It is hot!

Bonjour! 

The Voges

This past week was incredibly hot. The french people use this word called the "canicule" to describe when an immense heat wave hits and that happened this past week. This is just bad news for a missionary because when it is hot everyone stays inside. Contacting was really hard this week. We often times returned home sweaty and empty handed. Looking on the bright side though this heat should be a good prep for returning to a Texas summer. 

Other highlights of the week were when we met some tourists from Plano! That was really strange. If you ever went to the Chase bank next to Plano West you probably met the mother. She had worked there for over 25 years. 

For my Swiss family, I had Rivella this week for the first time in a while! There has been a huge advertising campaign for it in Alsace so I had to go get some! It was as good as I remember it and it brought me back to the fun family reunions we had in Switzerland. 

Tuesday we went into Strasbourg for a zone finding day and activity. It went really well despite the fact that the public transport shut down for the day on strike. I also got to run into Sister Walters (my cousin) again! We got to chat for a little bit more than at Zone Conference and it was great to catch up on things. Saturday we spent the day in St Die with the district doing some finding. It was a day full of door to door but we saw a ton of success in areas we usually don't. Also, St Die is in a region called the Voges which is incredibly beautiful. It just a bunch of cities on the sides of mountains. It reminded me a lot of Switzerland so needless to say I had a great time! 

Have a great week. God Bless

Elder Hein

District Photos

Last week's zone conference with the giant cake

12 Pounds of Cake

Bonjour! 

Another week down and what a week it was. Tuesday we had Zone Conference in Nancy. That was incredibly fun. It was our last zone conference with President Babin so everyone in the zone decided to chip in some money to buy him a 6 kilo (12 pounds) kouglehopf cake (I don't think I spelled that right). The kouglehopf is a regional specialty and is basically like a really dry bundt cake covered in powdered sugar. Anyways this thing was huge, and he was very appreciative. I also got to see Chelsea (my cousin) at the conference. She is doing well and her french really impressed me. 

Wednesday the St Die Elders came in to Colmar for an exchange. I have never laughed harder on an exchange. It was so much fun. They brought their car in, so we took advantage of it and did some tracting and less active hunting in areas that were unreachable before. We somehow stumbled into Eguisheim, a small village that was voted prettiest village in France by the french people a few years back. It was incredible. Right up next to the mountains, surrounded by vineyards, with castles scattering the skyline. 

Friday was one of the highlights of the week. We had a first appointment with some guy named Nathan we met earlier in the month. He is a 30 year old french man who works in the town hall who attended the baptism of his aunt and was interested in learning more. So he fixed the appointment for this Japanese restaurant. We were a little worried about teaching in a restaurant just because it's not the easiest place to whip out your scriptures, or pamphlets but it actually turned out to be stellar. He really enjoyed the visit and wants to have his own personal relationship with God. It's something he has been searching for all his life. Later in the day we met with Thierry, the golden boy. He told us that he had finished the Book of Mormon and has been doing a ton of research about us online. He keeps in contact with temple square missionaries and they also help answer his questions. We taught the restoration, which he already knew, and answered his questions. He wants to get baptized but wants to take it slow. He did tell us that he knew coffee was going to be a problem. He loves that stuff. Fast forward to last night though when he texted us saying that God has been changing his life and he has severely reduced his coffee intake. Apparently he is disgusted by the flavor now. God is good. 

Elder Pixton and I have been getting along well. The work is great and we are happy. Have a great week! God Bless!

Elder Hein

Eguisheim

Eguisheim

Statue of Liberty

Bonjour! 

We started off last week by going to the Statue of Liberty...but in Colmar. Yeah, apparently the guy who made the original is from Colmar so they have a smaller one in the middle of a roundabout. It's pretty cool. Ill attach some photos. 

Wednesday we went out to Strasbourg for District Meeting and lunch. It was a good time. We spent some time later in the day baking cookies for members. I impressed myself with how they tasted. The branch invites everyone to do a small task every week to prepare for the sacrament meeting subjects. This week's task was service, hence why we made the cookies, but it turned out to be a good occasion to meet with some less actives. 

