Feb. 23, 2009

Bonjour la Famille!
comment allez-vous? vous avez passé une bonne semaine?
cette semaine etait bien. on avait quelque rendez-vous avec nos amis et on a parlé avec pas mal du monde. il y avait pas des grandes miracles mais on avait 2 amis de l'église à l'église ce dimanche. et Agnés, le dame qui va se faire baptiser le 20 mars va bien. elle nous a dit qu'elle allait arreter de fumer au jourd'hui! c'est chouette de voir les personne qui sont prêts à donner tous pour le seigneur. i'm going to stop writing in french so that it doesnt take you 50 hours to read my email. We talked about Sacrifices in our Class for the Amis/recent converts(gospel principles), and it was a great lesson. basically everyone participated and i think that had a lot to do with agnes' desire to stop smoking.
we had some other cool things that i dont know if i told you about happen recently. we were infact, just walking down the road to the church and this guy like stopped us and was like "hey are you the men of god? i want to talk to you guys?" so we were like okay when ya know, because that doesnt happen often. and so we fixed a rendez-vous for that night and he wasnt there... so we waited like 20-30 minutes. and he shows up.. (he was a little drunk) he said okay just give me a second k? and so we waited and waited and another 20-30 minutes goes by and so we're like we're outta here we'll see him another time.
so. then the other day we were walking home and we walked by his building (its not too far from our apartment) and elder Weight is like lets go in here (the door being open) and so we went in and as soon as we got in the door, here comes this guy that contacted us down the stairs.... so we got his number and he said ya i'll call you and we're going to call him so thats just a cool miracle.
umm also we're teaching this guy who was an old amis, and we didnt know about him but he contacted us in the road and he told us that he wanted to talk to us. so we were like okay that works. so we've been teaching him the last couple weeks which is cool.
we've also had just some other great experiences that have really helped build my faith and i hope the faith of the Members. its been really fun these last couple weeks. the work is starting (ever so slowly) to progress and we've been way blessed. right now in our mission every companionship, other than like 2, has a baptismal date and the spirit is just sooo strong here its amazing. its great to be a missionary!
I know that god lives and that he loves us and i know that as we give all our time and talents to the lord he will bless us far beyond that which we can earn on our own. I know that Christ is our savior and our redeemer and that he loves us and knows us personnally. i know that through his atonement that we will be purified if we want to be. God loves us. and he wants us to be happy. i love you all and wish you a very good week!
Elder Laws

Feb. 16, 2009

hey family how is everyone?
well this week has been a fairly good week. it started with tuesday where we had an exchange with the elders of Grenoble and i was in Valence again with elder Baiemonte... something like that. it was a good exchange and we got to see agnes. she's doing really well and is really working towards her baptismal date of the 20th of March. its pretty cool! i'm way excited about all that. (especially since we will both be there for it(me and elder weight). it was transfer calls day and well we didnt get one so we are staying together.) so yeah its been a lot of fun!
ummm.. .then we went about our week and yeah just normal stuff but then Friday came around... now i'm pretty sure i told you this was going to happen but friday Elder Bednar, and Elder Kopishke, came and visited our Mission and so there was a special "mission conference" (elder bednar called it a revelatory gathering or something like that) in Geneve and we all got to go there! it was way amazing because he basically taught us that we didnt need an Apostle or a Seventy to answer our questions, but taht with each other and the SPIRIT! we can get the answers to all our questions. and just taught us the best process to go about getting the spirit and learning was found in d&c 88:122 so yeah... cool stuff! thats not all he taught us but i dont really feel the need to share more sorry. but it has been really fun experimenting with this new process. so its great.
umm other than that nothing else to say oh wait he also said if we come out of lessons saying what a good job we did and good lesson we gave that that was priestcraft.... because we're blocking the spirit from guiding us. basically. haha! he said some way profound things.... but it was amazing!
umm.... lets see.... thats about all i think. love ya! and have a great week!
Elder Laws
congratulations Amelia!

Feb. 09, 2009

hey family.
well sorry this wont be very long but we had a great week this week!
we uhh set a baptismal date for march 20th with our amis who wanted to be baptised and it should be fun to see her growth over the next couple of weeks!
also this week we went out to the ardeche. and visited a couple of families. and i got to tell you about this kid in one of them. the family is from honduras and has been living here for about 5 years. this kid is named Léhi and his is 7 years old.. we went and took them the sacrament and had a little service and then he was asked to say the prayer to finish... the kid prayers like a prophet! he asked for things like to help us avoid temptations and just crazy stuff like that. his mom told us that he struggles to find words in french and that its better in spanish. way cool.
that was a good trip and sadly i didnt take my camera but oh well. things have been going good and there have been a couple people lately who have come up to us and asked if we were "the men who preach the good words of christ" or something like that and yeah! its been an exciting week.(that never happens). umm what else... idk its just been a fun way weird week because we didnt have as much time to find people so its weird. umm yeah. hope you have a great week and love ya!
Elder Laws

