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