Letter from Grant

Subject: I get to stay in Rodez! wooot wooot!

Transfer calls came in, Elder Gossel and I are staying in Rodez.

So this week we spent 5/7 days not in our sector so I really do not have a lot to tell you about our investigators. 

However, we got to go to Lyon and have a massive conference and see everyone! That was SoOO much fun! At the conference we got to learn about Ipads from two seventies! Elder Nielson and Elder Kearon! They both did a fantastic job. Granted, anyone could have told us we were getting Ipads and we would have been super excited. Basically they stressed the fact that Ipads are Tools not Toys. The mission president can see everything you have ever downloaded so no angry birds for us. They also stressed that the best Filter comes from your heart and mind. Basically, you are the best filter, so keep your mind straight! 

I look forward to being able to use Ipads! We can do some really cool languages studies! We will have the ENTIRE gospel library on our Ipads and we will even have the area book and our planners all electronically. For mothers day in Three weeks I can Skype in through my Ipad (probably at a mc Donalds). 

We are also allowed to have Facebook. We will be making a new account as our "missionary account". I guess you can find me on there but everything will be in French...We will friend the members and then ,with their permission, friend their friends and try to find new investigators like that. We are allowed to post spiritual thoughts and invite people to baptisms and other churchy events.

We can also start a blog...I am not sure how all that works. We will find out at our next Zone conference or Zone Training where we will actually receive our Ipads.

So there it is. Madame Gill is still progressing.

Norrick is being a bum, he hasn't been intown at all this week.

and our two new engagès are doing just fine. 

Love you :)

So the first couple photos are from when we went to a members house with the albi elders! The members live out in the middle of the campaigne and so we needed the albi elders car! Yes, that is a samurai knife. Infact, this member always has his butterfly knife on him and usually an extra. It kinda reminds me of matt :) So, we think beef Jerky is a pretty manly food. But, the French dry and season the ENTIRE LEG OF THE PIG! (you can find dried pig leg at almost any grocery store too...) and then cut off slices to eat. Yes, it is crazy....DELICIOUS! Ethan would be in heaven right now. 

The last picture is off Ashly Baggs from wx xc team.  (I don't know what the expression on grants face means in that pic...  not ready for the picture?   funny kid)

These were Grant's MTC companions/roommates.  

Letter from Grant this week: April 20, 2015

Subject: This week on, BREAKING FRANCE!!

Wooo! has been the word of the week. Although, our transfer calls got moved to this wednesday. Sorry, I still don't know if I will stay or go.

One of the members, Julio, in Rodez has the girl living with him. Her name is Aniesse. She is the bane of our missionary existence in Rodez. She doesn't want to marry Julio and really just does not like us. She plans activities with Julio after we have planned meetings with him just to get him to not go. I may sound biased but trust me i'm not! She laughs during the prayers and disrupts our lessons with him with her atheist banter. Anywho, our last meeting with her went really really well. Why? Because we got to teach her! That's right! This week someone posed the question "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" yes this is a very big dilemma in France. Basically, the conclusion that she came to was "god must have put one of them on the earth first". From there Elder Gossel and I took this as an opportunity to teach! We explained that because god made the chicken he therefore must have made the Earth! And he made the earth because...then we explained the entire plan of salvation. I felt like Ammon teaching King Lamoni! Building off what little information she had and by the end she said she believed that the entire plan of salvation must be correct! It was a wonderful experience and we look forward to teaching Aniesse more!

We engaged two more people to baptism this week. Earlier this week, while porting, I called all of the old contacts in the phone and fixed a Rondez-vous with a man named George! When we went to the Rondez-vous later that week we were greeted by two africans! George and his wife Blanche(Blanche means white in French but she is not white...she is african) We taught them the gospel of Jesus Christ and they were both incredibly receptive! Infact, asking them to be baptized just flowed into the lesson, it felt really natural. They agreed, we fixed a date in two transfers from now, and they both wanted to come to church tomorrow. It felt to easy. We later learned that the members really have struggled in the past to intigrate George and Blanche. There are no members with cars that can drive them to church and George and Blanche do not have money to take a train. Basically, they would have been baptized a while ago if they could get to church. We will likely continue teaching them and trying to find a way. 

Elder Gossel has been working me hard this week. This was easily one of my more stressed out weeks. We missed 5 out of our 7 language study hours due to Rondez-Vous during those times. We also skipped dinner twice to accommodate for lessons and extra contacting time. So, as dad would say, "we built a lot of character" this week.

