June 16, 2014

So this week was pretty sweeeeet! the highlight being of course Dunking Maddalena in the ocean, it was cold getting in, but once i hit bellybutton it was actually really nice! wish i coulda swam a bit! she was super pumped and her baptism was very spiritual (despite all the scantily clad women around on the beach...)

So on tuesday we went into paris cause Elder Jenness had to do legal stuff to avoid getting deported and other nasty things! so wednesday he went off and did that stuff and Elder Hall, my first MTC Comp and i ran around paris and did some contacting, went to teh eiffle tower, cause thats chill and i can do that...

on thursday we did more service at that members house, we moved like 5 trailers of gravel and dirt and grass we pulled out of her yard, that was a good workout! then we did some contacting and stuff! that night we went to Nizars house, it had been a while, but hes chill as always, nothing too exciting! had a good chat about faith and how we are going to help him gain it!

on friday we did exchanges so a Zone Leader could come up and interview Maddalena to be baptized. the trains back to cherbourg were messed the crap up cause france is allowed to have strikes whenever they want... so that sucked, but when we finally made our way to cherbourg she passed the interview, we dunked her the next day, and tehn she was confirmed! it was a super spiritual weekend and it was amazing for her and the other ladies and branch members too!

dont have much more to say, but like, i love whoever reads these, and i love hearing about your lives! be safe and take care!

June 9, 2014

so this week! i got pretty diligent at writting in my journal, but i also decided id only write in it in cursive, so that SUCKS. but my handwriting is getting Fresh. i look so legit. on paper...
so on tuesday we went to coutances, a decent sized city to do some contacting and porting, nothing exciting happened, but like, it was fun. waste of time and well not do it again, but it was enjoyable! they have cathedrals EVERYWHERE. their skyline is sick. (photo included)

Wednesday we had Week 2 District meeting, which is a nice way to say zone conference where the meal isnt included. but i gave my first district training! holy cow. stress McGee! i can see my pulse in my vision, like if i hold still i can see 3 lines on either side of my vision pulse with my pulse. i might have blood pressure problems! but the training went well, i think it was pretty decent, nobody fell asleep, so thats a good sign for sure! that was in Rouen, a 3 hour train ride away, so that pretty much ate our entire day up!

Sednesday we had a family home afternoon with the african ladies! it was super fun as usual and it was Elder Jenness' first one! it was also super cool cause Magddelina(the one who is getting baptized in the ocean) has like understanding problems, but she told the whole plan of salvation to the other africans! so taht was Super reassurring! :) that night we had dinner at the branch presidents house, we had a bunch of cheeses that would have made me barf at the begining of my mission, but now i like them, so thats intereesting news! a delicions 4 course meal, typical french! :)

then the next day we taught a couple lessons, life was goin pretty good! then we went to Caen so i could conduct a baptismal interview.... Holy Cow, it was na hour and a half cause she had problems with President Monson, but she knows for a fact Joseph Smith was a prophet. super frustrating, but in the end i helped her understand how it all works and we prayed together and by the end she was good with saying she believed he was a prophet! so she was baptized on sunday! super cool!

then on saturday we took the train back to cherbourg, taught 2 lessons then went to stake conference, that ws pretty good! Magddelina came, so that was really cool! shes super pumped to be baptized.

sunday we sent to Caen, for like the 5th time, for the french europe broadcast, then we stayed for the baptism, and thismorning we woke up and built a cinderblock wall for a member! that was pretty fun! :)

good week! and a thorough update thanks to my journal keeping! :P

hope you all have a FANTASTIC Week!

i love you all to bits n pieces! :)

Kaden

pictures:

a sweet castle turret tower and a cathedral

double rainbow i saw out the window of our apartment

coutance skyline

June 1, 2014

This week has been TIRING! so so so tiring, but good!

