Letters from France

93rd and LAST email from France

2010-01-18T19:29:00.000-08:00

Hey are you there? We are at the mission bureau. It’s so fun being here with all the ones I came out with. We are having a good time! I just finished my interview and I’ve been trying to throw out all the things I’m not going to need because my bags weigh a little too much. I don’t want write a lot. I’ll see you tomorrow! I’m really excited about coming home- everyone is. Also, do you know if they will weigh my carry-on bag?? I hope not!

92nd email from France (Albi)

2010-01-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,
We had a good week, lots of snow! Everyone is acting a little crazy about it all but it is cool because from what I hear it doesn’t snow very often in the area. We spent the whole weekend in Toulouse which was really fun. We did an exchange starting Friday night but when we were ready to go back to Albi the trains were all canceled and we were stuck there. The branch president called to tell us that church was canceled in Albi so we decided to stay in Toulouse because they were still able to have church but it was still just one hour and not alot of people came. I guess it was alot easier for them because alot of people come on the metro and there is a stop not too far from the church. We finally got back to Albi around six but even for that train we had to wait around for a long time because the first one we wanted to take was canceled. So this week we had a really cool miracle and found a really cool family. So Wednesday we had to go to Toulouse for our zone formation meeting. We had set a rendez vous in a town called Castre for just after so instead of going back to Albi from Toulouse we headed to Castre. About half way through our train stops at a station in a little town called Lavour and from what they told everyone it wouldn’t restart so everyone had to get off of the train and they called busses to come and pick up all of the passengers to bring them the rest of the way. While waiting for the bus everyone was lined up outside and we started casually talking to the people around us. There was one really nice family, well it was a younger couple, a younger kid then an older lady. After about ten minutes the lady asked us if there was still a church in Castes. We told her where it was in Albi and that the church in Castres had been closed for a few years. She said she was baptized about twenty years ago in the north of France and was never even put into our member records here in Albi. Her son was really young when she was active in the church but is now very open and interested to talk to us. We have already taught them one time and hopefully again this week. The rendez vous went super well and they were happy to follow the engagements we left them. The coolest part is that they really see that it wasn’t by chance that our train broke down and we met each other anyways. They are already progressing well and seem to love everything the church teaches. Me and Elder Newell were pretty excited because the last few weeks have been a little slow even though we have been working really hard. So I only have one week left. It’s really weird to think about. I am really excited to see all y’all again and also I’m excited to see Saudi Arabia, and Chelsea.
I went shopping again today but I didn’t really buy very much. It’s hard to explain there isn’t much here that you can’t buy anywhere else, it just costs alot more here. I would love to buy a bunch of really French stuff but its hard cause it’s just as modern here as anywhere else. I’ll buy some nice chocolate and maybe some cheese if I can. Love y’all, Taylor

91st email from France (Albi)

2010-01-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,
Piper is finally here, that’s exciting! She’s cute. But it's kinda weird to think that Ivy had a baby and I am now an uncle cause I haven’t really been there. I am excited for that though. This week was good. We had a few really long days but it’s good to say we worked hard. Everything is going good- it’s starting to set in that I don’t have that much time left and that I’ll be with yall again soon. It doesn’t really bother me during the week though just during emails and preparation days. Elder Newell is doing pretty good keeping me concentrated. I did an exchange with Elder Hill, my old comp from Toulouse, and we just talked about home all day so that made me realize how much Newell is helping me stay focused. We have alot of stuff to do the next two weeks so that will make them go by fast. Wednesday we are in Toulouse then again for an exchange this weekend and also we are doing another exchange with the Montauban elders Tuesday of next week. So with all that, wow it’s all kind of unreal. Everything I did before I came to France seems like a big pre-existence memory. I am excited to go back to normal life though. Well, I’ve said enough about going home I guess. I do still have two weeks. Church was good again. There weren’t many people there. Actually alot of people haven’t come since the Arnolds left. I hope it’s not for that same reason. We would love to go out and see all the people they saw and taught but it’s just not possible without a car. We’re trying to start working with members though even though its hard. This week we didn’t really see any members since at church the Sunday before which kind of makes for a lonely week but we have a few things planned for the next few days so I hope that all works out. The New Year’s pictures look cool. Everyone is so much different.
I don’t have any pictures today but I think I’ll just make you wait. Also, I have tons you haven’t seen on memory cards but don’t get too excited, I think I sent most of the good ones!
I’ll see you soon! Love y’all, Taylor

90th email from France (Albi)

2009-12-28T21:13:00.001-08:00

Hey Everyone, Ok, so this week was pretty good, I guess. Christmas went well. It felt like another normal week but I guess that’s better and it helped us stay focused- something that is becoming a little harder every day. Church was only two hours again. There just weren’t enough people to do all the lessons. Thankfully we had a couple from the stake that came. When we started it was only us and them and the branch president’s family but then a few others came. I’m excited for next week because everyone should be off vacation and at church.
I really liked talking to y’all! The pictures you sent yesterday- everyone looks so much bigger and grown up. It’s going to be really weird to be there with everyone again but it’s coming fast!
I’m not sure what we will be doing this week. We have our district meeting tomorrow morning here in Albi then Elder Hill and I are going to do an exchange so that will be fun. If you remember he was the one I trained before I left the bureau. Normally we work for the last three hours of p-day but recently president told us that we could to it earlier in the day cause at night it gets dark so much earlier. So that’s what we did today. It’s a pretty good feeling to know we will be relaxing for the rest of the day.
So I don’t have a whole lot to say. We talked about so much stuff when I called.
Does Dustin work at the snowball place? In the picture he had one of those shirts on. If so, that’s cool. Daniel looks alot older also. My camera is out of batteries so I can’t send any pictures. I don’t think I took many this week anyways. Sorry this email isn’t very much but I just told you everything on the phone!
Love y’all, Taylor

89th email from France (Albi)

2009-12-21T06:49:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone, I hope you had a good trip to Arkansas and you can make it back without any problems. We had a good week here even though it was pretty hard. We are having a really tough time seeing our amis. It seems like everyone kinda has the same idea of just come by after the holidays which I can understand but it just leaves us without very much to do. I think we went this whole week without really seeing any members or anyone else from church. We’re just kinda in our little world here but we’re doing pretty good trying to have some Christmas cheer and not think too much about home. It’s kinda hard though. It’s been cold. We actually had a few days of snow which was cool, I liked it. Anyways, church was kinda different. We got there and instead of the forty or fifty that normally come there were less than twenty. I don’t know where everyone was- even the people giving talks didn’t show up so we did a little sacrament meeting and testimony thing. Then after that we kinda realized that the teachers weren’t there either so we had one combined class then ended after two hours- kinda funny but it was fun because everyone stayed after and talked. Anyways, we don’t have many plans for Christmas the 24th. We will go to the church at six to eat with the branch president and his family but that about it. Also, Wednesday we have zone conference. It should be fun- it’s my last one so ill get to kinda bear testimony and talk for a while. It’s what we do every time for the ones going home, I just never thought it would be me. I’ll have to think about what I’m gonna say. Also we are going caroling somewhere in town. That should be pretty cool just cause there will be so many of us together also we are having a talent show after just to kinda celebrate Christmas. At first there wasn’t anyone who wanted so sign up so finally we all gave in and said we could do something even if we didn’t think our talents were very cool. I’m gonna juggle then Elder Newel is gonna sing a Christmas song even though he isn’t really a singer also I talked Elder Call- he’s in the district but in Montauban- I talked him into standing on his head, also Elder Scott is going to do sit-ups to the beat of a old classical music song that should be funny. So for our Christmas calls- I think we will just do them from the church since we don’t have anywhere else to go. I’ll probably call around 4, 5 or 6 which should be just Christmas morning in Louisiana and I guess if mom is already in Minnesota then I can just do two calls. Y’all seem to be doing alot of shopping- don’t forget about me! I’ll need alot of stuff when I get back! Love y’all, Taylor

88th letter from France (Albi)

2009-12-14T11:57:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone, So this week was pretty good. It went by really fast which is kinda scary cause I only have five more! It’s starting to get really cold, actually today it’s been snowing since we woke up this morning. It’s not been really sticking cause its not cold enough. Maybe it will snow alot for Christmas- I would like that. Someone last night told us it was going to start getting colder and colder every day for the next few weeks so we’ll see. Today we went and bought a Christmas tree for our apartment. We haven’t really decorated it yet but we probably will later. Hopefully we can find some lights for it. Already Albi has all the Christmas decorations around town so its a little more cheerful.
This week we were walking down the road and this huge islander guy was yelling and waving us down. We stopped and he’s from Tonga and served his mission in California. He’s really cool and has been here for like a year playing for the rugby team. We showed him where the church was and he came Sunday so that was cool. We’re gonna see him again Wednesday. He knows Timani. Most people from Tonga always seem to somehow know each other so I asked. His name is Mate but it’s not how you would say it more like ‘mah tay’. He’s really cool- too bad he’s been inactive for so long. He could have helped the branch a lot! France does that to people. Other than that, this week was pretty normal. I did another exchange with Elder Scott- that was fun even though we didn’t have much to do- just alot of walking and contacting.
It’s becoming pretty hard to not think about home! Time is going by pretty fast. Hearing you talking about seeing everyone at home really makes me really want to be there. Tonight we have our soirée familial at a member’s house. We talked to a guy last night that really should come. We talked to him for about an hour. He is Buddhist so it was kind of an interesting conversation but at the end we invited him to come and we fixed a rendez vous for 18h45 at the same place we were last night. Then we will walk to the member’s house together so that’s cool. I hope he is there. We have our district meeting tomorrow. We used to go to Montauban cause we had the Arnolds but now I told everyone just to come to Albi. After me and Elder Blosil are gonna do an exchange. We actually were able to fix a rendez vous with a guy me and him contacted like two weeks ago when we worked together. I’m excited about that. So the guy that was coming to the fhe, Jean Christophe, just called saying he couldn’t and I guess he didn’t really have a fixed adresse here in Albi so he’s gone for good- ahh- just another day.
Yeah well, we have to go. Thanks for your email. I’m so excited to talk to y’all on Christmas then to see you soon after that!! Love y’all, Taylor

87th email from France (Albi)

2009-12-10T08:24:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,
Ok wow- well what a day. I’m emailing from Toulouse. We had to wake up early to get our train around seven. Elder Butler got the call Friday that he would be going to Angouleme which is on the western side above Bordeaux. He was pretty excited. I know he was kind of tired of Albi after three transfers. I’m here with the zone leaders now but I’ll be picking up my new colleague, Elder Newell, around five then we head back to Albi. When we get there we’re not gonna have any time really because we will have to go from the train station straight to the church for our soirée familial. Then I guess we will have to walk back with his bags either later tonight or come get them tomorrow morning. I’m pretty excited about the new comp though, everyone has just said how cool he is. I’ve only met him for a few minutes a few months ago but I think it’s gonna be cool. He’s from California but I don’t know much more that that. This week was good. Saturday night we had a huge party at the church for the Arnolds. I guess they are gone now. They called us for something this morning but by now I think they are on their way home. They were pretty ready to go see their family by the end but they still worked hard. They helped us so much. I think it’s gonna be alot harder now with them not here but we will be ok at least I’m with someone cool. This week I did an exchange with Elder Scott. It went really well. It was kinda cool working together again but being alot older and better at what we do- kinda more experienced, I guess. It’s kinda weird to think about but after today our group will be the oldest in the mission. That’s super weird to think about. Today at the bureau was strange cause all the ones leaving today are the ones just one group older than us in the mtc. I'll tell Elder Page Whitney got his letter. I’m sure in a few days she can talk to him on face book.
oh la I can’t believe your gonna be home soon. It seems like you were just there. I guess I will be home pretty soon- crazy.
Yeah, for my ear- I finally called Soeur Carter about it cause it was still bugging me- not hurting at all but just kind of plugged up so today the doctor from Germany for Europe called me and he just emailed me a prescription that I will have to go to a pharmacy to get filled. So I’ll do that today and hopefully it will go away. He did kinda act like it was a big deal cause he said it could get worse. I’m hoping the medicine will take care of it.
Really I don’t need anything for Christmas, maybe if you want to send some cards or something but don’t pay for posting or anything. There isn’t anything at all that I really need and I’ll be home so soon after that. I would just have to bring back what you would send me and I already have way too much stuff!
Ok, have a good week and a safe trip home. Send some pics with Sulphur people. See ya soon! Love y'all, Taylor

86th email from France (Albi)

2009-12-01T04:34:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,
Wow, all that seems pretty fun. I would have liked to be there in Thailand but I guess our week wasn’t too bad here. We stayed pretty busy. Thanksgiving was good. We started off with a little Turkey Bowl- it was only me and Elder Butler but we went and threw the football around a soccer field- it was fun. Then later on the Arnolds invited us over when they noticed we didn’t really have anything planned. They cooked a really good meal- it wasn’t turkey but still it was good. We all ate too much so I guess that all that really matters. This last weekend I was in Toulouse with Elder Hill. It was cool cause we got to go see a few people I knew there. For lunch, since I have saved alot of money, we went and ate at a really nice old American diner- style restaurant. We’ve been all over doing service this week, just helping people mostly members. I like helping them but it’s going to be hard when the Arnolds leave cause we just won’t have any way to get go see them. I don’t know if I told you but there is one person that comes to church and lives in Albi so teaching with members is really hard and the members invite us over but it’s really hard for them cause they know that they will either have to bring us back to Albi after or at least to the train station. It’s not like we can just come and leave. They like having us. They just know it takes a little extra effort. This next week is going to be filled -also tomorrow morning we have the district meeting in Montauban then I come back here on exchange with Elder Blosil then also Thursday Elder Scott is coming from Toulouse for an exchange. Pretty much all the other days are filled with going and seeing people. Also we have to do alot of thing for Elder Arnold because they have to be moved out of their apartment by Saturday night. President said we could help him for anything he needs so I’m sure that will take at least a little time every day. Tonight we have our soirée familial -everyone is going to meet at the Arnolds then were going to stack wood at a sisters house like thirty miles away way out in the country so that should be fun. I haven’t been feeling super good lately. I was sick then it got better but now all the same symptoms are coming back. The worst thing is my ear. I’m going to go buy some medicine today. It doesn’t hurt a lot but I just have a little earache so I have a hard time hearing out of it. I can tell it’s nothing big though so don’t worry. Well I’m glad you had a good trip! Thanks for the pictures! Love y’all, Taylor

85th email from France (Albi)

2009-11-23T04:44:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,
So this week was pretty good, just kinda normal. I can’t believe it’s already Monday. Church yesterday went well. We had one ami that came, Veridienne. It was cool to have her there. She seemed to really like it. Getting her there was kinda hard. Saturday night she said she wanted to come so we started calling all the members for someone to come pick her up. Finally we got a single soeur but she wasn’t from Albi so she wouldn’t have know where to go so we wanted to go with her but then we realized that we couldn’t go cause it would be just her so finally we called someone else to meet us at church early to go with us. Then go with the soeur to pick her up, it was pretty complicated and took alot of phone calls but it all ended up pretty well. Also at church we had to teach like the class for the kids so like from ages twelve to sixteen. It went well, I think they liked it. This week I did an exchange in Toulouse. I was pretty excited to go see people I knew when I was there but we ended up not having a whole lot of time. We had to go do service for a frère in the other ward but it was fun and he really needed help so it felt good to help him. We were with the other missionary equipe also so it ended up being a pretty good day. We did insulation which made me think of the elders a long time ago at our house doing the same thing except it wasn’t exactly the same work. I would call where we worked more like a stable or barn just with super old rock and brick walls- way out in the French countryside. They cooked for us also which was nice. His wife made a huge lasagna but it was different cause all the meat was salmon which tasted kinda weird at first but I really liked it. Before I’ve eaten spaghetti with salmon and caviar mixed in so it’s kinda the same idea- same taste anyways. We were also able to go and finish painting with our amis David and Aurore so that was fun. They want to invite us to eat with the Arnolds before they leave. I hope we can. They already have their whole last two weeks planned out- everyone wants to see them before they leave but thankfully with all of that the members aren’t forgetting us. We have two things planned this week where we should eat so we are looking forward to that. The only problem is here no one that comes to church lives in Albi so it takes us a long time to get where they live either on the busses or trains. There is an American family here because he plays professional rugby. We were hoping to get invited for Thanksgiving but that didn’t work out. I think we might go eat at a Thailand place though.
So we got the flight plans! That’s cool! I heard the Margret Sales has been talking to dad to try and figure something out. Ohh, I just realized that was the other email you were talking about yeah I got that but didn’t look at it yet- sorry. Yeah, so the bureau knows it’s all worked out now. Yeah, those first plans looked bad-flying in at 6:00 in the morning. These are much better. I talked to Elder Sellers in the bureau about the first flight plans and all he could say was ‘man, that sucks’. Are you taking your good camera to Thailand? OK, well I have to go. Thanks- have a good week and a great trip! Really try and email me from there. That would suck if I didn’t have anything!
Love y’all,
Taylor

84th email from France (Albi)

2009-11-16T10:52:00.000-08:00

This first one is me and Elder Page. That's probably the last time I'll see him for a while- he dies this transfer!

Us with Samuel at the baptism...

Us, Samuel and the Arnolds...

Hey Everyone,
So we had a good week. I'll start out talking about the baptism- it went really well. It was kinda shocking being there and realizing that someone was actually going to get baptized. I figured it out and it’s been like sixteen months since the last time one of our investigators went all the way without having opposition or any problems but it was really, really good! There were alot more people that came from the branch. We were only expecting a few to come but then more and more kept showing up. They were pretty happy to have someone else and since he is a really cool, funny guy there shouldn’t be any problems with integration in the branch so that’s awesome. The confirmation was really cool too. One of the members brought her neighbor to the baptism and she seemed to be pretty touched. She had alot of questions after and we even got to sit and talk to her a little. I hope we can see her again. So today is p-day but we just got back from a rendez vous. I thought about trying to fix it for another day to not waste any of our free time but I’m glad we went. It was a good rendez vous with a guy named Mr. Zaradzki. He’s older and has alot of health problems but I think it helps him alot to talk to us. I hope we can see him more often. Today was the second time since I’ve been here. Church went well yesterday. There were actually over fifty people so that was exciting. It was kinda crazy at first- we were in our classes and they had just kids everywhere mostly in the hall running up and down. They were supposed to be practicing for their primary program that was later on but they were just making alot of noise and I’ve been having an ear ache thing so I was trying to hear but just couldn’t so by the end I was just super mad at all these kids. But then later for their program they actually did a really good job and I ended up really liking it so I was able to forgive them a little. So this Wednesday we had our zone conference. It was really good. We pretty much just went over all the things that Elder Holland taught us while he was here. We do this thing every conference where everyone prepares little like five minute talks and then the zone leaders choose someone randomly to give theirs. Well, I have avoided this little talk my whole mission but sure enough very unexpectedly they called my name. I hadn’t prepared much at all cause I thought there would be no way I would be the one cause it normally falls on elders the zl's know aren’t working very hard or the greenie, stuff like that- so I kinda winged it but it ended up really good and even President and Soeur Carter were making references to stuff I said for the rest of the conference. I compared missionary work to the old Nintendo 64 game, NFL Blitz and if we do good work without messing up for a while we can become “on fire” then having the power to pretty much do whatever we want. You just dominate the opponent, so that was cool. This week will probably go by really fast. Tomorrow morning we have our district meeting then after that I’ll stay in Montauban for an exchange then we have service with our amis Wednesday then after that the zone leaders are coming for another exchange then another exchange Saturday where I will go back to Toulouse. I’m pretty excited for that one- to go back and work in the area I was when I was in the bureau.
You never sent pictures of anything. The rock concert seems pretty cool. I’m glad that the passport worked out with no problems also you made me scared when you said I would have to go to the embassy here to do some final stuff. French people always make stuff like that super complicated and I’m sure it would have taken alot longer than expected.
In the mtc I took a picture of me flexing- you don’t happen to have that saved anywhere? If so, I want it. I made the bureau buy me a curl bar and send it for zone conference so I’m trying to kinda start doing a few exercises every day.
I’ll send some pictures now! Love y'all, Taylor

83rd email from France (Albi)

2009-11-09T08:07:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,
So we had a pretty good week. Everything seems to be going by so fast. Every week seems faster and faster. I was pretty sick also which didn’t really help but it’s a little better now. I went and bought some medications that helped then some strong cheese and French mustard kind of helped for the sinuses. I’m just not used to the cold here. The temperature dropped alot this week and I’m kinda getting scared for December and January cause I don’t do very well when it’s really cold. Well, I’ve been here for two weeks now but yesterday was the first time I really met the members with the stake conference being last weekend. It was good, lots of people kinda crammed in our little meetinghouse. It actually reminded me alot of St. Raphael. It had the same feeling with kids running around. We spent the whole hour of priesthood planning out a service project, just things like that but there was a good family-like spirit and they all seem very willing to help us with missionary work so that’s good. We’re going to need help especially after the Arnolds leave in December. So we have a baptism this Saturday! It’s kinda crazy but I’m pretty excited also. It’s a guy around 40 years old that has known the church over ten years and has been an on and off investigator. He hadn’t seen the missionaries in a few months. Three weeks ago he came to church, then the next day to the family home evening, then we saw him during the week and then he came Saturday and Sunday for stake conference. He was really touched and then pretty much had no problems when we asked him to be baptized. We will see him again tonight for the fhe at the Arnolds then he has a little interview with the zone leaders that have to come up Thursday night; then if all goes well, the baptism will be in Toulouse Saturday at two o’clock. The branch is pretty excited to have a new member also. I think it’s been a while since they have had a baptism. The district meeting went well, better than I thought. I was pretty nervous having so many people but it kinda just made it easier cause there were more people answering and helping with roll playing activities and stuff like that. I just need to be sure to be really prepared cause it’s alot harder to wing it in front of that many people than it was with just one or two other companionships back at the bureau. Another cool thing about Albi is that Frere Moukilou is here.’ I dont know if I ever said anything about him but he was a member in Toulouse when I was there. He helped us alot and was the assistant to our dmp, the missionary coordinator person but a while back he was searching pretty seriously for a wife. That was like six months ago but a while back he got married to a recent convert here in Albi then they moved here just a few weeks before I came. I was pretty happy to see him here when I came. We also taught the coolest couple this week. Their names are David and Aurore. They are both school teachers and probably the coolest, smartest people I’ve ever met. They were asking some questions about the Book of Mormon like how Nephi knew the word gentile and just some other things no one ever thinks about. They are in the middle of building a house kinda in the middle of nowhere so it’s kinda hard to go see them but hopefully they will keep reading and searching with open hearts.
So I sent all the papers and passport to Houston. It’s going to take like six or seven days. I think they had a two day service but it would have been 60 Euros so I chose the next one for like 15 that took a week. I hope it gets there ok. There aren’t any really reputable mailing places here. There is only la poste which is like the UPS for France but it shouldn’t have any problems. I had a question at the top of dad’s work. Is it owned by like a royal family of Saudi Arabia or is just like a normal CEO? As for buying me clothes- if you want you can. I’ve been kinda thinking about what style I’m going to go back to. I think it’s going to be mostly polo shirts. They don’t have to be polo polo but just polo style then just jeans or whatever. I came with two pairs of jeans- one was kinda loose before and now it’s just impossible to wear then the other which was tight is loose. The ones that are loose now are like 30’s but don’t really buy alot of stuff like that because they all fit differently. I’m just gonna have to go shopping but that will be fun. Also I think don’t worry about Christmas stuff. I’ll be back right after where I will need real stuff and it costs so much to send stuff. I would say just don’t worry about it just some letters or something. Love y’all,Taylor

82nd email from France (Albi)