Those were the highlights for the week!

Madame Gill has a testimony that the book of mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. We are rearranging her date for baptism so that she can go on vacation with her grand kids.

We have been having less and less contact with Norrick. its realy sad. However we will see him tomorrow! :D we are going to change things up a bit in the way that we teach him...... fingers crossed.

We have almost officially lost a less active this week. Good members making/saying really stupid things to her. 

Thankyou for your support! It is good to hear from yall!

Elder Keller

 District meeting, I'm guessing exploring on pday and playing basketball at zone conference...

This was our zone Pday in Toulouse. We had another exchange with the zone leaders...We got to play basketball underneath this super cool bridge next to the college! I met this chinese guy named Yane and we got to be pretty good friends by the end of the day. The chinese elders got his number so hopefully they can start teaching him!

Another missionary posted this on his blog this week:

Anyway! We had another exchange with the district leader, Elder Gossel and Elder Keller. I went with Elder Keller. He is cool. He is just in his fourth transfer. He is in the same group as Elder Brill. Our exchange was pretty "relaxed". We took and hour and a half bus ride to a members house, did service, ate pizza and left. And that was our exchange! haha

Letter from grant: Week 27

Subject: Transfer calls this Friday?

This week we found three ami's that really seem interested and could easily progress towards baptism! On the other hand, there are two members here holding a grudge against the missionaries for something that happened a few transfers ago. A missionary asked to help a member quit smoking and the member took it the wrong way. She started spreading weird rumors about us. I feel like I am in JR high again. So we have spent more time than we would have liked trying to rebuild our relationship with said member. Oh well! Not everyone tries to be more christ like each day! Is what elder Gossel keeps saying.

This week we had a really cool experience! we met people from Bangladesh (yah I have no Idea how to spell that, plus I can't get these blasted internet café computers to spell check. The guy who runs this has so many random programs and some viruses. Please do not send any valuable info across the internet to me. It will likely get stolen!) Anyways, the Bangladesh people were sweet! They can speak in english so we communicated like that. They are here because the husband is somewhat important in the Bangladesh government and he is trying to escape Bangladesh rebels. He even showed us his music videos. Yes, he has multiple music videos of him and many other mostly naked indian ladies. A little weird but what else are you going to do with all that money? After we contacted them, in broken english they said " we make you indian food, you want come?" Both me and elder Gossel said "YEAH!" And trust me, that was some SPICY indian food! He made the BEST curry! And kept apologizing about it too! He kept saying "I find not the good indian spice here. When I find good indian spice I make Spicy curry for you". That curry was really hot. I don't know if I can do hotter curry! haha, I did manage to eat all of it....but at the cost of a few tears.

The missionary work has been going great! We spent all of saturday and sunday going door to door and found the coolest people! The first two people are this mom and daughter from africa! The daughter is half african and speaks near perfect French. They are the BOMB! After we gave our little pitch they were actually excited to hear our message! Not that I should be surprised, I just assumed they were muslim like most africans here. But yeah! We will see them in a few days and give them the first lesson! 

The third person we found actually contacted us...that either means someone is really good, or really crazy. Elder Gossel thinks he is crazy, I think he was just excited to see us! He contacted next to the local park. His first words "hey you, yes, I want to take your lessons or whatever you do" From they way he talked and knew the little details about every other church It sounded like he is searching for the true church! Although he was confusing up all of his apostles. He told us that his name was Saul....like the rock that christ will build his church on. I have hope that he will be a great new investigator. Elder Gossel thinks otherwise. I guess only time will tell!

Madame GIll is still progressing towards baptism. Slow and steady.

Norrick still hasn't gone to church. We may just kidnap him and bring him to church one day.

We played basketball this week! Half way through this sweet muslim guy, maybe thirty, asked if he could play! He wasn't very good at basketball but we got to introduce ourselves and our purpose to him! :D

I love you all! 

gardez le sourire! :P

Elder Keller

Sorry for the weird timing of my emails... from Grant

With paque(easter) everyone in France decided to take monday off so all of the internet cafés were closed....I hope no one freaked out or called the mission office.

The highlight of this week would have been conference and my exchange with the zone leaders! 

For conference we went to a members house with an investigator. We watched conference in english because both the investigator and member want to learn english! However, our member got "tired" after three sessions.... so he kicked us out. So I have not seen any of sunday's sessions...Not really 100percent sure what we are going to do. We might try and go over to the members house later this week.

