April 28, 2015

Transfers happened! i am moving to St Ouen, still in greater Paris, actually neighboring areas to the one im in. the area im going to is appareantly more ghetto that the one im in. i thought aulnay was the most ghetto, but turns out it gets worse! but worse really means better, cause where the people are poor, they are more humble. and more ready for the gospel! Im whitewashing again, so thats ugh, going to be fun again!

this week was pretty bomb though! in a good way!

the lessons we had with madalina went super well, i hope she gets baptized before i leave paris so i can go to the baptism! that goes for all our investigators actually... i am so anxious for them to be baptized! ahg.

tuesday we had a good dinner appointment at the Castenhieras house, and they made us BBQ, and earlier in the day we had a district meeting and we had BBQ, it was delish! such a good district meeting! i can also send you a picture cause i have one thats not on my camera. still having camera probs though. they just wont update. BUT soon i will have an iPad, so i can attach live selfies to all my emails. whos pumped? all of you should be.

on thusday we had a really good lesson with Onise, (the one with the super adorable baby that i never got a picture of) and she came to church on sunday! so awesome! :)

we also had a pretty fun family home evening, it was a rather good time, we played pictionary... oh man, the drawing capabilities of some people just makes me laugh so hard! we had such a good time :P

on saturday we were setting up for the musical fireside that happened that evening, and the whole day was just super fun! i got to do the Technical stuff for the whole show, which consisted of wireless mics and music and stuff... it wasnt the biggest deal, but i felt like i contrubuted, and i got to be all techie! it was good! :) there was also a strawberry themed buffet after and that was delicious!

sunday was great, we went to Alexandra and Guerdas house for lunch and we had a good time there, saying goodbye and all that sad stuff.

and monday was a conference and me dropping by the Sekyeres to say goodbye to them... :,( so sad. but, C'est la vie!

hope you all had a good week! heres my new address:

Les Missionnaires Elder Oviatt

164 Avenue Du Président Wilson

93210 Saint-Denis-La-Plaine

France

April 20, 2015

one more glorious week came and went, and now Bennett and I are potentially in our last week together. and that makes me sad. But theres a chance ome freak accident could happen and we could stay together, that would be interesting!

also, i realized that in my rush of sending decent weekly emails i have forgotten to send you pictures! i knew something was missing! :P ill fix dat.

so on monday we had a super sweet lesson at Alexandra's house, and Madalina came, it was awesome, we had a really good discussion, then towards the end Guerda and Sando showed up and we were able to share another message with them. Guerda has been having a pretty hard time lately with back problems (hers are much more severe than mine) and its been hard to be able to console her, but though the scriptures i think we were able to give her a comforting hope. i love scriptures so much!

tuesday was pretty good, we had district meeting and ate raclette. SO GOOD.

we also got to teach our bestfriends Opoku and Yeboah and Nanayaa, multiple times thoughout the week, but on tuesday we got to focus more on learning french, and we have been doing it through the scriptures! one person will read a verse then the next person translates it and reads the next one in french, and we continue in a circle like that, ive learned a whole bunch too! funny enough, Opoku is the only one who hasnt been to school in france for french, and his french is the best out of the 3... power of the scriptures yet again!

we also taught Vita, and things have been going super well with the help of Brother and Sister Michaud.

then on wednesday we had a fun time on exchanges, we had the pleasure of welcoming a referral to the church to give her a tour. super good experience. her name is Onise, and she has the CUTEST kid. oh man. she asked me to hold him... so much temptation, but i refused and explained that its against the rules. you all better be proud of me. we also learned how to do geneology! i thought that because almost all my family tree is done that theres less for me to do... oh how wrong i am. theres alot i gotta get goin on when i get home!

on thursday we had the wonderful pleasure of escorting Smith on his Pday (missionaries who leave the mission usually get one Paris P-day the day before they fly home, but smith is going early so he had no other companionless friends to acompany him, so we got to have an extra Pday!) Many glorious things happened. it started by running into my bestie, not so Elder Ethan Ruttan, he was just hangin out at the church in Paris... what!? so yeah, were going to hang out with him today on our pday! we also went to Sacré coeur, and up the eiffle tower! :) yipee!
and we had a sweet lesson with Carole, she made us dinner and we showed her the church websites on her computer, she got WAY too excited that the mormon tabernacle choir was mostly white. shes like "a choir for Jesus, and its almost all white people!" "there are so many white people who believe in Christ!" "where did you get so many good white singers that believe in God?" and other humorous things, but in her defense, are all very true statements!

