December 15, 2014

this glorious week went by SOOOOOOOOO fast, probably because it was raining miracles again, but who know, it could be that we were mission a day cause Elder Smith was sick... but either way it just zipped by!

on tuesday night we taught a couple lessons,

wednesday we went to the gare and said goodbye to sister hopkins, and later we welcomed sister anderson who was in Melun at the same time as me last year, so thats pretty cool!

on thursday things went pretty well, got stood up a couple times, but saw some cool miracles, and shared some good christmas messages! :) lifes been good!

friday we did alot of planning and calls, then we went to the branch christmas party. it was super loud, super unorganized, and super fun! i loved it so much! everybody was laughing and having a good time, and our cool ibnvestigator gabriel came with his wife and son! that was really really cool!

we also found a wallet on the ground on friday and it had a ton of info on the guy but not his phone number, so we called the assistant (my good buddy/ex companiopn) elder christiansen and did some searching to find his phone number. we found it and called him up. we were expecting a super cool christmas miracle, but he was just super greatful and offered us 20 euro but we said no thanks, wished him a merry christmas and we carried on our merry way!

sunday was good as usual, i got to sit with my companion during sacrament meeting, that was weird, its been probably over 6 months since ive done that! :P

life has been good, we are very happy and healthy again, very cheery and excited for christmas!

i love you all, have a good week!

Elder Kaden Oviatt

our  dusty tree

christmas party!

December 9, 2014

This week was a busy one for sure!

we had our district meeting on tuesday and that was all fun and stuff, then the Assistants came over and did an exchange in Tours, it was SUPER LEGIT. one of the APs served in Torus last year so he was just havin a blast, and they went and taught some of his old investigators! it was rad! I got to do an exchange with Elder Christiansen, who was my companion a few months ago, so that was dope too getting to hang out and work with him again! during an exchange we were planing on setting a baptismal date with some of our investigators, and Smith and i were thinking late january, but Christiansen was like DECEMBER 27th. its happening. then it did. it was sick!

and on thursday we went over to Orléans and attended their district meeting, which was pretty good, got to be edified and stuff. their district leader is a chimpanzee though. he moved the district meeting back an hour without telling us so we got there an hour and a half early and had to just wait for him. then one of the companionships' train got stopped and they showed up just in time to eat!

THEN we went to Bourges and did some more dope exchanges there, taught a whale load of lessons, so that was sick, and pretty much just tore it up! i love exchanges so much! you get so much stuff done.

then you know the sunday deal, church is good, life is good, everything is just, Good! :)

BONUS DAY! Monday, cause Elder Smith was WAY sick and i wasnt feeling 100% either, we stayed in and rested up, i also swept and mopped and cleaned a bit, and set up a christmas tree i found in the missionary storage cave under the apartment, so its probably 15 years old, but its christmas-y and fun! our apartment is so cozy now! its been a LONG week, spirits have been low and spirits have been high, but for the most part high, yay CHRISTMAS! heres some food for thought; smith and i will be together for last Thanksgiving (we were in the same district) and haloween, canadian thanks giving, american thanksgiving, Christmas, and Soldes(huge french sales) this year. crazy eh?

this is Christiansen and I, and the Cathedral in Bourges

i depart with a covenant of peace.

Elmers Glue

December 1, 2014

last monday we went to a castle, Chateu Chenonceau, it was pretty sweet -see pictures-

yeah, so basically we actually had a really good week! we had 3 thanksgiving meals, one for our own district meeting, one for the Aleçon district meeting, and one with some members! there was sorta turkey at one of the dinners (turkey sandwich meat) and chicken at theother two, so like, not to shabby! i definitley clogged a few of my bodily functions, arteries, bowels, brain-flow, all that jazz. food-coma(x3) so i cannot complain! i ate so much i wore one of my stretchy dress shirts and its a good thing i did! :P

we did exchanges with Alencon and Orléans elders, so that took a bunch of time, and was super fun!

the assistants are coming to do exchanges this week, thatll be fun, but honestly i cant think of anything to add to this, so you all get a short email this week! :)

peace out,

Elder Oviatt

the castle

November 24, 2014

this week was pretty sweet! alot happened, without alot happening, ya feel?

so the city's christmas decorations are up and light! they have a skating rink(somehow... its like  +7° every day... in ground cooling or something ridiculously expensive... they have like 5 massive decorated trees around the city, its been good! and theres music that plays in the streets! so festicve. no snow though, so it can only look so much like christmas without snow...

well obvs we had the conference with the entire mission and Elder Cook, that was only super cool! a ton of really cool insights and a VERY strong spirit. it was the coolest conference ive been to. i think it was cooler than it would be to go to Genereal Conference, cause it was very personal and very close. there was a Question/Answer portion, and he had a talk prepared but he decided not to share it because we were spiritually prepared for a different message, so he basically talked about how cool the prophet is and how much he loves all the brethren and why, he gave a very interesting insight to the life of an apostle that i never had before. eye opening and very touching. it was a very cool very spiritual conference!

in other (less cool) news, we got stood up a ton this week, didnt get to see the guy that we set a baptismal date with, so that is probably going to be pushed back a couple weeks, our list of fantastic potentials and current investigators sorta got slimmed down a bit, but hey, thats how life works! time to go find some more people! i actually cant really think of anything that happened other than the Cook conference... OH! yes, okay, so Bouchaîb Afoufou, hes our investigator, he didnt seem to motivated, but he was willing to meet with us cause hes got nothing better to do, but he totally came to church! and it was not like the simplest thing for him to do. so that showed us that sometimes people are just decievingly lazy-looking, and they really do care about what we teach!

and yeah i can pretty much say that thats about it! :) fun-ish week eh?

well, catch ya on the flip-side homies! :)

Elder omlette.