Exchanges! I got to go on exchange with elder Mcbeth(i think thats how it is spelled). I really enjoyed doing missionary work with Mcbeth in Toulouse! We got to meet a member family and give them cookies! They were so excited to see us. At one point the members asked us if we could help find the missionaries that baptiezed them. Fun right? Horible idea. We hopped on their computer, punched in the elders name, and found his picture! We pulled the picture up, it was him holding a book he wrote....an anti mormon book. The member was just heart broken. She grabbed the mouse and scrolled down to read the article further. He is very anti against the church. Elder Mcbeth and I just kinda looked at eachother really sheepishly. Neither of us knew what to say! After a few seconds of silence the member said "he may have lost his testimony; but I know the church is true and him not being a member isn't going to change me!" If that wasn't the perfect reaction to a bad situation I don't know what is. To stand by your faith and hold fast to what you know. I don't know if this single instance strengthened my testimony more this week or if it was General Conference. Both are pretty close :) 

We are getting our transfer calls a week early. So by the end of next week I can tell Y'all if I am staying or going. :)

avec lamour (with love)

Elder Keller

Week two in Rodez

Subject: Bonjour tout le monde

Week two in Rodez was Sic! Mainly because I wasn't in Rodez for half the week but in Toulouse!(yes Hunter, Toulouse is a city not a music artist; there are plenty of masks though) I was doing a special exchange with the Chinese elders! Yes, I got to teach 8 chinese people! Chinese people are literally the coolest thing of my life! All the Chinese people we taught are from hong kong and took 8 years of english. They are here in France going to business schools. They are literally just smiling ALL the TIME! Josh is going to love it(For everyone who doesn't know Josh, Josh is one of my friends back home who got called to Hong Kong! he is a lucky man)! To open each lesson, to break the ice, we would play a few games of ping pong (I am sure josh is just freaking out right about now(Josh loves ping pong)) We had to teach super simply for most of the chinese investigators because they really don't have any christian base. The chinese missionaries teach the three main lessons in Preach my Gospel just way differently. For instance, our first lesson with Zhao(the kid who is in the picture with me) we explained the Bible. Where it came from. What it talks about. The next lesson we explained who Jesus was. His atonement, why that is important. How to use it. Zhao was super receptive! He loved talking to us! Like I already said, Josh is a lucky guy!

The rest of the week can be summed up with district meeting and continuing to teach madam Gil! She is getting really integrated into the branch now! Almost the entire branch of 25 people have had her at their house! She just invited everyone(like the whole branch) to go and eat at her house for a saturday session of conference! 

Norrick, our other progressing investigator has been good and keeping commitments. But a little flaky on coming to church and with meeting times. But I guess that's the life of a missionary.

I love you all! 

Elder Keller

6 months serving the Lord in France

Subject: OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY

So, Rodez. Rodez has been super exciting for a couple different reasons. First being, we engaged someone to baptism!! Her name is Madame Gill (pronounced jill) she is about forty years old and has looked into like every church. This however is the first church she has fixed a baptismal date for! So that is super exciting! She has almost finished the book of mormon and Doctrine and covenents as well. She is a reader. There is a fixed date, but the ward wants her to move it two weeks so that all the other baptisms in the ward happen on the same day. I'll write back next week with what her finalized date is.

Our next super duper awesome investigator is Norrick, Norrick is black, from Gabon (I dont know where this is) He loves basketball and Thanks to Ben Clifford I know all about current basket ball! hahaha I befriended him super quick when I told him I went to a Jazz game! haha, He has been baptized twice already, but is really open to new information. We have taught him all the lessons twice, but he just doesn't grasp some concepts. So we had him teach us the Plan of Salvation and that really clicked for him! So hopefully we can continue to progress super well with him!

Rodez is also cool because of my new colleague! Elder Gossel! Elder Gossel is German and loves rice and ketchup. With sausage. He loves soccer, surprise. I have learned a lot about how to be a good missionary from Elder Gossel. In fact I started taking notes! hahaha, He just thinks differently than my last two companions and honestly it has really helped! He has this rule wherethat we never do something for more than an hour. (unless its a lesson) so if we have three open hours we might contact for an hour, port for an hour, and then pass by some less actives. We have seen lots of success from this and it helps you stay Focused for the whole three hours.

Also, the way he teaches is good and different. For instance the idea to "have the investigator teach you" was all his idea and it Really helped Norrick out a lot! He also carries UNO cards in his bag so before or after a lesson we play ten minuets of UNO with our investigator. I noticed that when we play UNO it helps our investigator relax and feel comfortable. Especially for Norrick, he can be a little shy sometimes. 