friday we did some weekly planning and had family home evening, it was pretty good, the branch president, Brother Crucy did the spiritual thought, and it was super funny, and very insightful! pingpong and games after were fun too!

saturday we had the pleasure of going back to the Sekyere families house to teach Opoku and Yeboah and Nanayaa, and we had a good discussion on scripture study, and we went online to find a scripture reading chart, and we all committed to read the book of mormon in 120 days (goin back to President Hinkleys chalenge in 2005) im reading mine backwards, because i think it will be an interesting twist that i havent done yet, but i think i will get some new insights. ill read in english and french, depending on my daily needs!

we also went back to Caroles house, and she made us FouFou, its like, a very sticky glue that you dip in broth/chicken juice, it was super interesting... i didnt love it, but i liked eating african food! its fun to discover cultures and foods!

and sunday was good aswell, we went to church, as usual... that was boss. and then we went home and ate, did some studies, and headed up to Brother Henrys house to follow up on his member-missionary plan. that went semi-sell... not sure exactly what happened cause his wife speaks french sorta... its haitian creole, so i was catchin like 30-45%, but we were lost. then we had snacks and left! it was a good evenin!

now its today, were going to hang out with Ex-Elder Ruttan, so thats why were emailing so early today! have a good week loved ones, you are exactly that... LOVED! :)

ugh... i cant add pictures... my files are corrupted, and the computer refuses to touch it... whateves! sorry for you!

talk to you later!

April 13, 2015

yo home skillets!

okay, heres your run-down:

Had a super awesome lesson with Vita on tuesday, she is a referral from a member named Steeve, he also gave us 2 more referrals! what a boss!

we didn't, really know what to do with our lessons, she didnt seem to be understanding or getting anything... BUT we had these members come and it went super well, they all got along and now she is progressing very well! TEACH WITH THE MISSIONARIES. IF THEY DONT INVITE YOU? ASK THEM. IT WILL ENRICH AND BLESS YOUR LIFE AND THE LIVES OF OTHERS. so yeah, that was super sick!

We also got back in touch with Benjamin again, hes doing well, but not really progressing. He knows the book of mormon is true, and the joseph smith is a propeht, now we just need to tell him what impact that can and should have on his life! we shall see!

Madalina is doing super well too! she was trying to watch conference, and she has been asking very sincere questions. She is one of the most honest seekers of truth i have come across on my mission. Please keep praying for her. i know she will have great miracles soon if she continues on this path! im so excited to see what happens in the future. in our lesson we went over the Plan of Salvation, and she had great questions and understanding! She also texted us and said that she really enjoyed church, that brightened our day! :)

then we had legality for Bennett, so that pretty much took an entire day, then the next day we had Zone Conference, and that gave me the necessary kick in the pants, and we went HARD, and we will continue going hard. when we first got to this area we went super hard cause we had to, we didnt know anything. but as we got more comfortable we started chillin(still working of course, but not as hard) so now we have restarted going hard in the paint. so yes, good thing we had that ZC!

Saturday was straight up awesome, we had a great lesson with Carole, and after we went and FINALLY watched the sunday afternoon session of conference, and we watched it with Opoku and his sister and brother, and that was sweet, we started late though and so we finished late and they also fed us after... we got home just in the nick of time! it was like 10h29!

and sunday was SO cool! Okay, so our building is the closest church building to the airport, and so just before sacrament, Brother Steven B. Allen, who works for the missionary department of the church. he had a good time and i translated the whole meeting for him and his wife and a couple they were with. it was rather stressful! good time though.

Missions are sick.

heres a really good quote that is very applicable at the moment:

"The greatest blessings of general conference come to us after the conference is over. Remember the pattern recorded frequently in scripture: we gather to hear the words of the Lord, and we return to our homes to live them."

                            —Robert D. Hales

signing off,

Elder Oviatt.

April 6, 2015

Two weeks to catch ya up on! :) 

here we go:

we ate at the Castenhiera familys house and that was super good, i love how much the members here help and love us, it makes the work easier, and more enjoyable cause its not like youre nagging the members to teach, theyre nagging you to come with you, and its awesome! the Castenhieras are from Tahiti and portugal, they are a very cute fun family, and the father is not a member. the missionaries have been teaching them since the dawn of time, but hes coming around! 

we visited a member... it was interesting. we immideatly felt like we needed to leave but he wouldnt really let us, we were tehre for an hour and at the end both elder Bennett and i were so tired. it was a bad time. were not sure whats goin on there but we dont have any desire to go back!