Feb. 02, 2009

hey family how are you guys doing?
well so this week has been not to bad i guess, we've talked to a lot of, unhappy, people, and a lot of really nice ones so basically about average, comme week.
lets see exciting stuff.... umm so this week there was a greive. or strike in english(idk how to spell it), in which all of france was a part of. there were like 10-15 thousand people in valence who yeah, walked the street, it was crazy we were there and then left for like about and hour and went back and there were still people... so yeah basically just a normal thing here to happen.
umm yeah.
also this week we had an exchange with the elders of grenoble st. martin d'heres. which was good i stayed here in valence and had a frenchie companion for the day which was good. we had a rendezvous with the lady who wants to be baptized and she got us all confused by saying that it would be cool if it was around may 27th that she got baptized and then we saw her at church and she said that she thought that was too far away so we will talked to her this wednesday to see whats going on haha!
umm also we saw this other older lady who everytime we go over there has incense burning and weird monk chanting playing and yeah... she basically told us she had a "revelation" that she was told that she didnt have to join any churchs but she could if she wanted and the mormons were the closest thing to the truth so we'll uhhh see where that goes i guess...
other than that we're just trying to find new amis because we need them, its kind of boring like this but thats okay...
ummmmmmmmmmm love you guys!
Elder Laws
ps sorry i dont have more to say!

Jan. 26, 2009

hey family!
hows everyone doing?
well so i was in the middle of writing an email for like 30 minutes and it decided to be stupid and erase it so this isnt going to be very good, especially because it put me in a horrible mood really fast....
well thanks for all of you who remembered my birthday it was really good.... nothign special, and nothing like home but we had some cake and elder weight sang happy birthday to me so it was good. (happy birthday keshia! haha)
umm... then lets see last week we went to lyon and played (american) football. it was fun, then the next day we had zone conference where we talked about a new... plan to work with members and also alma 26:22 which is a great scriptue that i applicable to everyone! (those 2 things dont really have anything in common though.)
umm... lets see... also this last week we got the good news that Elder Bednar is coming to visit our mission so basically i guess i'm going to see an apostle! which is really cool! he might be changing mission boundaries because apparently someone somebodty knows got called to the geneva italian speaking mission so yeah we'll see what happens. oh and that will be the 13th of february.
umm.... also lets see. the other day when we were walking down this road we saw this building that was like smoking....(on fire) so we were like we should call someone... so we called the pompiers (firefighters) and while we were waiting elder weight was like "its kind of funny how theres no smoke coming out of the chimney." which was probably just more funny at the time... but yeah they came and got it all taken care of and we just went on with the rest of our day so ya... it was good.
umm what else... oh dad i lied to you.
the ch in french is mostly said sh... but when its words that arent based french like christ its said k... i looked in the dictionary and the words that go chr at the beginning are all said k, and some words with cho, but for the most part ch=sh so ya...
umm i think thats about it.... it probably wasnt but now i dont remember and i gotta go love ya!
ciao!
Elder Laws

Jan. 19, 2009

Hey Family how is it going?
so this week has been kinda fun i guess....?
umm we went and saw the lady who wants to get baptized and it looks pretty good, we dont think that she understands everything perfectly but we're of course going to work on it so it's all good! and if all goes according to plan then she'll probably be baptized in february sometime.
other than that we haven't had a whole lot going on. we went with the bishop this sunday to montelimar to visit a less-active that is too far away to come to church and it was good.
umm also the other day we were porting and this guy let us in and he was kind of crazy and i couldnt understand everything he said because he's from the north. and they have a weird accent up there its called ch'tis... or something like that haha! anyways he told us he wasnt really interested in religion but that he wasnt not going to be hospitable... so he let us in offered us a coffee then water and started to talk... he talked about all sorts of things like how he was a mercernary, he showed us his knife and other weapons, told us that this one time he was in africa and there were 150 blacks coming for us and it was me and 5 other guys and we won.... ummm... yeah so thats kind of interesting i guess.
also lets see.... we also had a couple of mangez-vous sunday... like so we're basically stuffed solid and sick today haha! but its okay because we're going to lyon today to play football with a bunch of other missionaries and then work up there tonight. and tomorrow is our zone conference so anything that has been sent probably before the last couple of weeks should be there and i'll get it. i also got the birthday package this.... friday i think.. so yeah thanks!!! i have some pictures i will probably send next week so yeah. umm lets see., oh zone conference i'm conducting aparently i found out yesterday night and its in french so we'll see how that goes haha. umm. well, thats about it for me have a great day love you all!
Elder laws

Jan. 12, 2009

Chateau Crussol:

Hey family how is it going!?
well, i've got a couple interesting cool things to tell you, i believe.
firstly i got my new companion Elder Weight on wednesday and he's a way nice guy. the work is going well here and yeah its cool. he's from kerns utah and has 3 sisters(he's the oldest) and his parents... ummm... likes tennis, sports... he's way chill. and almost finished with his mission!! haha he's got until april 1.... or maybe 2, who knows.
then first things first. i forgot to tell you, but a couple of weeks ago we went up to chateau Crussol. its an old ruined castle and its sweet. hopefully the pictures work so you can see too. but ya that was fun. a nice little hike.
umm what else... oh yeah so like we went and ate with this member last night and he made me try roquefort cheese.... it was kind of as bad as i thought it would be but not in the same way.... idk it tastes weird.
et puis sweet miracle that we've had. a member invited us to their house and when we got there he was like well i have a reference for you from the stake president in Nice and he said thats its a friend of his wifes (they've been talking about the church with her for like 20 years or something) who lives in our area etc. and she called them the other week or day or something and said "i want to be baptized" so he was like well its not that simple etc. you have to talk to the missionaries and etc etc etc... so she was like k send me the missionaries. so we got everything , called her she seems way interested and we're going to see her probably wednesday so cool stuff. let you know how it goes!
and yeah so love you guys! have a great week!
Elder laws