Happy Memorial Day. Another great day to be a citizen of the United States of America.
Transfer time, transfer time, transfer time! And the news is in. I'm out of Villeneuve D'Ascq and heading up to Namur come Wednesday morning. It's a medium sized city in Belgium, so I'm back up to the cold north ... just in time for summer. My companion is named Elder Rodriguez, and I'll be living in an apartment with Elder Price again. Par-tay. I went there a few times when I was in the office, and the city is nice enough.
Since I'm being moved with only one and a half transfers left, time is going to fly by. Elder Walton is already in limbo and waiting for his plane to take off in T-minus 3 days, so he's what we call the walking dead. He's already started the official giveaway pile in the apartment, and I've already nabbed a cool watch. I'm gonna need to find a new running buddy.
In other news, we actually did some missionary work this week as well. Like normal. We went out with the bishop on Tuesday night to find a part-member family, and we had to spend some time hunting down the address. We came to a big gate and an intercom with 25 or so apartment numbers. Bishop: "Well, we have no idea which one is his. I guess we'll have to pick a random one. If I get this right, you both owe me 2 euros." Riiiing. No answer. Me: "Well, my turn. If I get this right, you're buying us ice cream tonight." Riiiing. No answer. We snuck through the gate behind a car coming in, then found out that Bishop actually was right on his first try. He's been spreading the news that he won and I owe him money, but he won't take the dang 2 euros. Even though they weren't home, we got a call from a recent convert asking if he could see us and the bishop at the church right away. Talk about the right place at the right time.
We taught a lesson about service to our 9 year old investigator in Belgium this week. At the end of the lesson, we asked him what he would do to serve. He suggested that his service would be inviting us to his house to clean out his basement and take things to the dump. We couldn't reject after just teaching a lesson about service, so we went back the next day in normal clothes to help clean up. The day was ultra-packed, so we had to plan out our buses, trains, metros, cars and walking time down to the minute. I had it all planned out perfectly, until one of the buses decided to take the day off and not circulate for the day. Those dang strikes will get ya every time. We had to take a hit and cancel our rendez-vous.
We didn't have too much to do the following day, so we decided to go up to a neighborhood to do some tracting. The usual. Getting off the bus, we always cross the street to go left, but I had the distinct thought to go right that time. After starting down the street, a lady in an electric wheelchair rolled up to us with a hairless dog. As I was learning what a hairless dog feels like, the lady explained that she's a member, but hasn't been to church in 15 years or so. She was really nice and is letting us come back soon to have some lessons with her.
Right after saying goodbye to her, the next two people we contacted gave us their phone numbers, and one of them let us teach him right there on a park bench. We had to turn around to go home by that time, and while waiting at the bus stop, a lady came up to talk to us. She had talked with the missionaries a year or two ago, but hasn't had contact since then. We've been over to teach her family two times since then, and they're all awesome. Going right was definitely a good choice!
Other than that, we taught some Muslim dudes we found at the university, had a good lesson with "H" and "D", and found a scary house protected by at least 200 garden gnomes. TWO HUNDRED. Elder Tai has a sense of humor and decided to knock on it, but luckily, no one was home.
Don't let the gnomes get you.
Elder Wilson