we went to share a message with a member and her boyfriend, and they made us home made fries and burgers! they were so good it was ridiculous! then we ran over to Carole's house with Brother Henry and we taught a lesson there, and she asked us to bless her house and then we explained the priesthood and said we could give her a blessing, and she was like "Please!?" and we did and she said immideatley after "that was powerful. thankyou"---side note, i have been thinking alot about the miracles that Christ did, both in Jerusalem and America, and i was also thinking about how he raised the dead and then i thought about Elijah and Elisha, and how they also raised the dead with the priesthood. that really got me thinking about how we have that same priesthood as worthy members of the church, and that if God wants, i can also do that! How much does He love us!? its like, more than we can understand.

we did exchanges this week too, and those were super fun, Elder Maono and I had a "competetion" to see how many cards we could give out on the train rides, it was pretty sweet, then we stumbled upon a horse place and we pet prize winning race horses. that was fun, but they werent very nice...

we had family home evening on friday and like nobody came, Except Madalina, shes loyal, even if we change the days! she is doing very well aswell; and she was trying to watch conference but it wasnt happening... oh well... :P

AND GENERAL CONFERENCE. i cant even begin to describe how pumped i am about conference. AND, because of the time differences i didnt get to watch Sunday afternoon, so theres still more treasures to discover! :) we watched conference at the church by our house, and we pretty much hung out there all day sunday cause we watched priesthood, then saturday afternoon, then sunday morning, then we went home. lots of conference! :P i am not even going to try to begin to describe how much i loved conference, the spirit was so strong and i was touched so many times! plus i shook hands with 2 people who gave talks! and i LOVE the personal testimonies of Christ at the end of the apostles talks, THAT is probably my favourite part of conference. i love how personally they know and love the Savior. I want that so bad, just to know Him. like when Elder cook said "i know
Him, i know His voice" AAAH! yes please.

well, i love you all, i hope you all watched conference, if you didnt... well, you know what you need to do!

no pics cause i dont have my adapter thingy! :) <3 much love!

March 23, 2015

Hello everybody! :)

this week was rather stellar! :)

we started out on tuesday with an X-ray, that went well... its fun to look at the interesting twists, turns, and backflips my spine does! hopefully i get to figure that out soon.

on wednesday we had an awesome lesson with Marie-Rose again, she is still going hard, full of faith. we dont think she is willing or ready to change religions or anything, but visiting her can only do good. even if its her that builds us up! :P

then thursday we got to go to Opoku's house and talk about the restoration, that family is doing so well! and after that we went to two members houses to talk to them, get the missionary motivation light under their bums, and both visits went super well! one of the visits was with the branch president, and at first they were like we dont really talk to alot of people, then his wife was like "oh, but i talked to this neighbor and this friend and her cousin and their dog and the half sister of the renter from the house 3 doors down from here, we also gave that person a book of mormon..." etc... so that was a super good time, that couple is so dang inspiring. i want to become like them some day. thats one of my favourite things about being on a mission. you get to observe and watch people-see traits that i want, that i like, that i dislike, i really just get to see a smorg of attributes then try to apply them to myself, or write them down to apply later in marriage or child-rearing or whatever. obviously i like to trach the gospel and bring others to Christ, thats a given. but its fun to see who i can become, see the traits that i read about in preach my gospel and in the scriptures, but they are spread out, im jsut trying to see how other people have applied them and i can do the same if it worked well for them!

on friday i was feleing sick, (i think it was the branch presidents food...) but that didnt last long, jsut during studies. we taught Jean-Pierre and we went to Alexandras and taught Guerda and Sando, we are going to try to set a date for them to be baptized soon! hopefully that goes well! and we had some more time so we swung by a less actives house and had a great lesson with him and his daughter, his daughter asked if she could practice her english with us and we were like, ugh, we have a family from Ghana that were teaching, you could come along with us to teach them and that way you could practice your english too! :D and she was down, so thats going to be sweet! :)

saturday we had a sweet lesson with Madalina, she opened up alot and is doing really well. shes so honest and kind and just has very pure intentions. God is really going to bless her soon, shes an honest seeker of truth, and we know that God answers those that seek with pure intent, and she is FULL of real intent! i love when good things are about to happen!