2009-11-02T12:15:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone, So we had a pretty good week. Ahh, so I just looked in my agenda for the list of cool stuff during the week that I had written down but I guess I grabbed an old agenda so I don’t have it but anyways we had a lot of cool stuff that happened so I should be able to remember. I guess we can start with this weekend. We were mostly in Toulouse. We left early Saturday morning with the Arnold’s for the mission conference. We got there pretty early and it was really cool to see everyone. After a while we all just kinda sat down waiting for Elder Holland and President to arrive. Finally they came, him and his wife, Elder and Soeur Holland then also Elder Kopischke. We started by going up and shaking his hand. He was asking everyone where they came from so I thought Saudi Arabia would be a better conversation starter than Louisiana so I told him that. Just like I knew he would, he said that he had been there earlier in the year then we talked for a few seconds. Still pretty short but cool. Anyway, the meeting started as normal- his wife talked which was really good. She kinda made us all feel good by saying that Europe will bloom when it’s day comes and we’re all doing a really good job and not to worry too much about the outcomes just as long as we’re doing our part. She said to just to keep faith and obedience and we will be protected and see miracles. She didn’t talk for very long just a few minutes leaving most of the two hours for the two authorities. Next was Kopischke who also had a really good talk. He kinda checked up on some of the engagements he had given us a year ago when he made the tour to all of our zone conferences so that was cool. I probably liked it more than others seeing there weren’t a whole lot that were even there a year ago. Then Elder Holland spoke. It was pretty powerful but he wasn’t exactly feeling as sorry for us as his wife was. He talked alot about how he is sick of seeing returned missionaries from France becoming inactive because of how the people here use their free agency. He told us to just learn the gospel, use faith and then what happens happens but there aren’t any excuses to say it’s harder than anywhere else in the world. He also talked alot about the urgency of our callings not only for the people here but for us as future members of the church. It was all very good. We spent the day in Toulouse. I wanted to do an exchange with Elder Gunter and Hill from the bureau but since there was a new soeur coming from the mtc they had to stay and do their presentations for the new missionaries so me and Elder Butler took their car and went and saw a few of our old amis. We actually ended up teaching two of them. We didn’t have much time before we had to meet the Arnold’s who came with two of our amis from Albi back at the church for the Saturday night session. This was good. Also Soeur Carter spoke then a few others and then Elder Holland who talked about Christ much more calmly than the morning conference was. It ended with some kind of a primary program song thing which was weird cause it’s the adult session. Then a ten year old kid gave the closing prayer- just not something you would see in America but whatever. Then apparently some guy went crazy trying to go after Elder Holland and had to get taken out. I didn’t see anything but some random member was pulling us up to the front for backup. I don’t think it was a big deal though. We stayed Saturday night in the bureau then went at ten for the big session. That was right next to the bureau in a big building we had rented so that was cool. We had to meet one of our amis early that came from Albi on the train then we went and found our seats. There were tons of people there. I got to take some pictures with a few Toulouse people I had missed before I left. Tonight we have our fhe again. There should be a few amis that are coming so that should be cool. We don’t have many things planned for the week yet but I think we should be able to find some people to see. Tomorrow morning is the district meeting in Montauban which I’m kinda nervous about but I’m sure it will go pretty good. I told the bureau about the big envelope that should be coming. They should send it right away then I’ll try to get it back pretty fast. If I have question we can just stop by the email place really fast or do it from the Arnold’s. I had some questions for you:
What are the days your going to Thailand?
Are you going to be home for Christmas? If so, what days?
About Dad- that stinks. I hope it’s nothing too bad and he gets better soon. I’ve been pretty tired lately but I think it’s just going to be like this until I come home. I’ve had a cold, too. I bought these pills I thought would help. It had one for the morning, noon and night then before you go to bed so I did that for four days. It’s what the pharmacy gave me but it didn’t seem to help a whole lot.
Why does Chelsea go to a groomer? Sorry I don’t have my camera with me today. I will try to send some next time for sure.
Love y’all,
Taylor

81st email from France (Albi)

2009-10-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, I hope you had a good week. Everything is pretty good here. Um, I didn’t email yesterday cause I was on the train. I was pretty sure that I would just stay in Cannes until the end but I guess President wanted me elsewhere. I’m in Albi now. It’s a town about an hour north of Toulouse that so far seems pretty nice and has a little branch with about thirty people. We did service this morning so I got to meet the branch president and some other members. Also, there is one of the two mission couples here in Albi so it’s super cool to go and work with them. They are at the very end of their mission and are pretty excited to help us with whatever we need. When President called me he said the work was going slowly so he was counting on me to pick it up a little. I’m sure he says that to almost everyone but we will see how it goes. I thought I would be sad to leave Cannes but actually this move will help me work hard until the end. I’m still district leader just with a much bigger district than ever before. I’m kinda nervous but it shouldn’t be too bad. Also, I have Elder Hill and Gunter from the bureau so I should get to go on exchanges there and see some old amis. There should be us then four more companionships so that will be one of the bigger districts in the mission. So you know this Saturday we have our mission conference with Elder Holland. I’m really excited. The cool part is that now I’ve moved into the Toulouse stake again so we get to go to the stake conference which is the real reason he is coming. So yeah, Albi seems to be pretty cool. I’m sure it’s gonna be freezing by Christmas time but hopefully I’ll be able to get through it. I’m sure a new ville will make the next few weeks fly by cause there is always alot to learn with the investigators and just to get to know the town always takes a while. I’m with an Elder Butler. He’s from Chicago but kinda went to high school in Seattle- just kinda moved around a lot. He’s alot younger in the mission, I think sixth transfer. He’s cool. Right now he has some knee problems and has a hard time walking around a lot. It’s really cool having a senior couple here. We had a fhe last night at their house with another member and one of our amis that came also. This morning they drove us to service then they taught with us today at four. We had a really good rendez vous with an old African lady name Amandine. We were actually able to set a baptismal date for the 21 Novembre which is cool and it seems pretty solid. We didn’t do very much, it’s mostly the Arnolds (senior couple) that really want to see a baptism before they go home in December but anyways, it’s a baptism and that’s awesome. We also have another lesson at their apartment tonight with another one of our amis so things are going pretty good. So thanks for doing all that school stuff for me.Cannes was cool just to go back for a while and see everyone. I kinda realized we didn’t have much going on with our amis or anything so I wasn’t too sad to leave. Well, I don’t have alot of time. I think I might send you some pictures from the Arnolds computer if I can. We have to go back to our apartment now then go over to the rv. I hope you have a good week. Love y’all, Taylor

80th email from France (Cannes)

2009-10-19T06:52:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, So we have had a pretty good week starting with last week. We went to Nice. It was really cool to see everyone. We had a couple of hours to play. We started with soccer then ultimate Frisbee and yeah, as expected we creamed them. Also, this week we had our zone development meeting which was cool. We had to wake up early and drive to Aix en Provence to meet up with everyone but it was cool to see President and Soeur Carter again. Then after they just ordered like two hundred Euros worth of pizza so everyone got to chill for a while with President. In our interviews he said that I would probably stay here in Cannes for a while. I think we are going to be in a trio for one transfer then just me and someone else until I leave which I’m pretty excited about. It’s really cool having the car. We are actually the only missionaries with one in the mission that aren’t zone leaders or assistants. Our week went by pretty fast. We were able to see a few people and even had someone that came to church. It was a black girl named Precious that only speaks English but she liked it. This coming week should be cool. I get to go back to Toulouse for a big meeting for all the district leaders so I’m looking forward to that. I also talked to President about my foot he took a picture on his blackberry then emailed it to the regional doctor guy then the doc called me the next day and said it was a fungus thing but wasn’t that bad and shouldn’t spread or anything. He said just to wait till I’m home then ask a doctor about it so I guess I’ll just do that even though it seems better to just do it now. Yeah, I got Whitney’s letter. I'll try to send some more pictures. I have a bunch of sweet car pictures. There are just really nice cars everywhere here- Ferraris and Lamborghinis, Porsche, Lotus, Benz, BMW- they are everywhere.For school, I think that would be cool to go for three semesters then get back on the normal track but yeah I really don’t want to wait until August. I got an email from Soeur Daun today. She is up there with Sister Spencer the one from my mtc district that went to New Caledonia. They are roomies now. It’s weird that they are already back in school. You know today I have exactly three months till I’ll be there with y'all! Sorry but this week I didn’t make my list of things from the week and my emails aren’t nearly as good without them. This morning we went on a huge hunt for Elder Diamond’s wallet. He left it at this tobac like drug store when we were buying a map last week then the guy brought it to the police but that’s where we had to go to like four different places to finally find it. But he got it back which is cool. I gained a few pounds this week but not like fat, just from walking around and stuff so that’s good. That bureau was killing me. We should get transfer calls this week so next Monday I’ll know exactly what’s happening but I think Elder Hansen will go home cause he is at the end- then we will have three from the two groups there are here now and we will stay together and just dominate the whole French Riviera in the car- well at least from Antibes to St. Tropez. It’s cool that me and Elder Diamond have these few weeks to try and find some people in Cannes we have been able to see. It’s been great to see some people I taught while I was here but it’s still been kinda hard- we haven’t had a whole lot of rendez vous this week. Elder Diamond is cool. He’s from Provo and he is the same age in the mission I was the first time I was here, just before his year mark. Thanks for Aaron’s address and stuff. I don’t know why they need it. I think Pres. might send the bishops emails to say if we did good or not. He seems to really like me for some reason though I’m not sure why. St. Raph was cool but all the members we passed by weren’t there. Today I think we’re going to go bowling again so that should be pretty fun. Also, Elder Hansen dies so he wanted to buy some stuff for his family so we will probably chill in centreville for a while. Well, I don’t have much else to say. Sorry today’s email wasn’t structured very well. I’ll try to write stuff down this week. Love y’all, Taylor

79th email from France (back in Cannes!)

2009-10-12T04:26:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, Sorry I don’t have a whole lot of time to talk. We’re about to catch the train to Nice. We’re gonna kick their trash in ultimate Frisbee. It’s cool to be back here. What happened is before here in Cannes there was a trio, so President kinda wanted to start up two teams again so I said I would like to come back. It’s been really good so far. Most people remembered me even though it’s been about a year since I came the first time. One thing is for sure, I kinda forgot that the missionary work is a little harder here than in Toulouse! I kinda miss all the college students and people that were willing to listen but so far it hasn’t been too bad. We have fixed three rendez vous for this week just by talking to people on the streets. Also I’ve been trying to contact all the people I taught while I was here but we haven’t had much luck but being here also I'll be able to work a little in Saint Raphael. Actually tonight we have a rendez vous with a St. Ralph family. We’re gonna eat so it should be awesome. I will miss the bureau and all the cool stuff we did there but it’s cool to be out here. I’m back emailing you from this dumb cyber cafe but nothing too bad.I’m working with Elder Diamond. He’s alot younger in the mission but we’re doing good together. He is really cool and I can tell were gonna be friends even if it’s only been a few days. There are two more in the apartment both from Utah. One is going home in two weeks so he’s trying not to be too trunky. So, I was with Frère Paya, you know the French mark Morris? He’s still really funny but I was with him in the hall and he said to someone "yeah, if you don’t remember him its cause he had more hair the first time" I, to say the least, did not think his joke was very funny and now I’m more paranoid than ever about my hairline, even though it’s really not that bad. Last night we had a little rv with a member family. We just all talked and ate a bunch of crepes. It was cool. It’s still pretty hot here in Cannes and people are still in summer mode- not too bad, just kinda crazy down town near the beach and stuff. This week is zone development so its gonna be cool to see everyone then we only have about two more weeks until Elder Holland comes. Everyone is pretty excited about that. I’m gonna try to send a few pics then I’ll write more. Hey, I hope you got all those pics. There are some pretty cool ones. There are so many cool cars here. Hopefully soon we can go to Monaco since I didn’t the last time I was here. But today Nice should be fun. Love y’all, Taylor

78th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-10-05T05:20:00.000-07:00

Hey, I’ll write more later. I'll be busy all morning playing golf with President C. Happy birthday to me! Pray that I play good!
Hey Everyone,This week went by pretty fast. We seemed to do alot of different things but I haven’t made the list I normally do so I hope I can remember everything. Well first off, this morning we went golfing with president! Awesome! It was just me, him and Elder Hill. We had joked about going together a few weeks ago then he really wanted to so we did. I played pretty bad which was kinda annoying but it was still fun. The course was nice but pretty hard with skinny fairways, water and lots of sand. The clubs we rented were really old and crappy but we had fun.

Conference was so cool. We had four amis that ended up coming so we were pretty excited about that. They seemed to like it and the translations weren’t too bad either. We didn’t get to watch Sunday night until this morning on the computers. Elder Holland’s was pretty powerful like always. It’s so cool that he is coming here to talk to all of us in a few weeks. I just hope he goes easy on us cause of our lack of baptisms. I’m sure he knows it’s hard. President told everyone that when he comes it will be a mission reunion with everyone from every city- probably the only time that will happen in President’s three years of serving here. Normally when apostles come they make do a tour of the mission but since he only has time for one conference before stake conference, everyone gets to come. It will be cool to see everyone but I’m not sure if we will have time to chat and take pictures. Probably just back to the train stations as fast as possible. Even the elders from Nice are going to rent a car to make it back the next day. So, I’m still in the bureau. I don’t know when I’ll be leaving. President didn’t say anything today. I get the feeling he wants me to stay a little more than I want to be here but anyways. Elder Hill can do everything that’s necessary so probably sometime this week. This week I got to go test drive a new car. That was cool. We met President at a dealership then worked out some stuff with a dealer then me and him went and drove around town for a while. I figured he would have wanted to drive but he told me to. Then just asked questions about how it handled and stuff. We should be getting at least one new one this week. It will be a pretty big change because we are changing from Renault to Opel. The ones we looked at are Opel Merivas which aren’t quite as cool as the Clios we have now, but not too bad. I won’t be driving one very much either way. Thanks for all the happy birthday stuff! Golfing was kinda like my gift. Write back when you get this. Also, I will send you some pictures I took this week. I’m trying to keep my camera with me every day before I leave Toulouse. Love y’all, Taylor

77th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-09-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, So this week was pretty good. It seems like we mostly filled our nights with lessons making the days go by pretty fast. Church yesterday ended up really well! We had four of our amis that ended up coming so that was good. Also, it was our fast and testimony meeting and for the first time in a while there wasn’t any strange stories or weirdos that talked so our amis seemed to like it. As for my departure, I haven’t heard anything. President will come to the bureau tomorrow and I’ll probably ask him if he has been thinking about where I will go my guess is that I will leave next Monday, but as to where, I really don’t know. This week should be pretty busy. We have our zone conferences this week. Ours is Wednesday then of course this weekend is general conference. I’m pretty excited about that. Hopefully we will have some amis that will come. We have been inviting everyone. I will miss all of our investigators and members here in Toulouse when I leave. Today we are going bowling. I’m pretty excited cause we haven’t done anything really cool with our p days in a while, just chilled in the bureau. As for your questions, yeah sign me up for school. April wouldn’t be that bad. I would like to go to Provo but I’m not sure. Try, I guess, though. Yeah, summer and fall in Idaho would be different. I heard also sometimes you can go for the three summer fall and winter- maybe that would be a good idea- just to catch up a little. I had Elder Sellers email you with the questions and stuff. I think it’s not a problem to wait till the end of November but not any later than that, so it’s good that dad is taking care of that this week. I’ll send you some pics today. I took a few this week. Thailand seems really cool, I am jealous. Email me back. I’ll be here for a while or at least back on later today. I can’t believe will be 21 next week- I feel old. Also is there any blogs from Bryan or Andrew this week? Copy and paste them to me. I wrote Bryan last week. His mom sent me a little email with his address. I also wrote to Grandma and Grandpa. Hey, so we just got back from bowling it was fun. I had a solid 115 but not near as good as I was. That’s cool the letter finally came for Whitney today. She should write him back. So we have to go work soon but we don’t really have any rendez vous so hopefully we can find some people to talk to. We at least were planning passing someone named Adel that we used to teach when we came but then he gave us like five rendez vous but he wasn’t ever there so we stopped calling or going over. But hopefully he will be happy to see us since it’s been a few months. He lives in a pretty bad Mus. quartier so I hope we don’t have any problems. Because we are a trio, it’s better sometimes though. But still there are places I’ve been that I will never go back to, just not worth it cause there are so many raging, wild, mean rock throwing Ars. but anyways. Hopefully I will email you from my new ville next week!
Love y’all, Taylor

76th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-09-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,
Thanks for the emails. It sounds like everyone is doing good. I enjoyed the pictures. Everyone looks so different. I really like Evan’s hair- ha. Maybe that’s the look I’ll go for after. I doubt it but it would be nice to cover my little receding hairline. First off, this week was crazy. We spent almost the first three days running around doing stuff for the transfers then right after we had people coming for carte de sejours medical visits so we had to taxi them around since no one else can drive. It all took up alot of time making it pretty hard training Elder Hill in all that he has to do after I leave. So yesterday at church the Russians came with three other amis so that were really cool! They really enjoyed church and should be there next week also. That was really exciting and we even got to teach them after with a member. Just to clarify a little also, we fixed a rendez vous with just the two Russians Saturday for a little "cours de française" or French classes since they don’t speak very well. Also today doing our shopping we met a really cool French lady that lived in New York and has been to Utah so knew alot about the church. After talking for a while she was trying to convince me to teach French after but that’s not very likely. I’m already pretty "bureau trunky" and extremely excited about going out into the full swing of missionary work , also with the time I am leaving Toulouse there is an opening somewhere that I would love to go to. I am keeping my fingers crossed. I try not to think about it much but it could happen. We might go eat but I’ll be back down later- hopefully I can sleep a little today. Thanks for the pictures. It was cool to see the city just in the background of that one of y’all walking to the car. Have you been using your new camera?
I can’t believe September is almost over. Goodness, it seems to have just started but really we only have a little less than a week left. I’m hoping to leave right after conference weekend. That’s normally about how long the person in my place trains someone else but I’m not sure. Also I was wondering if you have all the old pictures on the computer that I’ve sent you or if they are all at home. Let me know. The head honcho from Spain told me to go to Opel dealerships looking for a few "merivas". I guess it’s the next car they want replacing our Renault Clios. They are kind of like a small minivan. The ones we have now are really nice and cool. Thailand should be cool. I looked up the town you said, it looked like a random little place. Have fun at your bbq and beach tomorrow. It’s gonna be sweet not having school. I wish I could be lazy sometimes. Sorry I haven’t been sending pictures of anything. I’ll try better. It’s just I don’t really have my camera very often, maybe I’ll start wearing my backpack for a week or so and pull it out when there is cool stuff. It’s just I never have it with me now
Do you realize I have less than four months to go now? I can’t even believe that.
Love you very much,
Taylor

75th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-09-14T12:28:00.001-07:00

Hey Everyone,
First off, thanks for all your emails and everything you sent me! It was fun to get the blogs and stuff. It’s always good to read what others are doing and they all seem to be doing pretty well. This was a good week. A lot of things didn’t go exactly as planned but it worked out. We had some really cool stuff too. After the zone formation meeting I went to Tarbes to do an exchange with Elder Beadle. I’ve been kinda excited for this exchange for a while because for the moment in Tarbes they are having a really rough time and not really teaching or finding lots of people. It had been almost a full transfer since they had any new amis or lessons with the members going over there. We said that we would talk to everyone and hopefully see some miracles in finding people that would be willing to talk to us and learn more. Later on walking and passing by old amis and kinda heading towards the area that we had a rendez vous planned for later on that day, there was a man crossing the road. He was way behind us but trying to be obedient in talking to everyone we see, we decided to turn around and contact him which lead to a wonderful lesson that lasted about an hour there on the street. We were able to set another rendez vous for this coming week making him a new ami and breaking the long streak of no new amis! This day in Tarbes helped me appreciate all the people here that are mostly willing to talk to us even when not really interested. It’s transfer day so I’m going to the gar to get some people. I’ll write more later. Ok, so we just got back all the missionaries that are going home are here now but it’s not too bad cause there are only three I think. Today were gonna get away with only doing two trips to the train station which isn’t too bad. To answer your question yes- we got another colleague today -his name is Elder Hill- aka la jeune sauterelle (young grasshopper) so I’ll be training him for about three weeks then leaving somewhere. I think my last weekend will be conference weekend making it around six months here in Toulouse, seeing that when I came the first week was the April conference. So Elder Hill is from Colorado but a few months ago his family moved to Houston. He seems really cool.

Dang, I just deleted the window and what I had typed; which kind of makes me think of all the stupid computers I had to use in the last year eeh I’m gonna miss the bureau but I’m really excited to get back in the full swing of missionary work. Here, it’s hard to explain, but just not the same. Good, but not the same. Sorry this letter is like in three emails- you know transfer days are pretty crazy for us! Now it looks like we have to go back to the gar cause some sisters bags got taken off the train then she kept going and now we have to try and send them on the next one to Bordeaux. For some of your questions: I like what you did last year for my birthday, just slip some money in my account then I’ll spend it when I need something most likely after I’m back but here I’m pretty set. I don’t want more stuff to lug around. You don’t even really need to send a box or anything- I feel like I just got one! Elder Page told me that there is a guy he knows from Utah that sends him dear elders and that he was talking about stuff I had written on my blog which makes me wonder about how many people really read it! Thanks for sending me copies and Andrew and Bryan’s emails from the blogs. Andrew seems like he is doing really well in Arizona but I can relate alot better to what Bryan said in his. I think Germany and France are a lot alike. Thanks again for the emails and have a great week! Love y’all, Taylor

74th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-09-07T11:11:00.001-07:00

Hey, Thanks for your email. Sounds like yall have a good week. It just kind of flew by for us! We were pretty busy in the bureau but I think by Friday we had all the big problems taken care of. I’ve been on the phone often with our phone company trying to get a senior couples phone to make international calls then last week the Chinese elders went to Albi for a rendez vous and they kind of dented and scratched the side of the car. Two days ago someone told us at a stop light that our brake lights were always on and sure enough he was right. So, we’ll have to get that fixed soon. Then just this morning the elders in Cannes called saying their car was towed last night for being in a construction zone or something like that. I’m just hoping they can take care of it themselves. Then on top of that there is never ending coordonnées coming. Also this week was the end of the month so there were a bunch of reports that had to be turned into our supervisor office in Spain. Also this week I talked with someone from the big offices in England so that was kind of cool for the missionary work. I guess this week wasn’t as bad as I made it sound! W did have a few days with not a lot going on but the lessons we did have were pretty good. We had three people at church again which was cool. The Russians were there so we kind of skipped the end of sacrament meeting and watched a video with them which ended up pretty good. Also we’re going to see them Saturday -hopefully with our Russian members. This Saturday morning we had a lesson with Daniel, one of our amis from Dominican Republic with a member that went really well and we saw one of our new amis from last week named Guillaume. He’s so cool! It’s just always hard to get people interested enough to come to church and actually read or just do anything during the week when we are not there. So Soeur Oliver and another older soeur were at church Sunday so that was cool to talk to her and see kind of what life after is like. I’m trying not to be trunky but it’s kind of hard. I think getting out of Toulouse somewhere else will help me a lot. I just feel like I’ve been here so long now everything we do just seems second nature cause it’s been the same for so long. I can’t believe the transfer is over this week. I will be on the 13th. I still have a while so I’ll try not to think about it but If I had to guess...I'd say I’ll get someone to train in the bureau next week then be gone somewhere else three weeks after. Then I’ll most likely go to one more town where I’ll finish. This week it got really windy and cooler and I got thinking that summer was over but now it turned hot again. I’ll send a passport picture today maybe some others if I have. How is your camera working out? I saw one today that was the same d-90 but anyways I’m sure it’s cool. Are you learning how to use it and everything? I’m sure it’s complicated. Do you still read Andrew and Bryan B.’s letters? If so, email them to me next time. Oh I told you that Elder Holland is coming. So now I guess the Carter’s have set up something with Elder Holland to see all the missionaries in our mission! It’s going to be like a week after he is here for out stake conference so that should be really cool. The only problem is they said if the missionaries are somewhere that they couldn’t come and get back to their villes the same day they can’t come so most will probably get to go. Maybe for Nice and down there, it will be kind of iffy. Yeah, go BYU- that’s cool. Wasn’t it Oklahoma that LSU beat a few years ago for the national championships? Thanks for the LSU baseball shirt you send awhile back. I never would have known that LSU baseball was that good without the shirt! ha Love y’all, Taylor

73rd email from France (the Bureau)

2009-08-31T06:16:00.001-07:00

Hey, So this week went by really fast again! Just like you said, it’s kind of hard to believe it’s time to email already. We had a good week. I guess it went by so fast because I wasn’t here for a lot of it. Wednesday I left again for Aix en Provence. We ended up staying the night with Elder Page in Montpellier which was really fun. It was me, him and Elder Gibbons (another that served in St. Raphael) so we mostly mourned over its closing. Thursday I worked all day in Aix with Elder Robinson( who was in the mtc with us) That went well. We were able to teach a few people then we went to their missionary coordination meeting so it was cool to compare how they did stuff differently than us. All the zone conferences went well, we talked a lot about working with less active members. President told us over 70 percent of Europe is less- active so even if just a few of them came back the church would grow much faster than it is now by convert baptisms.
if I were to stay here in Toulouse until October I would get to see Elder Holland at our stake conference but I don’t think I’ll still be here. But that will be cool for those that are. It’s too bad he can’t do a tour of the mission. Yesterday at church went well. They did a little missionary theme. President and Soeur Carter spoke to everyone together (cause of fifth Sunday) about how they need to present themselves as members of the church. They did it with a PowerPoint and everything then for sacrament meeting they talked about missionary work which was cool. We kind of got sucked into singing but I guess it wasn’t too bad! This week in the bureau was pretty crazy just everyone is pretty busy. I’m glad I changed all the phones without any problems- that will make things go easier for a while at least. An elder scraped the side of our car pretty bad so I’m going to have to worry about that this week but it shouldn’t be too bad. I can’t really say much about our amis this week since I wasn’t really here to see or teach them. The Russians did come to church again and the Russian member was there to translate. We didn’t fix anything for during the week cause it’s so hard to talk to them but they said they would come again next week so we’ll teach them there.
My eye sight seems to be not as good as it used to be- I guess I’m just getting old! Well we’re going to go to some preparation day stuff. Love y’all, Taylor
Oh, tell Whitney and Evan that their rock climbing and guitar classes sound cool!