On tuesday Elder Christiansen was packing pretty much all day, we went and saw Anne-Marie and she gave him a going away present, a little teddy bear and some white chocolate, the super expensive kind, and a stuffed heart(it matches the one her daughter has cause she wants us to marry her daughters SOO bad.) and that was pretty nice, havent taught her a lesson in a couple weeks though, getting a little worried about her. then we went over to caen to stay the night so we could get to paris in time for me to have a trainers training meeting. so wednesday we got on the train, slept pretty much the whole way, then we got to paris, and i went to the training for trainers and met my new companion, his name is Elder Joshua Jenness, hes from Indiana and hes super sweet! hes 21 and about 2 inches shorter than me, so thats cool! hes a boss, full of blue-fire and desire to learn and work. its going to be a SICK two transfers full of miracles and joy! he also looks like Steve Carrell, so thats fun, i always make referances to anchorman or the office or like anything else Carrell related :P 

we had a couple boss lessons, like magddelina told us taht there is no way she is waiting longer than her baptismal date to be baptised. the original plan was to baptize her with her friend, but we havent been able to see her friend as much so we told magddelina she could wait a week to be baptized with esther, or she could do it by herself and she was like (apply thick african accent) "by the grace of god i will learn and be ready to be baptized the 14. i know i can do it. you cannot stop a person from being baptized, it is not something that waits for friends. i need to do it. i will be bpatized without esther" sot hat was super cool! we also re-fixed a date with Michel, hopefully he doesnt have any further health problems, hes SOOO cool! Sunday was good, we didnt have a ton of investigators at church, but that was a blessing cause i had to translate everything, Elder Jenness is still too fresh to translate. but like, thats fair. its HARD. so far weve had crepes and baguettes and patisseries and its been a good time! :) so yeah! life is going good over here! im super exhausted! but life goes on! :)

have a good week everybody! i love you all! :)

Peace out sistas

Elder Oviatt

3 generation picture!

May 12, 2014

hello people of earth:

this week we had some sick lessons! my favourite was with the Esthers and Maggdelina our friends from nigeria, and we had a family home evening at their house! we had a cookie recipe where all the ingredients were scripture references, and in these scriptures they could find the ingredients ex: 1/2 cup of Psalms 119:103 Honey. and then we had all the ingredients, and we said, look at these good ingredients! now lets take all the ingredients we found in the book of mormon out. would our cookies be good? maybe! maybe not, but there would be some flavors missing! just like how we cant bake cookies without the book of mormon we also cant make a church without the book of mormon and modern revelation! then we played "don't eat Pete" and you have like 15 candies and you send someone out of the room, you pick which candy is pete, then the person comes back in and picks candy until they get to pete then they don't get any more candies. yes, a childish game, but we had two 3 year olds, a 5 year old and a bunch of ladies, so it was find. normally its called don't eat pete, but they couldn't say pete well, so we changed it to "don't eat fatsmatsa" cause thats a popular nigerian name apparently! it was actually so fun. none of you can even comprehend how competitive that game got! so good! :)

also, this week we got a car! so thats only like the best news cause the public transportation here SUUUUCKS so bad. so now we are like 200% more efficient!

we also did some sick exchanges this week! double exchange in Caen, so we were there from thursday afternoon to saturday afternoon, our lesson count was a little down but we helped the other elders out and we got to know them better and just had a sick few days! we woke up early on saturday and played basketball which was so much fun, we also played soccer too which is not as cool, but i had a pretty dang good time! haven't played soccer since like 2nd grade! :P

OH! and at church i over heard Anne Marie talking to a member and say how much she felt the truth there, and she said quietly to an investigator who is going to be baptized soon "good luck at your baptism, maybe soon you'll be coming to mine!" so that was sweeeeeeet! :) very very excited for her. oh, and our 67 year old investigator bought elder Christiansen and i matching berets. like, not gross sideways ones, but like, brimmed berets. so classy! i got a haircut today! and that pretty much my week in a nutshell! :)

Can't think of anything inspirational or super motivating for this week, so instead, Stay Classy.

Elder Kaden Cutiepants Oviatt

piclegend

first: france thought it would be cool to build cement ping pong tables all over, and it is. they are in pretty much every park and outside every apartment complex. ive always liked them, but never got around to taking a picture of one!
second: first person ive seen in france who actually wore a floppy beret! also, dat sweater doe.

