October 24, 2011

Hey, hey, hey how is everyone doing? Well, this week has been great. There have been a lot of things happening and a really cool miracle that took place. Well, this week started off great. We had a great family home evening with the young adults and Clair even came. She loved it. We also saw her on Wednesday and gave her a blessing to help her quit smoking and to answer her questions. It was a great rendez-vous. She is so cool. Well, she came to church on Sunday and then I went on a split with a member and we taught her. It was a great rendez-vous with her. She was taught about a year ago and she was almost baptized. Well, we committed her again. We said we know you know this is true so will you go home and pray for a date that the lord wants you to be baptized. She said she would. Well, we go throughout the day and just contacted and contacted. Towards the night I get a phone call and it was Clair. We were on the metro at the time and I asked how she was doing. She said or so I thought; “I am sick.”....then the phone cut out. I was in shock. I was thinking she was fine earlier today. Is she sick of us? Well, when we get off the metro I called and asked how she was and she said fine. I am fine..whoo…there goes that worry. Then she said "I was calling to ask you if...if we could actually fix a baptism service for next Sunday".........WHAT??? I was in shock! She said that she felt that it was time and she needs to get baptized. I told her I would have to make some calls. So, I called around to see if we could and I got a “yes.” So, I called her back and told her yes but that we will have to see her every day to get her ready. She was ok with that. Then I told her that everything needs to stop…the smoking, the coffee drinking and the tea. She said; “no problem.” It was so cool. She asked in the rendez-vous earlier if her friend from America who is a member can come and baptize her. We said of course. It is so cool. She remembers a lot from the last time she was taught. We have a lot of work though. We have to go over a lot of things and make sure she is ready. So, we have a lot of work and we also told her this week will probably be hard. We told her to just remember to rely on the lord and he will help you get through anything. So, we will be working with her to get her ready and we are praying and will try our best for her. So that is our miracle for this week. It is so cool. Graciela is also doing great. We have a rendez-vous with her tomorrow and we want to ask her to be baptized. We have asked her before but there is something that is stopping her from doing so. We don’t know what it is but we will work on it and hopefully find out what it is. She is doing great though. Our friend from Egypt - I am not too sure about. He is having a hard time right now and I don’t know what is going to happen. We will keep working with him to help him out. We will try our best. Things are going great here though with Elder Tehaai. We are having a great time. We are doing a lot of contacting though but things are great and we are having fun. Well, I love you and hope you have a great week. Take care and remember to rely on the lord and he will help you. --
TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

October 17, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Well things here have been fun. It has been a great week with my new companion and we have had a great time. We have worked hard and it was a very tiring week. Well, let’s start off our week. Monday was our last p-day of the transfer. We didn’t do much. We just went out to lunch and then we had a rendez-vous with Cherif, our friend from Egypt. It was just really to say good bye for Elder Dick. Then we left a spiritual message. He is doing well. I am not too sure about him though. For the moment he has stopped progressing. He has come to a wall and kinda stopped. I am hoping just for the moment though. I hope we will still try to work with him. We saw him with Elder Tehaai and it was good. It was a little difficult but it was good. He just wants to find a job first before he wants to stop smoking. We will keep working with him and hopefully help him out. Tuesday we just had our usual last district meeting for the Pairs zone. After the meeting we had a burrito fête. This is where we make homemade burritos and have lunch together. It was good. Then we just had a dinner with a couple of members to say good bye. Wednesday came and it was a fun transfer day. Luckily I didn’t have to transport anyone this transfer. But we went to the gare and found my new companion. I have to say he is legit. He is so cool and is so nice. Our apartment is so funny. Two Tahitians, one French and one American. It is a fête. We all have a good time. For a long time I couldn’t figure out something. I could understand when the Frenchy Elder Gubbay talked but when the Tahitians were talking I couldn’t really understand them. I could understand a little bit of what they were saying but the rest was just a blur. Then I realized that they were not speaking French but Tahitian. It was good. So, in our apartment we are speaking French, English; Tahitian, and Chinese. Last night it was funny. We had two Elders speaking in Tahitian, a Frenchy speaking Chinese and a very lost and confused American. We get along great in our apartment. We have good laughs and a great time. We have been doing a lot of contacting lately. We need to find some new investigators so we have been doing that for a long time. It is working. This week we also got a golden referral from the Visitor Center. Her name is Claire and she is from England. She is so cool. She met with the missionaries a while back but stopped. She then realized that there was something missing in her life and found out that it was the church. So, she came into the Visitor Center and talked with them for about 2 hours. I called her Saturday night to invite her to church. She told me she was already planning on coming. She then said that right when I called her she was praying and it was the first prayer that she had given for a very long time. So I asked her how she felt and she just said it was good and she felt closer to God then she has ever felt before.... so we saw her Sunday and she loved church. After church we saw her and just got to know her and give a little lesson. It was great. She remembers a lot of stuff that the missionaries had taught her and then she told us that she wanted us to teach her about the atonement of Jésus-Christ. So we taught that and asked her how she thinks she can be clean. She said that baptism is something that has been on her mind and that it is something that she must do in order to be clean and follow Jésus.....WOW it was such a good lesson. She told us that she will probably get baptized but she wants to take it slow for the moment. She was very cool and she may come to FHE tonight. If not we will see her on Wednesday. We also had a rendez-vous with Graciela and it was great. We taught her about eternal families and it was a great lesson she is doing very well also. Things here are going great. Elder Tehaai and I are getting along and working hard. Thank you family and friends. I love you and hope you will have a great week.

