trip to India, yes again

 Love these awesome traveling companions! And Sabby for driving us everywhere.  So grateful for a wonderful host, friend, tour guide, volunteer, mother, therapist (group session :), to share her amazing life with us.  Loved that we had more time this trip and tried new foods and places to eat.  We did a slum tour, which they call the 5 start slum because there are businesses in the slum.  It was nicer than other parts of India we have seen, so not too sure I'd call it a slum, but still very tough living conditions.  We helped Heather teach the blind boys swimming lessons, we got to hang out with the migrant kids at the school, we did an awful lot of shopping this time around, hahaha.  Used the post office to mail some postcards.  Good company, fun times, new perspective having Rachel along with us ; ), came home a smidge sick - all part of the India experience (Only Darcy with appreciate that).  Until next year, right?

Transfer day - March 28, 2016

Grant Pictures Paris

 They had to run up to Paris one day to fix Grant's companions visa papers or something and these were pics they took.  March 25, 2016

Letter from Grant - March 21, 2016

The week was great, we started this week off by having Elder Christofferson come and speak to our mission. Holy cats that man is amazing. We have been reading Christofferson talks all month in preparation for him. We also were given the goal to have one hundred and eighty seven engages(people with baptismal dates) before he comes. To accomplish our goal Every team of missionaries needed to have two engages. Basically an engage per missionary in our mission. Which is a remarkable thinking that we, as a mission, only baptized one hundred and fifty last year and we had  extra missionaries then. Anywho, we all worked crazy hard and ended up getting two hundred and twenty three! Just incredible, we even found an engage before Christofferson came. His name is Thomas. We found him in the area book. Haven't gotten to know him super well yet but we plan on getting to know eachother better :)

Wednesday we went to Clerment-ferrand to fix some drawers and give the sisters a new chair. After we ran down to Toulouse with the other office elders to take down an old Elders apartment. We moved the Elders down there into an old sisters apartment that was fully furnished. Which means we had to take everything from the old Elders apartment either home, or to the dump. Fortunately, we found enough space in storage for most of it. While we were down in Toulouse we had what is known among missionaries as the "Toulouse K-bob" It was probably the best K-bob I have had on my mission. :) We made it home late Thursday night. Friday we ran some errands for the Mission office and Friday night we taught the Chinese investigators how to make cheese cake! :) It was pretty exciting. 

Saturday, I know I haven't said much yet but I was asked to baptize a Chinese investigator named Tian. That was really cool, she wanted me to baptize her in Chinese so I had one of the Chinese Elders record the Chinese baptismal words on my IPad and during our long drives I would play it back over and over until I had it memorized! Anywho, got it on the first time :) didn't have to baptize her more than once and another one of the Chinese investigators said that I was "quiet understandable" so I guess I can't really ask for much more on that topic :) Anywho, here are pics...

The elders that taught Tian(Zhu an Jensen(Jensen is from Oregon)) and Me

Tian, Me :D, and Lucas

Elder Christoffersons car...no We just found it in the parking garage after the Christofferson conference :P

We played Jenga Friday night and Tian took this picture and she thought it was like the funniest thing ever. And no I didn't lose.

Avec amour,

Elder Keller

Xie Tian Baptism

Letter from Grant - March 14 2016

This week almost sounds like a normal missionary week.

So, we had interviews with President Tuesday, always good to have some one on one time with the big man. He promised us that we would find one person to engage to baptism before the mission conference.

The next day we ran errands up in Lausanne. Some elders got a fridge from some nice members. The fridge was infested with cockroaches. So they were happy for a clean fridge. We also installed a washer, dryer, and an oven up in one of the newer Geneva apartments. We came down from Swiss to Lyon Thursday for district meeting. District meeting was really solid. Probably one of the best ones I have had. It was on repentance. Which I thought was odd at first since all President has been talking about lately has been engaging people to baptism to reach our goal of two new people with a baptismal dates per missionary team before March fifteenth. March fifteenth is our mission conference! And Elder Christofferson is coming! We are all super excited. Anywho, we talked about repentance and just did lots with repentance. I don't know how to explain it, it was spiritual.

We spent the next two days on exchange with our district leader Elder Lindsey and his companion Elder Blake Wilson! We did good work, we were trying to find people to engage to baptism. So we went through the entire area book and tried to recontact everyone who used to have a baptismal date. We fixed some appointments, and that's what we spent most of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday doing. 

Today, the office dropped a lot of random stuff on us. They need all sorts of random things done before the Christofferson conference tomorrow. Basically we have had no time today, However, litter-ally less then an hour ago we had a Rondez-vous with one of the people we called from the area book and we engaged him to baptism and he accepted! His name is Thomas, he is a very humble old French man in his fifties. Really kind guy :) Anyways, it was a super cool little miracle.

Avec amour,

Elder Keller

Letter from Grant - March 7th Happy 20th!

Monday morning we got up and drove cross mission all the way to Bordeaux. We ate breakfast in Brive and got the biggest Eclairs I have ever seen. We even ate them in the back of the van.

When we got to Bordeaux we checked out two empty closing apartments. The first we couldn't get into, grabbed the wrong set of keys. The second, when we did get in, was completely trashed. Someone(either the Elders or some strangers) broke ALL of the furniture into pieces and then piled it up next to the heaters. Crazy stuff. Fortunate the place didn't burn down. Someone had also fried a couple plastic plates and bowls in the microwave. Floor was super ripped up too. The whole thing was just crazy, unreal, a little scary to be honest. So we got to be the cleanup crew. 

We spent the night in Agens, where elder Wilson spent his last four transfers, and gave them some chairs that they were missing. Elder Steinbock is in Agnes, he came in with me so it was good to see him and talk. I didn't realize he was raised Jewish or that he spoke fluent Hebrew! Pretty funny the people you come in contact with.

We took down the entire Pau apartment in one day. Man, we were tired. The proprietor decided that she wanted to sell the four man apartment that the elders in. So, just moved everything out. Kinda crazy. 

I'm finally like half way through doing legality. Oh, pain in the neck. 

Anywho, we made it back home to Lyon Thursday night. The rest of the week we ran errands in Lyon. The mission nurse needed some furniture and one of the mission couples needed stuff. 

Well that was the week. Loves, see ya soon.

Avec amour,

Elder Keller