Sixteenth Email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey y'all, I'm really sorry again about no email last week . I was pretty bummed. You said you were thinking about all the stuff I would have said- I was doing the same- thinking about all the stuff I wanted y'all to know. Everything is good though. I have a lot to write. I guess first off today we just came back from girls camp here in Vitrolles.
It was really fun- they are just staying at a members house in their backyard. They have a big teepee thing they’re staying in. We gave a spiritual thought then ate with them. It was fun, there were only 3 there. Leticia was supposed to be there but right before she left yesterday her cat died which is the worst form of opposition I can even think of but everything else is good with them. Her baptism is the 6th of August for sure. We’re really excited about that. She picked out everyone for the different parts and planned the whole thing herself. It was really cool. Me and Elder Clyde have to sing a song together! I guess that will be ok. Y'all all know about my singing skills so we will see how that goes. Last week I gave my other talk in sacrament. It was really good. I talked about preach my gospel and how the members can do missionary work. A lot of people actually told me it was really good and that my French has gotten a lot better. The bishope talked after us and the first thing he said in his talk was congratulating my on my French. He actually said that I “talk like a native”. I'm pretty sure that was stretched a little but it is a lot better. After that in his talk he talked about how good we were as missionaries then he told everyone that they can trust their friends with us. That made us feel good to really have his support.
This Sunday at church they made this announcement about a pioneer broadcast that they would have at the church at 4 and just for everyone to stay and eat just do whatever until it came on. We got the Albertini family to stay, explained about the pioneers and everything. They were all excited to stay so by the time 4 came around the big projection screen is in the sacrament room and everyone’s there. Next thing we know its the Osmond's concert thing that you and MaMa watched. It was amazing. Let me tell you as a missionary that was quite the treat. It was just weird cause it had nothing to do with pioneers. I wasn’t too sure about the Osmond's at first. I knew mom really liked them but after the One Bad Apple song I was loving it then I was just about ready to get up and dance for the YoYo gig. It was really fun. Most of the members knew who they were already- it was all in Englis then when they would stop and talk and it was translated into French. There was quite the discussion afterwards about if it was appropriate for Sunday. I know it was Saturday night for y'all but whatever - most of the people were just like heck yeah that was so much fun. I was really happy when MaMa emailed me saying y'all watched it. I was hoping you didn’t miss it cause I knew how much you like them. But me too now- I'm a fan. Our elders quorum president wants to do a mini mission with us for three days so that’s going to be exciting. It’s probably going to be the next week but he has to get set apart and everything. He's going to stay in our apartment and all that good stuff. He served in Canada probably 4 years ago. That’s cool about Alex's trip. That should be fun. What are they going to do in Paris? He should have came down. The tgv trains go from Marseille to Paris in under 2 hours. I guess he probably still remembers a little French from school. I hope he tried to talk to some people. I hear that the people are easier to understand there, they just talk faster. A member gave me a calendar of Paris for some reason so I get to look at those pictures a lot. Last week I did a transfer in Avignon- it was cool the city -really awesome. It’s all inside a huge wall then the Pope's Palace (shown in the picture)
is there which is huge. I was with Elder Brack. This is his last transfer so he will go home in about a week. I guess our baptism on the 6th is my six month mark which I can’t even believe. It’s gone by so fast it doesn’t feel like six months at all. The other week we were in this really old town called Lancon de Provence and there is a big castle in the middle so we decided to knock on the door. We talked to the guy that lived there for a while. It was pretty cool. We haven’t been eating that much with members in the last few weeks, we have twice I think. Today we ate just like chicken and potato ball things. We ate a really good salade last Saturday then the week before that we had another meal with some people. They had this really good Moroccan bread then a tomato salade all kinds of different cheeses then ice cream- nothing to out of the ordinary. The only thing is someone gave us this syrup called gingembre and it was really spicy. I didn’t like it that much. This was in Avignon with Elder Brack and he only took one taste then left it on the table. ha That’s so cool about our camper being on the Zachary's camp. Take some pictures with the river in the background. I can tell people that’s our house. That’s funny, I already started to write Andrew a letter today. I have his address though in an old email he sent me. I can’t believe Ryan will be home soon. That’s cool. Your memory card is in the mail, you should get it in like a week maybe. When you do just download all the pictures on the computer then do what you want with the good ones. I just want to make sure that they are all there somewhere. I saw the batman ad the other day for the first time, it looks good and Hancock has been on the side of our buses for a while now. I talked to a Muslim girl last night for a while she said that Brangelina are actually not in Nice but in a suburb of Aix en Provence. I don’t know if its true but if so that’s not to far from here. She was asking if I knew any stars and we ended up talking about them, good works, helping out the missionaries, etc. Our biggest problem is no one has cars so the members are always full bringing other members so we can’t get rides for our amis. I can’t believe Whitney works at Sonic- that’s got to suck but whatever- that’s right by the house so that works. How’s she doing with the truck? Transfers are the 12th I think. We’re going to a zone development meeting in Marseille Thursday so I’ll get to probably have a first interview with President Carter -that will be cool. That’s about all I have to say- nothing to big has changed. We played ping pong today for the first time with this kid -the son of a lady we do service for- it was fun. That’s cool you watched the missionary film in French. We watched the Testaments the other day with one of our amis that was fun. I don’t really need anything in the mail but still mail something. You can wait a few more weeks. I don’t know when the next zone conference is but yeah its nice to get something just not to have to wait 6 more weeks. You can take all of this last part out of the email it’s not important. When are Ivy and Calder coming? I guess Mckenzie, Melanie and Amanda are still there. What’s they all doing? I wrote Melanie a letter last week but still haven’t mailed it.I sent Jenny one a while back -she probably already got it. I need to buy more envelopes today that are big enough for pictures. There is a place in the shopping place where you can print out one at a time for 25 cents soI made a few for letters and stuff. That sucks for Michelle Wi! She finally does good then gets to excited to do the score card. Does Taylor Z. have the truck over at the house? That would be fun to drive. Well I'm going to go but I love y'all. Hope this email works- it better. Bye.