Thursday through Saturday was pretty much straight finding. Walking the streets and knocking doors is the life. Which brings me to one of the craziest miracles of my mission. So flash back to one of our first days in Colmar, we were just out contacting when all of a sudden a man, named Thierry, stopped us asking for a Book of Mormon. Forcibly we gave him one but he was in a hurry so when he rambled his number off to us we didn't get it down properly. That evening we tried all sorts of combinations of the same number in attempt to get a hold of him but none of them worked. This past week we fasted and prayed to have new investigators to get the work moving here. Saturday morning we get a text from the church headquarters giving us a referral of a man named Thierry. He wants a missionary visit and Book of Mormon in Portuguese for his friend. The number he gave was pretty close to the numbers we tried to call two weeks ago so we knew that this was the guy. We were excited to say the least. We met up with him in the afternoon giving him the Book of Mormon and a brief explanation of it and the restoration. That evening we texted him to confirm numbers and he proceeded to tell us that he has already read half the book, he can't stop, and the something is telling him it is the truth. Since then we have had a few more conversations over text and he is extremely excited to learn about us. Now I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch but this is looking pretty good. 

God is good, that's all I can say. Well I hope everyone else had a good week. I know I shouldn't be counting down but 9 weeks left... crazy. 

Can't wait to see y'all again. God Bless!

Elder Hein

A Gondola Full of Missionaries

Bonjour! 

Colmar Boat Ride

Last pday we had the opportunity to go to Strasbourg to be with the District. It was incredibly fun. We went to this buffet at night called Flam's which serves all you can eat flammenkuchen, an Alsatian specialty. Basically it's like pizza with a really thin crunchy crust and instead of red sauce they use white sauce. The toppings range from a variety of things but are usually cheese, ham, and/or vegetables. It was delicious and incredibly filling. 

Tuesday through Friday was a lot of proselyting.  It was good, we learned during the week that the amount of tourists in the city goes down enough to where we can do effective contacting. We actually had 9 appointments set up but only 2 of them went through. Haha. 

Those two appointments were pretty cool though. One was with a Malagasy man named Olivier and the other was with someone named Ali. They both now have Book of Mormons and will hopefully read them. 

The direction asking from tourists still hasn't stopped. Speaking of which we had some old German women come up to us asking us where the post office was. I pulled out a map and realized it was really far away but because that was too hard for me to explain in German I could only tell them to take their next right. Haha. I hope they found it eventually. 

Saturday we had the district come in to Colmar to do some finding for us. It rained all day but we still had some pretty good success. I got to go contacting with my MTC companion Elder Nagloo for the first time. That was really fun. Additionally, for one of our breaks throughout the day we took a gondola ride down the "petit Venice". I will attach some pictures but I'm sure 8 missionaries on a gondola would have been a sight to see for some tourists. Haha. It was overall a terrific week. 

God has been blessing us with people to teach and I am happy. Have a good week! God Bless

Elder Hein

Colmar

Strasbourg

Another pic of the Colmar boat ride

Colmar!!!

Colmar

Bonjour! 

This past week was terrific. 

Tuesday we took our pday and said our final goodbyes to the members in Lille. 

Wednesday I said goodbye to Elder Mansfield (which was really weird after having been together for 3 transfers) and met Elder Pixton at the train station. The worst part about whitewashing into an area is Transfer day. Usually when you get transferred you have a new companion that can help you with your bags. Unfortunately when you are whitewashing your companion also has his bags, leaving you on your own with all your bags to haul around the crowded, sweaty metros and trains of Paris. It's terrible. Anyways... we made it to Colmar after what seemed like a never ending train ride and it's been terrific ever since. 

Colmar

This city is incredible. Easily one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to in my life. I'll attach some pictures but I am literally blown away everyday. The unfortunate thing about this is that the city is full tourists. This makes it literally impossible to do contacting in the downtown areas because everyone is either a Chinese tourist or from Germany. It doesn't help that we are wearing our white tshirts and ties because everyone thinks we are tour guides. It's ridiculous. We've had countless people come up to us and just start asking us for directions in German. It's helped me to get to know the city well but is really annoying when contacting. Anyways, we have started to do a lot more door to door stuff because it seems to be the only effective way to find for now. It's really too bad because I love contacting, so to end a mission doing door to door stuff wasn't exactly what I had in mind but I'll go hard nonetheless. 

The members here are incredible. We had 57 people at church today and apparently it's because everyone heard missionaries were back in Colmar. The members are so excited. We are hailed as gods. They picked us up from the train station, gave us groceries, invited us to a BBQ last Saturday, made a branch mission plan, started having branch council again, and invited us over for lots of dinner appointments in the coming weeks. It's crazy to see how not having missionaries for such a long time can really effect the way you see things. The member base is really made up of one family that accounts for 30 members in the branch. They are all extremely nice. 

I'm excited, Pixton is excited, the members are excited, and we are working hard. It's a recipe for success. We have already been blessed with new and old investigators and things can only go up. It's great. 

Have a great week. God Bless

Elder Hein

Family we served in Lille

Door-to-Door in Colmar