The Great Audible

Bonjour!

This past week was very hectic at times but we were able to hold it together and produce greatness like always. Ha Ha

On Tuesday we had exchanges in Paris with the zone leaders. It went very well. I got the cool opportunity to work a 3 hour visitor center shift. Basically there is a small little visitors center next to the Paris chapel. It is right in one of the most populated places in Paris so we get tons of people passing by it everyday. As a shift worker you sit there with your companion waiting for someone to walk in. It's quite relaxing and it switches things up a bit. We were able to teach this one man who was attracted by the beautiful paintings of Jesus hung inside. It was a pretty cool experience. 

Wednesday we had interviews and district meeting with president. It was a little nerve racking but I was as cool as a cucumber and things went well. Wednesday was kind of terrible though because we got news from the Lille Stake presidency that they would not be able to attend the event they planned on Saturday. If you remember the Lille stake presidency had told us to host a ginormous missionary day about a month ago. They came to our branch, hyped everyone up, we had called in the whole zone (28 missionaries), and had been planning for days on what we were to do. Well when we got the news that they weren't coming, train tickets had already been bought for all 28 missionaries, so we were forced to make some drastic changes. I felt like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, or even the great Romo at the line calling a huge audible during a game winning drive with 5 seconds left on the play clock. It was hectic but after a solid day of planning we were able to put together plenty of power points, charts, and spreadsheets that saved Saturday. 

So Saturday, the big day. Everyone arrived, except the 8 missionaries that missed their train in Paris (a zone activity can never go just perfect), and things just worked out. We assigned 16 missionaries to go work in neighborhoods surrounding Charleville, while 10 were to stay doing street contacting. We had two chauffeurs driving missionaries to and from drop off locations in different neighborhoods. To keep the details to a minimum, hard work was done, we were able to find lots of new investigators, and people left happy. I am content with how it all worked out and it is safe to say that we might be busy during the next few days contacting all these referrals. To complete the NFL analogy, the audible was a success, the Hail Mary worked against the blitz, and the Charleville missionaries came home with a victory. 

Have a great week! Love y'all. God Bless

Elder Hein

The Zone (minus 4 Elders who had to leave early and 2 Sisters who didn't come)

The 7 Neighborhoods

A chart that shows companionships, cities, times, and other stuff (excuse the bad hand writing, that was all Elder Silva) 

Raclette

Bonjour! 

Emmanuel and the boyz!

This past week was another week of solid contacting! We had
only a few appointments set up so we hit the streets hard. One of the
appointments we had was with a man named Landry. We met him on the
street the week prior and had an appointment with home last week. It
went really well. He is refugee from the Central African Republic. It
has been a while since I last checked up on the rebel forces in the
CAR but apparently there has been a huge civil war-ish thing going on.
Landry was getting persecuted so he fled the country and is now trying
to reunite with his family who still lives there. He really like what
we had to teach about the restoration and would like to see us again.

On Wednesday we were able to help a man from the ward with his home
improvement projects. He has 3 homes all right next to each other and
he is trying to connect them all. Elder Silva and I spent most of the
time getting rid of old tile with a drill. We are going to hire out
our services soon.

On Thursday I hit my one year mark! It was a great day that pinnacled
when I received a package from my Aunt. She sent me a raclette machine
and a block of cheese! It was such a great surprise. Elder Silva and I
have been eating so much raclette. It reminds me of Sundays back at
the Hein Home.

General Conference went really well. My favorite talk was from
President Eyring in the Sunday Morning Session.

Sunset after a long day of contacting.

Have a great week. God Bless.

Elder Hein

Very Short

Bonjour! 

Rene's baptism

I apologize in advance because this is going to be a fairly short update. After Rene's baptism, we had a couple investigators drop us, and Emmanuel moved 12 kilometers away so it was just a boring week filled with contacting. I guess I shouldn't use the word boring, because I had a blast, but there is nothing new and exciting, just the same old missionary work. Haha. With that being said we did find a few people this week who seemed to show an interest in the gospel. We will see where they go within the next few weeks. 

One cool thing we did this week was, during one of our lunch hours, we went with a friend of ours, Davy, into the famous ardennes forest. Honestly I dont know what all the hoopla is about. It was just an average forest. I would rather chill in the majestic Russell Creek (for those of you not living in the best city in America, its the creek behind our house in Plano). 

We also did a lot of planning with the zone leaders and Lille stake presidency this past week for October 8th. We got some great ideas for this tremendous finding day we are going to do. 

