59th email from France (the Bureau)

Hey everyone, We had a really good week which is good because after the last one we were kind of bummed and on top of that it’s been pretty hot. So we’ve all been more tired than normal and there seems to be lots of pollen and stuff in the air making us all not feel too good. But this week we actually taught a lot and got to see and find more people. We even had a few rendez-vous with the members and that’s always good. Well we were with the same member twice but anyways it’s better than nothing. Church was good. I don’t know if we have the same lesson plans every week but they talked about gifts of the spirit in Sunday school. We ended up talking a lot about the gift of tongues and how we don’t speak in tongues but it exists in other ways such as to share the gospel things like this. So it was going good then the teacher starts talking about the "promise"! ohh la la He was explaining how a prophet said that if you read the book of Mormon in another language at the end you will speak like a native! I think he’s getting his prophecies mixed up with the movie "the other side of heaven" but now we have half the ward ordering book of Mormons in other crazy languages such as Russian and Dutch! That’s France for you. So we’ve been trying to explain that it will help you learn a language but it sure as heck isn’t going to just come that easily. I’ve read it almost three times in French and I’m still far from a native speaker. But anyways, that was the excitement at church this week! It’s too bad we didn’t have any investigators there, because maybe that would have encouraged them to actually read, the one thing they all seem to have problems with! ha This Saturday the ward is planning a missionary activity. They’re going to meet at the church then go on splits, kind of just to get the members to work a little with us. They seem kind of excited about it. The idea was for them to set up little rendez-vous with their friends then we could go together. We’re going to set up a few rendezvous also because I would be surprised if they actually had enough for the six missionaries in our ward, but with our amis and theirs, it still should be fun. I’ve never worked with a member like that, we almost did a split once in Vitrolles when we had two rendez-vous the same night but one got canceled. It’s not very often we have more to do than we can handle. Probably our best ami, Daniel, that we have been seeing a few times a week, is about to go home to the Dominican Republic for two months so I’m kind of bummed about that. I’m going to call him today to see if he would like to talk to the missionaries while he is there. Two months is a long time. Zone conference is this week. I’m pretty excited to see some people that moved into our zone this last transfer. Also Elder Page will be there because has in Paripinon now. This week I got to do all the car inspections which was pretty cool. They were all at president’s house. All the zone leaders came from all over for their meeting. There were a few I was happy to see again. Also I took a few pictures I’ll send to you. That’s good Whitney had a good birthday. It seems like y’all go to movies a lot. You talk about them every week. Oh, this week we were doing service for this lady and she had a weight bench in her backyard that she gave us. That pretty much made my whole week. We cleaned it all off and it’s set up in our apartment. It’s like the one back home just a little smaller. Did you get the copy my passport last week? I was going to ask about gnc today because you didn’t say anything last week. If you could go check it out, that would be cool. Today we’re going to go to ville just to see all the stuff, maybe shop around. I’m hoping ill still be here for the soldes so I can buy a nice suit and shoes and stuff, in a lot of the smaller villes there wouldn’t be any of the nice stores. We’re about to go eat. I’m really hungry. We’ve been fasting for our district just to find new amis and just for the work to go better. Everyone seems to be having a rough time. Like you said, we all have good weeks and bad weeks. That’s kind of normal I guess. But even when we do have a few good weeks, that doesn’t really lead to baptisms, which is the goal really. We’re not really here to see how many lessons we can teach every week. If no one comes to church after, it’s a little useless but we'll keep trying. Well, I hope you have a good week. Love y’all! Taylor
PS: Hey, I forgot to tell you that our mission has a website. It's http://www.missionfrancaisedetoulouse.com/. There is a bunch of stories and conversion stories and miracles from old missionaries and information about the mission. You're gonna think its cool even though alot is in French.