25th email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey everyone. How’s it going? Really good here- same old stuff but we had a really good week, another really busy one. Anyways we’re in Marseille right now. I had to come for more papers and stuff. It’s starting to be pretty frustrating but its better than not being legal, I guess. I still have a while till I can finish it. I think the next step is coming for an x-ray of my chest which I think is kind of random- whatever. Vitrolles is going good. It’s starting to get a little cold and that’s kind of scaring me. I don’t like it but I hear its a lot warmer here than the other side by Bordeaux, so we’ll see. I should be staying in the south at least until all these Marseille trips are over with. Lots of little things happened that I wanted to write about so I’ll just start one thing. Well, Elder Calder is on this diet so we decided to buy healthier foods and one of these things that he wanted was carrots. One night he asked me if I wanted one and of course I was like no way I don’t like carrots- never really have. Then this memory came to my head of how Grandma Dees used to boil them and that I ate them but that was a while back. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about if I really liked boiled carrots and this is after I ate a normal one confirming that I don’t like them raw. So I boiled water, cut them up in little circles like I remember and I really liked them! So I might be doing that more often. I really should start eating better. I’m getting out of shape. I’m pretty excited for conference this weekend. I never really liked it as a kid but now I really want to see it. It will be in French which is ok, I can understand it but it’s not the same. With President Carter he wants everything to be in French which is good just different. President Merrill believed that the spirit spoke in English which I would have to agree with so we’ll see how that goes. We’ll be here in Marseille again Saturday for the priesthood so that will be cool to be with some other missionaries from the area and their will be a room with it broadcasted into English for that. Normally they do that at the bigger chapels. We had a cool thing the other day. We were just walking through centre ville and this lady comes running after us. She didn’t speak French really good but anyways she’s a member from Brazil and she just moved to a town like 30 minutes away and she’s been trying to find the church or missionaries. She couldn’t find it on the internet so we told her where it was and all that and she was there Sunday. It was really cool. Our members were really glad to see her. We went out to Salon to see Joris, the one in the picture that played basketball in Atlanta, because he just got back. So it was cool to see him again. We had a really cool service activity with the whole ward at Frere Renderanaridera’s house. There were so many people there- it doesn’t translate into English very well but people were describing it as "the whole chapel was there" and it really was like that. They did inside and out cleaning and painting then pretty much planted a garden and a few pretty big trees to grow. It was really good. He does a whole lot for the ward and everyone knows it so it was good to really help him out. Another thing- there is this recent convert named Jose deCamp -he’s really cool but his health isn’t so good. He’s deaf but can hear a little and he reads lips very well so he can talk with everyone fine but he hasn’t been good. He’s been losing his vision too so the bishop asked everyone to fast for him last Sunday then after church all of the men went in a room and gave him a blessing. It was really good and cool. That’s so cool that Aaron is the bishop. When I first read the email I thought one of the counselors was the other Clifford, the big biker dude. I was like- oh wow. But I don't think I know the Clifford's. We had an experience Sunday that gave me a little glimpse of what a bishop does. We have this less active lady that is just a little crazy and she always talks to me. Actually we ate with her one time and she bought us kebobs. I think I wrote about that but anyways after church she started talking to me and she explained her plan to leave the country to go to Canada- just to leave all her problems so I just told her to talk to the bishop. I wasn’t about to council her on that. Right, so after she’s like I’ll talk to him but only if y’all are in the rendez-vous. Geez so we went with her. Let’s just call it interesting but it was really cool just to see the council he gave her and how he handled the whole thing. I learned a lot from it. We actually randomly contacted the mayor of Marignane, just a little city next to Vitrolles. He wasn’t very interested but we talked for a little bit so it was cool. I should have told him I’m buds with the Vitrolles mayor ha not really. That’s cool that Andrew is training. He sounded like he was doing pretty good in his letters. I think they are having tons of baptisms which is cool. Andrew said that because in his last letter you deareldered me he said someone told me that he had a huge Texas smile so I let him know that he was indeed from Louisiana and not Texas. I got your birthday cards. I didn’t wait to open them sorry I couldn’t. It’s the same though. I’ll reread them probably on my b- day. I really liked the cards especially the Sweet Home Alabama one. I guess the strike wasn’t that big. That’s really cool about the football fireside and game, that seems like it was fun. Too bad they lost so bad. All those other stories were from my day in Aix so I don’t know how they’re doing really even though we were there yesterday eh I’m sick of traveling. I got a letter from Clay- he seemed so good! I’ll write him back today and Jace. Everything else is good. We really did have a good week. Thanks for your emails.
Love y’all, Taylor