Thanksgiving Bowl

Hey everyone!

This week was good as usual. I started the week of with an exchange with Elder Lee who is Tahitian. It is fun to talk to him about his home, it makes me want to go to Tahiti way bad--it sounds like paradise. Wednesday we spent the night in Metz and had a BBQ with the Elders there then the next day went to Strasbourg for the Turkey Bowl. Each companionship in the mission brought something for our Thanksgiving dinner and then we played football for about an hour and a half. It was a nice relaxing day and it was fun to see everyone and play football together. Afterward, we had a couple hours before our train so we got to walk around Strasbourg which is a way cool city near Germany. We had fun looking around and now I hope I serve there someday.

Last week we had a pretty good week. We went and visited a partial family and had a really good lesson with the husband who is not a member. The last missionaries that taught him really pushed him to get baptized and he had two baptism interviews that he did pass and so we have to be really careful with him cause he gets tense if you talk too much about baptism. I am excited to work with him though, he is cool and I think if we can help him to get a testimony of the Book of Mormon that he will be ready.

We have also been teaching all of our other people. We have one guy who I think will get baptized this coming transfer. He is really good and loves coming to church.

Other than that things have been the same old same old. This week is the last week of transfers so everybody is getting their predictions ready. I am hoping to stay in Luxembourg for at least one more transfer.

One of the highlights of my week was getting a package with Miller Motorsports Chapstick and decals. So here goes my shout out to Jason Shelley, thanks man you are the best, despite what everyone says about you at the track haha.

This week I have another exchange which will be good. It always makes the week go by super quick. We also found a Christmas tree in the apartment so we might set that up.

Hope you all are doing great.

Elder Lerdahl

Another Crazy Week

Hey everyone,

So this week was a pretty awesome week. Last Tuesday and Wednesday I went on an exchange with one of my favorite people in the district. We had a good time and worked hard so it was good. Last Friday we went down to Paris for mission conference. Elder Neil A. Andersen came and spoke to us. It was really cool because he served a mission in France and then was a mission President in France so he spoke to us in French for about half and then swapped to English. It was really cool to hear him speak and have it really directed towards you and what you're doing. I definitely got pumped up after the conference. It was also cool cause I got to see all my friends in the mission and talk to everyone for a little bit. Not to mention it's always fun to walk the streets of Paris on the way to the train station. There is definitely a feel to the city different from anywhere else.

Saturday we had an appointment with a new guy named Marco. He lived in the states for 8 years and there joined a church down in Florida. He moved back here and told us that he has been to different churches but has not felt anything special about any of them. He loves Jesus and accepted the first lesson really well. I am excited to keep teaching him and I am confident he will accept the gospel. One thing that was so cool is he told us all about how he tries to talk about the Bible and Christ with his friends. He is like 20 and could totally get baptized then go on a mission and share the gospel with everyone!

We also have a guy named Benga from Nigeria who has come to church three times and he told us he feels good when he comes. He even asked if he could come clean the church because he likes being here. We are going to invite him to be baptized this week. I am really excited for that!

Last night we went to a family's house in the ward and we taught their family about missionary work. The mom told us she has a friend who she recently connected with and that she had the impression that she needed to invite her to learn about the church. We gave her a Book of Mormon and committed her to invite her friend to come to church.

It has been a great week and things really picked up which has been nice because it has been slow lately. We taught 6 lessons this week which sounds like not a lot but for us it huge after the last 5 months in the area! Hopefully we can keep finding more people to teach.

This Thursday, we are going to play good ol' American football with a bunch of missionaries as our small celebration of Thanksgiving and I have another exchange so it should be great. We are also teaching the entire ward during a combined Sunday school so hopefully we will get some references!

Hope you all have a great thanksgiving, eat some pie for me!

Elder Lerdahl

C'est la vie, et la vie est fou!

Hey everyone!

So this week was pretty crazy-- just not normal at all. Last Tuesday I went on an exchange which went really well. We had a great time and did work. It was fun because we had the same trainer so we were able to laugh about all the crazy things that happened to us with our trainer. We meet this Romanian lady who I just know is gonna get baptized! The only problem is when we went to go meet her for the appointment, I think we had just missed her. It's okay though--we are gonna find her and I am gonna carry around a Romanian Book of Mormon until we do!

Wednesday we needed to switch comps back and Thursday we had zone conference so we just went down to Metz, France and spent the night all together. We worked as normal and then at 9:30 when we had an hour to do whatever--we had a huge BBQ. It was so good and it was a ton of fun. Thursday we had zone conference and interviews with President and Sister Poznanski. My interviews went well and it was nice to talk to President and just have that time to get counsel and  talk about the work and yourself a little. Yesterday we taught the young men's class at church. We are working really hard on getting the ward excited to do missionary work and so we have been teaching each class. Next week we are scheduled to teach the young women and I think we are gonna let the sister missionaries take that one haha!