72nd email from France (the Bureau)

2009-08-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

Hey, what’s up? It’s not p-day but I thought I would just let you know I’ll probably not be able to email until Tuesday. We’re leaving tonight then the Bordeaux zone conference is all day tomorrow then were coming back to Toulouse for our zone conference Wednesday. Thanks for the pictures! Everyone looks so old! I love the one with all the kids on and around the couch. Evan looks kind of like a girl with his hair but it’s cool. Well, send me more if you have some. Love y’all! à mardi

Bonjour à tous
I almost forgot I never emailed anything. Today has been kind of busy. President came in. First off we had a little réunion with all the bureau elders that went well. We just talked with Pres. about all the little things we could do better and what seems to be going tranquille. Everything is pretty good, the only thing is he wants us to be able to leave at four to go and work but it’s pretty hard cause there is so much stuff to do in the bureau- not hard stuff just a never ending list. So yesterday was the conference in Bordeaux. It was really cool to see everyone and they all seemed happy to see me! (but I’m sure it was just the new phones that I had for everyone)
Bordeaux was cool- just kind of what I thought it would be like. Actually, It’s kind of dreary and falling apart- not really in a good way- just kind of rundown but there were a lot of cool old churches and things. So Elder Wright is gone… President told him a few days ago he’s going to Bordeaux with us but to stay there. He was pretty excited. I can’t believe we were together for four transfers- it went by extremely fast. I’m going to miss being with him. It seems like we had months and months of calm smooth flowing days. Also he started in Marseille then went to Nice then here in Toulouse and now Bordeaux to die so he got all the big cities there are- lucky!
We actually had a really good week for the missionary work. We had three people come to church. Two of them being referrals from one of our amis for these two Russian kids that are here to work. So we saw them this week and they ended up being really cool and interested. The only problem is that they don’t really speak French or English so there is a pretty big barrier for the language. There is a member from Russia in the ward. We called her to make sure she would be there Sunday, she said yeah but never came so they didn’t have anyone really to talk with. But it worked out alright. So a few nights ago I was pretty hungry so I made a pizza. I took it out of the oven and put it on a plate. As I was walking to sit down I guess it was too big for the plate but it slid off somehow getting molten hot lava tomato sauce all over my hand leaving pretty bad burn marks and now a few days later a pretty nasty blister kind of on my wrist. I wasn’t very happy about that. The fact that I couldn’t eat the pizza was the worst part. I even had cooked up meat that I had put on the top with extra cheese but because it fell all the way to the floor by bouncing off the counter top and kind of rolling down the drawers, splattering onto the floor- it took twice as long for me to clean it up in major pain than it did to cook it.
Oh I got your package thanks that was awesome. For Dad- today I just got a letter saying my new residence card is ready. I had to renew it after one year and tomorrow morning I’ll be going to pick it up in Pibrac, a little town not to far from Toulouse, so you would probably want the newer one but I won’t have it till tomorrow.
Love y'all, Taylor

71st email from France (the Bureau)

2009-08-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hey, that sounds so fun to just chill with everyone back home. Kinda makes me think about when I’ll be there again but that is kinda crazy. I’m sure it made it kinda hard to pack but fun. I’m sure you will be excited to see everyone in Saudi too and Chelsea, I’m sure you miss her. If you took pictures of everyone at the house that would be cool to see. Have fun with your new camera. That’s a really nice one!
We had a pretty good week! It flew by extremely fast. I almost can’t believe it’s preparation day again. We were able to see a few people and had a few good rendez-vous in the bureau. It’s been kinda hectic. Everyone has been pretty busy. I guess cause it’s summer and everyone is on vacation. I’ve been getting tons and tons of coordonnées which is cool but you have to really stay on top of it or they start to add up fast. The cool thing is that lots come from Utah so it’s the higher up people that took a tour of the USA and lots of them are turning out to be nice families and cool people. Also the visitor sites and stuff give them a good image of the church and members which helps alot cause lots of people still have strange ideas that they get from the tv or I don’t even know where from. We had a referral that we got from a less active member a few weeks ago then this week we were finally able to teach her then she came to church so that was kind of a highlight! I guess I’m kinda starting to realize that I’ve been here in Toulouse for a while. It’s already my fourth transfer. I’ll be excited to leave for somewhere else but its gonna be hard also almost like a different life than here in the bureau. So in two days it will be five months which still seems like a while but it’s weird cause it seems like I just marked in my planner the day where I had six months. It’s just going so fast.
I did an exchange with the elders in Tarbes. It went well. They are having a pretty rough time just not having people to teach but I think that’s kind of spread through the mission right now with summer and all; even though we are doing fine here sometimes I forget also that it’s easier in a big town like Toulouse- just so many more people to teach, talk to- just for everything. I’m definately going to miss that if I go somewhere small. After this transfer things are changed up a little and were doing another district meeting tomorrow, so two weeks in a row but it should be ok- the last one went well. I remembered to write down the little things I wanted to tell you. Google earth updated the photo of our house and you can see the old Camaro in the driveway. I was pretty excited when I saw that. There are also a few other cars but I’m not sure who they belong to. It actually looks kinda white trash with the camper there but I guess it kinda was for a while after the hurricane, so whatever! I got an email from Eric. Did you see him while you were there? I hope so. He said is going back to school and he said he had his schedule and everything for Lamar so that’s great.
That’s about all I can think of. I’ll send some pictures later on. I hope you make it back ok. Love y’all, Taylor

70th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-08-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, I can’t believe its time to do emails already. It seems like I just did a few days ago. This week was one of the fastest ever. It really flew by. I guess for a few reasons we seemed to be all busy working in the bureau, it seems like the transfers bring lots of work that we don’t normally have. I know it did for me and then with that we had quite a bit of referrals. We still haven’t had any big problems with the cars. It’s kind of amazing. We haven’t had any wrecks since I’ve been here. The process of what to do after a wreck kind of scares me because I’ve never had to mess with it but how sweet would it be leaving and never having to worry about it. I brought up this point to president and jokingly he said "on vous garde jusqu'à la fin" kind of like ‘well, we’ll just keep you till it’s over’. Also this week it seems like we have been busy teaching and seeing people. Almost every night was filled from the second we left the bureau. We even had some rendezvous that were kind of laid back which is always good. One was a fhe that went really well. We played the water game and everyone loved it. It’s the first time we have done that since I’ve been here but I’m convinced it’s the best cause everyone loves it. Another night there was an guy from nice that took us out to eat which was way nice of him and then after that we had a recent convert that we teach at the bureau and he even brought bread and cheese to snack on. Then Saturday night we got to do service which always makes the day go by fast. In the bureau things are going really good. We got a big delivery this week- all the new phones for everyone. They came in a big box, now I have the project to get them out to everyone and switch the sim cards and all that. Actually President told me I’m going to go with the assistants to all the zone conferences to do it so I’m pretty excited about that! I’ll be in Nice, Marseille then over to Bordeaux then down to Montpellier. Wow- I will take almost the whole week but it will be really cool to see everyone and mostly to put an end to all these phone problems. So I’ll be looking forward to this trip in two weeks or so. Other than that not a whole lot is going on, just normal time is flying by. District meeting is tomorrow. I’m kind of worried again but the last few have turned out good. Also tomorrow after I’m going to Tarbes for an exchange so that should be cool. I hope we can find some people to help them out. It’s going pretty slow now for them. Love y’all, Taylor

69th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-08-04T10:42:00.000-07:00

With Elder Clyde, his trainer
With Elder Davis, his MTC Companion
With his MTC district sisters

Hey! It’s really relaxing to sit here and read your emails. Everything is kind of crazy here in the bureau today. It’s the transfer day so there are about twenty people here. Everyone’s been on my computer which kind of bugged me but I guess it’s not so bad. We just got back from doing our shopping which was way expensive cause we have six people now. Elder Wright and Monson are training for the next three or four weeks that means we will be in a trio for a while which is always weird but I guess it won’t be so bad. Actually I’m going to write more later. There’s too many people walking around…oh and Soeur Oliver and Daun (my MTC sisters) are here going home which is making me pretty homesick. Everyone’s pretty excited to go home. So this has been a pretty big transfer. There’s a bunch of people going home and also a lot of things changing with all the towns and missionaries. There are quite a few places closing because of the lack of greenies. I think about five places. Actually Saint Raphael won’t have missionaries now which is pretty sad, cause the branch is going to struggle without them. I just hope the members there are strong enough to keep it up and going. Our week was good enough but kind of hard. We had a lot of stuff planned that didn’t work out. I did do an exchange with Elder Parker one of the zone leaders and it went really well so that was good. But we did it during the week so I didn’t work in the bureau then I was left with lots of stuff to do without a lot of time. President’s family was at church. They’re from Quebec and they all have the strangest French accents ever. We enjoyed meeting them. I can’t think of much to say. Thanks for the pictures. Whitney looks really skinny and in shape and Trevor looks just exactly like Dean! It looks like they all had fun at Youth Conference. Love y’all, Taylor

68th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-07-27T09:29:00.001-07:00

Hey, sorry it’s so late! We just got back from Carcassonne -the coolest place ever! We had to take a train about an hour away to go but it was way worth it. It’s just a huge medieval castle and city filled with knights and jousting stuff. Look at it on the internet when you get the chance cause its really awesome. We went with the Soeurs and another ysa from the other ward. Also, it was fun talking to Soeur Daun cause she’s leaving Monday..weird. So our week went well, pretty fast like always. We had quite a few lessons and stayed pretty busy. President Carter’s son came back from his mission this week so that’s kind of exciting though I haven’t met him yet. Hopefully he will come around one day or maybe to church Sunday.We went and had a fhe with this one family and it ended up being pretty fun. They must have liked it cause they invited us back tomorrow. Tomorrow morning is our district meeting so I’m kind of worried about that cause it’s not really prepared or anything. Well, it is just not enough so I’ll need to work on that some more.This week I did an exchange with a much younger missionary, Elder Keadle. He’s from Rexburg, Idaho so it was cool to talk about all that. The coolest part was we spent pretty much the whole day teaching and seeing amis so it was cool. He liked it a lot especially because the week before they had taught a lower number of lessons than we did in this one day. They are in a little town called Colomiers right outside of Toulouse and they kind of struggle sometimes but we had a good day together.Also Sunday was a kind of missionary based sacrament meeting, the talks and all which wasn’t really planned but there were so many members on vacation they figured they could rely on us for the talks and stuff. I didn’t really do much but we did sing which I wasn’t super excited for but it ended up ok. I forgot to tell you though that a few weeks ago I gave like a 10 -15 minute talk at a baptism which I though ended up really good. Baptism talks are always the hardest because there’s always that weird tradition where the talks and stuff are more personal and touchy so in French it makes it even harder but I think I did pretty good. That’s about it. We have a pretty good week planned. We’re gonna be pretty busy until Thursday or Friday but we’ll probably find stuff for then, too. We’re doing an exchange with the "chef de zones" or ZL's this week also. It should be good. So next week is the transfer so everyone will be leaving and coming. We’ll probably be super busy trying to bring everyone around even more than normal cause there are I think 13 leaving.I hope you have a fun time when Dad gets back. Ok, we got to go. We have a few people to see tonight. Have a good week. Love y’all, Taylor

67th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-07-20T17:34:00.001-07:00

Hey Everyone, So our week was really amazing! We did SO much cool stuff. You know how I was saying how tired I was last week? So we found the perfect solution...a huge road trip to help move in the couple missionary that came last week. Yeah, we were assigned to go all over France- over 2500 kilometers- and spend three days away from Toulouse. We were pretty busy working and moving things but it was very relaxing. It all started Tuesday morning with our réunion de district, which went very well. The assistants were also there and seemed to like it. Right after it was over I went to Tarbes which is about two hours away for an exchange, which was awesome. The next morning Elder Wright took the big truck and came to pick me up and we headed off to Pau, which is in the south west corner near the Pyrenees Mountains. After we had moved some things and filled up the car again we headed off to Aix en Provence where we had to meet with another missionary couple. Then we headed up into Gap, the one little city in our mission up in the Alps. It was a really nice drive up there through the mountains. That night we met with the family Giles and gave them all that we had collected over the day. But that wasn’t it because we still had a couch and bed in Antibes that we had to pick up and bring back to Gap the next day. We woke up early Thursday and headed back down to the Riviera. We got to see the Antibes chapel which is closed now since about a year and a half but is kind of a legend in our mission- not many have seen it. It’s a huge villa in a way nice neighborhood that was converted into a church. After picking up all that was there we hit the road again for Gap which took us almost all day to get back. We unloaded the bed and put it together with the help of the other missionaries serving there; then we’re back on the road again just trying to make it as close to Toulouse before nightfall. We ended up staying in Aix en Provence again then heading back to Toulouse Friday morning. It was amazing. Maybe the best part of it was the food! There are a few towns that are known for their specialties and we had to stop seeing as they were just "en route". First off was Castelnaudary where we ate the best casoulet ever- which is a pot with beans and meat mixed in. I had a duck leg and also a huge sausage then for the second big stop; a town near Gap called Sisterone where we ate les coté d'agneaux or lamb ribs from a really nice restaurant. Honestly, we kind of splurged spending over 85 Euros on two meals but they were both amazing so pretty much from Wednesday till Friday we took turns driving. On top of all that we had a really good week with teaching and finding people! We ended up having ten lessons that were all pretty good and Monday we found and taught someone that came to church yesterday! Me and Elder Wright were pretty excited about that.Your week sounded pretty good, too. I bet Arkansas was fun to see everyone and all. I was going to ask you if you saw Harry Potter. It came out here and everyone’s been kind of crazy about it. There was a girl from Vitrolles at church Sunday! It was cool talking to her about how everyone is doing. It made me really miss everyone there and now I’ve been thinking about them a lot. It’s been almost a year since I was there. Well, that’s about it. Oh, I’m glad Dad had a good time diving. The Red Sea seems cool! Say hey to everyone for me. Taylor

66th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-07-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, We kind of had a good week. It started off kind of slow. We had our zone conference Wednesday which went well. It’s always really good to see everyone and they talked a lot about stuff that hasn’t been very clear for everyone such as how to contact, like how to introduce ourselves. They kind of made a new mission standard which will help a lot after receiving different instructions on how to do things over the last year. We had two 70’s come and teach us completely different techniques then when President Carter came he had his new way, then we still have others trying to hold on to President Merrill’s teachings- so it feels really good to have it all set straight. The weirdest part about zone conference- well, you need to know that every time we have a conference, the new and leaving elders and sisters bear testimony- well, this time it’s the Soeurs from our mtc district already going home! Their 18 months are over and they’re gone in a few weeks after this transfer! I couldn’t even believe that it finished so fast for them but it was cool to have them (Soeur Oliver et Daun) in the Toulouse zone and also I’ll get to see them as they pass by the bureau the day of transfers. It’s just too weird how fast it’s going. This Saturday the ward did an activity. We just all got together and played soccer. Not that many came but it was still fun and we had one of our investigators come so that worked out really well. He seemed to like it. This week in the bureau has been a little hectic. Elder Wright has been pretty busy closing apartments and stuff then last week the sisters in Nimes left their cell phone at the place they did their emails so I’ve been running all over trying to get a new phone and sim card and getting it to them. This week should be really good. It’s the 14 Juillet tomorrow like the French Fourth of July. It was last year when we did the big parade and party with Robert. I’m going to go to Tarbes for an exchange so that should be fun then Wednesday we’re going to be going to Pau, another town down at the bottom of our mission to drop off a fridge. Also, next week there’s a big possibility we could go to Gap. I’m praying that works because it’s the one town in our mission in the Alps so it would be a cool change. We got a new couple missionary this week. They were in the bureau for a few hours. They are really nice and excited to be here. Thanks a lot for the notes you sent me from the setting apart blessing. That helps a lot especially the part about being happy and all. It’s been kind of hard lately. I feel like there are really people that we could find to be baptized, it’s just going pretty slowly even when we work really hard. I haven’t been feeling super good either; not sick but just really tired all the time and I’ve been losing weight. I’m way more skinny that I ever have been before. I think I just need to sleep for about two weeks but I just can’t! Hey, you’re going to be proud of me. So, Elder Mak here can see how much money people have on their mission cards for like the mission money and there are always people that go from month to month just barely making it and running out at the end or always calling us at the bureau to look online to see if they have enough to buy food and whatnot; so I guess I must have learned to be trendy (I think he means “thrifty”) or something because I have the second most money out of the whole mission. It’s true I’ve been kind of budgety, I’m not sure why though. It’s weird for me. Hey, I finally found a suit. I’m super excited for that. It was 70 percent off. It’s a super nice one from a store called Devred. I also bought shoes for really cheap and a new belt. The suit with a really nice tie cost 48 Euros then the shoes 27 and the belt like 12- so it all worked out really nice! Love y’all, Taylor

65th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-07-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, Thanks for all your pictures! Seems like you having a good time. I forgot that Ivy was coming back. I guess I knew, I just forgot it was this week. We had an ok week, I was convinced it would be the best week ever then slowly it kind of fell apart but we did a lot of cool things. It just ended up with lots of rendez-vous that didn’t work out. Everything in the bureau is going fine. Time flies by here. This week I had the car reports to send in so that took a lot of time also I went to president’s house again to do the car inspections. That went well; it was just really hot going from car to car in the heat. Also, we have been trying to get ready for the zone conferences this week so we have been all over buying things for the apartments that Elder Wright takes care of. We ended up spending 300 Euros just on fans. I don’t know if there were actually that many that broke since last summer or all the missionaries just wanted more- it has been hot though. During these summer months in France is when all the old people die because nobody has air conditioning like in the states. We also took our trip to Brive- it was cool to be on the Bordeaux side that we don’t see very often. Also we've been to all kinds of car dealerships and phone stores just running errands- it’s kind of good to get out of the bureau but annoying at the same time. We had the elders come that had visa problems. I think it was Tuesday that three of them came then left for their new villes! I’m really happy because the new phone contract is set finally, they signed Tuesday. We negotiated it then passed it to toiry, the church offices in France to do all the paperwork but it ended up being really, really good. We changed it from just our mission to all the church phones in France and should save around fifty thousand Euros in the next two years! We have been talking to a few different companies and one SFR offered us 8 months free service which kind of shows how much they will do when you have companies working against each other. Hopefully we will get the new phones soon because I have a huge list of people that need them. The 14 juillet or the 4th of July for France is coming up soon. The French will probably take all week off for that. Most everyone left for vacation for a few months like they all do every year. These weasels pretty much took vacation days for the death of Michael Jackson- not really- but its amazing how affected they seemed to be by it. ha We were in a rendez-vous last week and our ami told us that he died and we didn’t really have anything to say, just kind of a loss of words because we didn’t really care that much. Then she got all sad and apologetic for telling us the bad news, thinking that we were hurt deep down. It was kind of funny. We need to go pick up someone at the gar bring him to the carte de sejour place then later on back to the gar(train station). The tour de France has started! Everyone is pretty excited for that. I guess it starts in Monaco then makes its way up through France. Elder P. was going to go get to go with members in Perpignan then was super mad when he found out zone conference was the same day. Everything is good. I’m hoping to go shopping a little today. I still really need a few things and it’s all so cheap if I don’t do it now it’s kind of a waste. The only problem is that I hate to drag Elder W. around because he doesn’t want to go at all. Hopefully I can work something out with Elder M. So I’ve just been rambling- you can take most of this! Love y’all, Taylor

64th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-06-29T10:45:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, Sorry I didn’t write back Thursday. Actually what happened was we only had one hour before going to president’s house so we decided to take advantage of the soldes. Remember the big sales that are twice a year? They just started last week. We also went this morning- so far I haven’t found that much stuff I had to have, just a few ties and some really cool cuff links.This week was really good. It went by fast; first off do you know I’m on my eleventh transfer! I have a nice stack of planners on my desk I’m pretty proud of. It’s amazing how fast time flies by. Our sports day at President’s was really fun and ended up being pretty relaxing also. We all played volleyball and ping pong also some other random games. Everyone was doing their own thing then we all ate together, a big barbecue with hamburgers and sausages. Thursday night I went with Elder Chlarson to Colomiers, a little town outside of Toulouse. We had a little exchange then we went to see their ami for the baptismal interview. It went really well and was pretty edifying for both of us. His baptism Saturday went really well, there was quite a few members that came. We also had an investigator that we met at the metro then walked to the chapel together so it was nice for him to come to church for the first time. Also this Sunday Denise and her family came to church for the first time since moving from Agen. They had come for one activity but never for a Sunday. This next week is going to be a little crazy also, it’s already super packed until Friday. We’re also taking a little trip down to Brive to help the elders move into another apartment so that should be fun. I’ve never been down to this part of the mission, also I have to go do all the car inspections at president’s house and that should take a few hours. Tomorrow morning I have our district meeting. I’m not that worried about it but I hope it goes well. I have it planned almost to the minute so nothing could go too wrong. I just don’t want it to be boring. I think motivation is one of the most important parts. I’m really looking to buy a suit. I tried on a few today that were 50 percent off but still I just haven’t found the right one. Also, I really need to buy shoes and a belt. I think I should have enough money on my card. It shouldn’t be that expensive, these soldes are really cool. I wish they would do this in America- it’s like going shopping and everything is on sale, not just the junky stuff no one wants. I just bought 3 thirty dollar ties for about five then some today twenty five euro cuff links for six.I hope your having a good time at home. Has Dad been calling a lot? That’s cool that Alex is doing so good in the mtc. I miss that place! It is really cool but also a lot different than what we’re doing here. It would be nice to go back for a few weeks for a little boost! Love y’all, Taylor

63rd email from France (the Bureau)

