Le Miracle 8.2

Howdy y'all! Ha that is what i said to everyone on sunday as i bore my testimony. They all thought it was funny. Saint Raphaël! A good chunk of the branch here works for the military and comes from a pacific island called Tahiti. They basically look like tongans that speak french. It is so fun here! 

This week (since we have nobody to teach) we spent a lot of time talking to people. Porting and contacting! It is a lot of fun and really need to be motivated to do that all day.. Especially when the other équip here is doing the same thing. Ha. 

Well we got to move into our own apartment this week so i dont have to sleep on the floor anymore! ..apparently my apartment had problems so the office told them to move out..but we inspected it with the proprietère and settled the problems and now we are living in another sweet apartment with AIR CONDITIONING!!!!! (yes it is actually hot enough to need that..)

Saturday was by far my favorite this whole week. I called an excommunicated member friday night to see if he wanted to play basketball. He called me back around21h00 and said that he was free and liked the idea and suggested the next morning (saturday) at 10h30. We accepted. We showed up and there was a crew of 8 tahitiens ready to play. We played soccer to warm up and then they just said to us "elders we are from tahiti..we need to eat." so we ate lunch and then played basketball! Gosh that was so fun. it was so hot too. We played forever and the best part was that most of the crowd was less actives and nonmembers.. the worst part was that they are all from the military so they are in really good shape and destroyed us.. haha that was so much fun. We fixed that to work every week!  

Sorry no pictures. I havent had time to take any and our cyber cafe stinks so i cant send them from here anyways. Bonne semaine! 

Les Missionnaires

Elder Dover

13 Avenue XVeme Corps

83700 St. Raphaël

 

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

Le Miracle 8.1

March 4, 2014

Transfers!! I got mutéed! In fact we both got transferred! Elder Peters went to Martigny in Switzerland and I am currently in Saint Raphael! I'm back in the south by the beach! YESS!! Also i am in a 4 man ville! First time i've been in a ville with other missionaries! That is awesome! My new companion is Elder Sommer... he comes from Germany! Munich i think. kinda funny. Funny story...i went missing to everyone in the mission. nobody knew where i was for several hours..kinda crazy. But long story short (if youre really curious to know why/how all this went down...i'll tell you later...) i slept in Marseille last night and took a train to Saint Raph this afternoon and just arrived.

Last week in Agen was kinda hard. Many tombezvous and Sam said that he did not want to be baptized. We respected his agency though it was very upsetting. En plus we were both being transferred so we both had to say goodbye. It was hardest to say goodbye to the Murer couple and Sam and Luka. It was fun and i learned a lot serving in Agen. One of the biggest lessons I learned was PATIENCE. There are things that the Lord wants us to do and the tricky thing is that we have to figure out His time and His way of doing them. I had to learn that a lot in that little branch. All in all I am happy and sad to be gone. I grew much there and learned much. I loved it. 

The few, the proud, Nous sommes les Agenais. 

Bonne semaine. 

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

Le Miracle 7.6

February 24, 2014

Aight! Week 6!!! Predictions? Will the WWII équip stay together?? Or is it the end? We'll find out friday!! 

Ok so this week..couple cool things. Though i feel like my memory is getting worse. i only remember the end of the week. sorry. the rest is in my journal.....i am quite amazed that I have written in it everyday. before the mission i never wrote in my journal and now i do it every night. 

so thursday we had district meeting in bordeaux and after the meeting i made some phone calls we needed to make. one of them was to the office. Frère Murer asked me if i could/would call the bureau to ask if he could use the mission credit card to buy stuff so i could fix my bike. (remember how it broke last week?) well the office elders said nope. He told me to just go to a sports store called Décathlon and buy brand new bikes....i was kinda surprised. So I was on exchange with Elder Powell again...so we bought brand new bikes..the thing is..there are no shocks, speeds/gears, etc. and they even have a girls frame.....thank goodness it is black. but i was talking to the office about it the whole time and Elder Asay (from Dallas TX!!!!) was telling me everything we should buy. He told me that I was going to be an experiment for the rest of the mission. If these bikes worked out well then the rest of the missionaries in small villes like mine would receive brand new bikes. So far they are pretty good. They ride really well. they look horrible but they ride well. and goodness i am sorry to tell you but i have a very sore body. ha they ride rough without shocks but the rear end will get used to that soon. 