Elder Gossel is also very straight forward. one of my last companions would dance around the Idea that we want to talk about the gospel whereas Elder Gossel is, straight forward. It has actually led to some pretty cool discussions on the road and has actually gotten us to fix of following rendezvous. I think it helps that Elder Gossel has a lot of confidence. He just acts like they are going to say yes to a gospel discussion or he says "what day works for you" instead of "can we come to your house and talk about the gospel" and we just fix so many more appointments than we did in Chalon! I love it! I feel like we are working harder and accomplishing more each day!

About the city itself, Rodez is definitely wealthier than Chalon. All the cars here are nicer and there are a lot more "fashion/clothing" stores. Plus it just feels nicer, the roads are better kept, the gardens look well tended. and the people act much differently here than in Chalon. Contacting people on the road has been fun! Sometimes when you try and stop someone on the road they just turn their head and give you this "who are you" glare and walk off without even saying anything! That never happened in Chalon so the first few times I was a little off set. Sorta spun you could say. But, thanks to Elder Gossel ive learned a few tricks in getting people to stop. :)

Elder Gossel plays Spanish Guitar, I didn't know that was a thing but OH my GOODNESS it is soo cool! he treats the guitar like a different instrument! IT sounds sooo cool hahaha!

This week we are doing a weird exchange and so I will spend today until wednesday in Touloose. (yes like the artist) with a chinese speaking companion. YES I AM FREAKING OUT SO HARD RIGHT NOW! I am super excited! 

Also I am picking up a little German from Elder Gossel!

ich liber dich - I love you :D

Elder kELLER

First transfer for Grant

Elder Keller had his first transfer Monday.  We were happy to hear from him yesterday, even though he does seem a bit tired in his letter and it gets worse in my letter!  But I wanted to add a little bit of my letter that he sent to me.  (it's at the end)  I thought I'd share it because I have loved seeing him grow, not only in the Gospel, but within himself.  Its been a  wonderful blessing to have him in our lives as a missionary.  : )

Subject: Rodez!!!!!!

So, yesterday I spent 12 hours on a train and two hours on a bus. wow. Hence the late email. I have been sent to the city of Rodez! Its presidents favorite city. Apparently, he baptized the very first person in this branch after having 20 investigators at church. I mean not at church, his appartment.

There isn't a branch here yet, we share with the branch in alby. but they are getting a building here this summer! Super sweet! I hope I can stay for a while. 

My new companion. Boy, when I found out he was German I immediately threw a happy fit! He KNOWS HOW TO COOK SAUSAGE!? wow! His name is elder Gossel! and do you know who is last companion was? Elder Smith from the MTC! so thats been fun! although, elder gossel does not eat lots of food. For dinner, a half a bowl of pasta; for breakfast, one packet of oatmeal; for lunch today, couscous. I might starve to death, or get that european bodAYY! hahaha He does make really good food though! 

So when getting off of the train here the first person I met was this man named Mark. Elder Gossel said "we have an ami here who wants to see you" and before I could brace myself this 5'8 big ol iraqian man came up and hugged the life out of me. Mark is literally the happiest person I have ever met! He just loves everyone! He wanted to see elder Smith off and greet the new missionary here so he spent 25 euros to take the train to Toulouse to come and pick me up.... 

Anyways, thats like all I can think of for now. I am a bit tired and the guy next to me at this internet cafe is blasting metal music out of his headphones and it makes it kinda hard to think. good thing that wasn't a run on.

Love you all! 

Elder Keller

Hunter wrote me, yey! I am super excited that hunter is going to Honduras! haha he is going to love it! I feel that for a mission to be successful, or, for you to stay out on a mission you really have to be 100 percent committed and he sounds excited and ready. I remember the first couple days, maybe even the first week thinking " what am I even doing here" and then I found something to fuel my desire, or I found my desire somewhere. I found love for that investigator at the mtc. I LOVED zach. More than elder Brill. and all the sudden it made sense. I am on a mission to give these people the gospel and since then I haven't doubted or asked "why am I here". 

You would love Rodez. Its the prettiest place in the WORLd! it reminds me of that house on the hill scripture! 

Prayer, it really works. It is like a sand timer thing. the ones that you turn upside down and the sand begins to fall. every time you pray about this thing it is like a grain or two of sand. It takes lots of prayers to build up a worthy little pile. Its easier when two or three people are praying for the same thing. Chose something specific. and Pray. :) I know this is true because everytime I have done this it has worked.