PACKAGES!!!! yay england trips! #ThanksJdawg

and elder ruttan, cause yall know i love that guy!

November 17, 2014

so yes, this week we are having a conference with the entire mission! i didnt mention it before cause it wasnt sure. but yeah! the mission hasnt been all in one place for a few years, for one cause we have a vast mission and transportation is very expensive, and for two we really dont have any chapels big enough for eeveryone to be there and eat and facilitate easily, but they figured it out and i am oh so very excited to have an apostle come visit! :D

this week was pretty dang good, we had a number of miracles and good experiences. During mission council we talked about the missions goals and the plan to attain the goals, and we talked about how we as zone leaders are in the trust of president, and that he trusts us to be obedient and to protect our zones, but taht we are like the mission presidents of our zones and the district leaders in our zones are like our zone leaders, basically if youve never been on a mission this wont make any sense to you, but he told us to have a new meeting once a transfer with out district leaders, the meeting is like a mini mission council, so we talk with our district leaders about how the zone is doing, about our goals and plans and stuff. so with this new thing Elder Smith and I decided to come up with a vision for this trimester, the vision is TRUST. first in our missionaries, our leaders and our companions, trust that we are folowing the Lord in our decisions and that  we are doing things the way they are supposed to be done. second, trust in the model of consecration, that way when we are stressed about the area and lessons and what to do we know that we are doing the best we can and the Lord will make up the rest, so whats getting done is all that He wants to be done. takes the blame off our shoulders. Third, trust in THE invitation. the invitation is the invitation to baptism, which is to follow the guidelines in the first lesson invite people to be baptized, the second lesson give them a baptismal date. this isnt easy or and is sometimes seems like a bad idea, but we decided to trust the invitation last night and this guy, Tibaut accepted to be baptized ondecember 20th, hes super cool, but normally we would not have given him a date to be baptized, but we decided to follow the lords council for our zone and trust the invitation and be baptized! super cool miracle and that deffs set the tone for the vision! :) super happy about it!

In other news, i want a cat. really bad. i dont know why, but ive grown to like cats more and more on my mission, and i know i dont really want a cat cause they get hair everywhere, but i like em! so well see how that happens :P umm, thats pretty much it! cant think of anything new... :) have stellar week errbody!

what a lovely yard...

we made a turkeydinner! happy between american and canadian thanksgivings! it looked SUPER tasty, but tasted otherwise...

November 10, 2014

this week has been pretty good, im trying to think of specific things i can talk about but it really wasnt that terribly eventful, weve been going pretty hard, and we have really got the area into good shape, before elder smith got here we had investigators, but we were constantly finding new ones, and the old ones just kinda disapeared, but we have gotten alot more organized and focused, and so far we have a good number of investigators and a solid base, alot of really high potential, but we wil see how it goes! weve got alot of people were teaching, but nobody is like EXPLODING at the moment, ya feel? it feels good though, its going to be a good transfer here in Tours, oh, yeah i get to stay in tours with Elder Smith! so thats pretty sweet, we get along really well and we work well with eachother! :) i have a ton of cool experiences and stuff i could share from this week, it just feels so random cause none of the miracles continue into anything, i mention somebody and never talk about them again, i can imagine that would get pretty annoying... so ill jsut wait for now :P give it a week or two till we see who is going to progress and stuff, deal? :)

well yeah, things are starting to get a little chilly here, my toes are pretty cold at the moment! but its better than -20, (good luck everyone)

im going to send a bunch of pictures from last week!

-Zone Finding day!

-Haloween in Le Mans with the Alençon district,

November 3, 2014

hey errbody!

so life here in tours has been REALLY sick this week, not the illness kind of sick, but sick as in missionary work being on FIRE!

so as for things going on here, monday night we tracted into this sick group of people, we rang and they let us in, then we talked about why we are here, prayed with em, and they asked us for bibles next time we come, unfortunatly we dont have those, so we brought books of mormon, and they loved it! they totally understood why it was there, what it could mean to them, it was sweet, plus we didnt even bring enough books of mormon for them cause they had guests, and they said they would give some to their friends.

then we had exchanges here with our district leader and his comp on tuesday and that started us out on a good foot, then we went to Le Mans and had a super rad haloween party/district meeting, so that was dope :P we dressed up, i was an old man and elder Smith was my cat in a sweater, we had a good combo costume, unfortunatley my camera is being goofy, so ill have to send pictures next week.

then on thursday we were running around teaching and finding people, good day,

on friday we had a Zone-wide finding day. the whole zone came to Tours and we did mini-exchanges for the morning and evening, it was pretty much the coolest thing ever. in total we were 23 missionaries, and we taught 34 lessons, made a bunch of new investigators and found 30 ish potentials. it was sick. everyone loved it! during lunch everyone brought candy and we went trick or treating between us, it was a good day!

finding day was sweet, but like all in all i think that this week i taught the most lessons and found the most new investigators of my mission. its been super good! life is good, love is good, families are forever. and THAT is my weekly update for You.

Elder Oviatt.