December 30, 2013

so this week was pretty stellar! firstly christmas and stuff! nice, gotta love the christmas spirit! we went to our ward mission leaders house for dinner on the 24th and he fed us a 6 course meal, oh man. he works at a boulangerie, so he makes bread and desserts for a job, thats pretty much all you need to know. this guy is legit, he knows everybody wants to try the classic french food like escargots and foie gras, so he made it for us, and im not going to lie, snails are dang delicious! the foie gras(goose liver or something?) was alright, id eat it again but i wouldnt buy it myself. we also had oysters at his place and i had 5, they were still alive, it was interesting! i would have never tried oysters or escargot back home. he also bought us scarves for christmas which was nice! they are pretty classy too! then on christmas we slept in and opened presents, had chocolate and candy for breakfast, then for lunch we went to one of the bishoprics houses and ate more foie gras and some strange shelled animal, different than the first time, still pretty good! then we went to this other families house and ate and hung out and this was a good time cause at the other houses we had to be like classy, but this last house they had a table of food and you dish up and walk around and talk and it was chill, i was very at home there, (ironic because thats also where i skyped home) they watched the christmas movie while i was on skype, which kinda sucked cause i missed the whole thing, but they didnt even have time to finish it anyways, so i asked the district leader, and he said we might get to watch our christmas movie on newyears day cause we have the whole day off! sick-nasty right! anywho! whatelse... um OH! right, we did another baptism thing, that was only SUPER LEGIT.(no pictures though, i forgot to bring my camera so the ward mission leader has to email me some copies) this guys name is Bertrand, hes a cop and he gets posted like all over france colonies and stuff. his wife of 15 years has been a member her whole life, so he knows what we believe and stuff, but never was super interested, but his wife and kids moved to africa to increase his chances of getting a job with their family near by, so they were there for like 2 years, and i guess having them gone just made him realize how important his family was, and he knew we believed in eternal families, so he was like, yeah, i want to talk to the missionaries. and yeah! his family came bcak just before christmas and the baptism was on saturday! super cool! the talks and stuff at the baptism were amazing, like the spirit was crazy strong. so cool. then yeah! thats pretty much my week in a nutshell! pretty good! also we have a couple really solid potential investigators, but Miguel Hugo is my favourite investigator, hes a boss, he tries to feed us everytime we go there, hes super in tune with the spirit and hes super cool, he came to church and like talked with the entire ward. Elder Gram was joking that in one sunday Miguel is better friends with the ward than Elder Gram is after 4 months, but its kinda true. Miguel is just such a bro. pray for him to feel the spirit and truthfulness of our message.

spiritual thought for this week is from the Bible Dictionary-Prayer

As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part (Matt. 7:7–11). Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings. Christians are taught to pray in Christ’s name. We pray in Christ’s name when our mind is the mind of Christ, and our wishes the wishes of Christ... Many prayers remain unanswered because they are not in Christ’s name at all; they in no way represent His mind but spring out of the selfishness of man’s heart.

till next week,

EVERYONES FAVOURITE MISSIONARY<3

Elder Kaden "The Fat Lard" Oviatt

December 22, 2013

Okay! so this week was fantastic, busy, terrible, amazing, and exciting!

first off, christmas conference was so sweet, i got to see tons of people from the mtc, i got to eat delcicious food, i had 9 letters waiting for me that got sent to the mission home! it was terribly enjoyable and it was so much fun to just relax and be around happy people!

on the way back from that to rennes (we were sleeping there cause the train wouldnt get us home in time) the mission president called me to inform me that i was being emergency transferred to Melun, so i had to pack my bags and get right back on the train to paris, which sucked because i was sick so travelling sucks when your sick, and i had to just pack up and go right before christmas, but i gladly accepted and was really excited to go actually because the trio wasnt working out amazingly, but my new companion is super cool, hes a sick bass so our singing is really fun, we started caroling while we contact which is just a blast!! hes danish so thats cool too! hes sweet. it was really bad when i got here though because i was sick as a dawg, but we went to the doctor, i got medicined up, now im good! i had hand foot mouth or whateever that childrens disease is, but its clearing up and i dont look like i have leprosy anymore! 

now for the amazing part, KADENS FIRST BAPTISM!

i kinda feel like i cheated because i never taught this guy, but calls are inspired, i am supposed to be here right now, i am supposed to have been there. so yeah, and even more good news, we have another baptismal date for 2 weeks, so boom. and ive actually taught this guy, so thatll be cool! one more cool thing, theres this super legit guy who contacted us and he is such a bro, we texted him to set up a lesson and hes like "i can feed you guys" so were like heck to the yes! so before he was even technically an investiator he invited us for dinner, it was ballin', and dinner was good! his name us Miguel Hugo. hes a boss.

and whats exciting is christmas is coming, so yes, obvs thats exciting! we have 5 dinner appointments for this week, so thats sick! im just in a great mood, straight up, christmas is legitimately the best time of year.

i love you all to bits and stuff, merry christmas an all that jazz,

Elder Kaden "Fabio-Salsa" Oviatt

(just an amazing haircut place by Miguels house; why salsa? i dont know, but i love it.) 

