January 25, 2011

Bonjour Family! Comment ça va? Well, things are going great here. It has been a good week with the work. Well, not the best but all you can do is try even harder the next week. Well, this week we were able to see all, but one of our investigators, but it is alright. It was Richard, the Canadian, who we were not able to see this week. But the good news is that we have called him every night to talk to him and help him stop smoking. Our other investigators are doing very good. The mother and daughter team is doing well but are in the middle of moving at the moment. I believe that they have to be out by the 28th, so hopefully everything will be good. They said they are too busy for us to go and see them but maybe we can go and help them move and do some service for them. I hope everything goes well with them and things will go great. They said they are going to stay in our area which is pretty big, but hopefully they will stay so that we can still teach them. We also have another investigator, Sonia, who just left for 15 days so we won’t be able to see her for some time. She went to St. Nazaire to help with her sister who is pregnant and about ready to have a new born. So, she is there to help her out. So, she will come back after transfers.... We will talk about transfers in a min. So that is the news about them so far. We also have a sweet African, Adolph. We taught him last Friday and he told us that he was not going to get baptized again unless the spirit tells him to get baptized. So, we are working on that. He reads everything we give him and he has started the Book of Mormon from the beginning, and that is sweet. Things are going good for him. We still need to find away to get him to church. So, hopefully we will be able to do that. So, that is what is going on with our investigators.

Well, let’s talk about transfers for a little moment. Transfers are next Wednesday. So, things are coming up. We will find out this Saturday if we stay or go. So Saturday we will find out and I will write a quick e-mail and tell you what is happening. I can’t believe this transfer is already over. The time has just flown by....question - does anyone know how to slow down time? If you do, can you please tell me? JK. But ya things are going good and this transfer just flew by.

Ok on to other things. This week our Branch President/DMB took us to go see Mont Saint Michel just for a moment. His wife was gone so he quickly drove us down there and we took a couple of pictures and then he drove us back. It was cool. While we were there we decided to run up the stairs of this place. There are a ton of stairs and they are steep. By the time we got to the top we could barely catch our breath, but it was fun and we had a good time. There is not much else that has been going on here. Things have been good. I have been reading Jesus the Christ a lot lately. I started it a while back then I just slowly, very slowly, read it and kinda stopped. But now I picked it back up and started reading it again. It is a really good book. I love reading it and learning more and more every day. I also have been reading the Book of Mormon, in French, which is going great. It has helped a lot with the language also. The reading has been good. I find new words all the time. Right now I am in Alma 55 which talks about all the wars going on. I just read where the 2000 stripling warriors just came into the story so things should be good. I have also made it a goal to study out of Prechez mon Evangile (Preach my Gospel) everyday. It has been great. I love it! I learn new things everyday that help me become a better missionary and a better person. It is a great book and it is not just for missionaries, but for the whole family. It is made for everyone one so that is one thing I like about the book. We can all learn from it. Learn more about the gospel, how to study, recognize the spirit and much more. It truly is a great book.

Well, that is about all that is going on right now. Things have been hard this transfer but hopefully we can get thing going here in Coutances. We have set some goals to do better with the work and hopefully things will get going. Well, I love you family and hope you have a great day and a great week. Je vous Aime

TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

January 19, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Well, this week has been great. We were able to fix more teaching appointments this last week and we were able to teach our investigators and everything went great. Well, we were able to see the mother and the daughter and things are going good. The daughter comes up to me all the time and asks me when she is going to get baptized. The mother still wants to be baptized so we are trying to get her ready. They are having some problems with their papers to stay here so they are working on that. I guess they have to move. They said that they will be staying somewhere in our area but we don’t really know quite where yet. Hopefully we will know soon. They came to Eglise (church) last week which was good and after we had a branch meal and they were able to stay for that, so that was good for them. At church we also got a new councilor. We now have one councilor and I think that is what we are going to have for some time because we really don’t have a lot of people. It was really weird to sit down in front again with the members looking towards the stand instead of towards the audience. It was cool though. The not so cool part was we had to give another talk in church. They had no speakers for last Sunday so Elder Gull and I gave a talk. It wasn’t the best but it worked. I just used one of the talks I used when I was in Charleroi. So, I was good, just touched it up a little. The bad part is next Sunday, not this one coming up, but the one after, a missionary is assigned to give another talk. So, that should be good. Maybe we can make a deal with our branch pres and get out of it. No, just joking. So that is what happened on Sunday.