2009-06-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, That’s really cool that you’re home now. I’m sure it was really good to get to see everyone. Today is kind of crazy. We’re all doing the transfers. We’ve been back and forth from the train station all morning trying to get missionaries where they need to be. Now we’re back at the bureau trying to take care of some work but its really hard because all the missionaries that are leaving tomorrow are here being wild and excited. We’re actually not doing much of a preparation day today but President invited us to his house Thursday and we’re going to play sports and stuff. He didn’t tell us why but we found out that it’s probably to celebrate his one year mark so that should be fun. This week was good, it was nice to know the transfers before everyone else. As far as our rendez vous it wasn’t the best week. We had a hard time seeing people- we really have this routine of good weeks and bad weeks. I can’t really understand why, however I hope we can snap out of it because the bad ones are always tiring. We went to Tarbes for an exchange this week so that was fun. We did it during the week and skipped a day of bureau work. Tonight we’re invited to our ward mission leaders house. He’s really cool- him and his wife just moved here a while back- he speaks really good English cause he served in Ireland. That will be a nice relaxing end to a pretty hectic day. For right now the bureau elders are staying the same but we think that will change in a few weeks when a few straggling elders come from the mtc that couldn't get their visas in time to come tomorrow with the other greenies. Another good thing with the transfer, I guess, is that I’m the district leader now, which I’m pretty excited about. I’ll get to go do all the exchanges and the district meetings. I’ll do exchanges with the zone leaders and I’ll talk to them every week about how everyone is doing so that will all be exciting. It’s more work but I’m pretty excited about it all, but a little nervous too. This week I have to do a baptismal interview for an ami of the Colomiers elders here in Toulouse. I’m kind of worried about that but I’m sure it will be ok. Umm..I don’t have a lot to say, Ill be able to write a little Thursday before going to President’s so write back when you get this. Be sure to tell me how everyone is doing and all that. Ask Melanie if she got my letter in French. Did you ever email the Steven guy? Was yesterday father’s day for you too? So we’re set up to have a good week. We have stuff almost every day lots of activities with church people; it should go by pretty fast. I hope you make it to Houston and back good. Sorry I don’t have a lot to say; there’s a lot going on here right now so it’s kind of hard to concentrate but I love y’all. Have a good week and I’ll try to write more Thursday. Love y’all, Taylor

62nd letter from France (the Bureau)

2009-06-15T06:40:00.001-07:00

Hey,Thanks for your email. It seems like everything is going good. I hope you have a good trip back home. I’ll try not to think about y’all being back there too much but it might be hard. Well it’s the last week of the transfer. This has been easily the fastest week since I’ve been here in Toulouse. I guess for a few reasons; there’s always a lot to look forward to for the new transfers. Then also we had lots of lessons and we were able to fill up almost every day teaching, which makes everything much more enjoyable. And it’s been pretty calm in the office so no one has been stressing over anything which makes it nice. I’m sure this week won’t be at all the same but at least we’re relaxed now, recharged and ready to work hard! As for our rendez-vous’, they all went well. We were able to fine a few new people also so that’s good. We’ve been teaching this lady, Denise from Trinidad. She was baptized in Agen then moved here to Toulouse about three years ago but hasn’t ever come in contact with the church here. Her number was given to us by a French missionary that taught her then came back just to see how things were going. We’ve seen her and her family a few times now but she has always been reluctant to come to church. We invited her to a barbeque and movie night our ward had Friday night and she came with her family. That was one cool thing of the week. Elder Wright’s brother got his mission call this week for Rome, Italy so he’s pretty excited about that. He also has another brother that’s in South America somewhere. He won’t see either of them until a while after he gets back. Tonight we have a rendez-vous with an African guy named éluge. I really, really hope he’s there because we turned down a FHE with a really cool family to see him and it’s not like were invited over that often. Oh yeah, there was this American guy at church from Washington DC, so we were talking and he said he kind of had some friends down in Louisiana. So ends up its Jeff and Debbie B.! He was saying that it’s been a really long time since they’ve been in contact and he wanted there address or number or just whatever. So I have his email. This guy said that M. was named after one of their daughters but they haven’t really talked to them since then. Actually I told him you could email him with whatever information you could get. He’s a really nice guy so just send him an email. He will be happy to hear from you. So that was kind of cool. It’s always a little weird to speak with Americans in English. This week we had to drive to Montauban to drop off some things for their apartment. It was just another little old French town but kind of cool. It was hard driving our big van around their little centre ville but we made it. I was driving. I guess that was probably the most stressful part of the week. Other than that everything is good! I’ll start getting a package ready to send home when you get there. That will be better. I’ll talk to you later! Love y’all, Taylor

More of 61st letter........

2009-06-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

P.S. -We made this logo. We have a cool printer that can print pictures on the corner of the envelopes so we throw this on whenever we're sending it out to missionaries (at least to the ones who would appreciate it). Then we put "With Love from the Bureau" or something like that.

61st email from France (the Bureau)

2009-06-08T03:09:00.000-07:00

Hey, thanks for the pictures and email! I’m glad you had a good week. Ours was good, it wasn’t the best but it went by really fast so it’s better. It’s the week five of the transfers which is weird to think about. This one has gone by super fast. I’m sure I won’t leave but I could change companions. How it works here is we have to train the ones that replace us for at least three weeks so it’s not like we ever just pack up and leave. We always know for a while beforehand, but since I’m the youngest here the other three will probably train before me anyways. This week was kind of slow. We had lots of things planned that didn’t work which kind of left us tired physically and spiritually also. It rained and when you’re looking forward to teaching it’s never very exciting being outside doing back up plans in the rain! We did have one investigator at church so that was awesome! Other than that, not a whole lot has happened. This week in the office was a little hectic. Most of my big reports to send in are due by the fifth of every month so I was busy doing those most of the time. The other day Elder Calder came to the office with his parents. It was cool to talk to them. They were all excited to go to Italy and pick up his twin. They have a pretty big vacation planned. I think they don’t go home until the 19th. We have our zone development meeting this week, Wednesday. It will be good to see everyone! It seems like all of my closer missionary friends are in this zone now, so that’s really cool. So it’s really fun to see them and eat together and stuff. I’ll be sure to tell Elder Page a letter should be coming. Today I think I’m going to write some friends from when I was in Idaho. I’ve been meaning to but haven’t gotten around to it. Before I didn’t have the mission addresses but now I can look it up on the computer. I also wrote Melanie a letter in French. I don’t know if she got it though I haven’t heard anything and it’s been a few weeks. I thought it was pretty good, though! The fourth of July thing sounds fun. Is that the first thing you will be back for or is there a Sunday between there and when you get home? Thanks for the pictures! The house there seems to be pretty nice! We were at someone’s house and they had a bunch of big placemats like for kids at a table with pictures of la Reunion where Alex is going. It looked really beautiful. Also I guess there is a huge volcano there cause they had pictures of lava burning through little villages and stuff. I guess he’s getting all ready to leave, that’s cool. I need to write Clay too today. It’s been a while. I’ll try to send some pictures later. We don’t have anything big planned today. We’ll probably just lounge around. That's nice sometimes. Sorry, you’re going to have a hard time making a blog out of this. It’s all kind of jumbled. (No, I just post what I get- haha) I hope you have a good week. I’ll send back some pictures, maybe a video. Love y’all! Bye, Taylor

60th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-06-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, Thanks for the emails. Today has been a little hectic. We just got back from the gar picking up an elder then were going to have to bring him back in about an hour. There is a little mini-transfer because someone is coming back that went home about six months ago, then there are some other little changes. But what I’m waiting for now is Elder Calder! He should be arriving soon here at the office. He is finished because his twin brother is serving in Italy and they want to go home together. President said that he could still “die” (translation- go home) at his original go home date which is today. (instead of choosing three weeks early or three weeks late like the rest of us have to) I’m happy to see him again! But it’s weird because he’s my first real companion to “die". Today we’re not able to go shopping or really anywhere because it’s another stinking holiday for the French people. They’re taking a long weekend for Pentecost. I guess it’s not that bad but it just seems like there is something every single week. This week went really well which broke up our good week/bad week pattern, thank goodness. We were able to see quite a few people and taught a respectable 7 lessons! Also we have a pretty good week planned with rendez vous almost every day. Some with some of our amis we haven’t seen in a while so it should be pretty cool. Also we had another dmp called in the ward (the missionary coordination guy). He seems to be really cool and young he just moved here from Bordeaux with his wife. He served here in our mission four or five years ago so we’re all pretty excited about that. Hopefully that will give the ward a little boost to help us and talk to their friends and families. We had our little activity Saturday that went pretty well. There was twice as many elders as brothers but at least each companionship got to take one frère and go work for a few hours. It was awesome. I can’t believe your going home in only two weeks. That’s cool. Is Dad sad to have to stay there by himself for a few weeks? That’s really sweet that their finally going to go scuba diving. Write back when you get this then I’ll answer again later and send some pictures if we end up having time. We are going to eat somewhere. Love yall, Taylor

59th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-05-25T05:42:00.001-07:00

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.

58th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-05-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, Thanks for the emails! We just got back from Auchon doing our shopping for the week. It took way too long, almost two hours. I’m pretty tired. I hope we get to relax a little bit today but it’s not looking like it. We have had a pretty hard week, we couldn’t really find many people to teach or see. It’s always hard to leave the apartment when you don’t have a lot of things already planned. This next week is looking a lot better. We already have quite a few things planned that are pretty solid. Sunday wasn’t the best either. I really thought we would have had at least 4 investigators there, we had confirmed everyone, made sure they knew exactly how to get there, what time and everything then just no one! I called a few of them after the first hour and finally got one to come but just for the last hour which is sacrament so I guess it was ok. President and Soeur Carter were there for the first time in forever and there was only I think, one person during the class for the investigators. I’m getting tired of all these French holidays. There has been something big almost every week since I’ve been here but now there’s a really big one coming up- the day of "assencion", the Catholic day to celebrate Mary. Remember last year in Vitrolles where they did the huge parade with candles and a big statue of her in the front. It was just ridiculous, but to make it even better this time it falls on a Thursday so they do something they call "le pont" or the bridge so they just make Friday a holiday also and start a four- day weekend. French people are unbelievable! haha Even the bureau work has been slow this week. The biggest thing is that Elder C. put gas in the car but it takes diesel. It’s at the shop now- I’m just hoping they don’t have to redo the engine or anything. He was freaking out after he realized what he did but I think it’s gonna be ok. All the new greenies came from the mtc this week, that was fun! They all seemed pretty cool. Oh, my two choices for coming home are 19 January or 8 March. January is sounding really good. I’m probably going for that. It’s really funny, at the beginning when they said we could choose everyone was like “oh yeah, woo-hoo another couple months to serve!!” but now almost everyone is taking the early date- but I don’t blame them, there’s a lot of time in between January and March. There’s a few going home this transfer that are gonna be two or three days late for the BYU semester- that’s one thing I don’t think I would like to do, but there all from Salt Lake or around there so they will still be with their families. I’ll send another email later with my passport and maybe some pictures. I think we might go try to see this museum in Centreville but I’m not sure. If we do that we would have to come straight back and go to work again then we would be all tired for the rest of the week. It would be fun though. I really liked the pictures of the camel market- pretty crazy! Well, we’re gonna go eat. Love y’all, Taylor

57th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-05-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, What a day! We’ve been all over picking up and dropping off the missionaries for the transfers. It’s always good to see the ones that have been in other zones for a while. Also all the ones going home are here so that’s always kind of hard to be around- it just makes us all feel super trunky. We’re all pretty busy with the transfer, updating things with the new missionaries and making sure everything is going smoothly. Now tomorrow will be a different story with all the new ones coming in. We’re getting 6 sisters and three elders. They seem to be all pretty cool with the pictures we have, it’s always cool to see how American they are and all the little things that they find interesting and are completely normal for us now. Tonight we have a rendez vous with a member so we’ll need to leave around six or so. I hope that goes well. It’s a lady and it’s the second time we’ve seen her. I called to make sure it was still good so I hope all goes well, but you never know. It always seems to be a hassle meeting people in town then going to see someone. But most of the time it goes smoothly. This week has been good- we’ve been able to teach quite a bit and found some cool people. We had three amis or investigations at church so that’s pretty good even though one had to leave early cause he had things to do. The other two seemed to like it and hopefully we’ll be able to see them this week. I don’t have that much to say since I just talked to you yesterday. It was really good talking to y’all! I really enjoyed it. Sorry if I was boring on the phone. I realized I was a little lame after I hung up, sorry. (For the record, he wasn’t lame or boring in any way. Mom) I’ll send a picture of my passport soon. You talked about the gnc stuff. What I had before was called no xplode and it was made by bsn if you wanted to look that would be cool. But you don’t have to buy it if it costs a whole lot just that would be a lot better in a box than a bunch of chocolate, I think! I saw some elders today that I hadn’t seen in a while today. They were going crazy just super ready to get home. I could see myself being like that too, though maybe not that much! Well, thanks for everything! Love y’all, I hope you have a good week. Taylor

56th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-05-04T05:33:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, thanks for the emails. Sounds like you had a pretty normal week, the same here. Everything has been pretty relaxed and not so stressful. It’s been starting to get hotter too, but there’s still a lot of little rain storms that come in every now and then. The other day we were in the hot sun then it started to rain but I guess with the wind and direction of the rain we didn’t have any clouds over us or nearby. It was kind of weird. We actually had a really good week with the missionary work, the best since I’ve been here and in a long time. I guess we were able to teach at least one person every day which I guess doesn’t seem that hard but you would be surprised sometimes. We actually were able to find a few new people that are pretty interested also! I’m a little worried about this week also because we don’t have too many things planned out but that’s normally how it is, then they just fall into place as the week goes on. I’m glad its preparation day today because I’ve been a little tired lately. You know what I do, it seems like every time I’m tired like this I end up getting a little sick and just sleeping for a day. So I hope that doesn’t happen. But it’s not like we can just take a nap either, which is something I miss. You know how much I like to just sleep even if it is a waste of time! Getting up at six thirty every day kind of wears down on you after a while. Saturday we talked to this guy that seemed pretty cool and said we could come back Sunday. So we went and his wife was all excited to see us. I guess when she was younger one of her brothers or sisters was really sick and they had some member neighbors that proposed that the elders come over to give a blessing. They let them come then she told us that the kid was completely healed and that all the pain was gone. So that was pretty cool and we’re going to see them again next Sunday. Well, I guess I’ll call Sunday around 5 or 5:30. I hope we can do it just here from the bureau. We have like three lines. I’ll need to buy a calling card this week. I still have time on my last one but I think it’s only good for a year and I bought it for the first call. Yeah, I hope Whitney and Evan are there this time. When are y’all planning on going back for summer? Do you know your flight plans and all that? Does Dad get to go or does he stay and how long are you going to stay? Yeah, you said something about your camera class last week, that’s cool. What camera are you using, just the digital one? How did Dad and Evan’s scuba diving night work? Have they actually done any diving yet? The basketball pictures were pretty cool. Maybe I’ll take one today then send them later in the day. The desk from last week isn’t actually mine, it’s the secretary’s but it looks cooler and bigger so I took a picture in it. I’ve been thinking about David T. flying around in his plane all week. Sister Brooks’ blog was really funny especially the home teaching remark at the end. Thanks for sending me that story, I like stuff like that. I’m sure he is just nuts when he flies. Well, try to email back a little something then I’ll get back on later maybe with some pictures. Love y’all, Taylor

55th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-04-27T06:13:00.000-07:00

Bonjour tout le monde,
So, Ivy’s having a baby that’s cool. I figured she would while I was here. I’ve just been waiting for the news. I feel the same as Whitney, I’m not really good with kids but that’s good! I’m sure everyone is happy. MaMa said that everyone back home already knows. I’m sure news spread fast. The good news is we’ll get to talk about it when I call in a few weeks! I think Mother’s Day is the 10th so just next week email me what time I need to call. I hope you had a good week. It wasn’t too bad here. I’ve been a little stressed which I would say isn’t a very common thing for me. Everything’s a little calmer now. When I got here they gave me my own phone which at the time I thought was super sweet; now sometimes I want to throw it out the window because it never stops ringing! Yesterday we had our stake conference. It was really good. A girl talked that just got off her mission in Baton Rouge and she talked a lot about the Louisiana people and her little redneck hick towns she served in! I would like to talk to her more but I think she’s in Carcassonne. For the conference, the church had to rent a big building with stadium seating and a big stage probably about the size of the Lewis auditorium but really modern and nice. I’m actually lucky because I went to the stake conference in Nice when I was in St. Raphael then I came here and got it again. There were a few more people in Nice than here but it was still good to see everyone. We had a ton of missionaries staying at our apartment the night before which is always a little annoying when they are just all over. Maybe I’m just a little unsocial, the others don’t seem to mind it so much. I can’t believe this transfer is almost over. I can’t believe that time has gone by so fast- it’s unbelievable especially since I’ve been here in Toulouse. I guess the next transfer is my tenth of either 15 or 16- I still have to choose but either way it’s going downhill pretty fast. So we’ve been teaching a lot of people lately, at least kind of a lot for the time we have in the evenings. We did our weekly planning yesterday where we talk about all the people we see and plan lessons. We finished and I was like “wow, all of the people we see are from other places.” The French people are just super hardheaded and just don’t really care but being in a big city brings people from all over. The members are pretty open to work with us too, which is awesome. We have rendez-vous for almost every day set up with the members to come and help us. Everyone seems pretty shocked when I tell them where you live. The French people especially but they don’t really understand how it is. Thanks for all the candy and the shirt from Rome. I enjoyed the dates, they were really good. I’ve eaten them a lot but never like that, just always plain. We all enjoyed the Arab writing on the candy wrappers too. I’ll try to hop online later and send some pictures. I’m going to have to take some first. I haven’t since I came here but maybe of the bureau and our apartment. I would of the car but we just had to park it really far away. It’s a really nice little Renault Clio. I really enjoy using the manual transmission; it’s like a life dream come true. Well, I’ll send this then another later. Email quick if you have any other questions or if I didn’t answer some of the first ones. I’ll probably email Ivy now. Love y’all, Taylor

54th email from France (the Bureau)

2009-04-20T04:45:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone, Thanks for your emails. It sounds like you had a good week, us too. It went by really fast. I just got back from a garage in a little town called Puget. I had to take one of our cars there to get some problems fixed. Tomorrow we have a little perk of the bureau-Road Trip- well, kind of. We’re going down to Bèzier, a little town where the missionaries are moving so we’re going to bring the big van and help them move all the stuff. It should be fun. It’s going to be just me and Elder Wright. He’s my colleague now. Elder Mendenhall left this morning on the train to go to Montpellier for the next 3 weeks before he dies. I guess President didn’t want him to finish in the bureau so he sent him there. He was way happy because he was there for 6 months about a year ago so he already knows everybody. So now it’s just me and Elder Wright and only 4 in the bureau so that will be a little better. It’s going to be harder for the missionary work though, I think, because it was him that knew everything about the people we see and teach. I had a rendez-vous with President and a guy from SFR, a phone company, and we negotiated a whole new contract for the whole mission. We’ll be seeing him again this week to talk about the final prices and all that but it was a cool experience just to talk about all the stuff especially with President who is totally a business man! It’s actually a really good offer and so were gonna see if we could include the mission of Paris with us so I’ll be calling them all week trying to find out information for how many phones they have working and how much time they would need to change. Last night we ate with the Ficquet family. It was really good. They have a son who’s about to put in his papers so it was cool to talk to him. Then we ate this tuna tomato tart with cheese. It sounds weird but actually was very good. I’m pretty sure she invited us over because as soon as she found out I’m from Louisiana she realized she could use me to find her long lost member cousins she found while doing her genealogy so now I have 2 names of dead people from Morgan city I’m supposed to give to somebody to see if they still have family lines in the church! So that's gonna be cool. Caussé came this week. It was really good. Him and his wife talked. I talked to the wife about y’all being there. She said the trip was really good and that it was cool to meet all the members there. She also talked a lot about how nice it was to speak to us in French not English. Oh, I got your package today, thanks! Actually I haven’t had time to open it yet Oh yeah, you have to put mission or elder or something on the address when you send me stuff. We have this super pissy always- angry mail lady that absolutely hates us and today I could see the fire in her eyes as she asked if it was for us or the other people in the building cause it’s not like pogue is marked anywhere. But everyday she storms in, leaves the mail then storms out and if she has questions or has to get us to sign things it’s just like she’s ready to fight! It’s really dumb because we’re always super nice to her. As for our apartment, yeah it’s on the fourth floor above the bureau and it’s super big and nice. The square here is really cool. The Compans Caffarelli is all offices. There’s always business people walking around then the apartment is the only one I’ve ever had with like real framed pictures on the walls and paint and all that- just very nice. The whole city here is really artsy and cool, except our section has some really bad big (a certain religion named) areas just huge buildings that we try to avoid because they pretty much hate us. There’s one that we’re not allowed to go to because they got the car stolen one time then the tires cut another time. Then the other ones we only go to if we have meetings. I keep thinking about Alex going on his mission. Madagascar’s going to be so different. Elder Mendenhall had a colleague from there and he was always talking about just how his culture was so weird. Well, thanks for all the emails everybody. I’ll try to send some pictures later maybe. I don’t have my camera right now. Go ahead and call the BYU-Idaho people maybe just to see. Love y’all, Taylor

53rd email from France (the Bureau)

2009-04-13T03:47:00.000-07:00

Hey, It sounds like you had a really good week in Rome. I really liked all the pictures. I’m glad y'all had a good time. We had a good week here also. There’s been a lot of stuff going on- lots of little random tasks things just needing attention that we have to do. I can see already that time is going to fly by very fast here. The two weeks since I came have already been super fast but I guess I’ve been in France now for over a year, that’s weird to think about! Church yesterday went really well. The ward seems all very nice. We even had a few people invite us over for this week so that’s always something to look forward to. The ward is a lot like Cannes, just pretty normal. Président Carter is in our ward so we’ll get to see him when he’s there. He was yesterday. It was good this week in the bureau. We had a guy come from French church headquarters here. He talked to us all about what we needed to do and just made sure we were keeping all of our files right and we were up to date on all the things- mostly for the apartment manager and secretary but he had some things for us with the insurance for cars and other stuff like that. He started talking a lot about the big audit in October were going to have by the French government and how it all has to be perfect for that. It was funny he was talking about October and everyone’s like “oh, I’m not going to be here”, then he looks at me and says “your new, right?, Yeah, you’ll probably be there.”So no one really knows but it’s possible I could stay for a long time. So far I’m okay with it. The ward is nice and the city is pretty cool and then having a car isn’t so bad either even though I can’t drive yet. I’ll be authorized this week so I’m looking forward to that. This week we have our zone conference which is going to be really cool. First off I’m in a different zone so there’s lots of missionaries I haven’t seen in a long time then also Elder Cossé is coming (the one that was in the Middle East with Elder Holland) I’m sure it’s going to be intense. He’ll probably teach us a lot but I hope it’s better than the last general authority that came. That one just kind of talked about numbers and percentages stuff like that. So all week I’ve been thinking of all this advice I could email Alex but I came to the conclusion that I don’t really have a huge list of do’s and don’ts but I thought of a few things I’ll email him tomorrow. We have a member lady that comes once a week to help us with French studies. It was cool last week, we all read an article then she helped us with pronunciation. I thought it was pretty helpful. Hey, happy birthday tomorrow, Mom! That’s cool. I guess Rome was a pretty good birthday present. Um, ok, for all you asked about what I want to do: I would really like to go to Saudi for a while just to see and just to have a passport to go there for later on. I could start seeing how I could do it now. (It’s a lot easier to do things like that here in the bureau) Also if you wanted to look and see when school starts and all that, that would be good. I guess just at BYU Idaho. Remember also that I have to choose 3 weeks early or later.( Feb. 6th so like early January or the end of February) I’m pretty sure the winter semester starts before I get off so I’ll probably have just to start in summer but try to email me the dates and I’ll think about it. Also see what information you could find out for the passport and visa for Saudi because I really would like to go back there. Thanks for the box and post cards, they should be coming soon, I’m excited for them. Yeah, Elder Wright was in my district -kind of taller big dark hair -you probably don’t have the pictures with you. Anyways, how are your two computers working out? That stinks the food wasn’t super good in Italy. I would love to show y’all all the good French stuff- different types of bread and cheeses- then all their different plates. I really would like to vacation here again after, I still don’t know about being picked up though. Elder Mendenhall’s family is coming in a few weeks when he finishes. They’re just renting a car and going to all the places he served. I’m sure it would be fun. I kind of forgot it was Easter too. We didn’t do anything special. Right now all the days run together- holidays- weekends its all the same. It doesn’t really make a difference. We just work. The primary did make us little bags of chocolate which were really good so that was nice. Well thanks for the email and all the pictures. I’ll probably send you some soon. I haven’t even taken any since I came to Toulouse though, it’s been raining and wet the last whole week. It’s a lot colder here than it was when I left St Raph. Have a good week! Love y’all, Taylor