Ha the next day elder powell and i had fun getting back to bordeaux to switch back...our train got cancelled so we ended  having to take a bus to bordeaux that took 3 hours then i had to take a train back to agen 2 hours after arriving in bdx and the train took 1.5hrs. sooooo 6.5 hours in bus, train, gare... that stunk. but after that we decided with sam to push his date for baptism to the 15 of march so he could prepare a little more. 

saturday we had our baptismal partners (rule that they have to teach our ami before we can baptize) from bergerac come down. I was with Elder Sanchez. He and I had a packed day in Agen... we had 4 lessons! seriously had to run from rdv to rdv. it was tight. but it was awesome. funniest part of the day was when elder sanchez ate dirt on the bike. i was riding and i mounted the curb...he saw it last second and fell into the fence (if it wasnt there he would have fallen into the train tracks. haha) i heard a loud metal crash and so i stopped and turned to see him smashed into the fence. i asked if he was alright and he said "yeah...that hurt.." and continued to ride. best part is that he caught all that on video!!!! so funny! i was laughing sooooo hard! 

Had some fun this morning. We went shopping with Elder Murer and then went a little sightseeing... it was fun.

Bonne semaine!

Elder Alec Dover

Pictures

BEAUTIFUL AUDI we saw in Auch this week.. RS6 (very rare)

Elder Powell and I with new bikes

Le Miracle 7.5

February 17, 2014

http://www.mormonchannel.org/bible-videos?v=2859421267001#.UwI1S1an02s.email 

I shared this little video with Sam and Luka this week. I love it. As I watched it I feel like I am in the blind man's shoes getting my eyes opened. It is a very powerful and well done video. If you have some time watch it. I am sure the spirit will touch you and teach you something as I was taught. 

This week was pretty cool! Biggest Miracle: 46 people at church yesterday! 46!! We didnt have room for everyone! Ha...it was Branch Conference. So we had the Stake Pres, his counselors, patriarch, and other stake leaders and their families....BUT...28 of the people there were Agenais. That my friends is a new record!! Meaning if we didnt have stake authorities there we would have been 28 people at church. That is a pretty cool miracle. Sandie and Marlene came again to church and loved it! We had a branch meal afterwards with everyone and Sandie and Marlene even brought something to share! That was so cool! En plus, EVERYONE that was there went and talked to them. that was so cool. Also a less active family came too! 2 sisters, their friend (not a member) and 5 kids! It was soooooo coool! Kinda weird to have a lot of people at church though. We seriously did not fit in the house/chapel thing.  

Numbers seriously dont matter but it was kinda funny when the Stake President came up to Elder Peters and I and said that we have the best numbers from all of the missionaries in the stake...that was kinda funny. I know I've been pushing the throttle a little harder and trying to work more and harder this transfer than the other 2 that I have spent here and I can see the difference. Our amis are all progressing much better and faster. Many of them are reading and praying about the Book of Mormon without our help and some come to church without us needing to remind them each week! 

Valentines day was this week! Guess what we did? NOTHING. haha just kidding. Elder Peters actually got dear johned soooooooo i made him a super french dinner and we ripped a picture or two.. haha i tried so hard not to laugh. I saw that coming. (Sadly i predicted it our 1st transfer together).

I hope all yall had a wonderful week like I did. I am tired. But keep working! Gotta work! This week we are going to go with Elder Murer and port little villages around Agen. We figure they have never had contact from the missionaries and since he has a car, we can go do that together! On y va! 

I love yall! Bonne semaine!  

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

Pictures:

I cooked some breakfast burritos for Sam and Luka this week..yep i have a french beret on my head. French people love my breakfast burritos. (and schatz does too)

Valentines day dinner!