Pray for us, pray for our investigators. i love you all, i appreciate your kindness in emailing me and showing me your support.

have a good week! <3

Elder Oviatt

March 16, 2015

okay not out-of-the-ordinary busy, but like, missionary life is a busy time!

so on monday we went up to the top of notre dame, that was pretty cool! real pretty!
theres a cool trick with pigeons that if you scare them they fly a couple feet away, but if you throw something in the air they scatter and fly far away and like, dont come back as fast. and there was a group of like 50 pigeons and people were taking pictures with bread and the pigeons come and land on them and stuff, but then i walked right into the middle and threw my planner in the air and it was like a dusty black cloud of bird flu. i heard a young child scream. it was actually super cool :P AND, i didnt even get pooped on! BONUS!

and on monday night we had a family home evening that was off the hook. there was like 9 people there, we played ping-pong and cards and had a member give a sick spiritual thought, it was dope! investigators eer'where!

then we spend a fair amount of the week preparing Opoku for his baptism, doing the program and all that jazz, the interview ya know? good stuff, and he was totally ready! the baptism was really nice, a spiritual, smooth, and delicious little gathering was held at the church, and there was a fair amount of people there!

we also had transfer news, im staying, no surprise cause im still training, next transfers will be thoroughly interesting though! cause we whitewashed itll be impossible to know who is staying of leaving!

and for the pictures we have the Sekyere father and son duo pre-baptism, and we found black swans. not a terrible surprise cause in Aulnay 98% of people are black! so like, makes sense that the swans are balck too, right? :P

have a great week all you beautiful people, and to those that are less beautiful... well you can have a pretty good week, but not a great week like everybody else. sorry.

our spiritual thought comes from Helaman 5:12. read it, love it, be spiritually fulfilled! if you dont have a book of mormon hit up Mormon.org, and ask for one. two (hopefully) goodlookin guys of girls will come and give you one, and if you want they will explain where it comes from and why its important!

March 9, 2015

time is Flying! holy cow. plus, its raining blessings as usual. Thats what obediance does right!

in any case, this week we had a couple really amazing things happen!

on wednesday we visited this lady named Mary-Rose, shes an old investigator, and she is pretty much one of the most faithfilled people ive ever met. we show up and she is so smiley and happy, but then she talks about how the tests for her cancer came back and its just gettibng worsen but shes like "if God wants me to be healed, ill be healed, if not, thats fine, He knows what hes doing!" with a smile on her face. then before we left she gave us a massive handful of candy. 

weve also been helping Opoku prepare for his baptism which will be on saturday, thats going to be sweet! super exctied for that.

but my favourite three miracles for this week are as follows:

Benjamin, our investigator who is in a wheelchair, (thats not important to the story) showed up for our lesson and had a TON of great questions, he read the book of mormon chapter that we left him and hes like "the first page i read i knew it was true" then he went on to say that the story about joseph smith and the priesthood and everything with the restoration and how it just makes sense to him, he just knows its true, and he asked about how he can be baptized by the priesthood, and how people can recieve the priesthood and like everything, he was so interested, and so we told him the process and everything, and we left him with another chapter to read and to pray to have a spiritual confirmation to strengthen his testimony of these things he already believes, and to also pray for a date to be baptized. hes like, okay! then he showed up for all 3 hours of church, we are way too blessed. honestly though.

Second is Carole, shes an investigator that we found over a month ago. she came to church, and she was like, "im comin back, i really like this" then she never came back, never responded to our calls or texts, but then saturday night, my comp (bless his soul, hes so inspired.) was like we should text carole invite her to church, then we forwarded the message to the potential people, and she came to church and she was like "yeah i just got back from africa, i was visitiing my family!" and we totally could have let her slip through the cracks but Bennett just felt like we should text her again. so sweet. PLUS, bonus miracle, during sacrament meeting all the talks were about the temple, an i was praying that our investigators that were there would be touched by the spirit. Carole leaned over and she asked a question about baptisms for the dead, and then a few minutes later she was like "where is the nearest temple? how can i go?" and she had this sense of eagerness and excitement, it was SUCH a miracle! :)

and third is we were planning for a lesson, and we have a goal to have a scripture for every lesson we teach, and we were choosing a scripture for this lesson and we stumbled on a really good one that was totally unrelated to our lesson, but we felt like thats what we needed to share. while we were at a lesson with Maddalina we were teaching and she was like "i am not worthy of Gods love, ive done bad things, i do bad things. he continues to bless me. its not fair" she doesnt feel like she can come to church because she just is that humble and brokenhearted. we talked to her a bit, and shared the scripture we had chosen the night before which was romans 8:38 and 39, 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, northings to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God loves each and every one of us, wether we feel like we deserve it or not. he will be with us, through thick and thin,

thank you for all oyur prayers, for all oyur support. sorry for not emailing last week. <3

Adios Amigos!

-Elder Oviatt