52nd email from France (the Bureau)

2009-04-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

Hey, so you’re there in Rome! I bet it’s really cool, probably not too different than here. Alex did email me! That is SO cool. Madagascar is going to be sweet! The people from there are so nice, everyone that I have known anyways. When I was in Vitrolles I talked about Frère Renderenaridera a lot, remember? He’s from there. Then everyone else that I have met from there has been really cool. There all seem to be pretty humble. I’m sure it will be pretty poor where he’s going and we can talk in French after. That’s going to be sweet! So my week has been really good here in the office. I’ve learned a lot more about what I’m going to be doing. So the referral thing is pretty important- we get names and addresses from all over the world, different visitor sites and just all over then we give them out to where ever they need to go. Then pretty much take care of all the 12 cars in the mission which isn’t that hard unless they get in wrecks which isn’t too often. Then we end up doing just lots of little other random jobs to keep things going smoothly. Um, we’re going to go eat- I’ll email more later. Hey so yeah, here in the office and it is really cool. I’m with Elder Wright from my mtc district, then Elder Monson who I was with in Cannes, then Elder Mak also from Hong Kong who is pretty much our personal chef! He cooks amazing meals every day. They’re way better than anything I’ve eaten since I got here. Then there are always missionaries all around, stopping in and doing things so it’s pretty fun! But there is a lot that we have to get done also. I take care of all the mail too, which is kind of cool to see but then of course I haven’t been getting much! You should probably send me something from Rome! That would be cool! You said Whitney wrote a letter which is pretty cool. Conference was really good. I guess you didn’t watch much of it. We were at the church so it was kind of the first time I met the members also. There are two wards here and they were all together for conference so it was kind of of hard to know who I would really be working with. All the new missionaries came in this week so it was kind of weird to see them all. They were all so “American”. You could really tell a difference in them and the ones that have been out for a while. There was one who kept saying “tight” and we haven’t stopped laughing at him! Well, I don’t have a whole lot to say. Have a good vacation! You should take some pictures and send them next week! Thanks a lot for your email! Love y’all, Taylor

51st email from France (the Bureau)

2009-03-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody, How’s it going? First off, I didn’t get an email which is pretty sad but anyways I have a lot to say! (Oh yeah, that’s right. i forgot we have been emailing Tuesday- yeah, it’s Monday. Sorry. Well, it’s cool that you wrote that email to me right then!) President threw us a curve ball. I don’t even think I said anything about the transfers being this week because I was so sure that we were going to stay together. Well, he called us Thursday and said that were going to be changing and now I’m emailing you from my new desk and computer in the bureau or office! Wow, I never thought that would happen. I was really shocked and a little sad to leave St. Raphael and Elder Page but now I’m feeling pretty good about being here. I still don’t know a lot about what I’m going to be doing. I’ll be here with Elder Mendenhall and Elder Wright from my mtc district. We’ll be a 3. It’s always like that here in the bureau because it takes time to show the newer one all that he has to do. I know so far that I’m going to be in charge of the cars and cell phones and the referrals; so that’s a pretty big thing I guess I’m not sure yet all that I’m going to do. I’m sure I’ll be learning a lot. As for the bureau, I don’t know really at all what it’s like. Today is crazy because all the missionaries going home tomorrow are here and it’s kind of just like a party. The transfers are always a pretty big thing here because the people that come, the greenies pass by here and the ones going home and I guess we’re the ones that do all the paperwork to get them all set and legal. There’s a lot that I don’t know yet so I’ll be able to tell you a lot more next week. And on top of that, today is preparation day so no one’s really taking time to explain things. We’ll be here with Elder Monson who’s secretary, then Elder Wright who’s the apartment guy, then Elder Mendenhall who’s training me in the bureau. Then I’ll ‘kill’ him after this transfer in six weeks when he goes home. Then I’ll take over just me and Elder Wright. One thing about the bureau is that I’m sure I’ll be here for a while probably at least six months, maybe more. I’ll probably just leave here and have one town left then it’s done. Today was already really good. I saw lots of missionaries. I got to see Soeur Oliver, who’s here to get a greenie tomorrow and lots of others. That’s going to be the cool thing, just to see everyone. I’ll be here to see a lot of my friends go home cause they all pass through. After all that, this last week was good. Elder Page wasn’t too happy that I was leaving either. We were doing really good together. The members seemed pretty upset too. I’m pretty sure they all liked us two. Everything else is good. I haven’t even gone up to see the apartments yet. They’re just on top of the office part. It was weird coming back to Toulouse; it’s been almost a year since I was here! Well, that’s about it- I’m the bureau car guy from now on but I think it’s going to be good! We work here until about five I think every day then go and do other missionary stuff. It’s closed the weekends and we work just normal then. I don’t have much more to say. Let me know how everything’s going. Write me. Love y’all, Taylor

50th email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-03-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, Thanks for the pictures. I have my memory card this week so I’ll try to send y'all some, if the computer works. We had a good week. It passed by really fast. We were all over. First Elder Page left for two days earlier in the week for a meeting thing in Toulouse so I was left here with an English elder that’s in Nice and also pretty young in the mission. Those few days flew by then the same day Elder Page came back there also was a stupid strike for all the trains and busses. The elders from the office who came to bring Elder Page home and the elders from Nice home ended up coming back to pick us up and we headed off to Toulon for another thing we had planned for the evening there. We ended up spending the whole day helping the Toulon elders move into their new apartment which ended up being really fun and relaxing. All of that kind of hurt us because we didn’t end up having a whole lot of lessons this week. The numbers aren’t really the most important thing but we don’t want all the people that see them thinking were just bums doing nothing either. So it’s kind of annoying. The day after that we had a baptism for an eight year old! It was at Cannes so it was good to go back a little and see some people. Then Sunday, I did the confirmation which I think went really well. Sunday this week was actually really good. I knew it would be good when they started with cake for the sacrament bread! They did a little missionary theme and our mission coordination guy talked and the branch president then me and Elder Page. It ended up being good. They had a group of us sing the Armies of Helaman song with Sisters of Zion. We didn’t practice or anything but it turned out ok. Yesterday was the coolest. For p day the elders from Toulon came and the sisters from Cannes and we just chilled on the beach for about four hours. We just sat and talked then we had a football we threw that around a lot made sand castles got our feet a little wet. I’ll try to send you some pictures. Then last night we ended up going to Nice. There was a member that called asking if we could come with him to translate for him to talk to an English guy that he works for. So we did. It was fun. The guy was a member and he really just does garden work for him so it wasn’t anything too complicated. For our amis: Tonight we’re going to go see a Tahitian lady named Ms D- she’s really cool and came to church a few times but then her husband left for a military mission for a few months and she doesn’t want to come without him. But I’m sure she will when she comes back. They have a little boy named -I don’t know how to spell it but –Hedihtai. We see them a lot. Then we have Soeur F. -also Tahitian- she’s not a member but her husband is. They come pretty much every week and she knows everything. We’re just trying to get her to make the decision to be baptized. We’ve been seeing a girl named Ph. She’s the granddaughter of a member and she comes to church pretty much every week. She was really close to being baptized then she got into a bad scooter wreck doing wheelies with her boyfriend and hasn’t come to church or really can’t see us too often for awhile. I hope we can start seeing her more because she is really close. We have lots of other people. Lots of the people just like to talk. Some are open-some have known the church for a long time and just don’t really do anything. That’s frustrating. We’re always finding and dropping people. We just need to find a few now that are serious and are willing to do things. We taught a really good lesson to someone that left on vacation and is coming back this week so we’ll see how that goes, too. I’ll try to send y’all pictures now! Love y’all, Taylor

49th email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-03-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone sounds like you had a good week- us too! We just finished a little meeting with our district, everyone came here. It was good but it's probably the last time we're gonna see a sister missionary from Tahiti, Soeur Mahuru, so that was sad. Shes going home in two weeks at the end of this transfer. We ate together after. It was good but they made us this dessert with marscapone- kinda like whipped cream but nastier- so now i feel pretty bad! We had a good week, we were able to organize another little Tahitian night but this time it was just the wifes and us. It was really fun. We ate all together and joked around. They're all really chill. Our most solid member family is going back to Tahiti this week for good so thats gonna be hard for the branch and for all our amis Tahitian. So Sunday we were at the church and there is this member thats been talking about taking us to this mountain thats not to far away and maybe eating together and chilling a little so he asked us if we could and we didn't have anything planned so we figured why no. We went to his house after church and ate the left for this mountain. When we were in the car he's like "we can go see our old friend the hermit". I understood what he said but figured he was joking or something and we were both like "oh ok whatever". So we get up there to this little trail thing and we start going up a little then hes like " yeah, he lives up here not to far". Then we asked him a little more and he says "yeah, there's a guy that lives in a little cave up here, REALLY, he's a hermit." So we continue up the mountain and there it is sure enough just this cave with a door and kinda plexiglass windows all plastered into the sides of this cave. So the member knocks on the door and sure enough they really did know each other. They have been friends for a while. It was just an old guy thats been living there for 43 years and people bring him groceries and he doesn't leave. He used to be a Catholic priest or something and then he was excomunicated and that's his way of repenting- just living all alone out there. He played his little instrument and sang for us - a little funny french guy but the whole thing was pretty weird. He's Frere Antoine at the rocher de roquebrunein (if you want to look on the internet I'm sure he's there) He said someone had him singing on youtube but really it's quite the thing to see! Last night a really cool young family invited us to come over. They live in between here and Cannes so we had to take a bus but it was really good and they had a roqoulette to eat, which is always really good! I've had it a few times. They have lots of potatoes and ham and other meats then a machine that melts cheese and you pour it on top- pretty good. We have been eating good in our apartment. Also we have used our grill alot. We just bought a bunch of steaks so well be experimenting with those. Last week we did pretty good with our marinated pork. As for our amis, we have quite a few! They just all are doing good and progressing. It's just very slow. We seem to be talking about all the basic things alot, trying to get people to come to church. Yeah, awesome that Alex's papers are almost in. I'll probably write him an email with all the stuff I wish I had known. Mostly about what to bring. I have way to much stuff to lug around. Y'all seem to be having fun and going out alot. I really liked Dad's bathroom story! Oh, Rome is going to be fun! I'm sure your gonna like that. I'll start looking for a suit but I'm not in a big hurry. Sand boarding sounds fun! Well hey, thanks for everything! Love y'all, I promise I'll write all about our amis next week. I'm out of time. Taylor

48th email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-03-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

Hey, sorry again about last week's letter. It was kinda lame. I wrote a big letter then the power in the whole building went out. We had a pretty good week. Sunday was pretty good. Finally all the people that were on vacation came back so that helped things to go alot smoother. Me and Elder Page always talk about how we miss the church back home and how well everything goes. Here we're always running around trying to help people or get things started on time. Their hearts are in the right place- it's always interesting! A few days ago we were helping someone move and they gave us a grill so we bought these big steaks and grilled em up today. It ended out better than I thought it would. We've had a few people invite us for dinner also. Just Sunday night we ate with a Tahitian family, the one that took us boxing, and they had pretty much red beans and rice. The only thing was it was with lentils and not red beans but it tasted about the same. I ate alot! It was closest thing to food at home that I've had in a while. Also Saturday I went back to Cannes for the day so that was fun just to work there again. We ended up spending alot of time in centre ville and passing some people that I knew when I was there. Yesterday for our p day we just went walking around by the beach. It was really windy and there were lots of windsurfers and even one guy with a huge parachute thing that he was holding onto. Then he had something like a wakeboard and he would just get a gust of wind and shoot up in the air probably thirty feet doing spins and flips. It was really cool. It's starting to get hot here, too. So I'm sure in a few months it's gonna be really bad. So your gonna go to Rome! That's cool . I guess you could go see all the vatican things. I heard they're really pretty cool. Also the new temple site is not far from there. I would say come here but I'm pretty sure they all just come to be naked on the beach; I can't see y'all being to into that! ha (new email) I'm all scared now I'm gonna lose my emails but anyways yeah, I figure Rome would be cool or indoor skiing in Dubai that sounds awesome. The best would to go see Tiger playing golf when the PGA comes. When is spring break anyways? Oh yeah, did they ever go to youth conference? I thought you said they would do that but I don't remember hearing anything about it. One thing, I think I might need to buy a suit, even shoes maybe. (but I'm scared of the French shoes) But really, my clothes are starting to get pretty worn down especially my black one and I kinda like saving the brown for meetings and stuff. I might start looking for something but I really don't like spending money though. Thats cool Whitney got her jacket. It's probably cooler than mine! Well thanks for the emails. I don't have my memory card withme so no pictures, sorry, next week! Love y'all, Taylor

47th email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-03-03T09:59:00.000-08:00

Hey, our library just had a little power outage so I don't have very much time. I had already written alot. We had a pretty good week. We went to Toulon for a few days for an exchange- that was good. Then Sunday was really cool, we went to Nice for our stake conference. There were alot of people there, like 700 and the chapel is really big and nice. It was good to see all the members from Vitrolles and other places that I've worked in. Our week was good. It's starting to get hot but its still better than being cold! Our amis all seem to be doing really well, too. It sounds like y'all are good. I like the car. We didn't go to Monocco yesterday because it was raining but next week, I think. Love y'all! Thanks for the emails. Sorry I don't have more time! Love y'all, Taylor

46th email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-02-24T11:03:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone. Hope you’re doing good. Thanks for the emails. I’m glad you liked the last one. I tried to do a little better because I was feeling the last few were pretty lame. But we had a good week, fast as usual. We had quite a few good things that happened! Sunday was really good; we were in our apartment Saturday night and we got a call from President and he’s just like “what time is church tomorrow?” ha- so he came with his wife which was really good. The branch was pretty excited to have him there. It wasn’t the best week though because a lot of the members weren’t there. Even the branch president wasn’t there, also the ward mission leader but it was still good. Lots of our amis ended up coming so we were happy. He also was with us yesterday for our district meeting. That’s something they have been doing for a while now. They’re making the tour to see all the districts. It was really good also. They talked a lot and answered a lot of questions. While he was at church I guess he realized all the Tahitians that were there and thought it would be a good idea to have a big soirée Tahitian; or like a big party or fhe with the Tahitians but also with the sister missionaries from Cannes who would already be there Monday afternoon for the district meeting. So we were busy setting that up but it worked out really well. They pretty much all came and we ate and had a good time- they’re always so chill. Another really cool thing that happened this week- we have this family also Tahitians- they’re less active but they really like us but the dad or Frère Bal. is a huge military head guy. But on top of that he loves boxing and spends a lot of time practicing and training so normally we just kind of talk about that when we’re over there. We’ve been joking for a while about when he’s going to take us. Then one time he was just like “this Saturday’s good” so we met him at his house and we went to the regiment or the big military base here in St. Raphael- then into the sweetest boxing room ever! There was all kind of boxing bags and training equipment even a ring and so we start going and he’s showing us all this stuff. He wrapped up our hands before putting the gloves on like it was intense. Then we started doing little work out exercises. The best part is that it was all to Rocky soundtracks which seems a little corny but I’d say it was very motivating! The workout ended up being very intense and I’m still pretty sore. Today we did our shopping for 2 weeks so next Monday were headed to Monocco. We’re pretty excited about that. Hopefully it will be sunny and all that. I’ll let you know next Tuesday. You can take this out but we had one little experience that wasn’t that great. We had a little brawl with a gang of little Arabs punks. They give us quite a bit of problems but this one was actually pretty bad. We had to hit a few of them and Elder Page has a black eye. They are just punks that thought they could steal our bags. It really just wasn’t good at all. We were in a pretty bad neighborhood. We’ll probably stay away for a while. But I don’t want you to worry about us. I’m going to send this then try to send some pictures then write more because that takes a while- maybe a video. I hope the video works because it’s something I think you’ll like.
Hey sorry my video isn’t going to work. It’s saying it’s too big. That stinks. It’s me playing a song on the piano. I’ll try to send it another way but not today- bummer because it’s really good. Well thanks for everything. Hope y’all have a good week. Everything’s pretty good here! Love y’all, Taylor

45th email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-02-17T09:35:00.000-08:00

Hey! Sorry I’m late. I guess I shouldn’t have told you we were going to be doing the emails at the same time because I already messed that up. Thanks for the emails and pictures. I have my camera today so I’ll do those after I write this. I had a really good week. It went by pretty fast. I spent a day in a new city -that always exciting- Toulon. It’s in between here and Marseille. It was fun. It’s actually really big- lots bigger than St. Raphael and even Cannes but I was there with an elder who is pretty lame and just waiting to go home. But anyways- also we were in our apartment Thursday I think and we didn’t really have much planned and we weren’t really feeling like walking all day so we decided to take off to St. Tropez. We had been needing to go for a while and we had some people that live there that we could go pass by and hopefully see. So we went down to the bus station and went. The bus was expensive and took about an hour but it was all along the beach with a good view so it wasn’t too bad. The town is pretty little and really nice. There weren’t many people there but I here in summer there is about a hundred thousand so I’m sure that’s crazy. No one was at the addresses so we ended up eating a pizza and window shopping- aawing at 300 euro ties and 18 thousand euro purses or probably around 25 thousand dollars. Our Valentine’s Day was good too. We were all over- really all over. We have this pace counter in our apartment that tells you how long you’ve walked and we have been planning for a while to use it but we were waiting for a day where we knew we would be walking a lot. So this was finally the day-Saturday- the final count was 30 kilometers or 18.8 miles. We actually ended up buying flowers and seeing all the people we know and giving them out. Everyone seemed to like it I think. The branch here really likes us. We have by far the best member relations here than I’ve had in the first two places. The other day we were walking and we started talking to this guy and it ends up he doesn’t even speak French but he’s from Florida. He’s 20 just like us but he was with a friend backpacking through Europe. They started in Paris and with walking and the trains they’re going to somewhere in Italy then back home. They were really cool. We met up with them the next day and played basketball, then the day after they were leaving. It was really fun -if anything will make you homesick its talking to 2 Americans while playing basketball! Geez- but they were also just kind of bums making their way around. They said that there learning a lot about something but they didn’t know what. At least I’m here knowing what I’m learning and they were way jealous of our French. They had studied for a few months in Paris but still can’t really speak or understand. I’m going to be in Cannes tomorrow with Elder Parker so I’m looking forward to that. I’m sure I’ll show him some people too. Maybe we’ll pass some of our old amis! All of the Nice and Cannes elders and soeurs went to Monaco yesterday. We were invited but didn’t really want to go with all of them. We’re planning on going in two weeks yesterday. It was already 11 then with us, that’s 13- that’s too many to go somewhere together. We figure it would be better with just us and we could do more and see more so that’s planned for a few weeks from now- sweet! I really like Elder Page. We’re doing really good here. We’ve been finding and teaching a lot of people. Really we have been doing pretty good -last night we saw a guy we contacted just a few days ago- that’s really cool and we already have lots of things for the rest of the week, just around seeing new people and our amis. The work is still really hard but at least we have things to do. It’s a lot easier working with someone that’s just normal. People seem to like us and it makes the work funner. We’re hoping to have some success. I don’t know if I said this but it’s been well over two years since the last baptism here in St. Raphael. I know we’re in a hard mission but still that’s pretty horrible. But we have some amis that are so close- they just need to make the decision. We’re doing all we can to help them but they still have to choose. We had 4 amis at church this week and over half of our rendez vous were with the members. Everything is going really well and looking better. Thanks for all the emails and photos and you know real mail never hurts now and then! Elder Page wants Whitney to write him! haha Love y'all, Taylor

44th email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-02-10T08:36:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, Sorry I don’t have my camera to send pictures. I’m gonna write it down so I don’t forget next week but thanks for the ones you sent. They all look pretty cool especially all the ones of skiing. The furniture is pretty nice too. This week has been pretty good. Yesterday we woke up early then the zone leaders from Cannes came and picked us up to go to Aix for our zone conference. It’s always good to see everyone and talk about what everyone’s been doing. Everything seems to be going fine. We’ve stayed pretty busy this week. We have quite a few people to see and rendez vous all over the place so were just kinda all over. We pretty much have stuff planned for everyday until this weekend so that’s good . It has been raining alot and cloudy but not too bad. Everyone in the zone was saying how cold it’s been but here we’re still nice and warm. I know- one year- that’s weird to think about! Last night we had a little party with some of our Tahitian members and also some of our amis. It was really sweet. I really like them, they’re so chill. I’ve already eaten with a few different Tahitian families and there kinda like us -they always make something with lots of meat then put it on rice. I like it. We had 59 people at church this week. I think that’s the most there’s been in a long time. Everyone seemed pretty excited about that. I gave my talk. It went really good. I ended up having to go for a long time because the guy in front of me took about 3 minutes but it wasn’t bad. I just never thought I would be the one filling in for someone else, especially in another language! Good luck with your car guy. That’s kinda of a weird job but whatever. Elder Page wants a picture of the yard boy. Every time we talk about him I find myself trying to explain to people that he isn’t a slave just someone that waters the yard and doesn’t get paid a whole lot. Also I was wondering if you could explain how church is and where it’s at, if everyone knows that’s what it is or how that all works. If they tell people not to talk about it-just curious about everything. Is it far from your house or just there on the compound thing and you did. I hope the visitor still comes and you can tell me more next week. Oh I’ve been meaning to ask how long do you think your gonna be there? I figure until dad retires! Well sorry I don’t have any big stories or anything. Everything’s going pretty good. I’ll send pictures next week, I promise, and if you could send one of the little yard boy and maybe the church that would be cool- thanks! Love y’all, Taylor

2009-02-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

HAPPY ONE-YEAR MARK, ELDER POGUE!!!