December 16, 2013

so this week we picked up the third wheel, hes a pretty sweet guy! and its going to be a sick transfer to say the least! so so on tuesday we found a new investigator, mme foulon, and she is such a boss. like, she has already read like all of first nephi, she did think it was suposed to be the bible but like different, so we had to explain that they are completely different, but one in purpose of course ;) but yeah! shes sweet! we taught her once on the street and once again at her apartment. the new guy, Elder Davis, hes pretty cool, he knows french pretty stellar too. so thats good. lets see, this week we also got in contact with Hélèna, finally, and started teaching her again. things are going well over here in Quimper! everything other than our branch christmas night. that was a total BUST. but yeah! we have a christbas conference in paris this week so we have like 12 hours of trains this week. i actually like them cause i sleep, all the time. GLORIOUS. next weeks email will hopefully be a fun one! its begining to look somewhat like christmas! theres still no snow, mixed feelings...

Au Revoir

Elder Kaden Parsley Oviatt

this is the sweet drawing i did on the back of my planner :)

December 9,2013

A church from my window. I thought it was sweet. 

The same church but foggy

Hello! 

yeah, so this week elder willden was sick. so no work got done, thats not even an exageration, so yeah, killer. so yeah, transfer calls came today and we are getting a third companion, trio life! itll be... interesting!

but on the plus side i read over one hundred pages of the book of mormon, so thats been good! from jacob all the way to alma, im somewhere in the begining of alma, so yeah! the book of mormon actually is epic. ive read it q few times, but never like sped through it, so this is different! a new take on it. its solid. ummm so this week i watched every video we have, some of them in english and french, and we didnt leave the apartment once for over 48 hours straight! so that nearly drove me crazy. but its been good, lots of learning and self reflecting, so todays spiritual thought is pretty good. its on pride, by my man Ezra Benson. here it is,

"most of us consider pride to be a sin of those on top, such as the rich and learned, looking down on the rest of us. there is, however, a far more common ailment among us- and that is pride from the bottom looking up. it is manifested in so many ways, such as faultfinding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting,withholding grattitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous;" Ezra Taft Benson

i dont know, i really liked that one, its an interesting perspective, and he also says in that talk that the book of mormon is just a warning, a warning of pride, for pride is the destruction of all nations. or something along those lines. so yeah, be humble, pray for humbling experiences, i tried it, it works. haha... yeah,

well i love all of you, <3 be smart 'n stuff. 

Keep Thuggin'

Elder K-Dawg Oviatt

Our Christmas tree

December 2, 2013

 sorry, this week was another boring one... 

so not alot happened, we only had one lesson with an investigator cause all the other investigators just disspeared off the earth... it was all looking so promising, then boom, but whateves, just means we gotta work harder! i also dont have alot of fun pictures for this week... but i have two gooders. so the only thing worth writing about was thursday, (american) thanksgiving. the whole zone got together and every companionship made different food items. me and elder willden, being the STRAIGT UP BOSSES that we are, made pie. yes we did. two apple pies, one blueberry pie, and one sweet potato pie. the apples were alright, pretty delish, the blueberry pie was a bust, but it was still tasty, not really a pie, bore like warm blueberries in a pie shell... but the sweet potato pie. Diggity-Dang. that was delicious. i have pictures.

but yes, other than that, all of our investigators arent answering the doors or the phone calls, except one, a 9 year old girl whos mother is a member. she is actually an all star kid. the lesson went really well, and she really has the desire to be baptised, like with no influence from her mom(she isnt active) soits cool to see that. for now me and elder willden are just going to work in overdrive until we see a christmas miracle, or a new year miracle, or whenever it comes. OVERDRIVE. aint no big deal. but yes, im still in good spirits and all, so no harm done§ i found lights for our christmas tree, so ill put those up, YAY christmas. this letter is really all over the place isnt it? well, whatever, thats all i have to say for this week

Adios Amigos,

Elder Studly Oviatt

November 18, 2013

ooooookay here he go!

so last pday was ridiculous. but we kinda got stuff done. that night i bought a calzone from this little pizza shop that's right up the road from me, that was deeeelish.

