Week 9

Bonjour,

 

It has been a pretty crazy week! I have had to write stuff down in my planner so that I don't forget anything. So last week with going to Paris for legality our whole week kinda got moved around. Tuesday we finished all of our emails and p-day stuff we needed to do and went to work. We taught one ami who I have really started to like. His name is Stephan and he is from Africa-- a country called togo or something like that. He made us dinner --it was interesting. It was rice with a sauce over it which had pili-pili--a super hot pepper some vegetable and sardines. So I found out last week that sardines are not my favorite. I thought it would be better to mash one up in the rice so I could not think about it and then I saw the spine come out and after that I ate them whole because it was easier that way. After the dinner which really wasn't bad because the peppers covered up the fish, we read the livre de momon with him. He asked us if there was scientifical proof if the Book of Mormon is true, and we responded with "Is there proof that Moses parted the red sea? You have to talk things on faith." And he nodded and agreed. I was a cool experience because he has had a hard time with things like that and he just accepted the answer. I am sure the Spirit helped him to accept that answer!

So about two weeks ago we got  a call from the Elders in Bruxulles and they had a guy they were teaching who lived at a refugee center and they moved him to another center that is closer to us. So we decided to go see him last Wednesday. The Elders told us he had a baptism date and had been going to church before the move so I was rather excited for the rendezvous. We had to take two trains and a bus to get there. It took forever so we finally got there and it was a refugee center that the Red Cross does so we found the guy and next thing we know his friend comes and is telling everyone to come hear the Word of God! I was stoked! So we went and found a table and we started talking to the guy his name is Kabba and he said he knew it all. So we started giving him the baptism questions and his friend was confused obviously cause he didn't know about it. So Elder Adams kept going with the questions and I taught the other guy the first lesson. It was half French half English and so it was a little easier but I had a lot of fun! I gave him the Book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet. He is a super strong Christian and was excited to have the Book of Mormon or as he put it the Word of God! So we finished up and got a lift from the red cross lady back to the train station and found out we didn't really have a way back to Namur. So we took a different train to Liège which worked out okay because we had district meeting the next day there. So we crashed with the Elders there which was fun but I was missing a change of garments and my tooth brush super bad! I ended up just squirting tooth paste in my mouth-- it was interesting! The next day we had district meeting and then went back to Namur and had straight appointments all day. We went like 36 hours in the same clothes it was gross but kinda fun too because it was just a crazy day.

So Friday night we had some left over pday hours and one of our amis wanted to play tennis so we went with him and played tennis for about an hour. It was fun to get out and play some sports and hang out with him. I sure suck at tennis but it was a good time and we are planning on doing it again. Speaking of sports, I kinda like watching soccer now. It's such a big deal here and our amis and the ward members get super into it. So sometimes it's on when we have dinner appointments and the next thing I know I am having to remind myself that I am a missionary and probably should not be yelling at the TV when someone scores ha ha!!

So the last big highlight of the week is we have an ami named Michel who is pretty Catholic and I think he likes meeting with us just to talk about God. But he has kept his commitments and been pretty open. Well anyways he invited us to Mass so we said why not and went last night. It was very different and I feel like I learned a lot. The majority of the people here are Catholic so I really enjoyed seeing what their church is like and it helped me to understand their questions and concerns when they come to our church. I was rather impressed by their reverence--- our ward here has lots of kids so sometimes it's a little noisy. It was a good experience!

 

So here goes the funny story of the week: We were walking down the street and some guy pointed at us and said "C'est dormage que il n'y a pas un permit de vous chassé" which means "it is too bad that there is not a permit to hunt you" and then he made his hand it to a gun and pretended to shoot us. Well I didn't know the verb for hunt so i turned to Elder Adams and said what? And this other guy next to us turns and said in English:  "That guy just said that Joseph Smith was the first person to make guns." and he chuckled. I don't know what was funnier, the guy that wants to hunt us or the guy trying to be nice when we both knew that is not what he said hah!

 

So here goes the sad story of the week: Ghazwan has continued to meet with lawyers and legality people here and has been denied legality again. He is now in the process of trying to make arrangements to leave and move to England to try and get legality there. Luckily he has some family there so hopefully that will work out. We have been telling him he had better find the church in England when he goes. It's just scary because he doesn't really have a way to get to England legally and technically Belgium could deport him to Iraq. We are going to hear from him today on how getting all of his documents back from the Belgian officials went and hopefully after that he will catch a train to France and he can then work on getting into England legally.

 

Well that is pretty much it for this weekend. The Tour de France is here in Namur today so we hopefully will check that out. We are going to run up to the Citadel and check out the Castle. Apparently Napoleon and somebody else super important in history was there so that will be really cool to see today. Hope you all are enjoying summer!

 

Elder Lerdahl