43rd email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-02-03T08:53:00.000-08:00

Wow – Elder Holland? That’s really cool! Before I wouldn’t have thought that much of it but now I’m pretty jealous. That’s going to be really cool. He came to the mtc when I was there and that was by far the highlight. I still remember his last conference talk about ministering of angels, sweetness. I’m sure you’ll get to chat a little; that’s really a cool experience! And Evan getting a new suit- that’s pretty snazzy- here we have hard times getting the little punks to take off their skateboard hoodies that they wear over white shirts to pass the sacrament. Yeah, I know! One year- that’s crazy!! Burning shirts-that’s pretty old I think. I’ve never heard of anyone really doing that, maybe somewhere else not here at least. Switzerland should be awesome. I was worried that it would be bad weather because it’s been cold and raining here and they’re saying it’s gonna be like this all week. So we had a really good week! We have lots of things to do. The branch is really sweet and we’re in contact with members almost every day, either teaching with them or doing stuff for them, just whatever. I really like it though- lots better than what we had at Cannes. Vitrolles was good but everybody just lived all over. Most people here aren’t too far from us. Everybody is close together. Our activity wasn’t really good. Everyone thought it was going to rain but it ended up being pretty nice. We were just in this park not long from the beach. They had a scavenger hunt thing that was pretty well done. Everyone was pretty into it. And before that we ate. People grilled a lot and people brought stuff. Everyone seems pretty nice. Church was good- a little crazy- but nothing too bad. They already gave me a talk for this Sunday so we’ll see how that goes. I’ll probably just get up and talk –they’ll like it. I’m stinkin sore today. Goodness yesterday we went to a gym with one of our amis. It was really good, it just killed me! I miss working out though. I’m definitely going to start again after I get back. Me and Elder Page just cut our hair pretty short and then found out that we have zone conference next week so were hoping no one says anything. I really like it but it’s on the verge of being buzzed so we’ll see.I keep forgetting you live in Saudi then I’m always surprised when I read all that y’all are doing in the emails. Thanks alot for the pictures. I really was planning on sending more but I forgot my camera today, sorry. Next Tuesday I will. Our p- days are Monday now but we still do our emails on Tuesday. It’s actually gonna work really good for us; the library is closed Mondays so we called to see if we could stick with Tuesday for email and president didn’t have any problems so now on p- day we don’t have to take time going to do emails. So we’re both pretty excited about that! Elder Page is just a little older than I am. We were actually in the MTC for a little while together but I don’t really remember him from there. He left the group before me………. (End of email)
…….our computers were being fishy so I sent it I, guess it worked. But anyways, this week was really, really good. We seem to have lots of stuff to do all the time so that makes it go by pretty fast. I hope y’all have a good week. Have fun on all your little trips. I don’t ever know if it’s a big deal to go anywhere or if it’s just like going to Lake Charles but it seems like y’all are good. I really like it here! Love y’all, Taylor

42nd email from France (St. Raphael)

2009-01-27T11:12:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, I’m transferred to St. Raphael! Yeah, I’m pretty excited to be here. I wasn’t really expecting to come here but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be really good. I took the train early this morning and got here around 7:00. The branch president was there and took us back to our apartment in his car so we didn’t have to walk. I’m with Elder Page. He's really cool. I think it’s going to be really good. It’s a smaller branch with like 50 that come but I would rather that than a big ward where we didn’t really know anybody. Elder Monson left too. He went to Toulouse to be the secretary in the bureau, which is perfect for him. We have our ward mission meeting tonight so I’ll get to meet some more people there. Elder Monson was here just before Cannes so he told me lots of good things. I’ve been here a few days on exchanges also, so I know a little already. We also have a big branch activity this Saturday so that will be good to get to know some people before church. I guess the fact that it’s in St. Tropez doesn’t hurt either! I’m really lucky to still be here on the Riviera. It’s a little smaller here than Cannes but the same beach- town feel. The chapel is pretty nice too. It’s a little smaller but still pretty nice. It’s in a neighborhood not far from the beach just mixed in between big houses. I still don’t know a whole lot, I’ve only been here a few hours! This week we just kind of went by and saw all the people we knew. We actually watched the Testaments with a few of them- that was relaxing -probably not the best use of time but there wasn’t much inspiration to go find new people with us both leaving. Then we’ve been packing and that always takes a while. The ski trip sounds fun. Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t really need that many winter clothes there in Saudi, good thing you could borrow some coats. I wasn’t too far off where I thought y’all were on the map. It’s just a little north of where I was guessing. Dubai would be sweet especially for a big world market even though I can’t think about what you would buy there. Arabic culture class seems cool. The language I think is really hard to learn though. I really don’t have much to say I don’t really know much about St. Raph and don’t have any big things to say about Cannes. I’m glad y’all are doing good. I'll try to get you some more pictures of the new area and stuff. Thanks for the maps! They helped. Oh yeah, I got Whitney’s letter today. We walked in the new apartment for the first time and there it was. Elder Page was like, “What?-that’s junk! It’s your first day here and you already have mail- dang!” I assured him it wasn’t a daily thing but thanks, it was good. Well, that’s about it. I’m sure next week I'll have lots more to write.
Love y’all, Taylor

New Pictures from Cannes

2009-01-20T09:17:00.001-08:00

41st email from France (Cannes)

2009-01-20T04:41:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone, Thanks for your email and all the info and the pictures even though Evan is wearing all of my clothes! I actually knew what an itouch was- I was just making sure because no one told me they had them- they’re really cool but not as cool as my future iphone! I didn’t know the guitar was a fender, that’s sweet! That makes 3 in the family, we’re just starting our own little collection. Wow, Switzerland, that sounds really cool. Skiing is sweet especially when you’re in the Alps! Dang, when I went snowboarding it was harder than I thought but skiing should be a little better. I remember the 2 weeks after I was super sore and that was just from one day. Whitney, be sure to take pictures. Swiss people are cool, too. I know a few and most of them speak English. Good job breaking your wrist Evan! In a few weeks our pday is going to start being on Mondays just so you know. I really like Tuesday- I think it breaks up the week better. This week went by super fast. We stayed pretty busy. We went to St. Raphael three times for different meetings then we did an exchange also but also we had a pretty hard time finding lessons. We had alot of things planned that didn’t work out just right. We even had members with us for alot of them. That’s the worst because it’s a waste of their time and discouraging for them. Most of them understand that’s just how it is but you still hate to waste their time. We had our meeting with President so that’s always good. There’s gonna be alot of changes this transfer but we’re still not sure what’s going to happen. We really won’t know until Saturday is when he normally calls us. He did say that our companionship will be closing. He just doesn’t know if it will be after this transfer or the next which means that were both gonna leave at the same time and just give whoever we’re teaching to the other missionaries that are there. That’s fine but I’m not sure if I want to stay another one just to close it. There’s not a whole lot of motivation especially because this transfer is the long nine week one. But either way I’m sure it will be ok. Either way if there is a change we’ll be moving next Tuesday so I guess you’ll know in the next email. We were talking with Soeur Carter and she told us that our mission is going to decrease alot by the end of the year. She said that were gonna lose about 40 percent of the missionaries here making it where there’s just 2 for every chapel or branch and the sister missionaries will only be in the wards where they have 2 sacrament meetings at different times during the day. And all that should be changing over the next 6 months or so. We’re just going to start losing the big groups like they came but we’ll only be getting a couple from the mtc so at the end we will only have about 60 or so. She actually said the church is going to start sending more to where they baptize more. Let’s just say this wasn’t the most inspiring discussion. Also we’ve lost quite a few older couple missionaries that no one is really replacing just because it costs alot and stuff but also that means that there will be more work for us to do which is good. Just like here in Cannes there is 7 of us and after there’s gonna be 2 or in Marseille where there’s 6 there will be 2 so I’m sure we will have alot more people to teach and be really blessed to find the people that are really ready to hear our message. Yeah- people speak Arab, that’s cool. I really want to find a book just to learn a little- maybe the alphabet. I think that would be cool because it’s all around here too. I had someone pull up a map of Saudi on the internet but I still couldn’t find where you are but I think I know is it just north of Dubai kinda on the coast? That’s another thing Dubai- do people vacation there because that’s like the sweetest city in the world and the PGA is there every year! I never got the letter from Whitney maybe it will just take a while I hope anyways.How much money do I have in my account? I don’t have any way of seeing. It sounds like you’re doing really good there. I’m always happy to get your emails . How’s Brian Barton doing in Germany? I guess he’s there already. What’s he saying about the language? I need to write Andrew and Clay. I haven’t in a while. Thanks for everything! Love y’all, Taylor

40th email from France (Cannes)

2009-01-14T05:16:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! I’m really sorry about last week’s letter. I know it was pretty lame. I was actually pretty mad. It just completely shut off right before I sent the email then we had our train and our metro to get to the train station so I couldn’t type another one. The weeks seem to be flying by. We’re already in week 5 of the transfer. The changes will be the 20th I think so pretty soon. I don’t know if I’ll stay or go. Either way I wouldn’t mind. I’m legal here though so I’m pretty free to go wherever so I guess we’ll find out next week. It’s still really cold on the other side so I guess I hope I stay down in the south. You know I hate the cold. It’s been pretty hot again today. It was really sunny and warm. From what I hear, everywhere else in the mission got a lot of snow a few days ago, even Marseille. Everyone was pretty shocked but I’d rather be in the sun. I like Cannes though. It seems like we’ve done a lot here. When we came we didn’t know anybody and now we have friends just all over, in pretty much every neighborhood. Yesterday we were in Centre ville and we ran into the soeurs (sisters). Actually there are three of them now. They went to Toulouse last week to pick up a new one from the north of France and there 3 until the end of this transfer making us 7 here which is quite a bit. This week one of their amis was baptized so that’s really cool. There were a lot of people that came and one guy were teaching came so that was cool! We also had our meeting with the ward mission leader and the other leaders to talk about the missionary work. That was good because that was the first time since before Christmas that they actually had the meeting. The big soldes are going on. They’re the big sales that all the stores do twice a year so we might go see what there is since were already in centre ville for the computers. I don’t really need anything. I bought myself one present so far- a huge umbrella. It’s pretty cool! The other little one I had broke and I was sick of being wet so I went to this golf store and bought it. It’s really big so much that it’s even kind of hard to navigate in between poles and down little French roads but it’s nice and dry so I like it. This week we’re going to be in St. Raphael again for our zone development and interviews so that’s pretty exciting. Some more questions and comment:
· First, what’s an itouch?? Which also reminds me, do y’all have phones or when do you think all that is gonna work out?
· Um, have you heard alot of people speaking Arabic? If so, it’s pretty sweet right?
· How dang hot is it going to be there in the summer?
· I really liked the pictures you sent. I’m about to look at them again so if it’s not too hard send me some more. I’ll start sending some in emails too. You need to maybe take more of around town and stuff outside of the house , just all that. Thanks.
· Does Dad still like the job? I tell him to email me about what his day is like and what he’s doing- all that.
· I guess the schools are cool. Sounds like it.
· I never got Whitney’s letter. I hope I do though. We can still email, don’t worry! If we couldn’t I would be really upset. If someone in this mission doesn’t email, it’s a choice. President Carter seems pretty cool about stuff like that. He’s the one that gave us more time to email friends- before it was just family. He thinks it’s important.
· So is there really like just desert all around you?
· I think it’s funny you have a little “yard boy”. (I took out the term he really used and substituted)
· Those people just let you use their car? That’s really sweet! Are they all little cars like that or are there American ones? Here all the cars are standard and they’re all super small. It still surprises me every once and a while we’ll see some old grandma riding on a scooter or something. Just things you would never see at home.
· Have Whitney and Evan been talking to their friends at home?
· Since you seem to want more details about it, we were all throwing up from the food so I guess it was just not cooked or something. I don’t know- it was really good to sleep though.
· That would be weird to have a maid.
· Are there really big houses in the compound for like the big bosses and stuff? You mentioned “the Hills” so I was wondering.
· Tell me more about the other members and that. Are there lots of youth or not really? I know there is more to ask but that’s all I can think of!
Love y’all, Taylor

39th email from France (Cannes)

2009-01-06T02:39:00.000-08:00

So this is the third email I’ve tried to type! This computer is stupid….. Thanks for the pictures everything looks really nice and you seem to be all settled in. We’re in Marseille today for the carte de sejour for Elder Monson . I figure we’ll be coming back this week to work some stuff out. It didn’t go all that well today. Our week was pretty good, nothing to special happened. We had a little New Year’s party at the church. The food was pretty good (we thought) but everyone got sick! It was pretty bad. I ended up sleeping all day Friday but I’ve been tired too so that helped anyways but really I didn’t get out of bed for like over 20 hours! Other than that bad thing, we’ve been finding some really cool people so we’ll see. The time has been going by fast. I guess that makes 11 months today. The weathers been nice still -not too cold, a little rain but nothing too bad. Sorry I don’t have much time but it’s good that y’all are doing good. I really liked the pictures! Bye, love y’all! Taylor

38th email from France (Cannes)

2008-12-30T02:58:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, thanks for all your emails! This week was really good- it went by really fast. First off, I’m glad to hear your doing really good. That’s great that you like everything. I’m sure it will get more and more normal every day. Sounds like the house is really good and the people are nice. I figured they would be and Dad likes work so that’s super cool! Christmas was really good It was great just to be with the members. Christmas Eve was really cool. The family Gonzaco invited us to come eat. We actually got lost trying to find their house and didn’t even have their number. Finally after talking to all the neighbors we found their house but at first we weren’t even on the same street. The food was pretty good, well mostly The first thing we ate were big huge oysters. I didn’t like them that much but a had a few. Then they had a big duck wing- just like a chicken wing but duck. It was really good then just a bunch of other stuff- lots of salmon, then different sausages and cheeses, then to finish a big ice cream cake. I guess ice ream cake is common for Christmas dinners. Then the next day, Christmas Day we went to the church to eat with just whoever wanted to come. There was about 15 of us so that was really fun. This meal was a little more interesting. It started with these cracker things with different types of meat on top; one was some raw ham which was a little weird then tuna and some more salmon- that was really good. Then they brought us some potatoes with the liver in the middle wrapped in some kind of meat that looked like bacon but tasted a lot weirder. The liver wasn’t that bad but I don’t think I would want to eat just a chunk of it. After that we all had a huge steak of duck but this time it was like a real steak! It was really good meat but a little gross because it wasn’t really cooked at all. After I finished I had a huge puddle of blood on my plate then of course more cheese and ice cream cakes. We stayed there most of the day talking to people, it was pretty relaxing. Yesterday we went to St. Raphael for a meeting and when we came back we ran into the bishop and his wife who were getting back from Toulouse and they invited us to eat at their house tonight. They’re pretty young and cool so I’m sure it’s going to be fun. I’m excited. It kind of rained for Christmas so that stunk but it’s been getting better. We had a few days where it was pretty cold in fact I hear that it snowed pretty much all the mission except here on the Riviera but I’m not complaining because I really don’t like the cold. This week should be pretty good too. There’s going to be a big party thing for the New Year. Actually I might be in St. EvRaphael again for an exchange if so I’ll just go to the party at their chapel. Thanks for your Christmas box, all the gifts, money, all the candy! I’ve been eating a lot of it and the money I don’t know what I’m going to buy. How many people were Friday? Are there old people that live their or just workers? How was the mall or whatever? One guy we talked to said that it would be just horrible to live there and that it would be almost impossible but I was just like whatever because I knew he didn’t know the situation and all that. It’s not really like you just moved there like a normal person out in the country somewhere. Are you able to call people or will the internet be coming soon? How is the TV? Does it work with the channels from home? Do you have furniture or not much? Why do you have a yard boy to water was that like part of the deal or something? There are lots of little Arab shops for food like that here too. Was there traces of Christmas or not at all or does everyone just have "vacation"? I hope all the people come back soon. Do you know or have other neighbors? I would really like some pictures but take care of all the other stuff first. I’m sure your pretty busy you could always just email a few. Whitney thanks for the email! How do you like busses? I’m used to them, we take at least 5 every day! So your going to buy a car, what kinds do they have there? Love y'all! Happy New Year! Taylor

37th email from France (Cannes)

2008-12-23T02:53:00.000-08:00

Salem hallicom, bonjour, and hello! I guess the family is kind of spread out now. The first one is Arab if you didn’t know. First off, I guess you’re at the new house in Saudi! That’s really cool. I hope everything went pretty smoothly. We had a really good week. Our Christmas night in Marseille went really well. Everyone seemed to like it. There was just a bunch of little movie clips then people read Christmas stories then we would sing. I liked it; at least it’s always just good to be with the other missionaries. It’s kind of like what you said about everyone coming over before yall left -it’s just good to know you have friends, especially when we don’t see each other that often. Things like that are always fun just to talk and see what everyone’s been doing. The best part is that Sonia, Barbara and Laetitia were there. I got to talk to them a lot after it was finished actually. Sonia is getting baptized or I guess she already has last Sunday. I was super excited when she told me so they seem to be doing good. Joelle and Laurent were there also which kind of shocked me. They seemed good too. They really liked the program anyways. Also there were a few other members from Vitrolles but not too many. President and Soeur Carter played and sang this really cool Quebec Christmas song and it was surprisingly very good. A few people invited us to come over for Christmas which is good because I was getting worried. Actually we’ll be with a family tomorrow night for Christmas Eve then the 25th were going to eat at the church with all the single adults but there’s going to be like 20 people there and also just a lot of the younger people that don’t have family around so I’m actually really excited for that. I’m not too sure about the food though. I’m a little scared at what they might try to feed us. Normally the French traditional meals are a little bizarre. I know the main course of the meal at the church is called foie gras which actually is the liver of ducks that have been force-fed so there super fatty so we’ll see. Normally there should be lots of really good stuff, maybe some new cheeses you never know. I’m sure there will be lots of nasty mushrooms and stinky olives but that’s normal and there’s almost no getting around it even in a normal meal. We had a kind of special fhe at the church. Well, not really special we just made sure to invite everyone. This was last night and there was about 15 people who came. It was pretty fun. We just watched a little film about the nativity then played a little game then talked for a while after. Everyone seemed to like it. It was a good change because normally our little Monday night things are pretty dinky and rarely are there more amis than missionaries. Me and Elder Monson finally had one of our investigators at church this Sunday so that was cool. He’s just a normal guy that doesn’t do much and really has no reason not to come every Sunday but still it was cool. But this week we have been teaching a lot of lessons and have been seeing some really cool normal people! So you’re in Saudi! ahh Let me know how it is! I hope you can email me soon maybe some pictures. Tell me how the trip was and all that. I hope Chelsea did ok poor thing on the luggage belt. I hope they didn’t just throw her in there like luggage. MaMa said that they were going to surprise y’all with a tree and some food. I was actually thinking if they even did trees or if Christmas was like a top secret kind of deal. Is everyone open about going to church or just how does that all work? I’m sure you don’t even really know either. Is there a wall around this compound? That’s how I picture it. Do you have a yard? What are the streets and stuff like? I guess it’s green and stuff not just desert. ooh Maybe you will have kebobs the big veal sandwiches. We still eat those all the time and their definitely Arabian! Did we change phone plans and all that? Did the bank stay the same? Tell me about the ward. How’s the house? Does Chelsea like it?
I really hope you have a good first week and get to know everyone. Especially Dad at work. I’m sure that will be all new. Get Whitney and Evan to email me or at least Whitney -Evan just did. Are the kids on vacation there too or are they just starting school when they get there? Let me know how that goes. Did the phone thing work where it transfers and all that or the sling box thing for TV? So do you just not have any furniture or what? I know you didn’t bring any. What is there to do around town? I still don’t know where you’re at exactly. We’re going to go to a book store and find a map or something.
Well cool! Hope everything’s good! Merry Christmas!
Love y’all, Taylor

36th email from France (Cannes)

2008-12-16T06:15:00.000-08:00

Hey! This week was pretty good. The transfer ended yesterday. I guess we’re both staying here together so that’s cool. That puts me here until almost my year mark. It’s going by so fast. Really nothing too big is going on here. I don’t have a lot to say. Just the same stuff- looking for people to teach. Sunday we went to watch the First Presidency’s Christmas devotional so that was really good. Finally someone invited us to eat for last night- an older couple, he cooked pizza that was pretty good then had a big plate of different cheeses so that’s always interesting. He has some really strong blue cheese that I ate a lot of. I know you really want to hear all the news about our amis but it’s really going pretty slow right now. Ivy sent me a letter this week so that was cool. It was kind of for my birthday and Christmas with money too so that’s always good! Thank y’all. I’m going to buy some Christmas cards today to send to a few people. For the call- I don’t know- I might be able to do it this week. I would just call from the church. I guess I could give you a time. OK, we figured it out. I will call you Thursday night at 5:30 here so it should be 7 hours ahead for you so the call would come Thursday morning at 10:30. I’ll call president but I figure he won’t have a problem. So I hope you don’t already have the anything planned at that time. If so you can maybe email President giving him a time I can call. So that should work! It might be just hectic to call after your there. I’ll just call from the church then we have our ward missionary meeting after. That’s Thursday, the 18th! Cool. Other things going on- not much! We have our Christmas party this week in Marseille. That should be really good. We are really looking forward to that. Saudi! That is really cool! Y’all have a lot to do I guess. I am super amazed about the garage holding 2 cars. That’s crazy about not letting anything Christian into the country. I still need to find a map because I don’t know where y’all are going to be exactly- that’s been bugging me. It’s cool the ward people have been in touch. I’m sure they will be happy to have a few more people. I guess you probably won’t be able to email this week after you get there. You know I want to know all about what it’s like. I have it all imagined in my mind but I could be way off. I’m sure it will be cool though. How were people at Dad’s work when he said he was leaving?? He’s been there forever. I guess today is his last day Well, I hope everything goes good. I’ll be praying for y’all. Sorry this is a lame email but we’ll talk Thursday. Can’t wait.

Love y’all, Taylor

35th email from France (Cannes)

2008-12-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone thanks for your email. Wow that’s really cool that y’all finally made a decision. I’m excited. I think that’s going to be sweet. I bet everyone was pretty shocked! Today was fun. There are a few missionaries in Nice that are finishing so we met them half way in Antibes and we ate on the beach and walked around. It was a lot of fun. The weather wasn’t the best. The sun wasn’t out but there was a lot of sun. It was cool to see all the snow covered Alps. I don’t think I’ve ever seen big mountains and the beach before. It was cool. I took lots of pictures. I’ll try to send them to y’all. That was today. Other than that we also had a pretty good week.-just more normal stuff. I guess I just passed ten months so that’s cool. Time is really going fast. I can’t believe this transfer is almost over. I’m pretty sure that I’ll be staying here in Cannes so whatever. We’ve been around a little this week mostly to St. Raphael. I was there for an exchange which was really cool then also again for a zone meeting. We practiced singing for the big Christmas party at Marseille. It was good to see everyone but you know how I feel about organized singing! I’m getting better -I don’t mind it but anything you have to practice for is just dumb. This Sunday we ate with some members for the first time here so that’s exciting. It was the family Wally. They were super cool and we just joked around. It was a good change from walking around all day. Also we have been meeting some pretty cool people just here and there so we’ll see. The only problem is that no one can come to church so really its lame. Tonight we have a rv with this family that’s pretty cool. We might even eat but I’m not sure. I got a letter from Sonia, Leticia and Barbara from Vitrolles so that was pretty exciting. I’ll have to write them back soon. I’m hoping to see some people I know at the party in Vitrolles cause its not to far. The amis and members are invited so I’m sure a few will come. OK wow Saudi- that’s really sweet- your leaving soon too. What is everybody saying? Were Dad’s work people shocked? He’s been there forever. Just tell me what everyone said- I’m really interested. I have no idea how the phone is going to work. ohhhhh what about the cell phones I would like to keep my number and all that, I hope it doesn’t change. What are you doing with all of our stuff? Cars? House? Who’s going to keep it up and all that? Who’s going to have keys and be there? Are you trying to sell the older truck or what? Or the boat? Don’t you dare! How much stuff can you bring like just suitcases or what? Evan said you can come back every 5 months or so. I guess means summers and Christmas’s. that seems very often. For the visa I don’t know maybe it would be easier from my end. I seem to be at the stupid prefecture place often enough. We’re going next Monday to Nice for Elder Monson- he still isn’t legal and he’s been here over a year.I’m sure your Christmas will be good. Your little ward is going to be so happy to have a new family. Watch Dad will be the bishop in like a month. I guess I’ll come live with yall for awhile after, then school for summer sounds good. I haven’t really even thought about after that much. I still have to decide three weeks earlier or later. I’m waiting for Christmas to open the box. Well that’s about it. You can take out a lot of this stuff. Send me lots of details about everything your doing to get ready to go. Love y’all. Taylor

One other thing: Whitney and Evan get ready because international school is going to kick your butt…don’t forget I called it.