Tuesday! alright, so we pretty much just did car stuff all day, trying to get the car fixed. I'm not sure if i mentioned this last time, but elder willden cant drive in france, so his last companion did everything car related, now i do everything car related, but we were confused as to which fuel to use, gazole or sans-plomb. we knew sans plomb was unleaded gas, so we decided to use that one. yeah our car is diesel... so we kinda ruined the car temporarily. but yes, we were inside phoning everybody trying to get the dumb car figured out, then that night we had my first dinner appointment! it was at an american couples house, we had chicken and mashed potatoes and stuff, it was real good. but halfway through we realized we had to make the meal for the district meeting the next morning... so elder willden was pretty exhausted and stressed from dealing with dumb french mechanics all day, so he went to bed and i was up till midnight making crepes. i was not happy, but i was proud of the fat stack of crepes. (pictures to come later)

wednesday was district meeting, other than that not too much happened. 

thursday we got contacted by " seperate people, one of them had talked to the missionaries and was super interested in family history, so we got his info and sent him a quick text to make sure he had our number if he ever needed anything, and this is what he responded with (he was pretty proud of his english, so he texted us in english. this is the exact spelling and stuff) "i hope to see you soon dear brothers in the lord Jesus Christ.I would need your help concerning genealogy. Do not hesitate to call me to share a friendly moment: if i am catholic, i am first of all like you Christian!"it made out day for sure! oh and we got the car back! so that was super great! we also went porting and this lady let us in and we taught about prayer and! she brought out some tarot cards, which kinda sorta freaked me out, but it was all good. we handled it.

Friday we had weekly planning then something come up too so we didnt do too much, we did have family home evening at a members house, with Hélèna, our investigator and her kids, so that was pretty great that she came! 

Saturday we made brownies for the ward meal which was on sunday. we did some contacting and some porting(door to door), finished up the weekly planning and it was good!

yesterday we had church, taught Hélèna again at church, then had the ward "break the fast" cause every month the ward fasts for missionary work. so that's pretty cool. it was really delicious, and there was a ton of people at church, like 30 or 40! hahah,

so that's my week in a nutshell!

the best looking elder anybody knows,

Elder hotstuff Oviatt

these are all the crepes i made, i don't know how many there actually was, but it was alot.

this of my favourite spot in Quimper, its not the greatest picture, but i love the building that hangs over the river, and i love the castle-ish thingy that is on the left side, and i love the graffiti, it just throws a twist on things. best spot so far. 

I freaking love France!

so this is probably one of the cooler things ive just walked past, no idea how long its been there, but its pretty dang cool.

November 11,2013

so i left my journal at home which is how i usually figure out what to put in these things... so this may be the lamest e-mail yet... sorry, 

so we had alot of cancellations, but we taught a good number of lessons, i went on exchanges in lorient, that was pretty cool, nice to change things up! and from lorient we went to rennes for zone conference, so i got to see some other new missionaries, yay for familiar faces!!! then that night when we got home we lissed supper so we were debating on eating then gouing contacting or just contacting and eating later, we prayed and decided it would be better to go contacting instead. food dont matter anyways. so crazy thing, we contacted this lady and she was like "yeah i had the feeling i should talk to you guys" and a bunch of stuff like that, we actually set up a rendez-vous (lesson) and we talked to her for more than an hour that night and actually ended up being late getting home! we have the lesson with her tonightso pray for us! her name is anne-sophie. shes pretty sweet. other than that the wek has been pretty boring, we talked to a couple other sweet dudes just on the streets, and the work here has been moving! also, i had to give a talk in church yesterday, i thought it went alright... the branch presidents wife said  i had amazing french for a blue (for some reason they say blue instead of greenie) but yeah! also im sorry but i dont have my camera cord, so i dont even have any pictures for you today... sorry, i hope you still love me!

Elder Awesomeness Oviatt

also, elder bednar was talking about how to be successful in your mission language. 3 steps, first pray 3 times daily for the gift of tongues. second, ask your friends and family at home to pray " times daily for you to have the gift of tongues. third, find the right reason. so i can handle 1 and 3, but i need your help with 2 please. i love you all!<3

November 4, 2013

okay so first off the keyboard is super stupid, so dont mock my spelling mistakes.

so the plane was pretty sweet. there were three meals, and the ones i ate were actually kinda good, i slept through the snacks qnd one of the meals though. once we landed we had pain au chocolat, this like chocoltey pastry, they were delish. then we went on the bus and did some contacting, me and elder bruno actually handed out a book of mormon! then later we went to bed in a motel. for the record, france is beautiful. the next morning me and elder toscano didnt get the wakeup call from the front desk so we had 20 minutes to eat and get dressed, i grabbed some croissants. REAL FRENCH CROISSANTS. and more pain au chcoclat... then we found out who our trainers are! that was exciting! after that we headed out to our areas (my area is one of the longest commutes from paris, so we didnt get home till 10, so we pretty much just went to bed.

the next day we had both our lessons fall through, so that was a bummer, so instead we went street contacting, which lasted FOREVER. street contacting wasnt my favourite thing.

the day after that it was raining so not alot of people were outside, we probably only contacted like 25 people. and we were going to go port-à-porting (door to door) so we drove out to the area we decided to go to, didnt get there till it was pitch blqck out (not to mention i was driving, and it was my first time driving in france cause my companion cant drive there anymore) so it was so dark we couldnt see streets or houses, so we drove back home and did more contacting... YAY.