May 5, 2014

week 3, came and left, the transfer is half over and that is literally frightening. but whateves, another good week! weve had a sick week to say the least. flippin so cool! because my comp is the district leader and the zone leaders are in our district, we get to go on exchanges with both of them, which is boss, and on my exchange with elder meisner we taught like 8 lessons or something like that.. it was cool and im pretty sure i made myself look like a boss in front of the ZL! dope.

this week we decided to start teaching lessons right in the road at the first contact, cause usually our attempt is like "hey we have a sick message about Jesus, did you know you can live forever with your family?" then they say "not interested" then they leave. BUT we changed it to "HEY. you know how much god loves you? the answer is SO much. in fact he loves you and the rest of the world, his children, so much that he gives us direction through a modern prophet. you know Moses and Noah and all those other bearded dudes" "yeah" "what did they do even?" "helped the people talk to god? i dont know" yeah exactly! they were leaders, or guides you could say! and they spoke to god and then told the people what god wanted them to hear...." etc.. yeah! people are alot more interested. and even since doing that we suck at it, but of the like 5 times we actually did it we got lessons and 4 of those 5 times we got new investigators.

our district trainer/my comp prepared a sick training about being someones hero, and how you dont have to be stronger or braver than anybody else, you just have to be braver for 5 minutes longer. so every night we called the district and asked them what they did to be a hero that day and it was sweet! tons of boldness and just working outside of the box, it was sweet! :) for instance, we were teaching this lady and she wasnt too interested, but we decided to teach the lesson in the street to reel her in ya know? then as she started getting interested her bus came so she like booked it through the street! i was NOT about to let this new investigator sneak off so i pretty much jumped over 3 cars and did a triple flip over a moped to give her a card with our phone number on it. it was intense. she hasnt called yet, but still, it was potentially heroic! we also made a lady cry during a street contact. in a good way, shes super depressed and elder christiansen said his dad has been depressed since he was 13 and that the only thing that really helped him was our message of the gospel, and she was like okay im interested. then we prayed with her and she literally vocally sobbed during my prayer. it was LEGIT.

we have a new member from sierra lyon(spelling?) named esther, she is a refugee staying in an appartment owned by france for refugees. in her apartment she has a friend named esther from nigeria, (yes 2 esthers, its ridiculous) but they both only speak english, so we translate all day sunday. its killer. plus they both have a son under 3. it is so ridiculous. every monday we have family home evening at the church with the single adults, and we were trying to decide who we should invite, and we had the idea to invite the esthers, but we decided to hold their own family home evening at their place so we dont have to translate everything and so they dont have to ride the bus with the kids. its just easier! so when we went to their house to suggest the idea they had another friend who wants to have the discussions! so dope! i love african people! but so at church, because it was fast and testimony meeting i told them that if they wanted to bear their testimonies i would translate for them, and esther(the member) totally got up and bore her testimony! that was sweet! i just stood beside her and translated it, and she talkied about how greatful she is for the church and for the missionaries cause she doesnt have a family and we told her we would do family home evening with her, and she started crying and i was translating and i teared up, it was just really cool to see how much little ideas and promptings we follow can really affect people. i was not expecting her to be that greatful! but it was sweet! i dont know, today was such a good week :)

i love you all and i wish you the best, dont forget about me, be safe and remember whats really important in life! (the answer is Gospel)

Your favourite Missionary in the France Paris Mission;

Kaden Butter-Smooth Oviatt

April 28, 2014

Hey!!