34th email from France (Cannes)

2008-12-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! This week was good- pretty normal, nothing to exciting happened. It’s been kind of nasty weather lately. It’s been raining for the last few days but I think it should be getting better. It’s been a little crazy the last few days. Last Thursday until Sunday night we had 8 staying at our apartment so that was interesting and a little annoying if anything but they’re gone now and its nice and quiet again. Elder Kelley moved to Toulouse to be the new assistant! Now we have Elder Shrotzki with us. He’s German. He’s the same age as me-mission wise- so I know him a little from the mtc. There he didn’t really speak English very well. He’s really cool and funny. I’m going to really miss Elder Kelley. He was the one to always joke with so now its a lot more quiet, but relaxing too. Sunday was cool because there were 10 of us there in church. All the members were like “ahh y’all are in force today!” Our fhe’s at the church are going better too. Last night there was like 9 people there- lots of fun too. It felt really good to leave for the day for Marseille. We went in the car with the zone leaders so it was pretty fast. We stopped in Toulon to pick up the elders from Corsica. It was cool to see them and big boat they come over on. It’s the Corsican ferry but it’s a huge pretty much cruise ship. They have to take to come back but they just closed the area there so it kind of killed everyone’s hopes. It’s the one place everyone dreams about going to. The meeting in Marseille was good! The 70 was super cool and nice. It was a different feeling though- kind of like a board room- we all had tables and it lasted super long and we talked about numbers and stuff. It was not near as interesting and uplifting as usual but still good. It was like that Sunday too. They presented the ward mission plan to the members so it was a huge PowerPoint and all that stuff. We had another class for all the amis watching a church movie I think. But they really discussed what they wanted to do and what they didn’t think would work. It seemed like the bishop was pretty scared because he didn’t know how everyone would take it. They presented all the goals for references and baptisms and percentages for lessons with members and all that. Before he was all like we’re going to ask for 50 referrals for the year- ahh ca fait peur- or that causes fear but he presented it all very well and for the most part they were willing to do a little more. So I hope it all works out for us and them. Getting to know the members is about the same. We did do service for someone Saturday so at least I know where one person lives but after that not much. I hope our Christmas isn’t boring just chilling at our apartment. Thanksgiving was good- we ate pretty good- mashed potatoes, gravy, canned turkey- it wasn’t bad! Of course Elder Kelley and Parker got invited to eat with a family but it wasn’t too bad for us. The old assistant Elder Hill just left. I had an exchange with him his last day so that was cool. He should be home now. I never have thought about me saying “we’ll see” a lot and about it being so different! But I must say it because here we say “on verra” a lot and it’s just the translation. But I’m doing really good on the language. The accent is the hardest part but it’s not a problem- its just obvious that we’re American. With our amis its still going pretty slow. The two people that we see every now and then- one lives on a boat in the port and the other lives in the back room of a snack shop- so if that answers your question. We’re doing ok but no one wants to or can come to church so it’s really lame because that’s what we’re really looking for. And really the only thing that leads to progression is actually coming to church. It’s kind of hard sometimes when just nobody has time to talk but then we have all day just looking for people. It’s going ok though. You didn’t say what you wanted me to do about sending the Christmas box. I did get your package, though. Thanks! Are you already using the laptop? What kind did dad buy? I hope Dad starts feeling better. I’ve been a little sick too but you know I’m like this every year so its normal. Good luck Evan for the basketball tournament. Disney 2010 -yeah I’m in- we’ve been talking about Disney lately. Elder Monson really likes it much more than me but it does bring back good memories talking about it. But yeah that sounds super fun and if Grandpa could get the presidential suite- woo –awesome. I never thought I would break in but last Tuesday I bought a scarf and the second I put it on I lost just a little bit of my American accent! Haha. Lots of people just email a few pictures home from their cameras. I can start that if you want. Y’all asked how I speak. I do well. There’s no more practicing just actual conversations. It’s still getting better though mostly just learning lots of vocab and all the little verbs that aren’t used very often. Please check and see how much money I have on my account. Maybe I should use my card for something so they don’t close it or something like the other time. A lot of this is junk you can take out when you print out my emails- do you print it then change it for the blog? I hope so! (Note- yes I do edit it for the blog but keep the unedited versions as well!) Well, love y’all, Taylor

33rd email from France (Cannes)

2008-11-25T17:52:00.000-08:00

First thing is that I got finally got your letter! Thanks for that. Hey everyone, I guess your getting ready to leave for Arkansas. That’s cool. Tell everyone hey for me. We had a pretty good week here just normal stuff. Time is passing by really fast- it’s incredible. Today we went shopping and I found a Dr. Pepper for the first time since I got here so that was pretty exciting! Elder Kelley and Parker left for Toulouse today so are alone for a few days. Nothing too much is going on. I know I was complaining about always being gone before but now I really miss it. It’s pretty hard just to work in the same place every day. We have to really work hard to find stuff to do especially because we don’t go to the other towns around here. The others do because they have the car so were just here in centre ville all day. Finally Thursday we’ll be heading to Marseille for the zone conference. I’m really, really excited to see everyone. I talked to Elder Calder on the phone the other night. He seemed to be doing well with his greenie. Also, there’s going to be someone from the 70 there- Elder Kipishika, I think. So I’m sure it’s going to be really good- different, though, because it’s going to be in English. We haven’t had any meetings or anything in English for a long time, since President Merrill, so well see how that goes. Our week was pretty normal. Sunday was good. They had the primary program just like ours, they sang and gave little talks. It was really funny- they other elders have this ami that’s been coming to church for a few months now and they asked her to come thinking about the question if she needs to be baptized. So one of the little kids was giving his little talk in-between songs and he said something like”… we’re only baptized once to show we have faith in Jesus…”- and this lady like everyone in France, was already baptized Catholic. So Elder Kelley and Parker were all like “ahh- I hate that little kid- why didn’t he say we’re only baptized once by the authority restored by Joseph Smith??? haha So we’ll see what happens there. We finally got our cell phone last night so that’s pretty exciting. Now we’ll be able to call people and fix stuff. Before, it was pretty hard to manage. I still like Cannes a lot. This week there has been a huge real estate convention so there has been people all over from all over so that was pretty cool. I think we’re going to do some more shopping today- just looking around. Here the word for window shopping is lèche vitrines or “window licking”. Last Tuesday we found this shop with cell phones that cost about 10 thousand dollars. I’m not sure why but they do. Oh, tell Jacob that CTR in French is CLB- choisir le bien. Why did he ask? Thanks for the pictures and card. Whitney would fit in perfectly in Cannes with those huge sun glasses. Everyone here is obsessed with Bob Marley too! Lots of kids have little man purses with his face on them and in Vitrolles one of our friends had a dog named after him! I never though his pic would end up in our house but whatever. What kind of stuff is Evan playing on the guitar? Yesterday we met the chillest old guys ever. They were on the south beach and every day they assemble themselves at the same place to feed old bread to two ducks. We sat with them for a while and talked. There’s 3 of them and they all come on bike and have been doing it for years. So if we’re ever bored around 3 o’clock we’ll head down there with em.
Hey, this is for Dad. I forgot to answer the questions but I don’t have a lot of time. There are a lot of fish markets and there is lots of fresh fish in the stores. Today they had a big shark just cut up. I think it’s just whatever they catch. They’re super crazy about soccer. I really like it a lot more now. Everyone even here in Cannes, likes the OM Marseille team even more than the Nice team. I saw the Seahawks playing on TV in a bar the other day- from the street of course- but that is the first NFL I’ve seen in a while! President Carter did away with the English class. Everyone was pretty bummed. Some of the bigger cities had like 15 students every week. Let me know what’s up! OK, bye again! Love y’all, Taylor

32nd email from France (Cannes)

2008-11-18T17:13:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, Things are going fine in Cannes. Oh and don’t be too worried that I haven’t gotten the memory card yet. I didn’t know there was money in there too. I think it’s either in Toulouse or in Vitrolles but it hasn’t gotten here yet. I did get mamas for my birthday though- all that came fine. Money for Christmas is really fine, that’s what I want. Oh yeah, you know I’m going to buy some sweet French shoes-some nice pointy ones- that’s how they do it here. They are kind of like elves shoes. I’ll probably get a scarf also and maybe a coat. It’s actually really nice weather here now, not cold at all. We wear short sleeves and no jackets.
But hey, thanks for the emails. It was really good but it seems I’ve been hearing only from mom and mama and not anyone else. Of course not that I don’t like hearing from you mom! This week was good. We did a lot of finding stuff. There is a whole area book of just people and numbers that haven’t ever been contacted so we’ve been going everywhere- it’s cool. I really like Cannes. I don’t know what were going to do after all these people are finished because we don’t have that many people to teach, but I’m sure we’ll find some. We’re finding a few, it’s just slow. We met this guy from Turkey who is really cool and we saw him the other day then well see him again tomorrow. He lives in a sailboat in the port which I think is awesome. So we’ll see. Tonight we have a rv with someone the other missionaries put us in contact with and we have a member to come with us so that’s exciting. That’s our first member lesson since we’ve been here. It’s not that bad being with 4 and it’s cool to see the sisters around every now and then. We had our fhe thing last night at the church. It was fun- we played this game that’s like Mafia. There weren’t a whole lot of people there but enough. I had talked to this less active really cool guy at church for like 30 minutes then invited him to come and he showed up so that was cool. Then afterwards the other elders set a time to go see him because he lives in an outside city- so that’s kind of annoying but whatever. The other elders are pretty ticked right now because the sisters set up a mangez-vous with their ami at church last Sunday so it’s kind of hard for stuff like that but for everything else it’s not bad. Christmas is going to be cool- what they’re going to do is have a big party for all the missionaries and members in Marseille. It’s a little long for the people here in Cannes but I’m pretty sure the Vitrolles people will come if anything to meet President Carter. Do you even know who the mission president is there or care?? Here it’s like a big deal. Everyone knows who he is and his story. Maybe it’s just because President Merrill was so amazing that they want to know President Carter, too. Everyone loved President Merrill and they’ll love Carter. It’s going to be a talent show thing I think. So they’ve been asking who can do stuff and I don’t think juggling would make it. Good thing I’ve been practicing my opera voice- me and Monson could sing. He sings a lot, I think it’s dumb but it doesn’t bother me so whatever. He really is a genius though. He builds robots and stuff. He created his own 3d game- just a total computer whiz but super smart too. His brain is different, I can’t explain it. Just one example is he does origami without thinking. He just sees it and can do it. He told me in high school he hated the computer nerds because they thought they knew a lot. He’s really, really cool though. We get along good. Thanks for the info- the Gideon’s ahh I was wondering just because we met one and they were trying to tell me he was evangelist but I was pretty sure that wasn’t it. Everything else is good. I really like it here. They’re starting to put up lots of Christmas decorations so that’s cool and were doing ok meeting people. Church was good, it’s just going to be really hard to get to know people. It’s not their fault. They already knew 4 then we all show up. They are nice and happy were there but that’s it, so we’ll see how that works out. Then on top of that the others are sisters and zone leaders so we’re at the bottom of the food chain haha- anyways it’s not bad. We’ve been playing soccer in the mornings just right around the corner. There is a community field with turf grass just open for everyone. It’s really nice and pretty fun too. We still don’t have a phone and it’s bad because we can’t call anyone or do anything to set up appointments. We’re just lost and they haven’t sent us one yet. Get Whitney and Evan to write or email or something MaMa is my only loyal writer and you. No, I really don’t mind. Use my computer and we can get me another one when I get home. That works better for all of us- mostly me! Thanks for answering my questions and for finding Mike for me. Eric’s been emailing me. He seems to be doing good and working out a lot. Apparently he’s training to wrestle with clye b., my old paintball buddy somewhere in Westlake. Well, that’s about it. Write a big letter next week. Love y’all,

Taylor

31st email from France (Cannes)

2008-11-11T20:16:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, how’s it going? Things are really good here in Cannes. This week went by really fast. We’ve been doing a lot of finding stuff. We don’t really know anyone yet and they didn’t leave us with many amis so we’ve just been kind of wandering around passing by people and visiting. We have one cool ami that we finally just met last night and he seems really cool. We’re going to see him Thursday, I think. He came to a little thing we had at the church last night so that was good. We played catch phrase and just kind of messed around. Elder Monson is cool. Of course, everyone at church asked him if he’s a grandson or something but he’s not. It rained the first three days we were here so I’m a little sick right now but nothing to bad. Church was really good. It’s more normal than Vitrolles was. (or I should say more like the way I’m used to) There are lots of families and people that know how a normal ward works. There are lots of returned missionaries. We went to the ward council and they all seem pretty excited about the missionary work so that’s good. It’s still going to be hard with 6 of us, I’m still not sure how that’s going to work. The members were just like wow that’s good but didn’t do much to get to know us or anything yet so we’ll see. Soeur Daun is there along with Soeur Mahuru from Tahiti so that’s cool. We just passed 9 months so the sisters are going downhill now! It’s going by really fast. Elder Monson is pretty much a genius. His dad works for the Church in the genealogy department. So I think that’s pretty cool. He was a byu ball room dancer. The other day we went to St. Raphael for our district meeting. It was awesome. We took the train and the whole way was along the beach. There was tons of huge houses and lots of ports just filled with yachts. The next town after St. Raph is St. Tropez so maybe we can make it out there one day. I heard it’s not that nice though. Here in Cannes is super rich too. There aren’t any bad areas because everyone is stinking rich. The first day we were just walking around and we found a Bentley dealership then kept walking just to find a Lamborghini dealership. It’s pretty crazy. The people are pretty open to talk though so it's great. Yeah, all the people were pretty happy for Obama. All the members told us they stayed up all night to see who would win. I figure y’all did the same thing. One thing I think is funny- our ward mission leader is the exact French twin of Mark Morris. They’re exactly the same, even the jokes and little comments they make. They even look alike and have the same laugh. We walked along the beach road the other day and they had a lot of the guys doing the huge sand castles. They were really, really cool. We need to go back and take some pictures. Today I think we’re just going to do some shopping around centre ville. They have all the really nice stores- Dior and Chanel and all that good stuff. I never got the Halloween things yet but I think they stopped forwarding mail for a while for the transfers. So hopefully it will come soon. I don’t have that many pictures right now but I’ll try to get a few more and send them. Just take more good ones on the card you have and then send me it. I only have one card right now. You have one and one is somewhere in Toulouse or in the mail. I don’t know what you need to do for Christmas. I’m really just ok with getting money and a tie or something chocolate. Just whatever you think. I’m going to try and send y’all something. I might do some shopping for that today. How’s my blog going? You haven’t said anything about it in a while.Thanks so much for Blake’s email. I have another name and this will take skills- Mike Michie who lives I think in South Carolina maybe but if not somewhere on the east coast- but the kicker is he’s on his mission already so I need his myldsmail email so if you could search for that it would be much appreciated! How’s Bishop Young doing? Our bishop here is pretty young. He seems super nice. I didn’t talk to him very long but he seems great. What’s Ryan T. doing? Is he still there and Will? Oh- question- who are the guys that give out the red bibles for schools and hotels and stuff? I need to know their name. The other day we met a really nice member from Utah. She was window shopping as she described it. Her husband was there for business so we talked to her for a while. She has a son somewhere in Europe as a missionary so she was cool to talk to. That really sucks for Clay’s mission not getting to email. I wouldn’t like that at all. Try to get his address for Washington. I wrote Andrew today. How’s basketball going? Are they practicing or playing already? It still feels pretty nice outside so I’m liking that. I really didn’t want to go somewhere that’s way cold. It’s really weird here, I don’t even know how to describe it. There are just lots of rich people or normal people doing a good job making me think their rich. They even hhave little rich French dogs- crazy. How’s Chelsea doing?Everything’s good here- no problems. Elder Davis is in Toulon so he’s in my district. It was good to see him the other day. When I came down here it was on the train. I was with Elder Gibbons- he was in the MTC with me. I really like him. But anyway his dad’s name is Berry Gibbons- I think he produces the efy cds but anyways this elder is in a band with his brothers called The Gibbons and they have a song on the last efy cd. Whitney should have it. Tell her to listen to the song and tell me if she likes it. He said they have a cd at Wal-Mart but I would be surprised if it makes it to our Wal-Mart. Write lots this week. Love y’all,Taylor

30th email from France (Cannes bound)

2008-11-04T08:14:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, how’s it going? So I guess you would like to know where I’m going. I’m emailing you from Marseille but in a few hours I’ll be chilling in Cannes (kan),which I’m very excited about! I escaped the twilight zone one more time. So Cannes- everyone’s been telling me it’s about the prettiest place in the mission. It’s pretty much the French Riviera at its finest. I’ve heard it’s quite a rich town just outside of Nice. I’m really, really excited. I’ll be with Elder Monson. I don’t really know him but I’m sure it will be great. Also, I’ve heard our apartment is one of the best in the mission. We’ll be living with 2 other guys, Elder Kelley and Parker. I know Elder Kelley from when he was in Aix and I’ve heard from a lot of people that Elder Parker is really cool. Also there is Soeur Dawn from the mtc who is in our ward, so it should be really good. I’m not sure how that’s going to work with 6 of us in a ward but I’m excited. Elder Calder is going to Toulouse right now to pick up his ‘bleu’ or greenie so the ward here was pretty excited to get another young one. I really liked serving with him. We had a lot of fun. There was a branch that closed called Antibes so I think we will be working with their old amis a little but I’m not sure. I know it’s not a super big city so I hope there’s enough stuff for us to do. It’s a whitewash too. Elder Monson was in St. Raphael before so he doesn’t know the area either. I’m sure that will be fun getting around for the first few weeks! Another good thing is- that puts us in range for preparation day Monaco trips! So we’ll see if that works out. I would love to go there. I’ve seen some pictures of it and it looks amazing. The last few days we’ve just been running around saying bye to people so it’s been really good. Sunday was good, they called me up first to talk in sacrament so that was cool. You'll like this one funny thing that happened this week- The other night we had an rv with Robert but it was raining super hard. We were in our apartment and not really feeling like walking over to his house in the pouring rain. Just then, he called to see if he could come get us so that was really cool. We were just kind of waiting by our window to see when he got there. So finally a car comes up and stops so were like ok he’s there and we get all of our stuff and run out. We go down our stairs and Elder Calder goes to the front door and I go in the back seat. So as Elder Calder’s running around I jump into the back seat and close the door. The first thing I hear is this old lady yelling "c'est qui" or ‘who is it’. So I look up and see it’s not Rob! It’s this old couple so I’m like ohhhh and jump back out of the car. Then I realized I should probably explain something so I open the door and say “I thought you were someone else” and ran back into our apartment so that was pretty funny. Then when Rob came a few minutes later Elder Calder could not stop laughing! It’s interesting how much French people care about our elections. That’s all they want to talk about. We were eating with this family last night and the husband just wanted to talk about that and his wife kept getting aggravated. He was explaining that maybe we’re not supposed to talk about politics with other people but with members it’s fine. It was pretty funny. I enjoyed it. Everyone here wants Obama to win but I guess we’ll find out soon enough. That’s really sweet that Evan made the basketball team. Is it because he’s really tall or did he find some cordination skills other than in his fingers for computer games? How often do they practice? Is it still Coach F.?
Yes, we have daylight savings here. It’s ok I guess but it messes us up because it gets dark later. It’s really hard to get around. The busses stop sooner. There isn’t anyone outside and it’s getting colder so that doesn’t help any. The members were really happy that I’m going to Cannes- not for me to leave- but just because the town is so cool and the ward. It will be a good place to be for Christmas. Someone told me that she thought it was good that I started in Vitrolles because it can only get better. But I totally disagree, I love it here. Also there are a lot of activities there so a lot of people said they would be there often and will see me. All the youth have something there this Saturday so hopefully I’ll get to see some of them. Leticia actually told me “your lucky your going to see all the celebrities”. I doubt it but we’ll see. Maybe I’ll get to teach some of them.
Today was really cool because Marseille is such a huge station for the trains. There were about 12 missionaries there and we just chilled for a while and talked about who’s going where and all that. Apparently Muslims don’t have Halloween so there wasn’t really anything going on. There were a few kids walking around but nothing too big. Some of our amis told us they knocked on our door but I guess we weren’t there. My foot is fine, don’t worry about it- thanks for worrying though.
I have a quest for Whitney go on my space or face book whatever and find me B. F.’s email address. He lives in Shreveport. Do a friend request if you have to become and ask. Please try and don’t forget I really really want it. So Christmas is coming up. I really think you need to send whatever your sending pretty soon. I’m not sure if the Christmas zone conference is before or after Christmas but if it is after I won’t have the stuff until after Christmas so if you send it now I should get it for this zone conference and have it for Christmas day. I really don’t know what I want just money I guess. I’ve been thinking about buying a coat thing and some shoes, we’ll see. Everything else is good. Oh send me Jell-O- that doesn’t exist here and people are amazed by it. Every time they’re just like ‘ohhh it moves’. We’ve been doing that then teaching a little thought about having a firm foundation. It works out pretty well. Ok well, I’m going but thanks for everything. I’ll tell you how Cannes is next week! Love y’all, Taylor

29th email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-10-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

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......

2008-10-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-10-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-10-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-10-07T15:27:00.000-07:00

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

25th email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-09-30T15:16:00.000-07:00

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

24th email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-09-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, how’s it going? Pretty good here. We're at the church writing emails because the place we normally go is really dumb and the guy isn’t ever there. So I just got done taking a little nap while Elder Calder did his. Ahh- I'm still in Vitrolles! Yeah, I'm pretty excited. I really didn’t want to go even though I figured I would. Everyone seems pretty shocked that I stayed here another transfer. That makes 5 which puts me here until the first week of November. This week has been good but kind of hard, too. We’ve been all over. I spent four nights without being here in Vitrolles. We were running around doing all the exchanges that we should have done earlier. So we’ve been in Aix, Avignon and then Marseille a little. It was lots of fun but pretty exhausting. This was the first transfer that I was really excited to have. Before we didn’t really see a lot of the missionaries but since Elder Calder was in the office before so he knows everyone and just being with a lot of other elders last week was good. We talked about transfers a lot. Just where everyone would go, who would become the new leaders and all that. We actually made predictions one night in Avignon. Not a whole lot changed though. Only one elder from the district left. Our exchanges were really cool. I actually worked in Aix with Elder Scott from the mtc so that was a lot of fun. We had a really good day. It kind of started rough, someone wasn’t there for a rendez vous so we were just kind of walking around centre ville and I see this girl who was just really excited to see us. So I walked over and kind of contacted her I guess. Then she’s like " I don’t speak French" ha so that was cool. But anyways she had just moved there from South Africa to be a nanny I guess. But she’s a member just a little less active so we talked to her for a long time- she bought us ice cream which was really good- then showed her where the church was. It was a sweet little miracle. Then later on in the day we had a member lesson planned and when we got there it was the family of Boris, the kid from the hike, so that was really cool to see him again. We got to laugh about how we "almost died". Later on in the day we had a rv with this lady who is a "voyant" or mind reader I guess. Not with a crystal ball but I think she reads palms so I figured it would be a little interesting but it wasn’t too bad. We taught a really good first lesson and invited her to come to church. Both Avignon and Aix are a lot bigger than Vitrolles so it was cool just to be around a lot of people. It was different but I think I wouldn’t mind a big city -I would really like to go to Marseille- it's my favorite. One morning in Avignon we all went to play rugby by the Pope's Palace which is in the middle of the town. I figured it would be pretty crowded but since we were there early we were the only ones.
It's absolutely the coolest castle I've ever seen. It's so big, I loved it and we just threw the ball around for about 30 minutes on the big slab right in front of it. I took a lot of good photos. I'll send y'all. OK, so we’ve been talking with Sonia a lot and we’ve planned to have the baptism October 18 which is really the biggest reason I'm glad to be staying. We gave her a blessing Sunday with the bishop to stop smoking but other than that she is ready. We hadn’t been seeing them that often but then she told us that she liked it when we used to have lots of rendez vous so we made a schedule where were going to see them times a week -Mondays, Thursdays and Saturday so that’s going to be really good. Last night I showed them all my pictures and we just talked about all of them for a while- it was fun.
One thing I started doing with Elder Calder is decorating our planners. We cut things out of all the publicity we get then glue them on, then put a nice layer of tape over. I really liked the one from last transfer- it just had Vitrolles written a lot but yesterday I made the new one it has a big 300 which is our goal for baptisms for the year. Then a big thing I cut out that says information immédiate demandez un rendez-vous then Vitrolles at the bottom. It is si cool. Elodie was at church Sunday so it was really cool to see her again. They said they would invite us over to eat some day so I hope they do. We went shopping today and spent 100 euros which is like 150 dollars. It was so much stuff- it should last at least 3 weeks. All the Muslim people are doing their Ramadan or whatever, their fast for the month of September where they eat really early then not all day until 9 I think. But anyways everyone keeps talking about this party they have every year at the end of it. Apparently they just go nuts for a whole day. I hope its not too bad considering were practically living in Tunisia and they are everywhere. Well, that’s about it everything is good. I'm really excited to be staying here for another 6 weeks. Love y'all, Taylor

Ok, I really don’t want to get you worried but people keep talking about this strike for the mail people that starts today and could last quite a long time. In the past they have been short but they said this could be a few months so maybe stuff will get lost or stolen or whatever. But I hope what you sent gets here but don’t send anything else until I know what’s up. I got your memory card and I'll send mine as soon as the strike is over.