the next day started out beautiful! we were studying and the sun was pouring in and it was all dandy! then the branch president called to say that there was a socialist protest going on in all of bretagne (the general area around quimper) and that we couldnt go to centreville which is where we do all our contacting. we decided to go outside before the protest started to see how big it was going to be, and once we got within 4 blocks of the protest there was aleady the ar,ed forces and the national police, so we decided to stay inside cause this protest was going on in all the little towns in our area and we are supposed to stay away from stuff like that. plus, commies are scary and dangerous. we were going to go out after the protest but it lasted all day so i made cookies for our investigators and later we delivered them, in the car this crazy drunk protestor jumped in front of the car and screamed for a while, so i swerved around him and laughed a little,

so sunday funday!!! that was pretty sweet, i met some of the branch, introduced myself and bore my testimony, then we went back to the apartment to study. we also made crepes and it was so so so good. (for the record i am in the part of france that invented crepes, so my already existing crepe skills are only going to get more legit.)(they also make crepes with black flour, which is weird, but im going to try some today) later we went porting (finally) and when we got out to the area it was pouring raing. like i mean pouring. but i decided whatevez. i need finally do some lissionary work, cause right now i feel like a lazy quitter. so we did. i got soaked. only ony guy let us in and he didnt even let us pray with him, but i loved every minute of it. that is what it feels like to lose yourself in the work (either that or the icy rain-wind combo numbed my soul aswell as my entire body) but it was good. i got back super excited and frozen and i think i finally started liking being in quimper!

Made it!

Mission President and his wife!

A Sick Castle in Paris

Quimper

Quimper

Crepe Party

Looking good in the rain

October 28. 2013

woot-woot! (thats what my teacher used to always say, and we loved it cause shes french and she has an accent. we also like it when she sais "lol") im headed to france in 2 hours! holy moly. DIGGITY DANG. my excitement doesnt come through so well over e-mail.

heres your weekly update! i dont have my journal so im just throwin this together from mem'ry. i hope you LOVE it.

so tuesday i dont remember who spoke at the devotional, but it was pretty cool, i wasnt super interested for some reason, and the guy in front of me was full on asleep, so i took advantage of that. by the end of the devotional i had put 3 or 4 gum wrappers, like 8 napkins, and a bunch of paper bits left over in my notebook from tearing pages out. so when he woke up he was pretty mad. his companions were laughing with me except one of the guys fromn his district was straight peeved. that just encouraged me more.

wendesday i dont remember alot happening other than when we did hosting we were in charge of traffic so i was like waving cars past trying my hardest not to laugh at all the moms bawling. the best sight i saw was one massive "provo-wagon" its like a full-cab extended box truck turned into a van. there is probably like 12 or 13 seats. Ridonk. but anyways, the provowagon had a mother completely smothered in tissues, wearing those huge bug sunglasses trying to hide the tears, and they had tissue boxes on the front dash board. i tried extra hard to smile at sad moms, but inside i cant help but laugh a little.

thursday we had "in-field orientation" 8 hours of class preparing us for the field. one dude from "the district" was working (hes kinda a celebrity to missionaries) so that was mildly interesting, the rest of the day just seemed to take forever.

friday we had our last gym day... sad sad day. :'( i played 4 square and dominated. i never realized how intense that game can get. all you prospective missionaries, start brushing up on your foursquare techniques, cause that game is LEGIT. friday was also the last day we had to teach our "investigators" we had the nicest final lessons. they were hot. 

saturday we said goodbye to the teachers because that was the last day we could see them, they taught us about the "investigators" they were acting out. they were both real people they taught on their missions so it was cool to see what they looked like in real life! then we pretty much just packed the rest of the day,

sunday was a normal sunday, me and elder Fults got to bless the sacrament in french for our branch, so that was sick-nasty, everybody who was leaving wore black in mourning of our d-parture, so i have pictures of that. theres only going to be 3 elders and 3 sisters tomorrow, the elders are all zone-leaders and the sisters are all sister-training leaders. but none of them have anybody to be responsible for, so i find that rather humorous. later that night we had our departure devotional, then the usual sunday devotional, then we went off and watched church movies, we all watched Joseph Smith the Prophet of the Restoration~in Franch, then after that we went back to the classroom only to realize that we would never see the France-Lyon missionaries again because they were leaving at 5am. so that was a long depressing goodbye... but once we got back to the residence we had a blast. i had a bottle of martinellis and some rootbeer and we all just drank soda and hung out. i came up with a genius plan the other day to stay awake all night sunday night so i would sleep on the plane, so i would be ready to go when i get to france tomorrow morning. im kinda a boss. so i was only up till 2am, but i think my plan will still work.

I LOVE YOU ALL. Hugs n' Kisses <3 XOXoxoxXOxOOxxooxXoxOx

Everyones Favorite Elder,

Kaden "CanadianBacon" Oviatt

(P.S. I always fight with my zone on the legitimacy of "canadian bacon" and why they call it canadian. cause in canada we all call it ham. silly 'muricans...)

the picture is of the whole Zone,we are beautiful people.

 Last temple walk :'(        

                                                     

   check out the gorgeous sunrise this mornin!

October 7, 2013

Hello Friends and Family, i love you all so very much.

