Happy Mother's Day!

Sunset from my view of my window! 

Hello everyone sorry my blog has been so bad and I have not written in a long. I will try to do a little bit better if I can. Well I am still in Nancy with Elder Velazquez so we will be doing another transfer together which is super cool. Also we have an amis from Tahiti named Jesse and he is so cool and we will be setting a baptismal date with him this week. The work here in France is going really well and the weather is very beautiful. I'm not sure what more you could ask for right? Yesterday was mother's day so I got to call home and that was awesome. Last time calling home before I go home. Man the time really does go fast only about 5 months left and I will be back. I am gonna try to really enjoy these last months I have here. But everything is going really good for me and I am really loving life and just trying to stay real and myself. Thank you all for the support and love you guys are amazing! Love you all! Elder Karl 

Miracles do happen!

castle in metz

Hello everyone sorry I have been so lazy with my blog I have had like no time to rest. But I will fill you in on what's been happening. So next week will be transfers and we will see if I stay or what happens. Also on Monday we will be getting I-pads which is pretty awesome. I am pretty sure we will be able to use facebook which will be cool. Last night we set 2 baptism dates with the 2 kids of Luis. The guy we baptized about a month ago, so super grateful for that. Okay story time- So this week I spent 2 days in Luxembourg for an exchange. I was with a blue or a missionary who has been here in France for about 4 weeks. Anyways I was excited because that means I would be doing most of the talking which if you have ever met me I am a talker haha but we go into a lesson with a man named Palo. Palo has been meeting with missionaries since 2004 so that's 11 years give or take. So we go into this man's home and he is holding a baby and his other child is sitting on the couch playing a video game. I begin to ask Palo how he found the church, why he still meets with missionaries and just about his faith. This continues for about 20 mins then I brought up baptism. This of course is not new to Palo who has been meeting with mormons for 11 years haha. He says " I know the Book of Mormon is true and that the church is true but I don't fill that I am ready and I am waiting for the lord to confirm it to me". Then at this moment I get a very strange feeling from the spirit that it's time for this man to get his anwser. So I ask Palo if it would be alright if we got on our knees and asked Heavenly Father right now if he was ready and if this was what the Lord wanted for him. He said yes so we got on our knees and then he asked if I would say it. I of course said yes but right before I was gonna start I felt that I should not say it. I felt that Palo needed to say it. So I asked him if he would say it. He was a little surprised but agreed. He began to pray and about half way through a miracle happened. All of a sudden Palo's son turned off the video game and the room went quite. The son then listened to his father pour out his heart asking God if he was ready and if this was true. All at once the whole room was filled with the spirit and I have never felt it so strongly before. When he said amen I looked him in the eyes and asked if he felt that. He said yes I feel the spirit. I said I do too and the Lord is with us. Then I said Palo "will you be baptized?".. with tears in his eyes he said yes "Elder yes.I know that I am ready and that the Lord is with us." I have never been more grateful in my life then I was that day Praying on the floor of a man's apartment in Luxembourg. Palo will be getting baptized the 17th of May and I could not be happier for him. I love my mission so much and I love all of you! The Lord is great, the church is true. -Elder Karl 

cool stuff in Luxembourg

Luxembourg!

(sorry this is so late getting out this week!) Hey everyone sorry I have not been able to write in a little while but we have been so busy here. Things are really good and i can't complain about anything. This week has been really cool because I finally got to go to all the countries in my calling.. That's right this week I went to Luxembourg!!!

Luxembourg 

It was really beautiful and so nice. Everything there is pretty fancy and like everyone is rich so it's a pretty exciting place! We had to go there because one of our zones is there and we had to go to a meeting so we were really lucky. And we had another BAPTISM!!!

Olivier's baptism!

 Olivier was baptized on sunday and he was so excited! He is blind but always has a smile on his face and is just such a huge example to me of "come what may and love it". While he was being baptized he began to laugh when he was put under water when he came up he was still laughing. When I asked him why he was laughing he said because i have never been happier in my life! Moments like that just confirm to me that i am where I am suppose to be in my life! There is no other place I would rather be then here in the service of God. Super grateful for that and just hope that i can continue to keep getting so lucky. I have been having the time of my life out here and there is no better feeling then when you can help someone find the love of Lord.I have never learned so much about life and just myself then in the time I have spent out here in the mission field. And I thank all of you who pray and support me! Thank you so much! i love you all Elder Karl<3  

polaroid picture..