This Friday, Elder Andersen is coming to our mission for our mission conference. Everyone is stoked. I think it will be great to hear an apostle speak specifically for us and our mission.

Tomorrow we are doing a skype session with Elders in Albania to teach one of our recent converts. I will be on an exchange so it will be a really cool experience for us to teach from English to Albanian and then back. It is so cool that we are able to do that and that the missionaries there in Albania can help us out!

Well that's the life, and the life is crazy!

Elder Lerdahl

Elder Lerdahl & Elder Kusseling

Transfer 5 Week 2

Hey everyone this week was pretty good. Last week I got to go on an exchange with one of the zone leaders and it was really awesome. I love it when you get to learn new things from new people and it seems like miracles always happen on exchanges. It was definitely the highlight of my week!

So last week we worked really hard to have lessons with members. Teaching with the members always goes so much better because you can integrate the investigator and it just works out perfect as long as you pick a good member. Last week we taught our investigator Loraine about baptism she was really a little hesitant about the whole thing but after a little while I think it got better. She finally committed to come to church. She didn't come, but hey at least she said she would try that is better than how it has been going. I think she is just nervous to go because it's new and all. Hopefully we can get her to come this next week.

During the exchange we were looking for where a less active lived and we saw some guys walking down the street and we stopped and talked to them. They invited us right into their apartment complex and introduced us to their friend who was interested. I love it when people who are not interested themselves refer you to someone. It makes missionary work so much easier. The friends name is Gaylor, (yes I had to stop myself from laughing and yes, I did think of the movie Meet the Parents.) Anyways he is pretty chill and I am excited to work with him. He loves the Bible so we will see how he takes the Book of Mormon. I am thinking he is gonna go crazy about it, that does seem to be the new thing for people who actually take the initiative to read it!

Things are going well with my Frenchie comp. Sometimes I find myself wanting to through all the French jokes of Talledega Nights--- I try to refrain. We are having fun and after just two weeks I feel the French coming so much more naturally and I am learning so many new words, some good and some well anyways... I am having a lot of fun and it is nice to be able to practice all day. I do however enjoy getting to speak English with some of the investigators and other missionaries. 

This week I have been dominating Jesus the Christ and that book is incredible! Read it!

Tomorrow I am going on another exchange and I am stoked. It is with my half brother in the mission (meaning we have the same trainer) so I am sure we will have a ton of fun. 

Well that is it for this week.

Elder Lerdahl

Transfer 5 Week 1

Hey everyone,

Transfer week is always crazy but this week was even crazier than normal. We spent a lot of Monday and Tuesday visiting people for Elder Manivanh to say goodbye to everyone and to prepare for the transfer. Wednesday we went to Paris to exchange comps. I was exciting because I got to see Elder Adams, my trainer, it's crazy how much I miss that guy haha! We spent a few hours there waiting for our training and then my new comp Elder Thomas Kusseling and I left to head back to Luxembourg. The worst thing in the world is trying to carry luggage through the metros of Paris! It is such a pain with all the people and stuff but we eventually got back to Luxembourg. Thursday we had a pretty normal day and taught Jonathon. We did an object lesson which worked really well.

You put water on a plate and the water represents us and then you sprinkle pepper in the water and the pepper is our sins. You then put two or three drops of dish soap on it, representing baptism and it cleans out the pepper to the sides of the plate. You then put a candle in the middle of the plate and put a cup over the candle. The candle represents the Holy Ghost, baptism by fire and the cup is the protection we receive by the guidance of the Holy Ghost. It sucks all the clean water into the cup and all the pepper is left on the plate! So by baptism and by the Holy Ghost we, or the water, are made clean! It is a good lesson especially when it works really well: We ended up setting a baptism date with him but have a lot of work to do.

Friday we went back to Paris for something called Mission Council. It's for Zone Leaders and invited District Leaders and their comps. I got to sit in and basically be involved in all the planning for the mission. It was a great experience to see a little bit of the back-end of the mission and how they create goals and prepare for special events. Elder Anderson is coming to our mission in November so we did a lot of preparing for that and set up a new goal for each companionship to have a family baptized in their area before Christmas. It is a pretty cool goal!

Saturday we taught another ami who is progressing really well. She told us that she can see her life getting better as she meets with the missionaries. I have a lot of hope for her, we just need to get her to church. After the appointment, we went to the ward Halloween party, it was a Trunk or Treat. You know that you have a lot of Americans in the ward when they do a Trunk or Treat haha! It was fun, we went and handed out candy and introduced my new comp to everyone and even meet some new potential investigators.

Elder Kusseling is really cool! He is from Lyon, France and we have been having a lot of fun together. I also have been speaking French all day and it's awesome! It is a huge blessing to have a native comp.

Well that is it for this week, I think we are going to have a pretty chill pday and just kick it and finish unpacking and all that which will be nice--transfers are always super tiring.

Hope you all are doing great.

Elder Lerdahl