It was very nice to open up my email to all the nice updates, keep it up people cause your letters keep me going. and if you haven't written me yet.. well, i see how it is.

hi my name esy elder toscano tomorrow~!

that was elder toscano...as you probably figured out.

um so on tuesday we were supposed to have a class at 7, but our teach didnt show up until 8:15 and he just said "i can come at either 7 or 8, you are supposed to have personal study for the hour before or after depending when i come" nice try frere mayne. Nice try. Frere Mayne is also one of our investigators, and i usually take control and plan the lessons and stuff cause i would just rather get things done. elder fults isnt very decisive, but seeing as how he is the senior companion i figured he had better take control. so i forced him to take control by planning the lesson. man im good. but yeah he planned this lesson on eternal families and it was a pretty solid plan, so we went into our lesson and the investigator told us he only had 15 minutes, so i took control of the lesson and completely changed it. i was just following the spirit, it isnt that elder fults' lesson was bad, i just didnt think it fit. and since neither of us had notes about the impromptu lesson we just went with the flow of the spirit. it ended up being probably our best lesson. which is cool, cause it just popped out of nowhere.

im not sure why but the next day our district all felt like we bonded, nothing special happened but we all were thinking about how tight we got, then when one of us said it we all said we felt the same way. so that was interesting to say the least! also we learned a new slogan that day <Ca roule ma poule> ( saa rule mah pool) or "it rolls my chicken" appareantly people use it to make fun of people or something, nobody really could explain it other than that missionaries wouldnt be using slang like that anyways so we didnt need to know how/when to use it.

then the next day we did trc lessons, where members come in and we teach them lessons, me and elder fults didnt take the time to prepare any lessons, we were just going to re-teach the impromptu lesson we taught frere mayne. so we got in there and taught this guy from tahiti, he was the worst at answering questions. we asked him what he did for work and about his family and where he was born, if he was a convert. normally these questions strike up conversations and we can burn a good 10 minutes just talking and throw a spiritual thought in at the end, but nope it lasted less than 2 minutes. so then we had to come up with a lesson, it went pretty good, but our next lesson was way more interesting. we taught this old guy that looked like santa. he was like 74 years old and was born in marseilles france, so talking to him was sweet, we started teaching him and he just kinda took over and taught us a lesson on how to get a meeting from a stranger guaranteed, it was really humorous. he said we need to walk up to a person and ask them all these deep doctrinal questions then when he cant answer tell him we can teach him the answers, and if that didnt work do this and if that didnt work do that. it was amazing, he was just such an enthusiastic guy. i really impressed him with my french! so that was cool to hear too! and later on the same day we had to teach frere mayne again, and in the feedback after he said it was a good lesson but that we need to even out the talking. its not my fault, im not meaning to hog the time, it just happens cause i speak french already pretty good but elder fults takes 45 minutes to come up with one sentance and it ends up being wrong. so i just get frustrated and make him say the prayers and stuff. but i know i need to give him some more opportunities, so thats my fault. ill work on it.

the next day i bough note cards to start working on my conjugations and french grammar and stuff, but then i needed an elastic for it, so i bought a bag of elastics and with the left overs i made a bouncy ball, but it was only the size of a golf ball, so i bought two more bags of rubber bands and now its a little bigger than a baseball, its my pride and joy. then i made like 2 more small ones. because i get really bored here. so ill send pictures of them, cause i love them. then elder baldwin taught me how to play tic-tac-toe inception. its really hard to explain, but its like normal tic tac toe but it takes skill and strategy. we play it alot. one game can last us like a half hour. theeeen later that evening we did some street contacting exercises with the missionaries that are going to the west indies. they actually left last night to go there. but yeah so we did some cool little situations ans stuff, it is hard doing lessons with role play, but they can really help out and invite the spirit too.

oh, and general conference. man. it was sweet. i have 7 pages of notes written down. and there were so many that were just like BAM. that was meant just for me. and also i never realized how much they talk about missionary work. its actually nuts. but i decided every week im going to send some spiritual stuff to help you all out. in Elder Edward Dube of the 70s talk he said in the sight of the lord it is not where we have been or what we have done, but what we are willing to do. i find that super important cause like growing up when mumma would ask me to vaccuum or something i would always whine and be like "but i already cleaned the bathrooms and cleaned the basement" but guess what folks. it dont matter. what matters is that you keep going. full steam ahead. so what if you already baptized 1200 people. get off your butt and baptize another. and another. really this can be applied to anything. so get at it. 

i love you all so very dearly, keep me posted, <3

Elder "smooth-move" Oviatt

October 21, 2013

okay so i didnt write in my journal until friday night this week. so most of the days are going to be very brief. not alot happened though so theres nothing really to miss!

okay so last tuesdays devotional was pretty cool, DALLIN H. OAKS was there and i was 15 rows away from the pulpit. freakin awesome. and when his talk was done i ran around out front to the door and he waved at our little group of missionaries and it was actually flippin sweet. he is such an amazing man! 

