chill week which was good. I needed a week that was not quite as crazy as the last few. Tuesday I had a split with Elder Gibson - we went to Namur and it was good! I was in charge and things went pretty normal so that's good. We did a lot of contacting which helped me get a lot better at it. It's crazy how every contact here goes so differently and I love when people think we are "temoin Jehovas." When they find out we are not it is pretty funny because they totally change their minds towards us. I love contacting Africans because they all love Jesus, so you either get an awesome contact and they will listen to you a bit or you get the nuh uh I already found Jesus kinda attitude which is pretty funny. Saturday they had a baptism in Liege in my district so we went to support the Elders and lady getting baptized. It was really cool and was good for us because later that day we planned our baptism with our ami Odette. I hope we can get a ton of members there and I hope all her family comes: It's on the 23rd and I am pretty stoked. Later Saturday night we went to Charleroi because Sunday was stake conference and they did a broadcast from Salt Lake City and the broadcast was not going to Namur. We stayed with some elders there and it was a blast. We didn't quite make it to bed at 10:30 like we are supposed to but it was good to goof off for a little bit and swap stories and what not. It's funny to see how people are on their missions too. One of the elders goes home in 11 days and it was just funny to see him because he was just so chill about it. It's weird to think Erik is on the down stretch and doesn't have much time left.  So anyways our sleepover in Charleroi was fun and Sunday after stake conference we had lunch there and went back to Namur for dinner with Beebee. It was her one year anniversary of being baptized so it was fun to celebrate that with her--she was stoked for it.

So this week we really got one of our investigators to open up. He is our other ami from Iraq and we found out why he really came to Belgium. His wife left him years back and 3 out of 4 of his children have been killed in various bombings or other things. His last kid alive is 19 and she has two kids and her husband died like a year ago. So he has been here for a while and they offer French classes for the people that come here and he has a test tonight. If he passes his test he can get work and if he can get work he can get help to bring his daughter and grandkids over. But they will only let them come if he has work and can pay for them to be here so we found all that out and its just been so crazy. He studies almost all day so he can pass the French test.  It's so amazing to hear him pray, he has such faith and you can tell he really is trying to rely on the Lord. I feel like us teaching him has helped him and I hope that he will pass his test and things with his daughter will work out. I also hope he keeps progressing because he is awesome and the ward loves him and he would be so strong in the church. so lets hope we can get him to quit smoking, if we can I think he will be baptized.

So something cool is that last week pres said that someone was preparing to be baptized on Saturday in our zone and a few of the other zones. We had no baptisms planned and Saturday rolled around and there was one in our zone and 5 baptisms in the mission! It's absolutely incredible to see how inspired our leaders are and when we have faith and act on faith that miracles can happen! We have focused a lot of faith in the mission because people have always said it's hard to baptize in France and Belgium. President has really focused on having faith because the Lord has prepared people to be baptized and we need to have faith and act and if we do that we can baptize in our mission. So that was crazy awesome!

 So this week is the last week of the transfer. It's funny because all the missionaries start getting nervous about transfers. Everybody starts guessing who stays and who goes where. I am stoked that I am pretty much for sure staying in Namur for another transfer. It will be interesting to see who goes where though.

Well that is pretty much this week! I hope you all are doing great and love ya all!

Elder Lerdahl

Photos from Week 4

Patrick and the Elders. They have lunch with him every week!

A nice Iraqi fellow...

A not so nice Iraqi fellow!

Iraqi Dinner With Ghazwan

A dish called Tepsi

Soup-type food. With eggplant and other stuff.

Friends from my district at zone conference

Belgium: Week 4

Bonjour toute le monde,

This last week was pretty crazy. We had zone conference and Elder Texiera was there from the 70. He spoke to us a lot about getting referrals from members and amis. He also spoke a lot about talking with everyone and getting as many contacts as possible. So that was really cool to have him there and I learned a lot!

Last week I also got to have an authentic Iraqi Dinner. Ghazwan cooked for us it was pretty tasty! I have pictures so I will send those out. We also got pics with sheets they wear so that's cool--I am now a sheet head haha! I have learned a ton about Iraq. He will be around so I am hoping to meet up with him tomorrow for a little bit.

Tomorrow I have a split with Elder Gibson in Namur. I am dreading it because he has only been out for about 3-4 months and its in Namur so I am kinda in charge so that will be interesting. We have made progress with another guy named Abdel. He is from Iraq too and left because he was investigating the Protestant church. The ward here must think we go to the mosque and contact everyone from Iraq.  Shako Mako means what's up in Iraqi so that will not be very useful thing for you all to know! But anyways, he has been attending church and we just taught him about baptism so I think we will challenge him next time we go see him. He is already tight with some people in the ward so I think he will keep progressing for sure. I am also sending a picture of Elder Adams and I and a guy named Patrick.  He is a convert of 7 years and eats lunch with us every Thursday. He also goes with us when we teach sometimes. It's awesome because he was a practicing Catholic and everyone here is Catholic so he relates really well to people.

That's pretty much the schpeel for last week. It was kind of a rough week and I am struggling a bit with the language, I want to get to the point where it all clicks and I can really talk to the people and really be myself around them.

Well things are going along hope you are all well! People keep asking about Romney and Obama-- whats up with that???

Love ya all hope everything is going great!

Elder Lerdahl