Le Miracle 7.4

"Remember that without ^afaith you can do nothing; thereforeask in faith. Trifle not with these things; do not ^bask for that which you ought not." 

~Doctrine and Covenants 8:10

That is a lesson I got to learn this week. Don't worry. I will share with you how:

So last monday how i told y'all about our experience in Lidl...i'll let you know what happened this week with Marlene and Sandie. We taught them twice this week. We gave them a Book of Mormon wednesday and by saturday they had read the introduction, testimonies, along with 1 Nephi 1-2...While chez eux.. Marlene told us that she had a vision. Ha I thought, "oh great.." but then as she told us what the vision was I was sorry for thinking lightly. She said she had prayed for help and in the vision a woman in the supermarket came to her speaking english and invited her to church...Well we arent women (Luka was there and got a good laugh from that part) but other than that that is exactly what happened except she approached us as we were trying to decide which ice cream flavor to get....we got vanilla. Well we invited them on saturday to come to church.

Then we went to go look for a refferral that i had recieved. The senior couple drove us to a little village in the middle of nowhere but we found the house and nobody was home. on the way home there was a sign that said "Paradis" (paradise in english) and Elder Murer said to Soeur Murer "stop the car i wanna see if this is actually paradise" and he and i ported the door. It was so funny because Elder Murer said as soon as the guy answered the door! "Bonjour Monsieur! Nous sommes les serviteurs de Dieu et il nous a envoyé ici pour demander si c'est vraiment le paradis ici?" ...reponse..."uuuuhhh desolée. je suis anglais. je ne parle pas français." hahaha i was not expecting that at all.... but i talked to the guy and found out after 7-10minutes that he wasnt interested but that was definitely fun! 

Biggest and coolest day of the week was Sunday. Saturday we decided to fast for one of our amis to accept our baptism invitation...we were really nervous. But we fasted and prayed all day for him. The Lord sure does have a way  for blessing us for exercising a little bit of faith. First of all. We got to church and we only had 6 people. Elder Peters, Elder Murer, Soeur Murer, Frère Cazeaux and Phillippe. Towards the end of the first hour we had more....Our ami Pédro randomly showed up and told us he wants to be baptized soon and that he is legal in france! He also wants us to help his family eventually! Then Soeur Murer tapped my shoulder and said that there were 2 sisters there that she didnt know. So I went to the front door and saw Marlene, Sandie and Sandie's daughter!!! Oh that was sooo cool! 2 awesome miracles then just before sacrament meeting, Sam showed up and he brought a less active with him!!! ...that shockingly is not all. apart from having 11 of the 20 people at church be people that missionaries brought is pretty amazing...but after church we went with the Murers to go visit a less active sister that lives far away. we were getting nervous because it was an hour to get there then an hour to get home. meaning that we would be late to our rdv with our ami. we went anyways and gave the sacrament to the sister because she is too sick to come to church. ...i also played with her adorable white labs. they were so fun! then we went home we went to our rdv. We got there and met up with the branch president and went to sam and luka's! We taught the gospel of jesus christ but took a different approach than normal.. instead of just talking about faith repentance baptism gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end, we took the approach that faith is a principle of action. we need to act on the things we believe in. For example if we believe that Christ died for us we need to repent and act on the fact that we can be forgiven of our sins. Well all in all we finished the rdv and sam had accepted to be baptized on the 1st of March!!!! Yes! 

Really the Lord does bless us a ton we just have to show him that we want it and ask for something specific every now and then (the more often the better... :P) Well i can honestly say to you that that was an amazing week but I am exhausted. Pday is truly inspired...all we did today was go for a walk with Frère Murer in the rain and fix my bike. We are so tired. But it is all worth it! I love all yall! Bonne semaine!

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

Pictures:

 walk this morning!

...may or may not have seen the confederate flag...

ha it is always kinda funny when he talks about hitler...

ugliest car in europe... Fiat Multipla 

one of my favorite cars in europe... Audi A6 Allroad!

Le Miracle 7.3

Wow. it is already February?! That is impossible! It feels like January just started! Good news! Agen is back to the cold rainy place it was when I first got here... haha it has rained at least once every day for the last 3 weeks. 