I think Shane forgot to write a blog this week! Here's stuff from our emails:
We get ipads april 29th! The handball player is good, he trusts us a lot. we went to another game and it was really cool. He is making progress but it is slow.. :( but I have a baptism this sunday with olivier! P day will prob be cleaning haha we had 12 missionaries stay at our place for stake conference and the place is wrecked! But tonight we have an FHE (family home evening) with guilliaume! but idk what else! I love you so much! Really miss y'all :( 

I took a polaroid! 

Staying in Nancy!

Hello everyone! So transfer information came out the other day and I will be staying in Nancy for another transfer with Elder Valezquez as Zone Leaders which is super tight. Really excited to stay here and to get to work with one of my best friends more! So this week we had a really fun family home evening with a family named L'Homel. They are really awesome and we had a lot of fun. Also we went to Guillaume's house for pizza night and he shared a spiritual message and showed us a small clip from "the Giver" and it was really good and it was a super cool message. We also had our last district meeting and it went super well. Also we have another baptism date for the 29th of march with a awesome guy named Oliver. He is a blind man but is so awesome! He knows everything about the gospel and just wants to be baptized. So that was really lucky and super grateful for that! Super excited what this new transfer will bring! Love you all so much! Keep smiling and always be grateful<3 Elder Karl 

the district! 

Me and my comp

The district

Me jumping over my comp haha 

One of the best moments of my mission for sure!

Hello everyone I hope all is well on your side of the world! For me everything is wonderful. And this week has been really crazy to say the least. So i will skip all of the boring things and just get to the awesome story.. so once upon a time Elder Karl and Elder Valezquez go out of there apartment to go contacting. On this night we were having a lot of problems finding people to talk to. Everyone was either busy or just rude so we decided to follow the spirit and let it guide us where to go. So we end up going to a random road with no one on it but for some reason we both feel like this is the place so as we continue down this road we see a very large man walking his dog .. not gonna lie he looked pretty scary. But we contact him anyways so my companion starts contacting him in french and the man says "Hey guys" in english which always throws us off. We soon learn that we just contacted into a Pro Handball player for Nancy and also he is from Sweden and also his whole family is Mormon and his brother is on a mission but he is not active in the church anymore. We were shocked that we found this man in the middle of nowhere and just goes to show how much we need the spirit to help us in our missionary work! But we talk with him for about an hour and then it begins to get cold so he invites us to his house. We continue to talk with him and find out more and try to find out why he left the church. But the whole time we are cracking jokes and really just becoming his friend and trying to show him that we really do care about him. His name is Maximiliam Jonsson. And is the star player of the Pro Handball team here in Nancy and we had a wonderful conversation which led him to inviting us to his game on friday night.

First night with Maximiliam! 

However as missionaries we do not have the right to go to activates such as this but.. we made some phone calls and asked the AP's of the mission and they said we could go! So we got to go to the Handball game and watch Max play!

At his game number 23! 

He was so excited that we came and it really showed him that we care about him so he was so excited and after the game the team was high fiveing everyone and Max runs up to us and jumps into us and hugs us and it was just so awesome!

Lots of fans 

One of the best moments of my mission for sure! And we will be seeing him again this week! I am just so thankful to the Lord for all that he gives to me and for all of the blessings! Always be thankful and let the Spirit guide you and you will be blessed for your efforts and faith! Love and miss you all Elder Karl<3  

Happy Birthday Elder Karl!

Hey everyone sorry i missed emailing last week we were super super busy but now I will try to catch you up on everything that happened! So first of all, thank you all for the birthday wishes and for all of the cards, love and support! I had a wonderful birthday it was on a sunday so of course i was at church haha! But after church we had a little meal with everyone and somehow someone found out that it was my birthday so they put tons of candles on the dessert cake, hit all the lights out and started singing to me! I was totally surprised and super grateful for all of the love from the members they are so awesome! And then we had a baptism on saturday! Luis got baptized!!!

It was so awesome and was super cool to watch his 3 children watch their father get baptized and to be such a great example! Also I was contacting this week and I found a super tiny store that sells old cameras... and I bought a cool Polaroid camera and i love it so much!

Polaroid camera!

i have been taking some cool pics of france with style ;)! But things here are awesome and I love Elder Velazquez we get along really well and work really well together! Love you all thanks again for your prayers and support! Love Elder Karl<3

Went out to dinner with my apartment!