Well, on p-day or Monday or Lundi, we went to Omaha Beach again with other elders who haven’t been. And it was really cool. We were able to take a tour this time with an American and a Flemish guy. It was awesome! They went through and explained the graves and some of the stories of the soldiers that lost their lives. We also found out that Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the son of President Roosevelt was laid to rest there. We got to see some other cool graves of people as well. It is an awesome spirit when you go there, just this feeling of peace. It is really cool just to go and see. They asked us also if we wanted to help them with the flag ceremony. They take down and set up the American flag every day. So, that was sweet. We were able to help fold the flag and we got a group picture of us with the flag, it was so cool! We also met other American people there. It was so weird to here English, and not just English, but American English one could say. A guy walked passed us and just said, “Hey guys, how’s it hangin.” Oh, that is so American. I love it. I miss good old American English. But it was really cool. Another cool part was that the cemetery is owned by America. So, we were on American soil. It was our home away from home. It was soooo cooooool.

I also was able to go on an exchange with my MTC companion, Elder McQuay. It was cool to talk with him again and work with him. He is our district leader now so that is good. He does a great job. It was cool because Monday we were on American soil together. It was also a year to the date of the last time we were on American soil, which was cool. On our exchange we have also been in France a year to the date, which was cool as well. It was cool to work with him again. We both had a great time.

Well, this past week I finished this book called, “400 Questions about the Life and Times of Jesus Christ.” G & G Walker gave it to me for Christmas. It was a really good book about, well, the life and times of Jesus Christ. It was written by Susan Easton Black, a BYU Teacher. She wrote a book that answered the questions her students asked her about Jesus Christ. It was a really good book and I was able to learn a lot about the culture and times. I liked it a lot.

So, those are some of the things that have happened. About our other investigators - we have our Canadian guy, who we have been working with. We saw him Sunday and we have been helping him with his smoking problem. We made a plan to call him every night to see how he is doing and so far things are not going too bad. He smokes about 2 cigarettes a day but he has stayed off the alcohol which is really good. So, things are going good with him. We have dropped the lady that had the baptism date. We have not been able to get in touch. We still try though, just in case, but all we can do is move on. We haven’t been able to get a hold of the guy that we gave the Book of Mormon to either, but hopefully things will work out. We also have this African guy who is awesome. We went over there and he has read everything we gave him and he told us that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. He wants to come to church. The only bad part is how to get him to church. He doesn’t have a car and he lives about a 30 min drive away. So, we have a little problem but we will find a solution and everything will be good. So, that is our investigators for the moment, but hopefully things will get better.

Well, all in all it has been a good week. We have had fun and have had a great time. Well, I love you all and hope you have a great time this week at work or school. Well, I love ya --
TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

January 12, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? I hope everything is going well. Well, things here have been fun. Not much has been going on. This week started off slow, but it turned out to be a good week after all. It started off slow because we didn’t have anything set up but finding. As the week went on we were able to have a member present in one of our lesson. On Sunday, we decided to change it up a little. We went to Grandville to do some contacting. Well, when we got there we started to walk around and this girl just comes up and says, “Hi Elders, how are you?” So, we talked with her and found out she is a member but inactive. We talked with her and gave her the address to the church. That was pretty cool. Then, after that, we were walking around and this guy comes up to us and asks us if we knew where this place was. We told him, “No, we don’t know this area. We are from America.” So we talked and we ended up giving him a live de Mormon (Book of Mormon) and getting his address. So, hopefully everything will work out and he will be interested and we will be able to teach him. So, that should hopefully be good.
What was also cool this week was I went on an exchange with the district leader. Well, Elder Gull went with the district leader and I went with his blue or greeny. I went to Alençon which was a good change for me. It was cool to go to another place and do some work. The elder I went with was named Elder Abel. He is from Washington, Utah and the best part is he is a huge U OF U fan. Oh ya! We talked forever about the U and how the sport teams were doing and everything. It was awesome. He also talked about movies that came out and were about to come out. Pretty much all the movies I missed. I realized now that it was bad because now I want to see those movies....one day - but not to day. My time will come. But it was an awesome exchange and we had a good time. It was great.

