June 27, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Well things here are going great. Well, just some things to fill you all in. Last week, not last Thursday but maybe the Thursday before, I got bit by some creature. I am not sure what it was but maybe a spider, I do not know. It was a small little bump on my face then it grew and you could tell it was swelling. It was way hard and it hurt really bad. The good news is that everything is fine now. I am not dead and I am back to normal. So, that was a fun experience. Well, onto our week. We had our last Zone Conference with President Staheli and Sister Staheli. It was a good conference. It is said to say goodbye but we will see them again. They leave tomorrow around 11 and then we have a new president, President Poznanski. It will be cool to see the things that will change and what he is going to do. He will be a great mission president. We have interviews with him this Thursday to get to know him and start off some things right. Well, our zone conference was great. It went really well. We sang in the conference because our district was in charge of the musical number. It was fun. We sang the same song that we did for sacrament meeting. Well, we had a good training. We talked about finding new investigators and more, but I forgot. That is why we have study journals. I will have to read it and remember what we talked about, but we did watch a slide show with all the pictures we sent in. It was a good training. It was fun. I also got a picture with him because I never got one when I came in, so that was good. Besides that there has not been that much going on. We are still trying to find some new people and working hard. Oh ya there was a baptism Saturday by the dl’s. It was a cool baptism. The guys name is Jun Shu. I think I spelled that wrong, but he is Chinese and he is so cool. It was a cool baptism. We had to do it at the church in St. Ouen because we don’t have a baptismal font here at our church. It was not far away so that was good but the metro ride there sucked. First of all we were wearing our suit coats and it is boiling outside. Then the metro is even hotter, but not just that, the metro was freakin packed. So you were body to body with someone and that doesn’t help with the heat. By the time we got off we were just sweating and it was just horribly funny thought but horrible. The service was great though. It was in English and Chinese. It was a cool experience. We also had our resent convert move out of our ward. He is now in the Paris Lille ward which is right next to our ward. He didn’t move far away but he is not in our ward anymore, it was sad. We will still see him because he comes to FHE and institute, so we will see him again. So, that is pretty much all that is going on. Not much, just trying to find some new people. We have found a couple but we have only had one rendez-vous with them. We will try to see if we can get some more things set up and see if we can get them coming. We got another internet referral today. We will call him up and go and see him. That should be good. So, that is life. It is great here. We are having a great time. The members are really nice to all the missionaries. Last night there was a family who invited all the missionaries over, all 12 of us. We had this big thanksgiving dinner type meal. Then for the 4th of July there is another family who is inviting all the missionaries over again to have a little dinner. It should be great. They are so nice to us we will have to do something for them. Then this Friday we have our concert with the missionaries so that should also be great. Well, family I love ya and hope you have a great week. I also hope that the weather has cleared up a little bit. Well, love ya

P.S. I forgot my camera so I will have to send some photos next week.
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TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

June 20, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Things here are going great. I am loving it here. Well this week has been fun. It has been hard though trying to get things moving along and starting all over. We have been doing a lot and a lot of contacting. Every day and sometimes all day we do nothing but contacting, but things are going great here. We have found two awesome investigators who are doing great. Their names are Charles and Godwin. They are both really awesome. We had a rendez-vous with Charles last week. He told us he was contacted by some other missionaries but they could never fix a rendez-vous. Things kept getting in the way. We finally got a rendez-vous with him last Thursday. He is so cool. He has family back in Nigeria who are members and so he knows a little about our church. He likes it a lot and we both think he has some great potential. We think he could be someone who will get baptized. Godwin is also awesome. He has met the missionaries before and has talked about them. He is doing great and working hard. It was pretty cool, we had a rendez-vous with him and he actually beat us to the church and called us asking if we were on our way. It was awesome! Then during the rendez-vous he had some great questions. It was a great rendez-vous with him. Then we had some other meetings but they couldn’t come. We were able to fix other ones with them and everything will hopefully turn out. So that is what we have been doing. We have just been trying to get this place up and running. We have been getting a lot of numbers. We have a goal on how many we want to get and we have to get at least one number before we go into the apartment. So that is what is going on. We have called them and we have fixed some rendez-vous for this week so things should be great. Some other things that are going on is that we do district finding each week and it is pretty cool. We will go somewhere and we will sing and contact or we will draw on the sidewalk with chalk. It is pretty cool. The last two weeks though we have sung because it has rained here so we couldn’t do the chalk. Speaking about singing - we are planning to do a Concert on July 1st with the missionaries in our zone. We have some very talented musicians in our zone - singers, piano players, flute players, and guitarist and more. So, we have been working on that trying to get things up and ready. Let’s see here – Tuesday – tomorrow, we have a zone conference and we have to sing. Our districts in the conference are planning to sing the Called to Serve arrangement there and it should be great. It will be our last one with President Staheli. He leaves the 28th and we will have a new president, President Poznanski. Then we will have interviews with him on the 30th and get things moving. It should be fun to see what will happen with the new pres. We will also be getting part of the west of France in our mission. They are merging some missions again. We will be getting the stake of Nancy and 16 missionaries, so it should be fun to see what president will do. So, it will be sad seeing President Staheli go, but President Poznanski will be a great president. I know him a little bit from when I lived in Anger. He is awesome. Well I love you family. I hope that you will have a great week and I hope the weather is great there. Well I love ya!
P.S. here are our district pictures when I was in Le Havre

