Week 6 in Luxembourg

Hey Everyone!

So this week was pretty slow but it was good. My highlight was a less active visit that we went to. We met him about three weeks ago during what we call "reach out night" here. The ward gets together and splits up and then goes and invites less actives to activities and what not. So me and some members here went and invited a less active member to General Conference and a lunch think. The following Sunday he came to General Conference and really enjoyed it so we set up the appointment with him for last Thursday. When we got there he had definitely outdone himself! He had an apple tart, ice cream and fresh fruit all ready for us! He served a mission in Belgium and so we ended up just talking and getting to know him for about 40 minutes. He is way cool but unfortunately he told us he feels like he doesn't really have a place at church anymore because the path of the church is to get married and have a family and he is 40 and has not done that, or in his words he is off the path. He for sure has a place in the ward here! But I totally understand where he is coming from.  After that we were going to start talking about what we had prepared, but Elder Manivanh and I both got the feeling that we should do something different. I bore my testimony about the Book of Mormon and actively participating in the gospel and then Elder Manivanh shared Moroni 10: 3-5 with him. It is of course verses he has read hundreds of times but it was really powerful!  I have the feeling that as we read that the memories of himself hearing it when he was being taught by the missionaries, and then the memories of all the times he shared it with others on his mission came flooding back to him! At the end of the appoinment we committed him to come to church so that the Lord could bless him more in his life. He responded by saying that he couldn't for sure say if he would come but that he would think about it. Well, Sunday he came and I think he really enjoyed it! The ward all remembered him from about 7 years ago and it was just great!

The other highlight of my week is that I started reading Jesus the Christ. Wow is that book crazy! It took me a while to get into it because it is pretty deep stuff but after about twenty minutes, I was hooked! Yesterday during P-day I spent about an hour and a half just reading it!  I am learning so much about Christ and his divine mission.

Last Saturday we got transfer emails. Elder Manivanh is leaving and going to Dunkerque a small town in the north of France, and I am getting a new companion named Elder Kusseling. He is from Lyon, France and has been out just over a year I think. I talked to him on the phone and I think it will be a good transfer. I  will learn a lot of French and I have a feeling we will work hard and get along really well together. Sister Pymm, one of the sisters here in Luxembourg, is leaving too, but the other two sisters are staying. I am bummed to have Elder Manivanh and Sister Pymm leave, but I am also really excited for this transfer!

Other than all that, is was a pretty normal week. We have been struggling to find new people to teach and the investigators we have now are progressing very slowly but it has let us do some less-active and recent convert work so I guess that is not too bad. I am excited to get out there and find some new people to teach this transfer though! We have just got to find the elect!

Well that is it for this week hope you all are doing great and are excited for Halloween!

Elder Lerdahl

Transfers

So we just got transfer emails. I am staying in Luxembourg but unfortunately Elder Manivanh is leaving. My new comp is a Frenchman who speaks no English so that will be fun and good for me but tough for our English investigators. Should be good though.

Talk to you all Tuesday--love ya! 

Elder Lerdahl

Life Accomplishments

Hey everyone,

 

So this week was another pretty slow week. We did a lot of finding and I am so not even joking... we did a lot of finding meaning we taught one lesson the entire week, so yeah that really honestly just sucked. But hey this week I did accomplish some lifelong goals. The first one and the one I am the most proud of is that I officially used an entire tube of chapstick! Normally I lose them or they melt or something, but oh no, I finished that sucker and it lasted a solid year. The downside to this accomplishment is that it was pretty much the best chapstick I have ever had it my life and chapstick is really important when you have Angelina Jolie lips.  So the first person who sends me a tube of chapstick from Miller Motorsports Park is pretty much going to be my favorite person in the whole wide world! The second lifelong accomplishment is that I finished the bible, and yes I know that is not nearly as impressive as the chapstick, but it's still kind of a big deal.

So yesterday I went on an exchange with my district leader. He is from Tahiti and only speaks French. It was a lot of fun to speak French all day and I learned some new words to add to my vocabulary so that was actually pretty sweet. Here in Europe they have things called Kabob shops and they are meat that is just left in like a light heat thing and it's only here because I am pretty sure they are against the food safety thing in the states. But they are so freakin' good and I don't know why that is important other than I like them and I had one this week. I also made lemon bars this week which really hit the spot. The only thing I need now is cheesecake! So Monday I am gonna buy a kit to make one. Elder Manivanh cooks and bakes a lot so I am learning from him.

The biggest thing that happened this last week is we were able to help one of our recent converts. His family has been giving him a really hard time about the church and he only speaks Albanian. So we called the missionaries from Albania and they called him and talked to him and then we gave him a blessing and iI translated it into Albanian and gave him a typed copy of it. The guy totally went from depressed to happy just like that. The coolest part was that he was instantly much happier before he even got the translated copy of the blessing!  It was really cool--he has been making it back out to church and everything too so that has been awesome. 

We have been finally finding some new people so know we just need get some appointments fixed with them and start teaching them. I am hoping a couple of them turn into new investigators.

This weekend we get transfer emails. I am pretty sure I am staying in Luxembourg but it will be super interesting to see what happens in our district. I really like everyone now so I am nervous for it.