the next day was pretty sick, we hosted missionaries, which is always a good time! then we taught our "investigator" but this time it was in english, it actually helped us all out so much cause it helped us realize that lessons are just like conversations, they arent jsut us talking the whole time. so i think our lessons have all gotten pretty good since that. 

thursday was amazing too, we did TRC for these two old dues, instead of two 20 minute lessons we had to teach one 40 minute lesson, kinda intimidating at first but it was actually pretty easy. they were pretty chill, my companion was having a hard time speaking loud enough for them to hear him, but i have the experience of talking loud for old people (thanks dad!) then whats even more exciting is that we got our travel plans! so the whole night we were all pretty excited! so coooooool. ill be at the airport in exactly a week.

then nothing really happened on friday, but on saturday soeur Judas was telling us that everyday god gives us something to be greatful for, so from now on im going to write down the daily blessing. sundays daily blessing was the sorbet for lunch, i love sorbet. and also i got a double size portion of mashed potatoes, so that was a sick bonus! sunday night devotional was flipping hilarious. the speaker was Stephen b Allen, hes in charge of missionary something or other. the point is he had a funny talk, which doesnt usually happen on sundays, and after we watched a video on the ministry of Thomas S Monson, and he is just such a great guy. such a loving prophet. i love that guy. another blessing of yesterday is that during the devotional an elder played an amazing song on the piano. it was a mashup of a poor wayfaring man and praise to the man, it was called carthage and the elder just played. he didng have music. im pretty sure half of it was improv cause he made the arrangement himself. it was so epic.
last night before i went to bed i stretched for like 15 minutes, it was an amazing sleep. slept like a baby. GLORIOUS.

i watched an interesting talk from Elder Bednar, i dont think the public has access to it, but it was called "recognizing the spirit" and it was full of amazing points.
first and foremost, if you are always worrying about feeling the spirit, you probably wont feel the spirit.

Dont just sit and wait for a dramatic message from god. you have to work for it. read your scriptures, pray, serve others. Elder Bednar said "If we follow Him, come unto Him, He shouldn't have to be constantly smacking us with the Holy Ghost." he told a story about how he had 3 instances that he followed the promptings of teh spirit without knowing it. sometimes we wont feel it, we will just do something thatll be inspired of god. something you couldnt have accomplished without the holy ghost.

well, you stay classy...

Elder "soggy-bottom" Oviatt

just an epic picture i took at the temple yesterday

another picture of the district, this week we were supposed to be wearing a rainbow

October 14, 2013

  okay so last p-day, you all got the update and stuff, so that was pretty sick. but after i sent the weekly update we had classes and stuff, and Soeur Judas started a discussion on revelation through the book of mormon and our whole class had at least one personal story on how the book of mormon has helped them answer a question or to find comfort. it was amazing. we all went around the room bearing our testimonies and how we ppersonally seek revelation through the scriptures, it was the coolest thing. the book of mormon is truly written for us in these latter days. i think its so sweet how personal we can find the book of mormon if we truly search it out and stay patient.

  later that night i made plan of salvation cards to help me teach the lesson on the plan of happiness, and the whole class was super impressed with my amazing art skills. i work WONDERS with scripture highlighters and a pens. the lesson the next day went well, when we had to actually use the cards, i wrote the scripture referances for each principal on the back of the card so its super handy. then we sang in choir that day too, choir at the mtc is so amazing. this week we are singing Praise To The Man, and they are broadcasting the devotional to all the MTCs around the world, so im pretty sure were going to have an apostle or a member of the First Presidency. so that should be promising, its tomorrow night, so ill let ya know next week what happened!

  then the next day we had to teach Soeur Judas, and we also taught her the plan of salvation, but we forgot the cards... :/ but its okay because we asked her loads of questions so we didnt even finish half the lesson so we finished it later in the week and remembered to bring the cards this time. then later that night I was trying to convince Soeur Dick, this awesome sister in our zone, (she left for montreal this morning) to ditch her boyfriend and have austen write her when he gets home, because apparently montreal is one of the missions with the highest rate of sisters and elders getting married from the same mission, so that would be cool. cause shes awesome. mostly i was just finding something to distract myself with, but then on Saturday soeur Dick got a letter from her actual boyfriend, and she Dear-Jane'd her! so that's sad but also just a hilarious coincidence!

  the next day i realized how flooded our room was getting with food. there's actually food everywhere, i found a bag of HI-CHEWS that day and ate them all, because they are amaazing. but also on that day we taught TRC lessons again, and that was actually so cool. we taught these two Haitian ladies who immigrated here and they gave us their whole background and how their whole family got baptized except for the one ladies daughter. our lesson was focused on Elder Ballard's talk from conference about member missionary work, so at the end of our lesson we extended a pretty hefty challenge, to pray twice a day for specific missionary experiences and to read a specific scripture every day for two weeks(we had a list for them) and we promised that if they did it that their missionary experiences would increase amazingly. then they agreed BUT only if we would pray for the one ladies inactive son and the other ladies non-member daughter to become interested in the church, so of course we agreed!

  the day after that we finished teaching soeur judas "le plan du salut" and that went pertty well, but we were all super tired and i fell asleep, so elder bruno made me a bed out of desks so i migrated to that, and next thing i know i was being talked to about being a divine elect called of god and i got a nice stern talking to, but it was actually motivating. after that i got super in depth with the concept of the watchman on the tower, and i like read online about it and stuff, so that actually ended up being beneficial!

