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