Taylor

Fifteenth email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey, sorry it didn't work. I typed for an hour and for some reason the email disappeared! I'm pretty mad- sorry, but I don't have time to write more. Love y'all. Things are good! Taylor

(Note from Mom: So sad! We really missed his email this week. Maybe he'll remember all the stuff and add it next week.....)

Fourteenth email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey, how’s everything going? Things are really going good here. Yesterday was the best day ever. The 14 Julliet is a national holiday for France. It’s like our July 4th- I think the story is something like the Bastille prison in Paris was overthrown by the people liberating the people inside starting the French revolution but anyways, it’s just another big party day. About three weeks ago we went to see an old ami with Frere Renderanaridera but he wasn’t there. We saw this old army jeep in his garage. He told us how cool the guy was and that we needed to keep trying to get in contact with him. The next week after we did our shopping for the week we were walking back to our apartment and we saw the same jeep with a guy sitting next to it so we talked to him just assuming that was him and it was. After we talked to him for a while he invited us to this thing at the town hall- just a little military presentation and they would have their Car Club Sud-est jeep there. So we thought that would be sweet and told him that we would be there. Finally Monday night we called him just to see if everything was still good. He was really excited to hear from us. So he says, “Yeah, meet me at the town hall then there’s going to be a parade with all the trucks and you can ride in mine with me, then you can come back and eat with us.” He said “yeah it’s going to be a good time, you will meet lots of people cause your American” so we were way excited. We go the next day and the first thing was the military thing- just a little march, some guys gave a talk- not to many people there but cool anyways- but yeah there is his sweet jeep and then like 10 others and a full size tank which was awesome. So we ride all through town. The tank was right behind us. We were in front. Our friend Robert organized it all. We went up really close to where we live to this big cemetery and there was another memorial service there that lasted about an hour. We talked to a lot of people. We actually met the mayor of Vitrolles. It was really funny, he was walking around shaking hands and stuff then he came to us, shook our hands, looked at our tags and just kind of make this noise aah/ooh- then said merci d'etre la- just pretty much a really weak thanks for being here and went on. But it was cool. So we got back into the jeep and went to this place in centre ville, kind of like a courtyard where all the people involved were having like an after party. It was cool. We talked to a lot more people. We actually got introduced to the mayor again by our friend and he acted lot nicer and we actually talked for 2 or 3 minutes. But then when I though it was finished, we got back into the jeep and went all the way up on the other side of town to this shooting range. Now we didn’t know we were going to do this but now only the guys from the car club were there...and us, but they had this big room and they had this way nice catered meal for the club people. It started with a salade then some fries then sausage then all kinds of cheese then pastries and all in different courses and plates, just really nice! There was also lots of wine and drinking going on but we had a few chances to explain the word of wisdom so it was good. Finally after everyone ate all the guys just looked at the other trucks and talked about all the stuff they did -just normal car show stuff. Then finally we came back to Robert’s house and talked to his family and taught them a little lesson- it was the coolest day, so much fun. We didn't mean to spent like 10 hours with him but we were kind of stuck there. We just figured it would be a morning thing but I guess not, we got back at like 7. We had another rendezvous at 8 where this sweet member ordered pizza and we just sat outside and had a little family home evening so pretty much the best jour de férié ever. I took a lot of pictures so I’ll send those to you. This week has been good. We had zone conference- President and Soeur Carter are really cool. It was good to meet them and just to see all the other missionaries. I think were going to try to do something next week with the ones from Marseille so that should be fun.
I made an apple tart last preparation day and it was amazing. I bought the stuff today to make another one. Yeah I got your package, thanks for all that stuff. The seminary cards are really cool with their missionary applications and the plan of salvation thing- where did you get that? I have these laminated ones we use that I got in the mtc but the wooden one is awesome. So the stake put on this ball last Thursday in Aix. We couldn’t go cause we had the zone conference that day. Y’all should have a ball there. It seemed really fun. We actually had 6 amis that went - the problem is only 2 of them were at church- yeah that’s messed up. The thing that’s crazy is that it lasted until around 3 in the morning, yeah that’s so messed up for a stake activity. We had a little ball in Vitrolles about 2 weeks ago. The first different thing is they do them in the sacrament room cause they don’t have a gym- then their music isn’t the best but they can’t understand it anyway cause it’s in English. We asked if all that stuff was ok and they just said “well…that’s how we do it in France!” ha, ok. I thought that was pretty funny. We have a rendezvous tonight with our ward missionary leader so that should be good then were teaching the Albertini family with him after. I need to send you pictures of the garage we cleaned. It was mess but we did so much work. We didn’t finish when we were there but I heard Sunday that it’s completely empty so we need to go get an after photo. Just some questions –who all reads my blog? I hear Elder Clyde’s mom has found it. That’s so cool. Oh yeah, happy birthday to Papa! That’s cool that Ivy and Calder are coming. Thanks for the memory card. I have lots of pics on the other one I can send you since I got the new one. How’s everyone doing? You never told me if Eric is getting really big. Oh, and gas is really expensive here too, now. Everyone here blames Bush for it. They hate him. Everyone likes Obama. Well, that’s about it. We’re doing good here. Love y’all, Taylor