  On saturday we had service and we were on garbage changing duty, not even that bad cause every garbage was pretty much empty already. then after that i had a nap, because we have a lot of free time on saturdays and sundays, then soeur judas taught the whole class as though we were investigators, so that was pretty alright, then after we had zone teaching, and that was amazing. so inspiring. it made me wish i had been a better missionary before i got out here, because whenever i talked about my mission i would try to teach in a very literal way so as to not invite the spirit, cause it made me uncomfortable or something, so thats something we should all embrace. the spirit is there for a reason. without the spirit we are just all part of some weird club, but we arent. we have god with us, and the spirit really testifies of that. we really don't do anything when it comes to true conversion. And on sunday night we had choir practice which was amazing as always. the choir director always shares like a spiritual thought in the middle of the practice and its amazing. and also, elder baldwin got a halloween package from his grandparents so i decorated the class room with green spiderwebs!

thats pretty much it! 

with much love from your favorite missionary, 

Elder "Deliciousness" Oviatt

the first picture is of my companions toe-thumbs, my (normal) thumb is on the left an his toe-thumb is on the left.

the next one is of my face reflection in the window of our classroom. i probably spend 10 minutes a day looking at my messed up face...

then the district that left this morning had a going away party... i wasnt invited (they are all going to montreal and were probably just afraid i would make all the other canadians look bad on their missions)

Oct 7, 2013

Hello Friends and Family, i love you all so very much.

It was very nice to open up my email to all the nice updates, keep it up people cause your letters keep me going. and if you haven't written me yet.. well, i see how it is.

hi my name esy elder toscano tomorrow~!

that was elder toscano...as you probably figured out.

um so on tuesday we were supposed to have a class at 7, but our teach didnt show up until 8:15 and he just said "i can come at either 7 or 8, you are supposed to have personal study for the hour before or after depending when i come" nice try frere mayne. Nice try. Frere Mayne is also one of our investigators, and i usually take control and plan the lessons and stuff cause i would just rather get things done. elder fults isnt very decisive, but seeing as how he is the senior companion i figured he had better take control. so i forced him to take control by planning the lesson. man im good. but yeah he planned this lesson on eternal families and it was a pretty solid plan, so we went into our lesson and the investigator told us he only had 15 minutes, so i took control of the lesson and completely changed it. i was just following the spirit, it isnt that elder fults' lesson was bad, i just didnt think it fit. and since neither of us had notes about the impromptu lesson we just went with the flow of the spirit. it ended up being probably our best lesson. which is cool, cause it just popped out of nowhere.

im not sure why but the next day our district all felt like we bonded, nothing special happened but we all were thinking about how tight we got, then when one of us said it we all said we felt the same way. so that was interesting to say the least! also we learned a new slogan that day <Ca roule ma poule> ( saa rule mah pool) or "it rolls my chicken" appareantly people use it to make fun of people or something, nobody really could explain it other than that missionaries wouldnt be using slang like that anyways so we didnt need to know how/when to use it.

then the next day we did trc lessons, where members come in and we teach them lessons, me and elder fults didnt take the time to prepare any lessons, we were just going to re-teach the impromptu lesson we taught frere mayne. so we got in there and taught this guy from tahiti, he was the worst at answering questions. we asked him what he did for work and about his family and where he was born, if he was a convert. normally these questions strike up conversations and we can burn a good 10 minutes just talking and throw a spiritual thought in at the end, but nope it lasted less than 2 minutes. so then we had to come up with a lesson, it went pretty good, but our next lesson was way more interesting. we taught this old guy that looked like santa. he was like 74 years old and was born in marseilles france, so talking to him was sweet, we started teaching him and he just kinda took over and taught us a lesson on how to get a meeting from a stranger guaranteed, it was really humorous. he said we need to walk up to a person and ask them all these deep doctrinal questions then when he cant answer tell him we can teach him the answers, and if that didnt work do this and if that didnt work do that. it was amazing, he was just such an enthusiastic guy. i really impressed him with my french! so that was cool to hear too! and later on the same day we had to teach frere mayne again, and in the feedback after he said it was a good lesson but that we need to even out the talking. its not my fault, im not meaning to hog the time, it just happens cause i speak french already pretty good but elder fults takes 45 minutes to come up with one sentance and it ends up being wrong. so i just get frustrated and make him say the prayers and stuff. but i know i need to give him some more opportunities, so thats my fault. ill work on it.