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TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

June 13, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Well Paris is Great! I love it here. There is always something to do and a lot, a lot and a lot of people to talk to! It has been a great few days here in Paris. Well, my last few days in Le Havre were also great. Monday at our English class we wore our Boo Boos because we have a few Africans come and they loved it. They all had a good laugh over it and they took pictures also. I will have to send it next week though because I don’t have my camera with me. But it was fun. Tuesday we had a dinner with a member family and it was awesome. They are so cool. We also had a district meeting in Rouen. This was the last one for me there. Because it was the last one I had to go and get me a Dr. Pepper...Yes it was a necessity. I had to have one! It had been a long time...I do have to say it was very good. Then we took awesome district photos. Then I spent a lot of time packing. I don’t know why, but I have a lot of stuff. I left a lot of it and sent some stuff like my journal and letters home. I left about 4 shirts, two pair of pants, some gym socks and a couple of ties. I love my ties, but I had to get rid of some of them. Some I never even wore so there was no point in keeping them. I finally got things ready for Wednesday. Wednesday morning I got ready and the member who gave us dinner the night before gave me a ride to the Gare (train station) to say goodbye. Then there were two other members at the Gare already to say goodbye to me as well. They are soooo nice to the missionaries and to me. They gave me two ties, a bright blue one and a black and blue striped one. I also got some treats for the ride to Paris. Well, that is when I was off to the big city. It was a couple of hours by train, but I finally got there. There were a couple of elders there to pick me up and take me to the church. My new companion didn’t come in till about 4:30 and I came in at 12:10, so I had some time to chill. Well, he eventually came and we headed over to the apartment. We are sharing our apartment with the Zone leaders so we are in a 4 man apartment. It has been great. We all get along and have a good time. Well, my new companions name is Robin Dick. He is from Oxford, England. This will be his 3rd transfer. The cool part is he was also trained by Elder Caywood. So, we both had the same trainer. Well, we get along and work hard. Elder Dick loves to sing and has a great voice. He took professional singing classes for 4 years and is a great singer. Our first couple of days here have been great. When we got here we had about 1-0 investigators so we had to start off with nothing and start fresh. We have been doing a lot of contacting lately and we have gotten a lot of numbers. This is good! We even had an investigator make it to church. Now this is something else - I couldn’t remember a ward like this. This ward has kids running around; it is loud and has a lot of people. It is just a different experience with all the members. I forgot what a big family ward was like. It was awesome though. I had a meeting early in the morning so we had to get up early because we live about a half an hour away by metro. So, we get there and Elder Jacquier and I had a meeting because we are the district leaders. We have a meeting every Sunday. After the meeting we had our first church meeting. In sacrament we were asked to sing the intermittent hymn. So, we had our two districts, Elder Jacquie’s district which is the Chinese district, and my district, which is the French district, sing. So there were 12 missionaries. It was so cool! We sang a rendition of “Called to Serve”. We sang one verse in English, then one in Chinese, and one in French. We then end again in French. It was so cool! They absolutely loved it. There were so many members coming up to us telling us we did a great job. We also have been asked to do a musical thing at our zone conference on June 21. We are thinking about singing that same song again. Well, let me tell you about our ward. We have a lot of French, a lot of Africans and a lot of Chinese. There are also a lot of Americans and a lot of visitors on vacation. We also have several BYU exchange students. So, we have a big ward. There are about 300 people at church each week, which is a lot here. It is so cool though, our church is right in the center of Paris. It is so cool I am so happy to be here. This place is sweet. Our work is starting to pick up and move. We also have a Visitor Center here in Paris where we work for one night for 4 hours a week. It is pretty cool. So those are some things going on. Oh, it was so cool, on Saturday we play sports and we played basketball last week. It was so cool; we played right next to the Eifel tower! It was so cool. Then today we had a Paris p-day where all the missionaries around Paris come. We played some American football and it was a good time. Well, I love it here! It is cool! I love the work also and love my companion. We are going to work hard this transfer and do the best we can and have a great time also. Well, I love ya!
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TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

