March!?

[JK! Hello April. *sniffle*]

Bonjour ma famille et mes amis!

It's crazy to hear about all the snow back home! We keep thinking it will warm up a little here, but as I am typing, I'm looking out the window at ice/hail/rain/whatever it is that Belgium gets. It started out nice and sunny this morning, and now it's quite cold!

This week has been full of adventures! Soeur Clawson and I have gotten really good at having backup plans. I don't think we had a single day that someone didn't randomly cancel on us, haha. However, thanks to these backup plans, we found a couple new amies!

On Wednesday, we had two lessons planned, and they both texted us that they were busy, so we decided to go and do some porting. We walked out of the apartment, and it was cold and raining! We were kind of thinking, “Well this is going to be miserable.” Then, I was like, “NO! This is going to be awesome! And we are going to find an old lady who is lonely and we are going to help her!” And guess what! The first door we ported, an old lady answered, and before we could even say anything, she told us to come in! We went in and sat down, and she told us that she has three cancers, she eats through a tube, her husband and parents are all dead, and her son has mental issues. She's alone, but she knows that God is there. While we were talking to her, I got the distinct impression to share the Plan du Salut with her. I pulled out the brochure, and told her that God has a plan for us, and that through studying and having faith in this plan, I have found so much peace and hope in my life. The spirit was so strong! She promised to read the brochure, and we are going to go see her again this week. She's so awesome! She also told us to go talk to her neighbor, so we did, and they invited us in! (This never happens!) We were able to talk to them for a while, but they weren't super interested.

View of Lèige while porting.

Saturday we got to do a bunch of porting again. We went to this cute rue, up at the top of Liege. The view was incredible! We met a couple people who told us to pass by another time, but nothing crazy. We did meet a lady from Louisiana though! It was so weird to hear an American accent not from a missionary! It was a fun afternoon. Hopefully when we pass back by some of these people, we can teach them a little bit!

On Sunday, we had one of our less actives at church. She has been having such a hard time recently. By choosing the church, her family has written her off. She had a lot of anger for a while, but as we have been working with her, she has started to become happier and happier. She bore her testimony in Sacrament meeting! And then later, after church, she comes walking up to me with a temple prep book and tells me that it's time to go back. Holy poop! I wanted to cry! She has come so far in the last three months. The gospel has put a light back in her eyes, that didn't exist the first time Soeur Clawson and I rang her doorbell. We also had another less active come. She has slowly been coming back, but she is super old so sometimes it's hard for her.

Picture with Laurence, the less active who wants to go back to the temple. 

Today, since we are getting close to the end of the transfer, and Soeur Clawson will be heading out to another ville in France, the Redds took us on another adventure. Today, we went to another American WWII cemetery. This one is on land where the Battle of the Bulge was fought. Turns out that was fought not too far south of Liege. It is so humbling to go to these cemeteries! I am living in a place so full of history! It's so cool.

Every morning, in my studies, I study a Conference talk. I finished the Ensign for the last Conference, so I just started the next one I found in my desk from April Conference 2013. This morning I was reading a talk by Elder Cook about peace… SO GOOD! In it, he quotes Doctrine and Covenants 121:7-8 when Joseph is in Liberty Jail, and he's told to have peace, his adversity and afflictions will be a small moment and to bear them well. The footnote in the talk leads to a quote by Howard W. Hunter I believe, that I have absolutely fallen in love with! It says, "So we must be refined; we must be tested in order to prove the strength and power that are in us." I don't even know why I love it so much. I think it's kind of comforting to know that our trials are given to us to prove that we have the strength to overcome them. So if you are struggling, souvenez-vous that you have the power to overcome it!

Since yesterday, was testimony meeting, I'll just bear a quick testimony for y'all :)

Je sais que notre père celeste nous aime tous. Il est toujours la pour nous aider. Il ne nous oubliera jamais! Je peut ressentir son aide chaque jour. Père Celeste et Jesus-Christ nous connaisse! Chacun de nous! L'église est vrai. Le Livre de Mormon est la parole de Dieu. On peut trouver tous les réponses a nos questions dedans. Nous parlons aven Dieu par la prière, et il parle avec nous par les écritures. Nous avons un prophète vivant aujourd'hui.

I love you all! Until next week.