I hit my one year mark in the field this week. Time flies by. I honestly am flabbergasted that a year ago I was just entering the Madrid MTC. I love being out here and I miss y'all.

Have a wonderful week! God Bless

Rene's baptism

Elder Hein

Another Blog - Spain Crew

Bonjour! 

My Spain MTC Crew - Elder Nagloo, Elder Lamothe, Sister Cornetta

This past week was really good. It started off on Monday
night with another gift from God. After finishing up emails, the first
man we talk to on the road is this super swaggy 21 year old man from
Gabon. He informed us that he had arrived in Charleville 2 days prior
and that he was actually in the process of looking for a church. Well,
that is music to a young missionaries ears. We got his contact info,
showed him the church, and now are praying that we can see him again
in the near future.

God hit us again with another super cool new investigator on Wednesday
when we were at the train station getting tickets. Some older fellow
came up to us and asked if we were Mormons. He said that him and his
wife travel a lot and they see missionaries everywhere. He mentioned
that while in salt lake a couple of years ago they did a lot of
genealogy research and that he would like to talk to us more about
genealogy and our church. He even invited us over to have a dinner at
his home.

Other than that a lot of our time this week was spent outside of
Charleville. On Friday and Saturday we were in Paris for a lot of
meetings with President Babin and the other mission leaders. He wanted
to set a new mission goal (double the baptisms by the end of the year)
so he called all of us in for some really long meetings. The coolest
part to the whole weekend was the fact that the Spain MTC buds all got
to meet up again. All 4 of us have become either Zone Leaders,
District Leaders, or STLs. We had a really good time talking about the
good times had at the Madrid MTC.

Saturday we were able to baptize Rene. It was quite the experience. We
faced a lot of unforeseen obstacles but despite all we were able to
get him baptized. When we arrived in Reims (where we were doing the
baptism), I walked downstairs and saw that the Sisters were
frantically filling up buckets of water and throwing them in the font.
The recounted to me that they had turned on the font earlier in the
morning but they forgot to block the drain. When they returned the
font had not been filled. So we spent the next 45 minutes running
around the chapel with buckets of water trying to fill this font. Also
we didn't take into account the fact that Rene is in a wheel chair and
the font is downstairs. Haha. Thanks to the strength of some of the
men and the courage of Rene, he was able to walk down the stairs
without a problem. When it finally came to baptism time Elder Silva, I
and Brother Carpantier, all had to be in the font to help Rene get
baptized. It was something I never thought I would see, or even
participate in, but I am thankful for the opportunity.

To finish off this email I would like to tell y'all the name that the
Nigerians gave me. I have no idea how to spell it but it is pronounced
I-O-May-Dey. It means my joy has come. I expect to be greeted by that
when I come home.
Love Y'all. Have a wonderful week. God Bless

Elder Hein

Another Blog - Spain Crew

Bonjour! 

My Spain MTC Crew - Elder Nagloo, Elder Lamothe, Sister Cornetta

This past week was really good. It started off on Monday
night with another gift from God. After finishing up emails, the first
man we talk to on the road is this super swaggy 21 year old man from
Gabon. He informed us that he had arrived in Charleville 2 days prior
and that he was actually in the process of looking for a church. Well,
that is music to a young missionaries ears. We got his contact info,
showed him the church, and now are praying that we can see him again
in the near future.

God hit us again with another super cool new investigator on Wednesday
when we were at the train station getting tickets. Some older fellow
came up to us and asked if we were Mormons. He said that him and his
wife travel a lot and they see missionaries everywhere. He mentioned
that while in salt lake a couple of years ago they did a lot of
genealogy research and that he would like to talk to us more about
genealogy and our church. He even invited us over to have a dinner at
his home.

Other than that a lot of our time this week was spent outside of
Charleville. On Friday and Saturday we were in Paris for a lot of
meetings with President Babin and the other mission leaders. He wanted
to set a new mission goal (double the baptisms by the end of the year)
so he called all of us in for some really long meetings. The coolest
part to the whole weekend was the fact that the Spain MTC buds all got
to meet up again. All 4 of us have become either Zone Leaders,
District Leaders, or STLs. We had a really good time talking about the
good times had at the Madrid MTC.