Well that is about it for this week. I hope you all are doing great.

 

Elder Lerdahl

Chicken Feet Soup

Bonjour à tous.

Well what a crazy week!  Last Friday was a pretty good day! We always make a really good dinner because Fridays we have something called weekly planning which is where we plan for the next week. So we do our planning while things are cooking. Anyways  Elder Manivanh made me Chicken feet soup! It was a little different at first but all in all it was pretty dang tasty. I have some good photos of me chowing down--haha it was a blast. 

Saturday we knew that nobody was going to go to the church to watch conference so we stopped off at the grocery store and got some candy and snacks and then went the church for conference which started at 6:00 because of the time difference. We watched the Saturday morning session Saturday night, the Saturday afternoon and Priesthood Sunday morning and the Sunday morning on Sunday night. I still haven't seen Sunday afternoon. So we got all our candy and went and one of our Amis actually came so we were super excited! He speaks English and German so we got to watch conference in English with one family that came, the sister missionaries and our ami Jonathon. It was awesome listening in English because I hate listening to a translator when I know that's not what the people's voices sound like. So anyways after the session I started talking to the ami about everything and he told me he wanted to join the church! so I asked him if he knew what he would have to do (he already has been taught the first three lessons) and he was like "yeah i gotta have faith in Christ, repent, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." I was thinking yeah buddy we are gonna have a baptism soon! so I asked him why he wanted to get baptized and he said he wanted to because he knows that this church is the true church. So I am on cloud 9 trying to keep myself under control. We invited him to go to conference the next day and figured out a ride for him and everything. So the next day he came for one of the sessions and we introduced him to everyone and since we had a member there we decided to grab the member and teach him the word of wisdom. So we go in and we start teaching him all about the word of wisdom and we explain the blessings and testify and then we go to commit him and he said, "I want to be a member because I know its the true church but I like smoking and I refuse to quit" Man I just about flipped a lid and wanted to call this man to repentance and then it clicked and I said to myself "How many times do you sin knowing better?" It really made me think a lot about how Christ just asks us to follow him and to do our best. Luckily most people are willing to try to do their best, but him refusing to try taught me another lesson. I have heard that as missionaries we will experience a fraction of the sorrow that Christ feels. It really was a heavy blow to have someone you are working with tell you despite their testimony, they refuse to accept and obey the things we are asked to do. All we can do is keep trying. We are going to try and work with him a little more and I hope it clicks for him. 

So anyways conference was really good. My favorite talks were definitely Elder Holland's and Elder Packer's. I just finished the book Believing Christ and I feel like I know so much more about the atonement and then while listening to those to talks I just felt the spirit so strong. It was great! I also really enjoyed something Elder Nelson said. It was something along the lines of our desire is based on our worthiness, personal conversion, and preparation. That really made me think too. All in all conference was awesome and after president Monson's announcement about the new ages for missionaries I am stoked to hear about some mission calls. I am sure glad I was 19 because at 18 I would have been terrible and would not have gone for the right reasons even if somehow I ended up going, but I think that it will be great for those who are ready to leave to not have months of waiting.

Well those are the big things that went down this week. I hope you all enjoyed conference!

Elder Lerdahl

Luxembourg Week 3

Hey everyone,

 

So this last week has been pretty slow for us as far as the work goes. The elders from Metz have a car and we got to use it last week so we just went around doing as much less-active work as possible because our area is so big. It was so nice to have a car for a week! I felt like the days went by so much faster because we were constantly moving from person to person and didn't have to wait for buses and stuff.

The biggest thing that happened last week was that one of the sister missionaries went home, she was pretty sick and was having a hard time so she went home and that day they sent in two more sisters so now there are three. They are all pretty cool and one of them is from my MTC group so it's cool to catch up and stuff. This last Monday we actually went shopping with the sister missionaries which we can do now because there are three of them and it's a public place. So anyways, afterwards we were helping them get all there groceries home and we can't go in their apt building and they didn't want to carry their stuff up the stairs so they went upstairs and we just threw everything up to them on their balcony. It was pretty ridiculous! All of the neighbors were looking at us and laughing--it was a good time. We managed to throw everything up to them safely except for a bottle of shampoo haha! So there is an easy way to get your groceries home if you live in a building without an elevator!

Anyways, yesterday I went on an exchange with one of the other Elders in the district--it was pretty fun. All of our rendezvous cancelled but we were able to get a few phone numbers and had a good time chatting about all kinds of things. He told me about something called the "Heartland Theory," it's a theory of where the Book of Mormon took place. It makes a lot of sense and was pretty cool. It's crazy to meet so many people from so many different ways of life and to talk and share crazy stuff with each other. It definitely makes a long day of contacting more fun. I actually had a pretty fun time contacting with him--we tried all kinds of different ways to get people's interest and to get their phone numbers. The best part of contacting is you just never know what you are gonna get. Yesterday we had an Italian Buddhist lady... I thought that was rather weird.

Well that was pretty much it for this week other than I found a copy of Believing Christ in our apartment. It's not in the missionary library but it definitely should be. I think everyone should read that book it is crazy good and helps make you realize the impact of the atonement.

 

Elder Lerdahl