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TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

October 10, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Things here are just great. Well, I am sure you are wondering what is happening with my last transfer.....oooh it gives me chills just thinking about that. Well, there have been a lot of changes in the mission. President has changed a lot of things around. Well, I guess I could tell you what will happen, but what would the fun be in that. Well, I guess I could tell you anyway. I am staying in Paris! However, things have changed. I am getting a different companion. His name is Elder Mihiarii Tehaai. He is from Tahiti. He has been out a little over a year. He started when I was in my 6th transfer. He will also become the District Leader. So, that means a nice relaxing transfer. HAHAHA. It will be good. He is a hard worker so I am excited about that. Then we are also having the zls move out of our appt and we are having the Chinese elders move in. Also, one of them is from Tahiti. That means two Tahitians in the apartment....o yah… we are going to eat well and have super fun. Then the other Chinese elder is French - so that means 3 francophone’s and an Anglophone in an apartment. We will be speaking a lot and I mean a lot of French - which is great. I finally have a francophone companion. It is going to be great. They are also taking the sisters out of Paris and not putting any in for the moment. There will just be 4 French missionaries here. I am the only one in my district who is staying. Elder Dick is going to Metz, Elder Rako is going home, Elder Wood is going to St Brieu and the sisters are going to Brussels and Blois. Everyone is leaving. President made some big changes. So that is the transfer news.

Well, we had an awesome week. We didn’t teach much though. We had 5 rendez-vous fall through, but it’s all good. We didn’t have any baptisms either but maybe we can have a couple next transfer. We have some great potential with the mother daughter team and our friend from Egypt. Their names are Graciela and Cherif. They are doing great. We had one last concert last night before everyone left and they both came and loved it. The concert was about Joseph Smith. We had a speaker who played him and a narrator who told the life story of him. Then we had some great music and everyone loved it. It was so spiritual. There were people crying at the end. Our president’s wife, Soeur Poznanski was crying and loved it also. It was a great way to end a transfer. We sang some awesome songs. I can’t send it because it is to long but if you want to see what it was we sang a version of “Nearer my God to Thee” by Vocal Point. So, you can look that up. It is an awesome version of the song and you sing it with 9 or more voices. It was all sung A cappella. It sounds sweet! We also sang some other great songs. I have recorded a couple of them but I will just have to show you later because I can’t send them by e mail. It was good and it was a great way to finish a wonderful transfer. A lot of stress and anger came from getting it ready, but it turned out great. So that was the highlight of our week - it was really sweet. We had a great meeting with Graciela, our investigator, and taught her the commandments and they went great. She understands them. We couldn’t see Cherif this week but he is doing good. He is still smoking a little but we will work on that. Well family, I love ya and I will talk to you next week. I hope you will have great week also.
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TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

October 3, 2011

Bonjour family or as President Monson said "HELLO". So, how is everyone doing? Things here are just great. Well I hope everyone had the opportunity to watch or at least had the chance to hear General Conference. It was a great conference. I don’t know how excited everyone is back at home with the news but everyone here is so excited!!!! THEY ARE BUILDING A TEMPLE IN FRACE YAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! We were not quite sure when he announced it but on the church web site it says they will build the temple. OH YA we were so happy when they said that. Everyone just yelled. It was so funny - it is so cool. There will also be another temple in Provo. WOW that is cool - two in one city. It just shows the work of the Lord is moving on. It was a great conference. We didn’t get to watch the Sunday afternoon session, but as I am writing this I am listing to it at the same time. So it is all good. Ya we watched the Saturday morning live at 6:00 PM our time, then we watched the priesthood session at 11 o’clock Sunday morning, then the Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock on Sunday afternoon and then we watched the Sunday morning live at 6 o‘clock pm. The Sunday session was at 10 to midnight so we couldn’t watch it. Oh well, I still loved conference. I loved how they just look so happy and are full of energy. I don’t know how they do it. They are in there eighties (80's) and we are in our 20’s and we are just dead tired. I don’t understand. I love it though. I loved President Monson and how he starts off with “Hello”, then his talk Sunday morning about his 5 dollars and prayer and being ready to answer the Lords call when he calls. There were a lot of good talks. President Packer’s talk about the crows and the young and old people. They were just all good. I can’t just think of one that I loved the most. Every talk - it was so great. It was a great conference. I did also read the conference talk by President Uchtdorf from the relief society about the forget-me-not flowers. It was very good about the 5 things we need not to forget - how to be patient, how to sacrifice, how to be happy, the why in the gospel, and that we are loved. It was a great talk. Let’s just face it; they were all good and inspirational. I learned a lot from General Conference. I will always remember it. Before the mission I didn’t take it that serious, but now I know they are called from God to give us his word. I love watching and taking notes. It is something that will bless my life forever. It was also good because we had to go out to the Versailles church. It was beautiful and it was good to see everyone in our zone and our stake. Know that I love you and I hope you have a great week and remember the words of the prophets. If you didn’t have the chance to watch them then go to the church site http://lds.org/general-conference/sessions/2011/10?lang=eng and watch/lesson/or read the talks. They will bless your life. If we remember the words of the prophets we will be protected and we will know what we are doing is right. I love you and hope you have a great day.

PS - our investigators are doing well. Our friend from Egypt has a date for this Sunday, but I don’t know if he will make it. We will pray though.
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TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER