29th email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey, how is everyone? I’m really good. Yeah, glad you liked all my pictures. I can try to answer your questions. I have no idea for the couple with the tattoo arm and Stg. Pepper shirt- doesn’t help me at all because I have no idea what that is- I think it’s really funny that you described those girls as Spanish. One is Mali gash and the other is Mimelle, the Muslim girl we talked about a while back. I really like the little figures the guy painted for us. They are from our ami, Lee. He paints them for this store. I actually have quite a few more now. He’s really cool but recently moved to Aix so now those elders are getting them- we’re pretty upset. Ok about my haircut-that was Elder Calder’s first time to cut hair. He’s about to cut mine again soon so pray for him. It was pretty bad! It only stayed like that for a few days though then grew out. He thought it was pretty funny, me- not so much. The freaky elder you asked about is just Elder Scott being dumb. Hey yeah, Matt Damon-wow. I really like that picture and that hat! Nobody’s ever said I look like Matt Damon before. Oh yeah, I’m in Marseille right now and I’m holding my carte de sejour. Finally!! It took forever but now that definitely means I’m leaving. So I’m pretty nervous. I’m sure it will be ok wherever I go. You’re right about the twilight zone though. I still don’t want to go over there. A lot of people told me it’s even better though so we’ll see. It’s going to be hard to leave Vitrolles but I’m ready, I think. Yeah we're still going with Rob and his family today so I'm really excited about that. We're meeting them at their house at 1 so we need head back over there pretty soon. I hope Evan didn’t take a bunch of stupid pictures. I really wanted some good ones of around the house and stuff and yall. What are y'all doing going to Japanese grills- that’s just weird for you but that’s cool. CITGO picnic -how come they didn’t do tours in the past? I remember going on a tour once but I was really young. I bet that was fun. Thanks for the Tony's. You can send them separately if you want if it's not too much more. For Christmas I really don’t need anything.I can buy some shoes here. I still like ties but im slowly becoming more European so I can't wear the big ones anymore- just sheik stylin ones. Stocking yeah candy and stuff only chocolate actually- would be great. Oh haha I just thought of the picture you mean- the couple that’s Joelle and Laurent- that’s funny- we’re actually going to be over there Thursday. ha I still am not sure what Sgt Pepper is. My foot is still hurting. I'm not sure what I'm going to do though. Don’t you have two memory cards now? I'm pretty sure you do. Send them both back please. Don’t forget the plastic cases too. Actually, look in my camera box somewhere in my room. I think there is another case for a memory card. I have one less and it bugs me just having one laying around but take lots of pictures and send it back. Whitneyand Evan need to write me. You, Dad and Ivy email me but I never hear from them. I hope I get a Halloween card since you said you got one for all my friends! How is Jace doing? I haven’t heard from him. I emailed him though. I hear from Andrew- six baptisms- what that’s crazy- that’s more than the average for each person here in two years. Y'all make video clips to send them to me. I'll try to send you some pics pretty soon of les Beux be Provence some time this week. Well that’s about it. Sorry this one wasn’t in a very formal letter form. There’s a lot of junk. I heard from Eric. He's going to Lamar next semester he told me. I didn’t have any good stories or anything this week but everything’s good. I'll know Saturday where I'm going. But anyways, hope y'all are good. Love y'all, Taylor

A few cute video clips......

If you can't hear him at the beginning, he says "Elder Calder is sick in bed tonight so I'll be juggling for you."



And playing a little ping pong. And then in true Taylor fashion, the Napoleon Dynamite run.....



And if y'all don't leave a comment on these, your just never going to! haha

28th email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey everyone! Thanks for all your emails. Everything’s going good here. We’ve had another pretty busy week and it was a really good p-day today. We have just been hanging out which was really pretty relaxing. We went a bunch of different stores and shopped around. I’m glad you got the pictures. I was hoping you would. Yesterday we were in Aix for a little zone meeting and our interviews and president told me that I’m leaving- at least if all the stuff goes normally in Marseille for the medical visit- so we’ll see. I’m sure it will though. I feel really weird about leaving. I’ve been here for so long. Everyone seems to think I’m going to Bordeaux on the other side. That’s pretty weird especially cause I don’t really know any of the missionaries over there but they all say its the best place to be for Noel or Christmas so I guess we’ll see. But that transfer will be November 4th I think. So I’ll be getting ready for that, starting to pack up all my stuff. Somehow I seem to have a lot more junk than when I came. But it will be ok. This last Sunday was really good. Everyone was pretty excited because a family in the ward had a son in Belgium on a mission and he just got back so they were all way excited to see him. I knew he was coming home for a while now and I was pretty excited to see him but then when he got there I was just like well this sucks-kind of makes me miss everyone back home. Especially because after he was all explaining how he got off the plane and saw his family and all that and how he realized it was over and all that. But he’s really cool though. He said he wants work with us and stuff so that’s going to be good. Then finally we got a new ward mission leader, Frere Vendassi- he’s going to be really good. His son is on a mission in Canada right now and he seems to really like us. We haven’t had anyone since Aurelian left a few months ago. So we should be starting to meet with him hopefully at least once a week. Sunday night we went to see Robert. They invited us over to eat. We just had a big crêpes party. They were really good. We both felt very unhealthy after but it was worth it. The best part is that they invited us to come with them next week to a little town called les Beux de Provence. It’s about an hour away and it’s a really old city with a bunch of shops and some kind of castle in the middle. We’re really excited about that. Actually Elder Calder had already bought a post card of the city because it was so cool and Frenchy so hopefully that works out for next Tuesday. If you want to laugh a little more about the silver- suited groom just know that his name is Sebastian ha He’s really cool though. Thanks for the complements on the apartment. We have already talked about how ugly the border is. Actually it doesn’t bother us. I really like this apartment, though. It’s a lot better than most of the other ones I’ve been to. oh yeah another good thing about Sunday a relief society president asked us last week if they could do anything for us cook or other stuff so we asked if they could fix all of our falling apart suits and stuff so I gave them a pair of pants that should be fixed by next week so that’s exciting. The bottom was falling where they fitted it and I had already put a safety pen to hold them up but it just wasn’t doing it. It was the green suit ones. I should be doing an exchange here in Vitrolles with Elder Scott this week so I'm pretty excited about that. We're going to be busy this week again. Tonight actually were going to Marseille and coming back tomorrow morning then were going to be in Martigues then two days in Salon then back in Aix. Yesterday we didn’t do much, we were in Aix all day for the meeting. I'm excited about going to Marseille. There is a French elder there that’s only been there for about a week or so. Elder Wright just left to go to Nice when he came making me the longest to still be in their first city in our whole group. There’s going to be 10 more coming for this transfer so that’s cool. I think Elder Calder's going to train. I bought a USB port today so that was a nice gift to myself. It should be a pretty good one. I'm going to start stealing peoples good photos and saving them. I bought a sweet address book today I'm pretty excited about that. I'll get everyone to give me their info. We got the new church magazines yesterday so that’s pretty exciting. I haven’t read much but it looks good. I got a letter from Andrew and some pics of him golfing. He seems to be doing good and another one from Clay. He seems to really be liking the mtc like I did. I kind of miss it. If my shirts are going kind of brown is there anything I can do for them? I've had this blister thing on my foot for a long time now and then someone told me it was a wart so I gave myself surgery and cut it off. It seems to be doing better, we'll see though. It really hurt before. You need to send my memory card back with some pics around the house and stuff. That would be appreciated-soon if you can. Also, maybe 2 more Tony's. Elder Calder really likes it but then so does everyone but if you could send two. I don’t really need anything else. I don’t know what I want for Christmas. How far ahead you should send stuff? I don’t really need anything. I would kind of like to buy some French shoes maybe. I can juggle better now. Maybe I'll send another video. Elder Calder is now hooked on it too. Love yall, Taylor

27th email from France (Vitrolles)

Hello! Everyone sounds like your all doing good. Me too. This week went by fast. The elders from Aix came down for the day and just left. That’s Elder Scott and Gill so we just ate lunch together then chilled at the church and played ping pong which is always a blast. I guess we will see them tomorrow in Aix for our district meeting. We’re still pretty busy running around tonight. We have a train that leaves around 7 to go to Avignon which I’m pretty excited about. I’ll be working there for the day with Elder Hanson so that should be fun but we’re going tonight just so we can plan together. Then tomorrow we’ll all come down to Aix again for the district meeting then I’ll go back to Avignon then probably won’t return to Vitrolles until Thursday morning. So that will probably be a little stressful. Then next week I’ll probably email you from Marseille because I’ll be there for my doctor’s thing for the carte de sejour. Wow, this week wasn’t too bad though. The only thing we left for was zone conference. It was really good, always exciting to see President and Soeur Carter. They’re really nice and of course it’s good to see all the other missionaries. For the rest of the week Elder Calder was sick so we didn’t really leave or do anything. It was a little boring but there was stuff for me to do. I actually read quite a bit which was a nice, relaxing change. I started with Our Heritage which is just a little short one about all the history of the church. It was interesting because that talked a lot about all the stuff we saw coming back down from Minnesota but then I read Kimball’s Miracle of Forgiveness which I really liked. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it but its pretty dang powerful so that’s what I did all week. It was good though. We finally went out Saturday afternoon but we didn’t have anything planned so we just went and saw some old people then came back. So one thing at zone conference, President Carter told us all something- lets call it the buzz of the mission, everyone’s talking about it- ok, so as of right now all the missionaries from Provo come in every 6 weeks then in the middle of every transfer or 3 weeks after the Provo ones come we get all the missionaries from the Madrid mtc. So it’s just kind of inconvenient so I guess President called some people and got this to change so that they all come at once. The thing is they changed when the ones from Provo come not the ones from Madrid. So what’s going to happen is were going to have one long transfer 9 weeks not 6 and then we will be on the transfer schedule three weeks off as what we are now. Why this matters is because that makes everyone that leaves after this 9 week transfer have a different date that they go home on. So it won’t be Feb. 6th for me now we have the choice to go home 3 weeks early or 3 weeks later. So it’s just something to think about. I don’t have any idea if it changes anything for me, I won’t have to know for a while but it’s something to think about. Let me know what you think but he told us it’s just totally whichever one works the best for us. Yeah, they have Halloween here. I’m not sure why either but its fun. Maybe they will do something at the church- that would be cool. If not it doesn’t change that much for us. We stopped by the other night to see Robert, the army jeep parade guy, and talked for a while. They have a lot of crazy stories of old missionaries that were here. He invited us back to have a barbeque, we just need to tell him whether it’s better for us Saturday or Sunday- so that should be fun. I sent your memory card Saturday, sorry it took so long but it should be there soon. This week I have a lot of good pictures you’ll probably have some questions about. But there are some really good ones, quite few of them too. I’m wearing the beret in one of them and I am absolutely studly- its my favorite. I think no I don’t know the girl that got baptized but that’s cool. Thanks for the missionary update. Keep it up. It’s interesting to see what they’re doing. Send me a memory card with lots of pictures just of everything. I never got homecoming pics. In reference to his comment, tell Evan he has no chance against this! How’s Chelsea doing? When is Ivy going to Delaware? She didn’t say when it was for. Ok well I got to go but love y’all. Oh yeah, transfers are November 2nd. I think and I’m pretty sure I’m going. Almost positive, I’m just going to start telling people I’m going soon but I’m ready, I guess. I’ve been here forever- longer than anyone that came in with me. You can even ask the missionaries there- Five transfers is a long time. Taylor

26th email from France (Vitrolles)

Hey everyone thanks for all your emails. This week was really good. We had a lot of fun, especially with conference. It was really good to translate it. They just did it really fast, I guess, then sent it. We watched Saturday morning at like 6:00 that night, then we had the night session Sunday morning and Sunday morning Sunday night. It stinks because we didn’t get to see the ending session because it would have been so late. I guess we’ll get it in the Ensign or here its "le liahona" which is the church magazine but it has parts from the Friend, Ensign in one. We ended up going to Marseille for the priesthood. We got a member to bring us. We took this really cool road to get to the church; it went all around the city just next to the beach. We saw a lot of the industrial port where they were building a few huge yachts. Then there were about a million sailboats out which sucks cause it was Sunday, but still a really cool sight. That was really fun too because there was about 20 missionaries there that came from all over. Elder Davis was there so it was good to see him again. He seems to be doing good in Toulon. I’ll see them all again this week in Aix for zone conference so we’re pretty excited about that. I’ve had a good birthday- three different people called and sang- just other missionaries but still pretty exciting. We didn’t do much but go shopping. We actually spent like three hours at the store just looking around. It’s like Wal-Mart with everything. Actually something that really cool happened yesterday, we were at Carrefour the same store as today to buy some medicine for Elder Caulder cause he’s been sick and we ended up buying a few other things. It was like 40 euros so quite a bit of stuff actually. Then when we were checking out when the receipt came out the lady was like oh vous avez gagné or “you won” so at first were just like whatever we need to hurry so we don’t miss our buss then she’s like no vous avez gagné! Then she explained that it was free so that was really cool- they gave us 40 bucks in gift cards. I think it’s for the birthday for the store but what a birthday for me. We used the money that we won today- I bought a really cool big flag for the France soccer team then me and Elder Caulder picked out a tie so that was exciting.Another thing about conference that was cool is that Elder Neil A. Anderson served in Paris so he recorded his talk in French and then another guy, Chaussé, I think is French from a city in our mission, Agen, so he recorded his own too. I did really good understanding. The only thing is you have to pay attention, you can’t just let your mind wander and still know what’s going on so it was a little tiresome. We watched the thing in between about President Monson and he was telling a story about Shreveport so that was cool. Also our members were pretty excited when they announced the temple in Rome. I guess its not too far away. They all really want one in France. I really liked the kids choir too. I was in Aix again for an exchange and I got to go to their ward council. It was fun but not like ours. I guess I just didn’t know anybody so I didn’t really care. We didn’t really leave the apartment yesterday cause Elder Caulder’s sick so I just spent all day cleaning and mopping. It wasn’t too bad though, it actually went by really fast. I’ve been getting a little stuffy but I do every year so whatever. I finally got some news from Marseille. I should be having a medical visit the 22nd then after that I should be all good and legal so that’s exciting. Also that means I’m good to go anywhere in the mission even the Bordeaux side. That scares me a little bit but I hear its the best place to be for Christmas. I can’t believe 8 months already. It’s going by so fast. I feel like just left. It’s going to be a year before I know it. I bought this tarte de citron or just like a lemon meringue pie thing to make for myself but I don’t know if its going to work. It said to mix the stuff with water and 4 eggs then cook it for 10 minutes on low so I did but it just looked like scrambled eggs were forming there at the end so we’ll see when we get back. It’s in the fridge now ha "la frigo". Also I bought a little fruit cake which I love. I had never had fruit cake before but I really really like it (that’s before I came to France- I’ve eaten it pretty often here) That sucks about the missionaries being sick. There has been lot sick here too. I want you to write a little every week about what y’all do with the missionaries. Tell me what they teach y’all and if they’re cool or not. Do they still come every Monday? If so, that’s cool. Ivy said they’re probably going to Delaware which seems really boring to me. Don’t know why but it does. That’s cool though. I’m sure it will be good. I never got homecoming pics but be sure to send them. I’ll send the memory card today.
Sorry I didn’t have that much this week. This keyboard is stupid so you might have to go through and add letters. Love y’all, everything is good here!
Taylor