Thirteenth email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey, How’s it going? Sounds like everything is good- normal summer stuff. Everything is about the same here. We just came from shopping for food. Before that we went to this store Decathlon to look for bikes, just to see how much they would cost. It was fun though just to look around- it was a lot like Academy so it just had lots of different things. We have a family that said they had bikes that we can use so we will probably just do that. We will be in Salon again Saturday so we'll see. We have the ward council again later tonight so that’s always exciting. We had a little activity committee meeting after church Sunday and we talked about all the things were going to do- nothing to big. We’re going to start trying to have a samedi sportif- just a day for everyone to come and play basketball or soccer and bring their friends. All the other big wards do it with the missionaries but it’s just kind of hard to start so we will see. I actually really want to play soccer. I was kind of hard- headed towards soccer but now that I’m here I really like it. We haven’t really played that much but its just everywhere. Most people here like the Om or Olimpique de Marseille or le Blues, the team for France. I’m pretty sure they play in Paris. They had some golf clubs at that store today so it was good to mess around with it a little. Just for the record, golf still is way better...and harder. All of our amis are doing good. We have a new ami that came to church Sunday but the best part is she walked an hour to come from the other side of town. She stayed to eat after too. I think she really liked it. We have taught her twice and have another rendez vous tomorrow. You said that y’all had a pot luck thing, that’s really cool. Y’all should try to do it every month- that’s how it is here but it’s pretty much every Sunday. People just bring food and stay all day. We’re there until at least 4 normally but there are people there for longer. Yeah for the flower drink I referred to a bee because bees drink nectar or whatever but yeah very funny. Did you get an email from a lady with a picture today or last night? She is really cool. We had a rv and she said she would take us out to eat. All the restaurants were closed so we got kebobs and just ate on a bench. It was really cool and nice of her. I told her to write you a little note in French. I hope she did. There is this one Muslim neighborhood in Marinade and yesterday we were there. There is this family that is just always chillin in lawn chairs outside so we go there to see them a lot. It’s really cool because we seriously know almost everyone that lives there. There were probably 5 people that walked by that we had talked to and know just from being there often. Latitia said she will tell us soon about getting batized on the 30th. All the youth left today for the youth conference so we’re hoping that’s good for her. Oh yeah, I have to give another talk in church not this week but the next so that should be fun. It’s on Preach My Gospel so it shouldn’t be that hard. Frere Renderanaridera is still good, we haven’t taught with him that much lately but tomorrow were going to go to his house for a while and help him clean up his garage and stuff so that should be good. When we were in the sports store today they had videos going at the end of aisles of stuff like skiing and wakeboarding then one of fishing- it was kind of depressing. Yes, people get married civilly first here. Elodie got married here than would go to the Swiss temple the next day. When is Ivy coming? Let me know if anything exciting happens. Have fun if you go to Galveston. Did Evan get his dive certification yet? Has dad been again scuba diving? So how is everybody at church? What is Will doing? Eric told me he is just getting huge from working out and Jace too. How big are they? Try to find me the cheapest memory card that works for my camera and I can send you mine. Just send it in an envelope or something that will mail to our apartment. I hope I get your box tomorrow. I printed out a few pictures just to have ones for the letters I send. What’s Evan playing on live, Call of Duty 4 I’m guessing. I played it once before I left. That’s the modern warfare right? Yeah, I think so. You can take out all these questions or just make this sound better. I’m worried all these people read the blog thing and I just sound like a rambling idiot. You can change or add whatever I don’t care. ha Throw in a story, pas de problem. Tell everyone I said hey. Love y’all. Taylor

