Monday, April 27, 2009

Apr. 27, 2009

hello family!
hows ya'll doin? haha i cant believe i just typed that haha!
well so this last week has been pretty fun. our Preparation day last week was spent just like shopping for ties and clothes and a camera for one of the other elders. we also played ping pong and it was way fun. my companion is a tennis player so he's good and we have some good battles! (matches...rounds...you get the picture right? my english vocabulary is going down i think...so yeah..)
its good to here that you are all doing good and i hope that i didnt umm... erase any of your emails that you sent before i read them... because i think i might have.... i'm not sure... because i had to delete a couple emails that just said that my mailbox was almost full... so i hope i didnt but yeah. anyways.... that was a good side track...
ummm. we basically havent had anyone to teach really this last week soo... yeah. but the week has gone really well and we talked to a LOT of people that were really cool and nice. We went on an Exchange with our Zone Leaders this past week and it was fun. Elder Chan, who i was with, is from China... hong kong. but he's funny and it was fun. right when we started the Exchange we went and talked to this guy from Eygpt and then we were like we have an Institute just right here if you have a couple of minutes to talk. and so we went and we taught him and it was good. and the rest of the day we talked to cool person after cool person. it was great! and since then it has been the same and so this next week should be good because we have a couple rendezvous fixed and yeah. it should be good.
one of which was this lady that we talked to and she was like talking about her kids that were going to catholic school and how her son wasnt interested in church now and she was soo amazed at how we were interested at such a young age. and the fact that we were doing it for TWO whole years was just incredible to her. so we were like well can we come over to your house and talk about this message with you and she was like yeah i think that would be a good idea. so yeah. just a little miracle and we see what will become of it. its so FUN being a missionary, except in the times when no one listens... but other than that its great haha!
ummm lets see what else. oh this sunday i taught the gospel principles class and it was a lot of fun. at first i was like okay people its time to wake up and start talking back... haha but after a few minutes we had a good discussion going. the Theme was Honesty... it was honestly fun... haha.
what else... well so right now its pretty cloudy and its raining a little bit. me and my companion got up this morning and for our morning exercises we went and threw a football around this little field thats across the street. it was fun and i fell and it was wet... its been a long time haha! it felt good! i miss hanging out with friends and playing football and basketball... and getting all dirty. i also miss a mommy who does my laundry too because i have to do it now!!!! (its been a couple years since mom did my laundry..)
oh and yesterday we got to drive a car..haha, well my companion drove and i was in the passenger seat. its an interesting story actually... we were going to have this thing at the Mission Home last night and it was for the Recent Converts of the past year or something. so we were going to meet ours there. but when everyone else showed up he did not. so we called him and he was like well can you meet me at the church so we were like ok. and so we took the Office elders car and went to the church....got lost on the way, but we got there anyways. then we waited for him and he came and we went back to the Mission Home and we were like late and only got part of the things but it was good. the food was good and there actually just happens to be a Belgian office Elder right now and he made some Belgian waffles.. he called them gallettes because they were thinner but they were waffles... and they were good. cool stuff.
another thing... i think that this week we talked to people that spoke: russian, french, english, spanish, german, korean, chinese, slovakian, and umm.... i think some others... its crazy how diverse geneva is. its cool
and umm yeah.
Hope you have a great week!
Love You!
Elder Laws

Monday, April 20, 2009

Apr. 20, 2009

Hi everyone!
how are your lives going?
Congratulations to Amelia for the baby girl who will be shortly with you. Congratulations to Keshia who's almost done with this school year. Congratulations to Kelsey who is still alive and still manages to keep up with her kids. Congratulations to Mom and Dad who will be celebrating 30 years tomorrow! and Congratulations to Jesse and Justin who will be celebrating 2.
you guys have a lot of cool stuff going on! haha
well my life has been a basic missionary life these last few days. get up eat work eat work eat sleep... haha umm and also yeah. We still dont have very many people to teach but we just have to keep working to find them i guess. we are teaching this one guy. he doesnt really understand or remeber things but he is a way nice person and so hopefully we can find ways to get him to understand better. what else has happened this week... i cant really remember anything way exciting or special for me personnally, but there was a baptism on sunday. so i guess that is special haha!
i was asked to play the piano (i guess people just force you to use your talents sometimes) so i had to practice a little bit and learn the songs. we also (we being my companion and me) were asked to give a little teaching while they changed out of there wet clothes. i thought it went well the spirit was definately present and yeah it was great.
oh another thing, we had umm... Zone Conference this week too. it was really good and President Peterson taught us about obedience as a means to receive blessings (baptisms) for the mission and how we are blessed as a mission, for the collective effort of each missionary. Also how obedience is the first law in heaven, how when we are able to be obedient to the rules that we have we are given new commandments to live by to strengthen us, and when we can live by those we get new ones and so on and so on. we follow the rules already and are sent on missions where we get new commandments not a few (d&c 59: 4-5). anyways it was great.
time running out i'll write another email to finish k?
love you
Elder laws
 