the next day i bough note cards to start working on my conjugations and french grammar and stuff, but then i needed an elastic for it, so i bought a bag of elastics and with the left overs i made a bouncy ball, but it was only the size of a golf ball, so i bought two more bags of rubber bands and now its a little bigger than a baseball, its my pride and joy. then i made like 2 more small ones. because i get really bored here. so ill send pictures of them, cause i love them. then elder baldwin taught me how to play tic-tac-toe inception. its really hard to explain, but its like normal tic tac toe but it takes skill and strategy. we play it alot. one game can last us like a half hour. theeeen later that evening we did some street contacting exercises with the missionaries that are going to the west indies. they actually left last night to go there. but yeah so we did some cool little situations ans stuff, it is hard doing lessons with role play, but they can really help out and invite the spirit too.

oh, and general conference. man. it was sweet. i have 7 pages of notes written down. and there were so many that were just like BAM. that was meant just for me. and also i never realized how much they talk about missionary work. its actually nuts. but i decided every week im going to send some spiritual stuff to help you all out. in Elder Edward Dube of the 70s talk he said in the sight of the lord it is not where we have been or what we have done, but what we are willing to do. i find that super important cause like growing up when mumma would ask me to vaccuum or something i would always whine and be like "but i already cleaned the bathrooms and cleaned the basement" but guess what folks. it dont matter. what matters is that you keep going. full steam ahead. so what if you already baptized 1200 people. get off your butt and baptize another. and another. really this can be applied to anything. so get at it. 

I love you all so very dearly

Love Elder Smooth-Moves Oviatt 

September 30, 2013

so alot happened this week, finally got the whole routine down and stuff, so that's good!

so last Monday during class we were all just sitting there having a nice conversation, and i was playing with my meal card (its on a little spring loaded cord thing so you just swipe and yeah) but i took my key and my meal card off the zippy thing, and then it became a little spring loaded gator-clip. Elder Baldwin was sitting just in front of me out of my reach, so i just sat there stretched out waiting for him to lean his chair back so i could hook it onto his ear. the whole time this was happening Soeur Judas was watching me, she knew what was coming but she let it happen anyways, so mad respect for her. anyways, Elder Baldwin leaned back and i snagged his ear and because it hurt he sat forward, which made the tension higher and it hurt more. it honestly went alot better than i could have imagined.
the next day we had a health meeting. so we went to the health department and they gave us this whole spiel about Belgium having safety rules and stuff and ended it off by saying they needed a blood and stool sample! so the whole rest of the day was filled with poop-citement. my companion puked while doing the stool test. which was funny and stuff, but not worth it.

the next day not alot happened, but that was Wednesday, the day that all the new elders come. i remembered coming and looking up to everybody who wasn't completely new, but now that ive been here for a week i realize they really weren't that special. they were just as clueless as me, they had just been clueless for a couple weeks so they were used to it. that day was pretty exciting though because during our lesson to Christophe i recited the whole first vision in french from memory. it was intense. but Christophe was too busy to be our investigator(who was actually supposed to be our teacher in a couple weeks) so we stopped teaching him. which sucks cause id really like some feedback from him. but oh well, s'est la vie.

then the next day Elder Fults was in San Francisco getting his visa, so i was solo all day. which was a nice break. Soeur Hafen was also in SanFran so me and Soeur Grünke and i were both solo so we kinda jokingly joined up for the day. then that day we also met our new teacher Frère Mayne. he just got back from his mission in Paris so we were all asking him questions and stuff and it just got me so stoked. man there are so many things i am pumped for in France. but later that night our zone leaders, who are leaving in a week, had a party to get rid of all the snacks they had accumulated and so we just went to their room and had nachos and full size chocolate bars and it was sweet! but the best part is that one of our zone leaders used to be a national weightlifting champion, so i jokingly asked if he would bench press me, and he said he would. so i got bench-pressed. that was ridiculous.

the day after that i drew cartoon versions of everyone in our district on the chalkboard, and they were actually pretty sweet! ill attach a picture in another e-mail. Soeur Grünke is going to get her 17 year old sister to write me on my mission! so that's pretty cool since i have only gotten dearelders, and the majority of those were from my mom and Janine, which is still really nice, but i still want some ladies to write me. or even an e-mail. cause i didn't have any e-mails this week. that was awesome to open my computer to.

now to be less of a whiner the day after that we had to teach the sisters a 10-15 minute lesson, and i planned it out, it was on the brother of Jared, and how he asked the lord what to do about the barges being so dark and also how they could get fresh air in them, then god responded my answering his air circulation problem but didn't answer the light issue at first. so then BoJ went and put holes in the barges like the lord said to then after he was done being obedient he prayed again and asked what he should do for light. i just like that part alot because he could have been frustrated that god was telling him what to do about half his problem, but instead he obeyed the commandment and after he had listened to the lord he went back and asked again. then everybody else knows the rest of that story. but if you don't its in ether chapters 2 & 3. even if you do know the story you should read it cause its pretty dang good. 

that's it for today folks!

Elder "tasty-buns" Oviatt

Me and my district at the temple!