Happy Warm Week! At least, I don't know what the temperature was like up there, but it was nice over here! This was a good week!! We went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders! Only my 3rd exchange this transfer. Wouldn't be a huge deal, execpt I have 2 more to do still. =P We had a super cool experiance with a less active member yesterday. Brother St.-Pierre called us up. We have visited Brother St.-Pierre consistently since I have been here, he has been less active for many a year. Often when we were driving to his place on the way to or from Ottawa, I had the thought, "Why are we even going to see him? He is never going to come to church, he doesn't have a car, his health is very poor, and he has no desire to come even!" So, Sunday during Sacrament meeting we get a call from him and we step out to take the call. Turns out he got admitted into the hospital and is being put on Dialysis. He needed some 'spiritual recharging' as he put it. So we drove down adn bought one of the members with us, and Brother St.-Pierre told us that he wants to comeback to church. He wanted to know if someone would be able to drive him and he would help pay the cost of the trip. And, the Member we brought is the only member from down in his neck of the woods that regularly comes to church, so he said he would be able to take him to church! Ah, it was a great meeting, and Brother St.-Pierre looked much better after we left. We're going back down Wednesday to see him, and We're going to start the lessons. I guess that was why we kept going to see him! That was the only phone call we received from him in 9 months, even though every time we left his place we told him to call us. And trust me, that one phone call in 9 months was totally worth the wait... Oh... What else... We had a branch talent show. I played teh Ukulele. Not very well, but that is OK. it was an extra performance in the show, and besides, the best part of the night was the pie auction, not the talent show. So much pie. =) OH! Today we were going to a members house, to play games. But, the members invited a member who is our age-ish and her Fiance to play games too. And were having a deep-Fry night. So basically were going to spend our MOnday playing games and getting mega fat. We bought the desert to deep fry (Read: 21 dollars of chocolate and candies from the dollarstore). And speaking of getting fat, Everyone has started inviting us over for dinner because I'm leaving soon. We will probably not eat supper alone for the next 2 weeks. I think in the next 7 days we have 8 meals with members. I don't like to think about leaving, but that being said, I should have told all of my areas that I was leaving to go home in 2 transfers so that we could have gotten fed way more! =P P.S. I got accepted into the U of L. So, I'm excited. P.S. We had almost 90 people at church yesterday! It was insane! There were more pople than there were parking spots! There were people parked on the side of the road! It was legit! Man, I love being a missionary!

Elder Oviatt 

April 28, 2014

so this week has been fantasticular and dreamalicious. first off, we had Week 2 district meeting, which just so happens to be a zone meeting too. so we got to meet the zone! unfortunatley the zone conference was in rouen; 4 hours of trains. no way. we had to get up at 4:30 to catch the train. then the last train back was at 5, so we literally burned a whole day. that sucked! but the day was good, lots of bonding and jokes with the district cause we all had to ride the second train from caen (the rest of the district is in caen) to rouen. so that was fun stuff! while we were waiting to catch the train back we went for dinner, 4 elders and 2 sisters, and we hit up this little Kebab shop(kebab is not like shish kebab. its like veal compacted into a massive barrel shape and they shave meat off it into a bun. we had a shop that sells donairs in sherwood park, donair=kebab) but yeah so when we finished eating we looked outside and it was dumping buckets of rain. it was SO glorious. walking less than a block to the train station and i was soaked all the way through my suit and shirt. dripping wet. it was so good! love rain like that!

then on wednesday we had the jehovah's witness-mormon showdown. it sounds a lot cooler that in is, cause we didnt actually see them, we just went to an investigators house, anne-marie, and it had tj (témoin jéhovah) magazines all over and at the end she asked us about jesus being the only one whos allowed to have the melchizedek priesthood and she gave us a piece of tj proselyte and it had like 5 scriptures on it and she told us to prove ourselves right and how she just stumbled upon the question... lies! but its fine cause she actually had alot of good questions so at the next lesson we answered all her other questions first and asked if she had any others and she said no! so obvs this whole priesthood thing wasnt actually bothering her, J-Dubbs were just trying to fight us through her. dirty TJs. dirty dirty TJs. and that night we had pizza at another investigators house, his name is Nizar, hes so legit. so so so legit. he was born muslim but ditched that theory and told us hes seeking the truth. weve been teaching him alot and he agrees with pretty much everything, he jsut needs a testimony about joseph smith. but hes searching with real intent and hes going to find it!

church yesterday was dang sweet too. we have one investigator and a new member that dont speak french. they live together and are refugees, both named esther and both have a son between 1 and 3. so we are translating every class. Man its Exhausting! and even when im not translating im just worried that someone will say something to scare the other investigators off... man church as a missionary is stressful! but this week was good, we had 4 amis at church and the people giving talks addressed the amis by name. so sweet! anne marie told me during sacrament meeting that she is loving church more and more. at the beginning of the week i was really scared about her but i think she secretly knows deep down she wants to become a member.

well, this is one of the better emails ive sent in a while! hope you all enjoyed it! :P 

1 theres a circus in town, as usual... and they had the creeeeeepiest clown.

2 this is our cute little town of cherbourg!

weeeeeellll, adios amigos,

Kaden tastyface oviatt