Elder Alec Dover

May 28, 2013

It has already been a week!! Goodness time flies here. Much has happened in this last week! So we teach a lot of lessons to keep our amis motivated. We plan to extend 3 baptism engagements this week, one in a few hours actually! It is so fun. I love spending time here teaching, finding, and spending time with the members. Tonight we teach Christopher and he talked with bishop so we hope we can move forward and get his baptism planned, La famille Lavie....We want to know why they dont want to be baptized and also find ways to serve them better. Philippe. Oh Philippe is so sweet!!! We gave him the LDM last monday and by Friday he had nearly finished 1 Néphi! We've read many passages with him and he just loves everything about it. He actually told us the other day that we have inspired him with his poetry. So if you ever see a poem written (anything gospel related) by Philippe Lewi, yeah he was inspired by Elder Stanford and I to write it...We plan to continue teaching him and ask him to be baptized later this week. We spent a lot of time porting, going door to door, and what happened? Rien de tout. Rien de tout.  ça va! We are doing a mighty work and nothing can bring us down!!

We had a ward activity this weekend and it was so fun! The French style barbeque is a shame to society but it was still good bread and sirop and cheese... I loved it! We played dodgeball -no joke- dodgeball. Everyone 12 and up played (even the ward grandma) it was so fun! I also played catch with a rugby ball -they wanted to see me throw it like a football so I did- and also with my frisbee. It was so good. I actually became great friends with our bishop's sons that night because they are probably the only 2 people in the ward that I can actually understand everything they say. Our next ward activity is going to be me teaching everyone how to play American Football!!!!!! So excited! Not a clue how to do that in French but ill find a way.

Good times already. I love them all. One last thing I really liked this week. We had zone training in Aix en Provence this week and one of the zone leaders shared his favorite quote:

 "I believe I am ALWAYS divinely guided. I believe I will ALWAYS take the right road. I believe that God will ALWAYS make a way, even when there seems to be no way." -William Robert Andersen

I have no clue who this guy is but that mes amis is a wonderful and brilliant thing to remember about missionary work. God hasn't and doesn't nor will he ever call missionaries to fail. He has called us to succeed. I need to remember that sometimes but it is always good to remember that I should always have faith and hope that miracles will happen. 

Je vous aime!!

Elder Alec Dover, France

May 21, 2013

Bonjour mes amis!

Wow its been a crazy crazy week and im so upset i forgot to bring my camera to the library so i could show yall a bit. So I guess youve heard that Im serving in Vitrolles, France right now. It is such a beautiful area. I'm seriously in love with it. Our secteur is kinda big so we have a car!! Everyone is so jealous because we have one and they cant! oh well they'll live. I just have to survive since i'm the designated driver since I have a valid drivers license. Boy do I wish I really learned how to drive stick...

So ive been in France for a week. What the heck?! I love it. The morning we left the MTC was quite eventful. A sister in my zone had seriously overpacked and needed places to even out her suitcase weight for the flights. Lucky me was the only one under weight in all 3 of my bags so I ended up carrying about an extra 50lbs of Soeur Wood's stuff. It was quite the event. I'll send pictures next week. SO the flight was soo long but good. When we arrived we met pres and sis roney. they are so great. We spent the next few days in a hotel in lyon-because we had some legality things to do. J'ai un histoire à propros légalité!! So they did a basic physical to make sure im healthy enough to live in France for the next year.. So I hopped on the scale and this poor french woman FLIPPED. I dont know how else to describe it. She went nuts. All in all she thought I had a severe case of Diabetes, accused me of never exercising in my life, told me not to eat. My word. I seriously was trying so so hard not to laugh. So she told me where I could go to check up on my diabetes and she actually PRICKED MY FINGER to test me. She didnt warn me at all just stabbed my finger then ran a test and was like O! Vous n'avez pas le diabetes... I was like I could have told you that... My finger is bleeding!! Haha that was fun.

Vitrolles is Sweet. We have one engagé -ami committed to baptism- named Charles. Very sweet and humble man. Im so excited for him. We also have many other amis we are teaching. Christopher is just waiting for Bishops approval to be baptized so we teach him to help him stay motivated, Phillippe we taught the first lesson yesterday and he LOVED IT. He went crazy. He is so cool. Everyone tries so hard to include me because they know I cant understand what is being said about 75 percent of the time. Its getting better. Oh and Philippe is a pretty successful artist and poet... thought that was worth mentioning.. Speaking of artists we taught another today named Robert. I loved his paintings he had all around the house SO SICK. If I get closer to him i might be tempted to have him paint me something. Finally, the Lavie famille. They are eternal investigators apparently. Members who havent been baptized. I think its because the Mom doesnt see the whole reason why baptism is so important. Her kids do but I dont think she does. Theres a few other amis I havent met but I will this week.

Contacting? OUI! first time out contacting, it was pouring. It was so fun. We got a lot of "C'est pourquoi?!" and NON MERCI's but I had fun knocking around in the rain. So far we still havent found anyone new but we will in time. The ward is small but the members are STRONG. My word they are so determined to live the gospel and they are not ashamed of it. I love them all. They all tried so hard to say things in english for me and it was so good seeing them try so hard. I hope I can understand them more so I can talk to them. They are so great!

It has been a good week and im anxious for more!

--

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

Sister Jenessa Dover

May 19, 2013
Kumusta Pamilya at Kaibigan,

I made it through my first week of the Philippines! Yay!!! And man, a mission is hard work haha! I seriously had no idea but its been amazing :) 

Right now we have over 30 investigators but dont get too excited, many are not progressing and its been a little hard. But we have a mother, Sister Michelle Zembrano and her 2 children who are really excited for baptism and go to church and they truly are progressing! We also have a young man who is 14 and he's just amazing! He reads the scriptures all the time and studies the lessons before we teach it and he is so excited to be baptized. But its so sad, since hes a minor his parents wont let him get baptized and hes so sad! But hes so ready! We have a goal to teach his parents since they are less active and see what we can do.There are so many things that happened this week like me falling through a bamboo bridge and more investigators but I hope you know I love you all and miss you! Stay strong! 

Mahal Kita, 

Sister Jenessa Dover