June 7, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Well things here are good. I have just been getting ready to leave and head over to Paris. It should be fun. I am excited to go to Paris. It also should be fun to white wash and start a fresh. It should be awesome. Ya, so Elder Whitecar is staying here in Le Havre with an Elder Fisher. The work is going good here so they should have some fun. Well, these past few days have been fun. This past week we had an exchange with the zone leaders. They came down for the day and we each worked with one of them. We found some cool people and got some numbers so hopefully they will turn into new investigators. We have also had some pretty cool things happen here. There has been many times when people have just come up to us and started talking to us. The cool part is that they knew us and they knew a lot about the church. There was one guy who knew about the pioneers crossing the planes and everything. We ran into a couple of people like that. I guess a while back they had missionaries come over and teach them, but they didn’t progress or something. But now they are interested again and want us to come over. So, it looks like the seed was planted a while back and now they may be ready. It is pretty cool. That has happened about 3-4 times this week.

Well, our investigators are doing pretty good right now. Joseph our friend from Donatien is doing great. His life is just like from the movie Pursuit of Happiness. The Lord has blessed him so much in his life to let him be here in France going to school. He was asked last week to leave his apartment and he had to find a new one. He has some great friends who said that he could stay with them. He is so cool. He loves the gospel and is so elect. Our other investigator, Françoise Daniel, is doing great also. She is so cool and likes us very much. She gave us some real Normandy creme and some real Normandy cheese. It was good. She is progressing great also. She is coming along slowly, but she is coming along. She comes to church almost every week. It is hard to have some rendez-vous with her but we have them about every other week. Well, that is what is going on. I have been trying to just get some things organized to head out. It is going to be hard to leave and I will miss it but this is what the Lord wants. Well, I love you.

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TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

June 6, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Things here are going great. Well, the transfer e mail came and I have some news. There have been a lot of changes this time in our mission. Well, here is what is happening with me. I am staying a district leader, but not in Le Havre. Yes, I am leaving. Can anyone guess where?......I am going to PARIS.....but not just Paris - I am going down town Paris as in the center of Paris itself. If you had a map and found the city center that is where I will be. Well, this is where I will be living:

Les Missionnaris
Elder Christopher M. Walker
11 rue des Roses
75018 Paris
France

It should be fun! My companion and I are white washing Paris 2. That is we will be both new and without knowing the area or the ward. My new companion is named Elder Robin Dick. He is from England. The cool thing is he is my bother in the mission. Elder Caywood, my father (trainer), trained him and now we are companions. It should be great and I am excited. It will be fun to work in Paris. Well, I will write my big email tomorrow. I love you and hope you have a great day.

Love Elder Walker

May 31, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? Well, things here are going great. We had a fun week this past week. Well, this past week I had to do an exchange with the elders in my district and we were running out of time because the transfer ends soon. We didn’t have time to do a full exchange with both elders so what we did was we had district meeting first. Then I worked with one elder for part of the day and then I worked with the other for the rest of the day. I worked with Elder Ingram first who is really cool. He is one of the funniest people I have met. Then I worked with Elder Able, one of the biggest U of U fans I have met, it was sick. I like them both. They are both really hard workers. So on Tuesday I had the awesome chance to work with them. Well, this past week we had an awesome rendez-vous with one of our investigators, Françoise Daniel. It was so cool. We have not seen her in a while so it was good to see her again. Well, last time we left her with Alma 32 to read about faith. Well, she came to the rendez-vous having read it and had a whole new meaning of faith. She also had some great questions. She was able to understand more clearly the definition of faith which is found in Alma 32:21. “And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” It was so cool. You could just tell she understood it. At the end of the rendez-vous we asked her to pray. In the past she wouldn’t do it, but this time she did it without even saying anything. It was very spiritual. We could all just fill the spirit very strong. It was a great meeting. So that was an awesome rendez-vous. Then on Sunday we tried to pass by a less active/part member family. The wife is a less active and the husband is not a member. In the past they told the missionaries that they do not want to see them again and that they don’t want us to come over. We decided to pass by anyway and they let us in. It was the husband at first. He let us in and talked to us. Then the wife comes and said, “Did you tell them that we didn’t want to see them anymore?” She sat down anyway and towards the end they both were participating in our discussion and where happy we came. It was so cool that they let us in and then that they were glad they did as well. They were a cool family. I was glad that we got to go over. Well, our investigators are doing well. Donatien, the one we wanted to set a baptism date with, is going back to Gabon, Africa for a couple of months. He needs to find an internship. If he doesn’t find one then the school year that he just finished does not count. So, he is going back to get one. His family is in Gabon as well so he will get to see them. He will be back in September for another year of school, so it should be good. His friend, Joseph, is doing awesome also. He is so elect and has a lot of faith and really counts on the Lord.
Well, transfers are coming up soon. We will find out on Saturday what will happen and next Wednesday is the actual transfer day. I would love to stay another transfer in Le Havre. I love this place. The members are great and I love the investigators. This is just an awesome place. We don’t know what will happen but we are guessing that I will leave because I have been here for 3 transfers, but you never know. We will find out. Well, thanks family for all that you do and for your love and support. I love you and remember to stay bright eyed, bushy tailed, and eager to excel. TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER

May 23, 2011

Hey family, how is everything going? I hope everything is going great. Well this week was a great week. We had to go to Paris again for our leadership training last Thursday. It was great...we got totally rebuked and chastised. We got “owned” as one might say. We had a big training on walking circumspectly. It was a great meeting. We were told to walk circumspectly and be fully obedient. We also talked about F.O.D. which stands for Foreign Object Debris in the aviation world. It means anything that is foreign to a jet engine that can destroy it. It also causes a lot of damage worth a ton of money. So we talked about F.O.D. in missionary terms and what things can be debris for us. They don’t even have to be big things president said. They can be little things like rolling up your sleeves if it is too hot, not buttoning your top collar on your shirt, chewing gum in public and a lot of little minor things that can easily be over looked. They can also very bad things. So we talked about changing the meaning of F.O.D. to Faith Obedience, and Diligence. So we had this huge talk on being obedient to the max! Don’t do anything that is not in line with even the tiniest of tiniest things we have been asked to obey. Then we talked about the talk by Elder Todd D. Christofferson, "As Many as I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten.” It was given during the last General Conference in April 2011. It was a great talk. They gave it to us and we were asked to read it and study it. It is a great talk. It may seem a little harsh, but it is totally worth it to study it and apply it. So this was our little training. I loved it! We also talked about what a BYU president once said. He said, “If you put me in a prison with walls so high and dig it so deep with walls so thick with no window, there is a slight possibility that I could get out. But, if you draw a circle around me with chalk and make me give you my word that I will not leave, there is no way I could get out. I would die first." So, we also talked about giving our word. We gave our word when we came into the mission. We gave our word that we would be obedient. So, this was our whole training. It taught a good message. It was one of the last trainings of President Staheli. We will have a zone conference next month and that will be the last time we will have training by him. Then we will have President Poznanski. So, that was a fun day. Then we had some time before our train so we got another BOOBOOS. Our whole zone pretty much got one. My new one is black with red, gold, and green around the neck. It is pretty cool.
Well, that was that day. Another fun story happened this past Saturday. There was a huge demonstration here in Le Havre for the G8 conference. They had 20,000 cops and a ton of protesters and people who just like to destroy things....So, we had two options - stay in the apartment all day or go to a referral we received. So we decided to go to the referral. Well, we took a 30 min train ride and then a 15 min bus ride. We end up in a place called Doudeville. The referral lived in Galleville. So we went to the city hall and asked how to get there. They said it was 5km away...so we start walking - and walking. We walk about 3 km and end up in this little town. We knocked on a door to see if we were still heading in the right direction and a lady told us “no” and we had to turn around. We had to go this other way. Well, we finally get there and we couldn’t find her place but there was a little ville right next to it so we walk there and couldn’t find it either. So we finally see a sign that said Doudeville 6 km so we walked back that way and we walk about 2 km and guess where we were? We were in the very place where the lady told us to turn around. We were only 2 km away and here she told us to turn around and go this long way. Well, we finally get back after a 4 hour walk. We walked about 15km which is 9.4 miles.... we get back to the city sun burnt and dehydrated. We ran into a grocery store called Carefour and bought a ton a water and just drank. We also found out that there was a bus at 1 o clock. Well, we missed that and the next bus was at 5, so we got to relax for a little bit and wait for the bus. It was a very fun and long day with very sore feet. Now the burn is gone and we have a great tan and a very funny tan line.

Well I love you family. I hope you have a great week. I love you!

TTFN LOVE ELDER WALKER