We had some really good rdvs this week though i do not specifically remember everything that happened. I am just going to give some highlights this week.. 

So wednesday night we had to take a train to bordeax for zone training that startedthursday morning! Elder Gee and Elder Leduc talked about obedience for the most part. How we need to continue to repent and be obedient to the commandments of God. I agree that is very critical in this work. They told us to pick a rule that we dont obey and that doesnt really make sense why we have that rule and to obey it and (most importantly) LOOK for the blessings that come from obedience. 

After the meeting, we went on exchange!! I stayed in Bordeaux with Elder Powell and Elders Ardeche and Peters went to Agen. While with elder powell, we went to town! We had a cool experience with their ami that came to the church to tell us he didnt have time that day..but we convinced him to listen to a scripture. We shared the scripture and he opened up and said that he wants to come to church every sunday and also he quit playing soccer so he could be more available for that. It was pretty cool to see how just a little scripture opened up the door. We also had a moment where another ami cancelled on us so instead of cancelling with the member that was going to help us out, I thought it would be a good idea to just have a message with the member because he is going on a mission soon so might as well help him understand what we can do when tombez-vous happen. haha it was a wonderful experience!

Then one day the murer couple took us out to eat at a pretty good restaurant! Yum. I got a real nice ham plate while Elder Peters ate a hamburger...

Then today while we were doing groceries we were looking at milk and trying to decide which one to get and then a black woman came to us and said "You speak english? Oh Lord it's been a while!" she later asked for our number and said she wants to come to our church. she comes from guyane and her daughter called us 2 hours later and fixed a rdv for wednesday! i like it when people come to us!

that was a pretty good week! hope yall had a good one! 

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

p.s. yesterday was apparently crêpe day! we profited! did you?

Elder Alec Dover

Le Miracle 7.2 (Agen, France)

Well since World War II has not ended we decided to take it up a notch. We had the BEST week ever! Seriously. I havent taught that many lessons, sparked so many people nor had so many people at church...Plus my bestest best friend called me and gave me a referral! 

So Vivian is doing well and we decided to return the the Restoration for a refresher and explain things a little more simply! (and we get to teach her 2 adorable kids this week!) 

Then i think i forgot to mention that we started teaching a guy named Jean-Luc. He is quite different. He just lives alone, and spends a little too much time on his computer looking for signs of aliens...haha one of his theories is that Angel Moroni is actually an alien race that looks exactly like humans but they have a brilliant white appearance...so they appeared and told Joseph Smith to create the church..ha that was fun to set him straight this week. 

Then we taught a less active family and their nonmember friend, Michael. We had given Michael the introduction of the BoM to read in preparation for the rdv and when we asked if he had done it he (without looking) basically recited the whole thing...we were very impressed. We taught him the restoration and he understood everything so well. It was an awesome rdv. He said at the end he wanted to be baptized if he were to gain a testimony...If he keeps going the way he is going I know he will receive an answer to his prayers. We invited him and the family to come to church.. it came down to a "I'll go if you go..." thing and then we passed the family to wake them up at 8h45 and then in the middle of the first hour... 8people randomly filed into the room. The family of 6 (havent been to church for 3 months) sister of the mom (hasnt been to church for almost a year) and Michael (first time)!!! making 24 people at church! NEW RECORD!!! yeeeeeeeeeeaaaahhh! 

Plus we had the Murer couple that moved in! We spent a lot of time builing and moving furniture for them and as a end result neither of us have heat or hot water.... yipeee! who loves cold showers in the winter?? The Missionaries in Agen!!! haha dont worry we are working on it...i think. 

There are other rdvs that we had but i dont remember them. Oh! and one night i got a call from my best friend in Carcassonne! Soeur Hodder had a referral for me! That was cool to talk to her for a little bit. 

And today we went to a ville called Villeneuve sur Lot...for fun and to look up some less actives. Well we were 1/2!! The other one is probably in the spirit world because she is 99 years old and she doesnt live at the address anymore nor does the phone work...but the other one said to come back another time and fix a rdv. good thing because we couldnt have taught her alone anyways. but while we were just looking around the ville we were stopped by a guy named Stephan. He saw my plaque and stopped me saying he'd seen americans like me before.. haha but he thought i was french and elder peters was american.. that was kinda funny. that happens a lot with us two. kinda funny. but he invited us over to have a drink (of orange juice) and he was really cool. he threw out his cigarette when we said we dont smoke. He asked us to forgive him. He then showed us around the ville! It was so cool! Got a tour from a Villeneuvois! He then gave us his phone number and said to call him and we'd talk next time we came to town. Very nice guy. Cant wait to go back! 

Well I hope all yall had a good week like I did! Set some good goals and work hard for them! It works! Love yall! 

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

P.S. La Garonne is flooding... everyone is freaking out.

pictures: the flood, classic french man look, villeneuve today, and soup party!

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Elder Alec Dover

Le Miracle 7.1 (Agen, France)

"Men, it's been a long war, it's been a tough war. " 

and it ain't over yet! World War II continues. We thought it'd be over before Christmas.... guess not. Elder Peters and I are seriously thrilled to stay for a third transfer together. (for those who dont know i say WWII because an American, a German in France is a fun reference...)

Agen! Petit Agen. Je suis agenais maintenant...c'est vrai! Sooooo this week! Good thing my journal is getting good usage every night because I honestly do not remember what we did last week. So sadly i will have to tell you what i remember...not even 1/20th of what we did.

So no clue what we did monday or tuesday. Wednesday was ridiculous. We taught a girl named Aurore at Sam and Luka's home. It was kinda funny because it was Elder Peters, Sam, Luka and I teaching one girl. So if she didnt understand what one person said another would explain something better. It was cool that Sam (who himself isnt a member - dont worry we are working on that) taught half of the lesson. Then we were going to leave because we had an apartment check with the senior couple from bordeaux but they called and said that they would be an hour late.. which was a big problem because that means we would miss our train to bordeaux so we could go on exchange. Well...they said theyd drive us back to bordeaux. Ok. So they showed up later than they said and there was traffic sooooo while Elder Gee and I were supposed to take a train at 18h to get back to Agen we missed it and that was the only train that would get us home in time. Soooo lucky me (of course not expecting this so i had nothing with me) had to spend the night in bordeaux. Then we took a train the next morning but instead of doing the 2 villes we all blitzed agen. So Elder Peters and Leduc went in the south of agen to work all day and I stuck with Elder Gee in centre ville! Plus! we did a monster day meaning pack a lunch and really just focus on work. go crazy all day until time to go in! So that is what we did. Elder Gee and I had a lot of fun getting to know each other better and also talking to everyone! We talked to 200 people i think. for agen that is unheard of for one day. We also taught sam the plan of salvation. it was a lot of fun discussing that with sam and luka. While we were there Elder Gee inherited a nickname! He is Lurch. hahaha. I doont remember if I have told mine but Luka and Sam call me Mickey. and Elder Peters is AngelFace. 

I dont remember friday either. 

Saturday we went and did our home teaching in a ville called Auch. 1.5hour bus away from home. It was fun. We did a little followup on everyone in the branch creating a personal missionary plan. it was fun. One of our members named Philippe lives in a hospital for mentally crazy people....he asked for some brochures about the missionary lessons so elder peters gave him a few and as soon as we left i could hear philippe running around saying "10€ Brochures! 10€" I laughed so hard. It has been a while since I have laughed so hard. Our member turned to us and said "philippe est en forme aujourd'hui." yeah.....he was full of energy. that was fun. Then we passed a less active and talked to her and her little son for a little. then we went home. 

Yesterday sam came to church again! he is starting to show some progression! Elder Peters and I are thrilled about that! He would be such an awesome member he just has to do a few things and get baptized...soon. Everyone in Agen seems to be happy that we are both staying. I am too. We will have the Murer couple arriving this week so that will be a fun change. 

Bonne semaine! Love all y'all!

Elder Alec Stephen Dover

pictures are from auch

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