Saturday we were able to baptize Rene. It was quite the experience. We
faced a lot of unforeseen obstacles but despite all we were able to
get him baptized. When we arrived in Reims (where we were doing the
baptism), I walked downstairs and saw that the Sisters were
frantically filling up buckets of water and throwing them in the font.
The recounted to me that they had turned on the font earlier in the
morning but they forgot to block the drain. When they returned the
font had not been filled. So we spent the next 45 minutes running
around the chapel with buckets of water trying to fill this font. Also
we didn't take into account the fact that Rene is in a wheel chair and
the font is downstairs. Haha. Thanks to the strength of some of the
men and the courage of Rene, he was able to walk down the stairs
without a problem. When it finally came to baptism time Elder Silva, I
and Brother Carpantier, all had to be in the font to help Rene get
baptized. It was something I never thought I would see, or even
participate in, but I am thankful for the opportunity.

To finish off this email I would like to tell y'all the name that the
Nigerians gave me. I have no idea how to spell it but it is pronounced
I-O-May-Dey. It means my joy has come. I expect to be greeted by that
when I come home.
Love Y'all. Have a wonderful week. God Bless

Elder Hein

Staying in Charleville for another 6 weeks

Bonjour! 

Lille Town Center

Well transfer news is in and I am staying in Charleville for
another, and most likely the last, 6 weeks! I get to stay with my
companion Elder Silva, which I am super excited about. Charleville
will have to face our shenanigans for another 6 weeks, haha. 

This week started out slow. Week 6's in the mission are comparable to dead weeks
in the schooling system. Everyone is just anxiously awaiting the
transfer news that comes out on Saturday, and are ready to kick start
their efforts again for week one. Despite that, Silva and I were able
to still put together a great week. The first couple of nights were
spent in the humble homes of some of our Nigerian friends learning how
to make different Nigerian desserts. We basically just made deep fried
dough balls, but they were good and fun to make. We also spent a lot
of time with Rene and Claire this week trying to get him ready for his
baptismal interview. We must have done a good job because on Friday
the Zone Leaders came and he passed with flying colors. He will be
baptized this Saturday in Reims (they have a baptismal font and we
don't). 

On Saturday we made the three hour journey out to Lille to be
there for stake conference on Sunday. The Lille elders harbored us in
their apartment and took us around town contacting on Saturday. It was
a lot of fun and it made me realize how much I miss the big city
missionary feel of Brussels. One of the missionaries, Elder Conley, is
from Toronto so evidently we were talking about hockey all day. It was
wonderful. We got some pretty big news from the stake conference.
Mathew Bennasar (a 70) and the other stake leaders in Lille want to do
an "operation save Charleville" on October 8th. (Charleville is a
really small branch and within a few months we might only have 6
members). What does this entail? Well different leaders and members
from the entire stake are going to be coming to Charleville to help
the missionary efforts for that entire day. We have just invited the
whole zone of Paris est (35ish missionaries) and the APs to come help
us that day. It will be a lot of fun and I am excited to see that many
people in Charleville. We might double the population. Haha.

Rene

District Picture

Have a good week. God Bless

Elder Hein

47 Street Lessons

Park in Reims

Bonjour!



This past week was really a fun week. As a District we decided
to set the goal of hitting 45 lessons in the street, which is about
double of the mission average, so we were on the streets a whole lot
but it was fun. To help with the efforts, Elder Silva and I decided to
eat nothing but Ratatouille during week, and as wonderful of an idea
as we thought that would be, by Sunday we were dying for some other
food. Haha. We ate somewhere around 15 kilograms of vegetables, and a
lot of couscous during the week for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It
was good but I don't think I will be touching ratatouille for at least
a month. Haha.

One cool little miracle we had while contacting  we met a jolly
black man who hadn't seen missionaries for 10 years that wanted to be
taught. He said he had been reading the Book of Mormon and that he
knows it comes from God. Hopefully we will be able to help him
progress in the gospel.

On Saturday we went to Reims to attend the sister's multicultural
night. I gave another amazing presentation about the great state of
Texas and I got them all to sing "Deep in the Heart of Texas". They
all know how to say howdy and y'all as well. Haha. It was a lot of
fun.

Sunday the national bocci ball tournament was going on in Charleville.
Yeah, I know, Charleville is really getting famous. Haha. Silva and I
went and watched a couple matches. It was a lot of fun. If there is
one thing we can take from the French culture it would be bocci ball.
It is such a fun game and doesn't take much effort. I can envision it
now, bocci ball at college football tailgates, haha.

In other news, if any of y'all remember Hervé from when I was serving
Tours, he is getting baptized this weekend.

Oh yeah, we were able to surpass our goal and hit 47 other lessons.
That was a really good feeling after lots of hard work throughout the
week.

Our presentation

Hope everyone has a wonderful week. God Bless

Elder Hein