Monday, March 7, 2016

Week 44 Zone Conference and Miracles

                                              The Genève zone after zone training :):)

Hello everyone! An absolutely incredible week of work here in Genève!
This week was full of miracles and we are grateful for what happened.
Here's the recap:

Tuesday: I'm skipping Monday. I'm only going to put Monday's from now
on if it's worth talking about haha. so on Tuesday we woke up and
drove to Lyon and went to MLC. It's basically where all of the zone
leaders go one time per transfer to get taught by the assistants and
President Brown about what we can focus on this transfer. I never
explained it, but at the beginning of this transfer president gave us
the challenge of finding 187 new engagés (number of people engaged to
baptism) before D. Todd Christofferson comes on March 15! Do we talked
a lot about how to do that and how to work with families. Anyways, a
lot of information and am too lazy to write it all haha sorry. But it
was great to see so many people I know at the conference! I'll send a
few pictures!
Wednesday: haha I know when I sum up Thursday it will be long, so this
will be short and to the point. We had 3 straight people drop their
rendez vous and so we had some contacting to do haha. Then we gathered
our notes from MLC and talked about how we could present them to the
zone! Voilà! Also a kid named Alex randomly called us and wanted to
take the lessons from us and we set up a rendez vous for Thursday!
Thursday: Honestly the craziest day ever!! We engaged 3 different
people to baptism in 3 different rendez vous! So we started off with
Alex in the morning at 10:00. He broke his legs awhile ago so he is
still recovering, so we just skyped him! Haha he already knew sooo
much about the church it was so cool. He loved the retab and the
spirit was awesome and he committed to be baptized on April 16th! So
then after Alex we went over to the Mueller Family and taught their
friend with them. The Muellers are honestly incredible! Their is a
Mormon message about them and I'm not sure if it's in English but
basically Frere Mueller has been blind for a very long time but he is
the happiest person on the planet, and his wife is soooo incredible!
(Haha funny side story: on Sunday the Ward was coordinating rides to
the temple and they needed one more person to drive and Frere mueller
was like "no problem I'll do it!" And the whole Ward died of laughter
haha). So, their friends name is Vidalina and she is a very nice girl
and her and soeur mueller have known each other for a long time. So we
taught her the plan of salvation and she loved it because her parents
are very sick right now and she is worried about them. She fixed a
baptismal date for March 26th! So then the crazy miracle...there is a
member here in Genève who is kind of known for being a little
crazy/weird. Last Sunday he gave us a referral of some names to call
and we didn't take them very seriously, but we still decided to call
them anyways not expecting a lot. One of the guys said we could come
over! So we went over to his house and we told Ali (his name) who gave
us his referral and he was like "that man is crazy I told him to stop
talking to me etc" haha so we quickly changed the subject. He said
from the beginning "I am not going to be convinced and be baptized."
Haha so We started talking about families and found out he had a
daughter and a wife and that his relationship with them was really
struggling. Anyways, we talked about the temple and then we watched
"strength beyond my own" (which is the temple video) and we told him
to think about his family, past and present and future, while he
watched it. Halfway through he just started bawling. The spirit really
touched him. He expressed to us that he feels like a failure in life
with his family and he just needs peace. We talked to him about
eternal families and how Jesus Christ can help him and we testified of
it. It was one of the first times in my mission where I've seen how
much the spirit can touch someone. We asked him if one day he would
like to go to the temple and he said yes. We  Then we talked about
baptism and he wants to be baptized April 16th :) the spirit honestly
touched him so much. It was a great miracle.
Friday: so Friday morning the whole Genève zone (our zone includes 4
companionships from here in Switzerland, and then 7 others from France
in Annemasse, Salève, Annecy, Gex, St. Genis, Chambery) met here in
Genève for zone training! Elder Barnes and I presented to the zone on
a variety of things ranging from what we are going to do when D. Todd
Christofferson comes, to how to find people and engage them to
baptism. Haha we had such a fun time with our zone and i honestly love
our zone so much! There are such talented missionaries here and I'm so
happy to be with them! So after zone training we all made chili cheese
dogs and had zone lunch! Then we went and had to d a few random
things, and then we taught Alex by skype again and went over the plan
of salvation and he loved it. He is so prepared and is progressing so
well. We are super happy for him. After the lesson we drove to Salève
where we started our exchange with them! I was with elder price in
Salève and elder Barnes was with elder Duncan in Genève! Haha elder
price is the man. He's from Layton High and played basketball there
and we talked all night long about people we knew and stuff. It was
super fun haha.
Saturday: Saturday Elder Price and I hit the streets of Salève and did
some quality contacting for a few hours haha. We had some pretty good
conversations but a few people were petty rude to say the least ha.
Then we went and ported for awhile in a village right by the French
Alps! It was one of the coolest villages I've ever been to. So we
basically just spent a lot of time finding people to teach which was
great. We knocked on someone's door who used to know the bishop, so
she was kind of interested and they are going to pass her in a few
days! Elder Price is such a stud I honestly learned so much from him
and we had a great talk about life on the way back to Genève after the
exchange. He's a great missionary. Then we switched back up at the
church in Genève and elder Barnes and I did some area book work
because we had a tombez vous and we hadn't had any time to do any area
book work on the last few days because we had been so busy!
Sunday: Sunday was awesome! So at church we had 3 Amis
there...Sultani, Ali, and Johnathan. It was the first time that Ali
had come to church and I sat by him and he LOVED it. The members just
ate him up and he said he'd never felt anything like it before! It was
so awesome. After sacrament I looked at him and asked if he thought it
was true, and he said "Yes, this is something special." He had such a
great experience! We are seeing him tomorrow afternoon. And elder
Barnes sat by Sultani and he had a great time as well :) the members
here are so incredible! So then later in the day we weekly planned for
a little bit and then went over to Soeur Ischola's house and ate with
her and the sister missionaries in our ward! Then we went back to the
church and put in zone numbers!

Matthew 16: 25-26
This scripture really touched me this week and changed the way I will
look at my mission and I think these verses may be my favorite right
now. I love the analogy of a man gaining the whole world, but losing
his own soul. What good doth it really profit someone if he indeed
does gain the whole world, but loses his own soul? Think about it.

Elder Wade

Matthew 16: 25-26
 25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it:
 and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.

 26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
 or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?



 Exchange with elder price in Salève!

 The Mueller couple :) our amie Vidalina is on the far side!

  I saw my trainer elder Boynton this week at MLC! :)

First time eating Mexican food in like 10 months! 
Thank you Austin couple. I forgot how good it is haha.

 Cool photo in Genève today!


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