Twelth email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey, how’s it going? Pretty good here! Sorry I haven’t emailed earlier. We have had so much stuff to do but yeah I'm still in Vitrolles which is ok I guess. I really though I was going to get transferred though. But I'm happy to be here, were working with so many different amis and members- we have like 30 people that we see every week. This last p- day we went to Salon de Provence to play basketball with Joris, this cool kid. He’s not a member but his mom is so we see him a lot. It was a lot of fun but we missed our bus and didn’t get back until we had just enough time to change and go to our rendez vous. It was with Leticia and Sonya. We asked Latitia to be baptized on her birthday, the 30 and she is thinking about it. She said she would tell us Sunday. She is ready though. Yesterday was really fun, too. We had a wedding. It was Elodie Fernandez. I probably have talked about her before, the girl that served her mission in England. She wasn’t working for the last three weeks so she taught with us like every other day. She is really cool and nice. The wedding was good. It was at the town hall but we didn’t get to go to that part just the reception. I was kind of bummed because I though we would go. We went to the church at 12 to help set up for everything after but there was just to much stuff to do before everyone came. But like her good friends didn’t go either it wasn’t like they just left the missionaries to do all the work. The reception was good -there were a lot of people there. Here in France for weddings the whole wedding party makes a big train through town and honks their horns so we knew when they were coming. Elodie and Fabio, her husband, had a rented Ferrari they were driving. It was sweet. She will go to the Swiss temple today then move with him to Chicago. I was sad when she left though. She told me to have a good life. I mean its not good to get attached to the members but when I first got here she’s the only one I could talk to cause she knew English. But I got some pictures. It was a good day. We didn’t do much missionary work but did lots of service. Everything else is good. I guess were all set with President Carter. We will have our zone conference the 9th so I can’t wait to meet him. Oh yeah- I had to give a 12 minute talk in church last Sunday on repentance. I thought it went well and people were saying it was good. I was nervous though. I think we might have to buy some bikes. I don’t know if I want to- I don’t think its really necessary but we will see. They have this big sale twice a year, the soldes, so if we can find some cheap ones. Did you know that gypsies really exist? Yeah they’re gitons here but just like all the evangelical spaniards they go on these huge tours each summer to hold church services. They’re really nice, laid back people. I saw there caravan parked in this huge field the other day. I just thought that was interesting. What have you sent me just so I will know if I'm getting anything at zone conference. So summer is in full swing here- it’s kind of depressing- everyone is at the beach or swimming but whatever. How’s the new missionary in Sulphur? That’s cool that ivy’s coming. Have you seen any of my friends? Who's been asking about me. It's getting hotter here too. I would rather here than back home, it's not so humid. I'm doing fine but Clyde is dying. Our apartment is hot at night. There isn’t an air conditioner but then almost no one has them here. We have this African ami and we see her like every Sunday night. She always gives us this drink she makes. I'm not sure what it really is but she makes it with this special type of flower. It's really good but it just leaves this strong nectar after taste. It makes me feel like a bee. Well what else do y'all have planned? I guess Whitney is in San Antonio now. That should be cool. Thanks for the newspaper clip with Shannon- yeah I enjoyed reading that. Keep sending pictures and whatever. I don’t really need anything. Also, the French is coming along very good. I think people can for the most part understand me and my comprehension is getting a lot better. That’s the hardest thing but it's hard for them cause of my American accent. Its slowly changing though but yeah everything is good. I guess I'll email y'all again Tuesday. Oh, how is the election going. Everybody loves to talk about that!

Love y'all, Taylor