France - Week 12 (St. Brieuc)

5/13/13

 

Bonjour toute le monde!

So we just received an email from our mission president telling us what will be happening the next 6 weeks. Drum roll...... Elder Adams is getting transferred to Strasbourg and is going to be a zone leader! I'm super excited for him; he's going to be great. It’s a brand new zone and everything so he'll be super busy over there. As for me, I will be staying in good ol' Saint Brieuc for at least another 6 weeks! I'll miss Elder Adams a ton, I learned a lot from him and we really worked hard and had a lot of great success. My new companion is named Elder Daniel Fish and I've already met him once before at a zone conference. He is a super awesome missionary so I'm excited to get to know him better and serve with him.

Yesterday, for mother’s day I got to Skype my family which was so awesome. We only had an hour to talk and that hour seemed to just fly by way too fast, but it was good to just see them and talk "face to face" for the first time in about 5 months. I'm so thankful for their prayers and support; couldn't be a missionary without them!

Other than that, this past week has been normal. Lots of walking, finding, teaching, service and awesome spiritual experiences. I'm so excited to be staying in Saint Brieuc! I was hoping and praying that I'd get to stay because I still feel like there is more for me to do here. There are people ready to get baptized and I feel like there are more I need to find! 

Shout out to my cousin Heidi Hudson for getting her mission call to Arizona! I know she's about to have the time of her life there!

Being a missionary is the most rewarding thing anyone could ever do. I'm loving every second of every day. Thank you for your prayers and support.

Talk to you next week,

Elder Davis

 

I didn't really take any good pictures this week. This is the only one I have haha. Elder adams thought that he would be funny and put on my sweats. They are almost shorts on him. Good ol' 6'4" elder Adams

 

France - Week 11 (St. Brieuc)

5/6/13

Bonjour everyone!

All I can say is wow, this past week has probably been one of the best weeks of my life. Every day this week has just been packed with spiritual experiences and miracles. I literally don't think it is possible for me to explain everything that happened in an email, but I'll do my best to give you guys an overview.

We've been teaching this awesome African man for a while named Jean-Pierre and he is just amazing, during our lesson with him (without us even asking or bringing it up) he said he knows the Book of Mormon is true, he knows Joseph Smith was a prophet and he wants to be baptized. He told us he not only wants to be baptized, but he wants his 4 kids and wife to take the lessons and get baptized and he wants to "share the message of the gospel with everyone"! He is so amazing, I can not only see him being baptized, but I can see him eventually being a bishop or some type of church leader and his little sons someday serving missions. He has so much faith it’s incredible.

We've been teaching an Egyptian woman named Ikbal for a while with her children, but we've never met her husband until this week. Before this week she kept telling us he was very atheist and very uninterested in religion. but, we finally got to meet him this week and he was awesome! super nice guy and he told us to come back so we can talk more about religion on Monday (tonight!)

Another cool story, we had a member invite us over to dinner on Friday and she had 6 nonmember friends there who all spoke English (they are all from England)! This is kind of a long story but I'll give you the quick summary. Basically when we got there the people were super nice, but we felt really out of place as missionaries. They had all brought alcohol with them to the dinner (as everyone does in France) and so everyone was drinking except for us and the member who invited us over. once they started drinking Elder Adams and I figured we should probably just finish eating and leave as quickly and politely as possible. 

Anyways, eventually Elder Adams and I told everyone we had to go, but we were surprised when the member asked us to share a quick spiritual thought. We weren't really planning on doing this because the 6 English people were starting to get drunk and weren't in a "spiritually receptive state". However, we decided to share a cool scripture in the Book of Mormon (Heleman (5:12) which is a great scripture about building your life upon Jesus Christ. We shared this scripture and both testified of Christ and why we decided to sacrifice 2 years of our life to help others build their lives upon Him and His teachings. What happened was amazing. The second we stood up, the room got completely silent. When we were testifying of what we knew to be true, the spirit came into the room.

Since that night, we got a phone call and found out that every single one of those 6 people have told us they want us to come back and talk to them more about Jesus Christ. They all were impressed at what they felt as we spoke and they remembered that feeling. One of the guys is a newly retired Military General for England which is kind of cool; he was super high up in the military. We are actually going to go see them today. It just amazes me the effect the spirit had on these people.

There were tons of other amazing experiences this week. Life is so good. Saint Brieuc is amazing. It isn't always easy out here, but it is so worth it. Last week I experienced what it means to be truly happy. There are going to be many baptisms next transfer (a transfer is a 6 week period in a mission) so I hope and pray I will be here to see it all happen.

This Saturday, Elder Adams and I find out if we stay in Saint Brieuc or get moved to a different city.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support.

Talk to you next week!

Elder Davis

France - Week 10 (St. Brieuc)

4/29/13

 

Hey everyone,

This past week was crazy! On Tuesday I went on my first "blue exchange" which means I went on an exchange with a brand new missionary. Elder Allen from Spring, Texas has only been in the mission for a couple weeks so he is about as new as it gets. He came to St. Brieuc and we worked together for a day and a half. It was a good experience and I definitely learned a lot. Since he is so new and since we were in my city I had to take charge so that was fun. That definitely put my French skills and everything else to the test. We worked hard and had a lot of cool experiences.

 

This week me and 30 (ish) other missionaries from my MTC group had to go to Belgium to get our legality all figured out. So from Thursday evening to Saturday morning we were away from Saint Brieuc doing that.

 Thursday evening Elder Adams and I took a train from Saint Brieuc to Rennes where we met Elder Cox and Elder Gunter. In the Rennes train station we had to wait about an hour until we could catch our train from Rennes to Paris. In the Rennes train station there is a piano where anyone could just go up and play. Elder Adams and the other missionaries who know I can play the piano kept telling me to go play haha. Eventually I gave in to the peer pressure and played some things I know how to play. It was crazy because everyone in the entire Train station (train stations are big and always packed with people in France) could hear me play. When I finished I had a guy who wanted to take a picture with me and everything haha it was pretty funny. Elder Lerdahl, one of our zone leaders who was there took a video of it so hopefully I'll be able to get that from him soon.

 

Anyways, after that little piano adventure in the Rennes train station, Elder Cox and I took our train to Paris (Elder Adams and Elder Gunter didn't need to do legality so they stayed in Rennes to work). We spent the night with 6 other missionaries in Paris, then early the next morning we went to go catch one of the fastest trains in the world to Brussels, Belgium. It was awesome, we got to sit first class and everything. After we signed some paperwork in Belgium we had a little extra time to get some lunch and look at the famous stuff in Brussels. I sent pictures of that; definitely a cool experience!

 

I'm convinced I have the coolest mission in the world. How many other people can say they woke up in Paris, had lunch in Brussels and then went to bed in Rennes? We definitely do a lot of cool traveling.

 

Traveling is lots of fun, and seeing my fellow missionaries always pumps me up, but unfortunately that made it a slow week for missionary work. Next week is going to be awesome though! We have lots of lessons lined up and lots of our investigators are going to be back in town from vacation. Oh plus, Elder Adams' bishop from home is going to be in France this week so I think he is going to take us to lunch and everything; that'll be cool.

 

Thank you everyone for your prayers! Talk to you all next week!

Elder Davis

 

Pictures!

 

 

1. Me with my 3 euro waffle, delissssshhhhh

 

2. Me with some of the other missionaries in my group. It was so good to see them. This is in a famous square or plaza type thing in Brussels.

 

3. Me in Grande Place in front of the main building. The guys in the left corner of the picture came up to me and Elder Johnson right after and asked if they could take pictures with us. They thought we were cool because we're American!

 

4. Same building

 

5. This is called a meat triad. Its kind of like a Kebab but bigger and spicier. Plus, it is covered in Belgium fries. Belgium is famous for its amazing frites!

 

6. Everywhere you look in France/ Belgium there are super old/historic buildings covered with naked statues like this one

 

7. Last pday right before playing some ping pong in the church

 

8. Belgium Waffles!

 

9. This is a very famous fountain of a peeing kid. There is a story behind the peeing kid and why he is important/famous but I don't have time to tell the story. Google it!

 

10. Me just hanging out in first class on one of the fastest trains in the world on my way from Paris to Brussels