hopefully you got the first part of this email. sorry my time was going to run out and yeah it was complicated but here i go to finish it... its like this. as a mission the last couple of quarters of a year we have had a goal that was to have 45 baptisms, one in each companionship. but because the lord will bless us on our collective efforts, we have a goal for this quarter to have 45 baptisms in the mission. if that makes sense. so that makes it a unified effort. so thats really cool!
umm well as far as i'm concerned i think thats about all for me. i hope you guys have a great week! love you
Elder Laws

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Apr. 14, 2009



















hey family! so this is tuesday.
i couldnt write yesterday because everything else was closed so yeah! i hope that everything is going well for you.
i guess i can start telling you about Geneva now...
basically we didnt have any amis.. so we have done a lot of finding in the last week and have managed to have a couple of rendezvous and a couple more scheduled so thats way cool. there are a lot of missionaries here in geneva with the four of Us in our apartment, the zone leaders, 2 sister equipes, the assistants to the president, the office elders, like 4 senior couples, and well President and Sister Peterson... so we see a lot of people. there is also an institute where we go quite often for rendezvous and meetings and actually the couple that works there is Elder and Sister Jones from Blanding, Utah. Who actually is the Brother of Cory Jones (dads old basketball coach)... and coached a baseball team with asa and hart on it.
so thats cool... ummmm other than that...
i'm in a ward that is full of spanish speakers so every other talk that is given is in spanish, just throwing another rock in the path is all haha.... it is fun though i have to say. we had a ward activity that was "organized" by the high priest group leader, a man who speaks only spanish, and it turned out that apparently us as the missionaries were supposed to do everything idk.... all i remember is 6 missionaries running around trying to get everything worked out haha.
it was fun
lets see... so then yesterday we went and did a lot of stuff for preparation day. we went to this park that has all sorts of cool stuff, then went to the jet d'eau, and well it was cool and you should have pictures so yeah...
um idk what else to talk about... oh i got the package mom thanks! and it was only one day late for easter. from now on i think it will just be better to send anything to the Mission Home because we never know whats going to happen.
well i guess i dont really have anything else to say... its been a lot of fun so far here and i'm excited for the coming weeks...
Love You!
Elder Laws

Monday, April 6, 2009

Apr. 06, 2009

hey family!
hows everyone doing?
well so this week was crazy....
basically i was running around all day for the first couple of days to get the apartment ready for the new elders. the start was monday when i received the call from president peterson. it must be said that i will be highlighting things other than cleaning the apartment but it must be known also that all freetime was spent, cleaning the apartment and packing the bags.
so Monday we were in a little town called Crest for the beginning. in crest there is the largest donjon or tower in france so that was way cool to see. but it opened at 2 o clock and we got there at around 11 o clock so we had some time to kill so we did emails (in a bar haha!) and then found some food and then went up there, so thats great. after which we had to run down to the gare to catch a bus or be stuck there until 4:30 ish. we got it and so then went home. that night we went and passed by a little family home evening to say goodbye to some members and that was good, they invited us to eat lunch the next day so thats the next BIG event... it was a good meal as always and was followed (that afternoon) by a trip to Parnans, to say goodbye to Agnes, which was not easy but was really good. ummm after that we went and saw the Meloens because they are sooo cool, we visited a little with them and then said goodbye.(idk if you know but goodbyes arent fun) and that just about wrapped up the night. ummm so yeah next morning we left at 6:22 on a train to lyon, then geneva. and here i am... we only have a small part of Geneva, but it is the down town part so thats nice. the ward that i am in is mostly spanish speaking so that means that next time i am in church i probably wont understand much but thats ok. My companions name is elder schmidt and hes from the salt lake area. hes a transfer older than me so it should be fun. we are in an apartment with 2 other elders so its cool. Elder bergia is from the paris area (yes that makes him french...) and elder Asay is from texas, dallas. (his uncle is the owner of Tahitian Noni).
we dont really have any amis so basically all we've done is finding. we do have a really cool bishop though who is willing to help us with whatever. which is nice. this weekend we got to watch all but one session of general conference (the sunday afternoon one). i really liked elder Hollands talk, and elder Hales, and elder Uchtdorf, and elder Ballards, and just about all of them which is cool. i'm excited to study and look at them more in depth.
Today i think we are going to do some cool things so i guess that i'll you know about them next time.
I Love ya, have a great week!
Elder Laws