September 29, 2014

yes, there it is. transfers are this week, cramer is going to be leaving tours, and Elder Chandler Smith is going to be coming to this wonderful city to be my new companion! Heres a little on elder smitty: he was in my district when i was a 'blue' missionary, and he was only a couple transfers older than me so i felt really close to him! He was a huge support for me when i was all stressed about missionary life and all that jazz, and now were going to be companions! how unreal!? Im super pumped, although im sad that Cramer is leaving. hes been an excellent example for me and he has really taught me what "working like a horse" means... ive never really felt "full" after a transfer, like ive been able to say "yeah, i did my best, i worked my ABSOLUTE hardest" i work hard, but after this transfer ive learned where my potential really was!

this week we had 3 dinner appointments! i talked about them in the voice recording, so just check that out! nad as for everything else... well, weve had a couple miracles, a couple really cool things this week. im SO glad i get to stay in Tours, its a beautiful city and its so prepared for the gospel! im Psyched!

Sad news... i lost my scriptures... </3 i was in the middle of a street contact when i realized, and i literally started to well up. i havent cried on my mission, surprising enough, but last week i was havin a slow start, i was really sad about Gloria Dahl, and a couple other things going on in life, and i was pretty down for a bit, then in the middle of a lady telling us some lame excue for why she doesnt want to talk to us i realized i lost my scriptures. tears slowly filled my eyes and i choked back my tears as the lump formed in my throat, then she talked for 5 minutes (i didnt retain a single word) and she walked away, and i forgot about my scriptures. i forget they are gone until my studies, then i look around and remember they are gone. 1 whole year of marking and notes. over 300 hours of reading out of those bad boys. when i come home i wont have "my mission scriptures" ill only have half... maximum. so thats really sad. I dont even want new ones, we should be getting ipads early next year so ill use those i guess... so sad... so theres your tear-jerker of the day!

but something cool happened to us today! we were at a store called Lidl, and a young man confronted us, and in his broken French "je m'appelle Scott ---- I'm from America." He is a member of the church who has not practiced since his youth, and talked with him for a half hour, his brother just served a mission in Spain and Scott promised him that if he met missionaries in France he will have to talk with them, and voila! so that was pretty cool!

Sister Poznanski, my old mission presidents wife opened a website, its kinda like DearElder.com, but for european missionaries. she puts little general gift packages together and you can add specific items, notes, and pictures to the package, and its pretty cool! the site is tofromus.com shes pretty amazing! :) thats pretty much all i got for this week! Adios Amigos,

Elder Kaden Oviatt

a house thats COVERED in vines,

and we made brownies for an investigators kid, Leo, cause it was his birthday! he was super happy :P