Well, we got some news about our little tiny branch here in Coustance. We got a new branch president. It was our DMB or ward mission leader. The sad but not sad part is that we were released as councilors to the president. Our new president may call us again to be councilors but I don’t know. Our branch is really small and everyone has callings already so maybe one of us will be a councilor. I have no clue, but we should find out soon. So, that is what is going on with our branch. Oh ya, it was awesome at church. We had 17 people there. Ya, 2 of them where from the district (stake), but there was still 17. It was awesome. On average our church is about 9 people so almost double. So that was really cool.

Well family I hope everyone had a great week. Hey, I have a question for you. Can you guys send me some pictures of the fam. I haven’t seen recent pictures in some time. The pictures I have are from Wendi and Ben’s wedding. So, it has been some time. I have a couple from Brendon and Kristy’s wedding also. It is just if you want to send them you can. I just thought it would be cool but comme vous voulez. Well, fam I love you and hope you have a great week.

TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

January 4, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Well, things here are going good for right now. The work has been a little slow lately but everything should be good soon. Well, we can start off with our investigators... well, it has been sad. We have lost contact with our baptism date and we have not been able to see her for about 2 weeks now. I hope everything is fine and that she just had to go somewhere the last minute. So that is what is happing with her. Our Canadian friend is doing good. He is having a really hard time with his wife right now but he told us on Sunday that by tomorrow or Tuesday everything should be fine. He also told us that he will need our help again to get back in touch with God. So, hopefully everything will be fine with him and I hope that he will always remember that the Lord is always there. We just need to go towards Him. His arms are always stretched out and we only need to reach up and grab a hold. Well, some of our other investigators just got back into town because they were off having fun on the holidays. So, hopefully we will be able to get a hold of them. We had a rendez-vous with one of them today but right when we got here she called us and said she was sick. So we moved the rendez-vous for Thursday at 3. So, hopefully she will be better and we will be able to go over and see her. The work here has started off slow but hopefully it will pick up. It has been a little sad we lost contact with our baptism date but things will move on and hopefully she will be fine and we will get back in contact with her.

Well, besides all that, this week has been good. For p-day we went up to Nez de Joberg again to show Elder Gull around. We headed back up there and when we got there it wasn’t raining this time so we went to the beach and it was cool – freezing - but cool. So we did that then we headed back to the apartment. Well, I can’t believe it is 2011. Where has the time gone? Well, for New Years we didn’t do much. In our mission for some reason it is treated like a p-day. I don’t know why but it is. So, we just stayed in the apartment all day. We tried to go out to the store but everything, and I mean everything, was closed. There was nothing open so we ended up walking around and heading back to the apartment. At 6pm we went back to work. So, that was our New Years. It was fun though and it was good to get some rest.

Well, Sunday I was put in charge of leading church in sacrament meeting. That was fun. It was my first time but I got through it and everything went great. After church is when we had a rendez-vous with our Canadian friend.

Well, that is pretty much all that is going on here in St Lô - not much. This week has been fun with studies. Studies are my favorite time of the day. I love reading about the gospel and the scriptures. Before the mission I wasn’t a big reader. but now I like reading. I still don’t think I can read 7-8 books in a week like my sisters at Lake Powell, but I think I would be able to get 7-8 chapters read of one book, if we were there. Well, during studies I have been reading the Book of Mormon in French. This has been good. It is cool to read it in another language. I still think I get more out of it in English but the French is cool. I have also been reading Jesus The Christ. I love that book. I haven’t been reading this a lot lately but I want to pick it back up. I have learned so much about our Lord and redeemer Jesus Christ. I love learning more about that. I was listening to a talk lately from John Bytheway about 5 scriptures that will help you get through almost everything. The first one was 1 NEPHI 11:17. It talks about how God loves us. An angel is talking with Nephi and asked him a question. He answers with, “I know God loves his children but I don’t know everything.” So, the first one - God loves his children. The 2nd one is MOSES 7:26-33. It talks about how God allows evil but doesn’t like it basically. The 3rd is in ALMA 14:9-13. It says that our work is not yet finished. That is why we are here because our work is not done. OK - The 4th is ALMA 7:11-12. It talks about Jesus Christ and his atonement for us. It goes through listing all the things his atonement covered. So, that is the 4th one about how the atonement is not just for our sins. -- Ok the last one is D&C 101:32-36. It talks about how in time Jesus Christ will answer our questions. So, those are some scriptures that can help us get through almost everything, Jesus Christ can help us get through everything.

Well family, I love you and hope you have a great week.
TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER