February 14, 2010

Hi family,
Well, I sure have a lot of news! It is strange to be writing this early…. Well, On Wednesday I was having a terrible, no good, very bad day. We took the wrong tram, I lost a filling, I swallowed that filling and I lost my companion. One of our baptismal dates decided to not see us anymore and then our phone rang. It was Elder Caywood and I knew that he would say something very positive so that I could be in better mood…. However…
On February 3, 2009 I was called to serve in the Belgium Brussels/Netherlands Mission. I was prepared at the MTC to preach the gospel in the French Language. On February 10, 2010 I received a new call. I will now be serving in the Paris France Mission under a new mission president.
The ironic thing is that on Monday I was thinking about Jake and how he had a hard time switching mission president half way through his mission and how grateful I was because I have become very attached to the Brubakers and I knew that I was so blessed to not have to switch because they are brand new.
I am sure that this change will be for the best. I know that the first presidency decided this and that there are a lot of really wonderful things that will come of it. But right now I am just a little triste, not sad, really triste. I feel justified because no matter how sad I am, soeur Brubaker is still more sad. She hasn’t stopped crying and that makes us all cry and then all the sisters in Belgium and the North of France start crying. It makes for some interesting phone calls.
They are dividing our mission and all of the French missionaries will be serving under Paris and the Dutch will stay the same. This is also sad because we have made a lot of friends on the Dutch side and now we wont get to see them on legality trips. Also, the Temple is on the Dutch side and I wont ever get to go. It will be a tough transition and things will be crazy for a while.
But the work goes on and great things are happening all over, so it is easy to still stay focused on the work and get things done.
On other news, today is the legality trip to France for all of the 2nd transfer missionaries (except for Sr Burgoyne) and so I get to spend the day with Sr Shannon and have a lot of fun here in Brussles. That is why I am on here so early- Sr Bagwell stayed at our place last night and she needed to go down to France to solidify her legality before the change. Since we were at the office and in pross we decided to just stay and check our mail.
Things with Nadege’s baptism are going well. She is so excited and she just is a little ball of fun.
Also, I… for the first time… spoke up (in French) in Relief society. The Sisters got into a pretty heated debate about the fall of Adam and then false doctrine started getting flung around so after about 15 minutes of fighting and about 100 looks of terror from Sr Burgoyne. I finally raised my hand and with all the courage I could muster I told everyone to go to 2 Nephi 2. I think the false doctrine experts in the ward weren’t too happy at first but at least we were able to move on. It’s a lot harder to speak French to members than it is to investigators.