23rd email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-09-16T17:18:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, how’s it going? Really good here! I’m in Marseille right now. We came last night so I could do some stuff for my carte de sejour. That was pretty frustrating like always. We ended up sitting in a room forever waiting for them to call our number just to be able to set up another rendez vous for December. It’s really ridiculous but since we were already here we met up with all the missionaries from around here and went to see D'if. It was really, really cool. I think the best part was just being on a boat. The ride started at the base of the port here so it was cool to be on the water. There was a really, really huge yacht parked out there so that was exciting along with all the other boats. But then the castle was pretty cool. There were lots of little clips from the movie (Counte of Monte Cristo) then lots of historical facts. It cost like 13 dollars but still worth it.
This week was good. Oh yeah, I got your package. I really like the shirt. Too bad no one ever sais lessez le bon temps rouller- it’s just a translation but still cool. We had our zone development meeting this week in Aix- so that was pretty good to see president again. They’re really cool. I’m scared right now though because it’s getting near the end of the transfer. President told me the other day,” Ohh that makes 4 transfers for you to be there…” So we’ll see. I’ve been in Vitrolles for a long time though. I just don’t want to leave. It’s going to be weird to go anywhere else and me and elder Calder are working hard and starting to find some new people to teach. Things are going pretty good so we’ll see. I know I’m going to move eventually, I just don’t feel like I want to right now I really like all of our amis and the ward. We’ve been working with a lot of members. This last week we had 8 lessons with them which is the most we have had in a while. I going to be bummed if I leave but I’m sure the next place will be good if I do. This Sunday we got to go to this young single adults broadcast that was transmitted just to our chapel by satellite but when we get there I realized it was taped or whatever at byu. It was really good but also really weird for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about how I probably know a few people that are actually there and how I’m here all the way around the world listening to Elder Holland being translated into French. It was really good though, I liked it. Also this week was Aurelian’s wedding. It was Thursday night, actually the same day as our meeting with President. There were quite a few people there. He was excited and I’ve talked to his wife a few times before -she’s really cool but he’s gone now. I’m going to miss him. He was really good as our ward mission leader. There’s no telling how long its going to take for them to call us another one. We were there for the beginning but I heard that the ball he had lasted until 4 in the morning. I still can’t get over that and they were just jamming- all the Spanish music- Shakira and everything crazy, you name it. This Sunday when we left our apartment to walk to church, just out of nowhere there were just tons of people selling stuff on tables all up and down our road. It was really cool. Normally they have the outside marché further down town but they moved it to the village. I don’t know why but it was really cool. Sonia told me Sunday that she really thought about it and that she’s going to be baptized in October; so that’s really good- another reason why I want to stay. We’re going to have two more exchanges this week with the elders from Avignon and Aix so I’m pretty excited for that. I’ll probably work with Elder Scott later on in the week so that will be good. Just one question- ok, so we’re on the bus quite often and hear the radio a little bit but every single time there is just this one song that the people here just love and I’m wondering if it’s big there too- it’s something about “I kissed a girl and I liked it”…..it’s so weird-everybody sings it all the time. So that’s just a question also what’s Ryan been doing since he came home? Update me on Eric, Jace and Clay, Alex… it seems like the last few weeks I’ve only gotten hurricane information which kind of sucks. I saw a picture of Galveston harbor the other day in the newspaper so I figured y’all were all right. That sucks about the flooding though. I really like Marseille. I really would like to serve here- just the big city feel. Besides that everything is pretty good. I’m really anxious for the transfer calls that should come Saturday night. Actually my birthday is going to be on a prep day so I’m sure we can do something with some other guys. I should have some pictures to send you soon. I took a lot of good ones today. Our neighbor is obcessed with Madonna. He plays music pretty loud during the day. It's not too bad as long as it's not in our study time in the morning. Andrew sent me a letter and it was really cool because I had already written him one and I went to send it the same morning that I received his but I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I just waited so then I could answer to the things he asked. I thought that was cool. Tell Whitney to be sure to send me their homecoming pics. That’s cool. I made a cheesecake Sunday morning . It was amazing! It was just one from a box like I love. We came back after church and ate it all. If you ever want to send me food, send that! ahh it was so good. What’s Eric doing? He never emails me anymore and I really want him to. What have they heard from Jace and Clay? When does Shawn leave? That’s cool. Do you ever hear how Matt, Christa and Andrew T. are doing? Send me a long email next week. I really want to know how everyone’s doing. That’s all I can think of for now, but love y'all! Taylor

22nd email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-09-09T14:01:00.000-07:00

Hey, what’s going on? I forgot my planner that I’ve been writing things down all week to ask you. I’ll remember most of them but it helps to have the list. We didn’t do that much today, just shopping for food and stuff. We’ve been buying it for 2 weeks so we don’t have to mess with it that often so that works. The assistants are coming down from Toulouse to do exchanges with us. Apparently that’s a pretty big deal -we're not sure exactly why they are coming. Normally it means some kind of change is going to happen. Maybe Elder Calder could train but that’s not likely because there is only one kid coming in this transfer also maybe I could go senior companion. I don’t know- its weird how there are just slowly more and more that are younger than me. Time is going by so fast- 7 months now. I’m excited for next preparation day- we’re going to be in Marseille already for my carte de sejour stuff so were going to go out to the castle or chateau d'if, the one where the Counte of Monte Cristo was or whatever, apparently its a big deal but you have to take a boat ride out to it so that’s going to be sweet. Yesterday we went to Port de Buc. It’s just a little town on the Mediterranean. It was really sweet, we just kind of walked around by the beach for a while. No one was there but so we ended up taking some pretty cool pictures. I bought a photo album today and printed a bunch off of my camera so I’m pretty excited about that. The only problem is that’s its one of those ones with the babies dressed up like flowers- that’s the only one they had that was the right size so I’ll be trying to change out the picture. This week has been really good. We found a lot of new people. We talked to this Chinese guy. He gave us a bunch of Virgin Mary ornament things for a nativity set. They’re all different. He paints them for his work. They’re actually really good quality but its just funny. Vitrolles is crazy. School started again this last week. It’s been messing us up so bad. First thing all the busses changed routes to bring kids back home so it takes forever to go anywhere. Then also all the little punk Muslim kids are back in their little groups all day just chilling waiting to cuss us out and throw rocks. But no big deal, it’s just frustrating. We have the ward council tonight. I’m really bummed cause I can’t go- I’m going to be with Elder Reese in a rendez vous. It’s hard cause us four are staying in Vitrolles so we had to plan like 5 people to see. That’s sweet about the house being ok. I hope this other one doesn’t do anything too bad. I really hope you sent the other memory card, I’ve been waiting for it. I don’t know if the evacuation messed it up. I’ll send you mine when I get it. I got the thing on President Merrill, apparently so did some others in the bureau so I'm not the only one. Sunday was fast Sunday so we all ate at the church after. It was all pretty good food until the bishop’s wife came over with this seafood salade. It was shrimp, that wasn’t too bad but the she gave me like 20 mussels. I don’t know how to explain it, we had fun trying to figure out what they were. Finally I just clamped my two hands together and open and closed them and the whole table goes “Voila”. It was funny. They actually weren’t too bad just kind of squishy. We’ve actually been to Istre and Martiques too this week which are both over an hour away. It’s hard to get out there but its really cool to see the people that haven’t seen us in a while, they’re always way excited when they see us. It’s just really hard for them to come to church. We were out on this dock and Elder Calder started to freak out-finally he told me that it was his first time to see jellyfish. I thought that was pretty funny. I got a email from Jace before they went in. He seemed really happy. I bet they had so much fun with Elliot. That’s sweet that he took them around. I feel bad for Clay because 9 weeks in the mtc feels like forever but that’s really cool. He'll do awesome. That's cool that Dad and Evan went to help out the people in Baton Rouge. I really wish that we had pamphlets that talked about church services and how much we do. All the people here are convinced that every church is in it for money. A lot of people don’t even believe us when we say no one is paid to do all the stuff- bishops and all. Everyone here still talks about Obama all the time. They say cause they don’t like war. Of course they have no chance against any other country. We had a rv yesterday and the guy absolutely loves the U.S. so all he talked about was America the whole time. Then he played some Toby Keith American soldier so we weren’t complaining. The thing is that he told us he didn’t understand any of the words so we invited him to our cours d'anglais. Hopefully he will come. Not that many people come anymore, just this one guy William. Well, I have to go. Tell me how everything is. OK, bye. Love y'all, Taylor

21st email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-09-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, first off, I’ve been freaking out. I’ve been hearing about this hurricane for about a week now. First they said it did a lot of damage in the islands and all that, then just on the street someone told me it was heading towards Florida AND Louisiana so I figured they didn’t really know- just somewhere in that general direction. I asked a lot of people at church if they knew anything about it but no one had any real details. We talked to a lady about two days ago and she’s like, “oh you’re from Louisiana? Well I hope not from the southern part!” I was just like “oh that’s great.” Then the biggest thing was this morning we were at our bus station and on the front page of someone’s newspaper it sais la louisiane limite les dégats then it talks about New Orleans so just like that Louisiana missed the damage. So then I’m thinking well it’s still talking about Louisiana so where did it hit. But then there was a little map and I saw it was a little to the east of us. I’m glad its probably not too bad. That’s right where Elder Lundberg’s from so I wonder if he’s heard anything. But I’m good here. Everything’s good. I got those pictures of the camper- that’s really cool- I’m excited for that. I could just see a big tree falling on it but it’s good that y’all took it. Probably not too good for the gas though. It’s good that y’all got a few vacation days. Take some pictures for me while y’all are up there. We’re here in Aix en Provence today. We came to play ping pong- yeah you’re right we’re going to be playing a lot now. It was fun. The other elders came down from Gap and Manosque so there were like 10 of us there. We just started this thing in the mission where were all going to read the Book of Mormon before the end of the year- the only thing is we have to wake up 15 minutes earlier everyday to do it. It’s not that bad though. We’ll see how it goes. We just started yesterday. Not too many things happened this week. One cool thing, we were at a rendez vous with this girl Eliza and she said that because her mom is pretty sick people come from their church every Wednesday night and sing songs and stuff. They’re evangelists so were like heck yeah we’d love to come. Then when the other people got there the guy playing the guitar was Collin Harris, one of our other amis! So that was really cool. We just sang and listened to him play the guitar. It was really cool. Actually one of the songs was exactly the same as I Need Thee Every Hour so I thought that was pretty good. I had a long conversation on the bus with this guy about Obama and McCain. I guess he picked the Alaskan lady. I heard in their last speeches Obama was up on a throne or something with big pillars behind him. Do you know what I’m talking about? A lot of people ask us about that. I told a member Sunday that y’all would be voting for McCain and he just went off on “oh so your voting for more war” and all this stuff. He was nice but still. Another pretty funny thing: so we had a rv with the family Albertini and I wore the tie that you sent me, the really colorful one that’s red, yellow and blue (first off I really like this tie) So finally we get there and they just start laughing and just couldn’t stop. I think it was so funny because I was explaining how much I like the tie. So finally the next time we saw them one of the first things they ask is “vous lavez jeter la cravate” - so pretty much “have you thrown it away?” It was pretty funny, they really thought it was ugly! That was the first time I’ve ever worn it, now maybe the last. Before I wasn’t sure if it was too casual but then Soeur Carter told us that it’s good to have a little personality so I figured why not. It’s been weird lately- fires have been popping up all over town. I’ve seen like 6 now always with the big planes and helicopters. The other day we were walking though the park and ashes just start falling down all around us. Then we saw all the helicopters coming but passing us way up because the fire was actually in the next town over in Berre. But then we keep on walking and 20 minutes later there was a big fire in the park we were just in so the helicopters had to go put that one out. I guess just because it’s so dry. I’m in a library and I can’t copy and paste so im going to send you another email. I’ve been doing a lot of exchanges. We did them with the zone leaders then with all of our district members because Elder Calder is the district leader. I was with Elder Hitoto- he’s from Paris so it was kind of weird to think that I actually spent the whole day with a French guy without any problems or anything. I think im going to go to Avignon again next week so though that should be fun. I really liked the camper pictures. So far I've gotten 2 pictures of Evan -the first he had on my Hollister pink shirt then the last time he had my Redstone gold shirt then my swimming suit and my boxers! Come on, Evan!! This week we planned to be healthy and go up to the plateau thing for exercises every day but we only did it once and we’ve eaten worse than ever before so that didn’t work out too well. I ate like a half a gallon if ice cream in 2 days. Tell me about the other missionaries from our ward and if you have any other updates on the Lovelace’s. The other night we slept on a balcony for an exchange here in Aix. It was pretty relaxing. I should be in Marseille this week for some more carte de sejour stuff so well see how that goes. I really like Marseille. I wouldn’t mind being in a big city. Well that’s about it. I hope everything’s good with the house and stuff. Thanks for the Jimmy Johnson thing. That’s cool . Love y'all, Taylor

Twentieth email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-08-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. How’s it going? It’s really good here. We have had a really good week, nothing to exciting has happened- it was just good. The work has actually been pretty hard. It seems like everyone has been on vacation so that’s been hard both for our amis and for our members to teach with us. Their school starts in about a week so I hope that will get better. We haven’t done that much for p-day today but me and Elder Calder did go to the church to play ping pong. We’ve been taunting I guess you could say for the last few days about who would win. We played for about an hour. We had set the table up in the relief society room. Actually after some good warm ups I won the first game. It was very intense. We ended up playing to whoever won five games first and he won. I had four though. It was close. We had our zone conference yesterday in Aix it was good to see President and Soeur Carter again. They are really cool. I really want that article thing about the Merrell’s so could you send it? They are just amazing. I think everyone misses them a little- just their spirit and knowledge of the gospel was amazing. The Carter’s are really awesome, too, though. One thing that was kind of funny this week was, we were just kind of eating and cooking around 9 or 10 the other night and I hear this chanting thing. I wasn’t sure what it was then the next thing I look out our window and I see this big statue of Mary up on the shoulders of four guys then hundreds of people following with candles saying prayers. It was a little different but what was so funny was they turned the corner right across from our window so they all saw us looking right at them. So the next day was the actual holiday and everything was closed. But the best part was we asked tons of people why it was a holiday and no one knew they just knew it was a holiday. This was actually last week I just forgot to writ about it in the last email. It really messed us up though cause we had a lot of rvs planned and we didn’t know the busses weren’t going to work.
The game they were playing with the silver balls its called boules. I thought I told you about that. It’s awesome. I really, really like it. All the old guys play all day. There are arenas for people to play and when there is a tournament there is so many people. They actually had the big championships in Marseille not to long ago. I’m sure that was cool. We’re actually looking to find some of the balls so we can play for our exercises- you know hand eye coordination. Ahh- I cant believe Ryan’s back. That’s so cool. I bet it is a shock to be home. I remember when Dallin came back he was really quiet. I can’t see myself being really shocked or quiet but maybe. I don’t think so anyways. That’s cool that Alex is going to school. You never said anything more about his trip, did they go to Paris or not? Cest vrai je veux ecrire en François mais je sais que vous allez comprendre rien alors cest nul. Ok so the whole Roquefort cheese thing, I really gave it a good effort- I just can’t come to like it. I’ve been joking with Elder Calder saying well maybe when I’ve been here over a year and a little more French I’ll be able to eat it cause he can eat it better than I can. It’s still really strong though. So I didn’t get your package but I will in like 3 weeks. You asked if I wanted to transfer. It really seems weird to think about being somewhere else but either way, we'll see, but yeah that’s true I really would like to stay a little longer. Elder Calder is really cool. Yeah, ok I figured it out, the picutre of the guy with earrings- that’s Joris- he’s actually in Georgia right now trying to play basketball for a college. He’s really good just not big enough. He’s actually coming back this week. We're friends with him. We played with him one p- day. You said how weird that all the guys were capris. I don’t know about the capris but you would really think it's weird if you saw all the bissous they do- that’s the cheek kiss thing on both sides. Everyone does it- well except us but I remember thinking how weird it was when I got here but it's normal now- everybody does it with everybody. I'll be in Marseille tomorrow for some carte de sejour stuff so that’s gona be cool. I'll stay with Elder Wright probably and yeah that’s the loft apartment. Ivy and Calder, so no more Mocha- sad. I don’t know how the eggs worked out either but those baby snakes are worth a lot I think. Quelle domage- whatever. I say get some lizards those would be cool. Evan, that’s sweet that you won $170 bucks! Well, that’s all for now. Love y'all, Taylor

Nineteenth email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-08-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

Hey, how’s it going? Really good here! We’ve been trying all day to find somewhere to do emails. The place we thought was perfect didn’t work; we needed like
photo cards and a check to pay for the whole year so that didn’t work. We’re good now. As for the pictures, I’m glad you liked them. Try to take a bunch of pictures before you send it back just of whatever- the house and all and then I can delete them when I get it. OK- the questions you asked about the pictures: The big striped building is a church in Marseille probably the one up on a big hill- it’s pretty cool.

The kid with the worn out shoe is Boris, the kid that was with us on our “disaster hike” and yeah that was his shoe at the end. We got him some new ones, though. At the wedding, that’s Alice, Elodie’s sister. She’s really cool. Yeah, the three girls are at girl’s camp. Yeah the kitchen window is extremely cool! Those are our weights I don’t use them that much. I’m actually a lot smaller then when I left but I’ll start again when I get back. The guy on the scooter is awesome. He’s a member in Marseille but I’ve seen him like three times maybe four. Yeah, that’s Frere Renderanaridera and his daughter Camille. At the beach, that’s the Mediterranean. Ok, those fish- we passed to see this family around supper time and they were eating. They have kids and they were eating all the other food but not even touching this huge plate of fish. So the mom says, “oh I can give y’all some food to take home” and she gives us more than half of them. They were really disgusting. They were all different like someone just cast netted in the Gulf of Mexico and they were slimy. Then the little meat they had was filled with tiny bones. We kind of picked at them for a while then just threw them away. But it was nice of her. So this week was good. We’ve been passing by a bunch of people so they can meet Elder Calder. It’s been fun. The members really seemed to like him Sunday. He’s from Utah. He’s really cool and fun. I really like him. He’s been in the office for the last months so he’s really excited to be back in a normal city. He’s also been in Nice and in Agin which is more on the other side by Bordeaux. We had our district meeting yesterday in Aix. It was cool to see Elder Scott. Nothing much new has been going on. This week was actually pretty hard. We had a lot of our rvs canceled. A few were with members too, so that’s always sucky. Last night we had a rv with this guy then he wasn’t even there so we went to see Mme. Parody with Fr. Fernandez cause he was already with us. So it turned out ok. She had the Olympics on the whole time so I was happy. I really wish I could watch more of them. I saw the girl pole vaulters- it was freaking amazing. Then the gymnastic guys, I was impressed. That was the first time I really saw the stadium in Beijing- it’s huge. I got the letter from Whitney today. I really hope you took some pictures of all the stuff you did when Ivy and Calder were there. Send them to me soon. I don’t think I really need anything in the next box not that I can think of. I cant believe that they started school. Time is going by so fast here for me. Elder Calder thinks for sure I'm going to go next transfer. The Carter's are cool. Everybody really likes them. They approved lots of music that wasn’t approved before. We can listen to all the Disney songs without words, Phantom of the Opera, too, just lots of stuff so that’s exciting. This week we have eaten pretty good. We had one meal and we had le foi du canard- something like that but it was duck liver but made in to a spread. It was ok. Then today we were at the store and I told myself that I was going to buy some Roquefort cheese and just force myself to eat it until I liked it so I started today. I ate a little bit but it was just horribly strong. The French people like it a lot though. Yesterday I had an exchange with Elder Hansen, he’s in Avignon now. It was good. That’s about it. Sorry I don’t have that much to say but everything is good. Love y'all, Taylor

Pictures from Vitrolles

2008-08-13T20:52:00.001-07:00

Eighteenth email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-08-12T06:18:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday, Ivy and Evan. Hey everyone, what’s up? Nothing much here - so I have just one more story for the cat (Minnette). We went for a rendez vous at their house the day before the baptism just to make sure everything was good and to sign the papers for the baptismal form. When we got there we saw the cat on the couch in the same condition, not very good just breathing heavy and shaking. They were all really sad. That had made about 2 weeks that it had been like that and it couldn’t even walk or anything. Sonia was really worried and talking about taking it to the vet to do the needle thing. They told us that it was 17 years old so its been around for a while. We decided to pray for it. We all kneeled and said a prayer that they would know the best thing to do and just if anything for it not to suffer any longer. After the prayer we sang a song for it and it seemed to be really happy. It opened its eyes pretty wide which it hadn’t been doing very often. We were in the middle of a little spiritual thought about prayers and how answers don’t always come right away and at that moment the cat kind of made a little noise and died right there in front of all of us. It was quite a scene. They were all crying which was understandable, it had been around longer than Laetitia and Barbara. So we put it in a box and they buried it the next day at their grandma’s house. It was really good though because they really saw that it was an answer to the prayer and not just that the cat died. The next day was the baptism. It went really well. There were lots of people there, probably around 50 or more. Soeur Portallano gave a talk, then WE SANG our song. It was actually really good and powerful. Lots of people told us it was amazing and super. There was even people with their eyes closed listening. Laetitia started to cry in the middle of it. It was really, really good. I was shocked cause when we practiced it didn’t sound anything like that. OK for the exchange….. drum roll… I’m still in Vitrolles but I’m with Elder Caulder so its going to be good. I’ve never met him before but I’ve talked to a lot of people who have and they say he’s cool. I’m in Marseille right now and his train comes in in a few hours. Elder Clyde is in Paragueux something like that near Bordeaux. I feel really good about staying. I really like all the people here and I’ll get to be here for Sonia’s baptism plus right now the missionary work in general is going really, really good. We had like 6 amis at church Sunday then we have three more who are engaged to be baptized and they are all planned for this transfer. It’s all going really good. We’re working a lot with our members teaching and getting referrals. I hope the transition is pretty smooth with Elder Caulder but I know the area good enough. The hardest thing is all the busses that we have to take to go everywhere different. Nothing too big happened this week but we had another marriage at the church. We had to be there from 12 till 9.30 so like all day. We did our planning there and a lot of service to set up all the stuff. I hear the ball went until 4 in the morning which is still hard for me to realize and it was in the sacrament room. During the reception outside there was a huge fire just across the road from the church. It really was huge- they had the yellow firefighter planes come from Marignane. I though they were going to drop water on it but I guess it wasn’t big enough for the planes so then helicopters came and just dumped loads of water on top. It was really cool. I have a sweet picture of the helicopter then all the water falling so that was exciting. I got to see a little of the Olympics swimming the other day. I saw the American girl come in 2nd- Hoff, I think. It was exciting. I heard the opening ceremony was amazing. The elders here in Marseille watched it somewhere. We’ve been saying bye to everyone for Elder Clyde. Last night we had a family home evening at the church with the family Albertini and some others. We just took turns choosing our favorite songs and singing and talking in between. It ended up to be really fun. So we’ll see how it goes with Elder Caulder but that’s about it for now. Oh yeah, guess what- Elder Davis is now in Toulon which is in our zone so I’ll see him in 3 weeks. I’m so excited. We get an email every transfer to say where everyone is and Elder Scott is in Aix so he is in our district- that’s really awesome too. I’m excited. Elder Calder is going to be the district leader too, I guess so that’s cool. Oh yeah, we have had like 3 more rendez vous with Mimelle (the Brangelina girl) She is actually really cool and interested in the church. She wants to be baptised. Se set a date for her but there is a lot she doesn’t know and needs to understand ha She actually asked me if she could get baptized, so we will see how that goes. Barbara and Laeticia’s mom Sonia should be baptized this transfer, that’s the main thing. She was all feeling sorry for us being away from our families. The other day she’s like “Pogue, if your still here your gonna come over to our house for Christmas” so that was cool. We’ll see. I wouldn’t mind staying here in Vitrolles for a while. Some mission presidents like to change the missionaries often and then some have it where its normal to serve in like 3 different places in 2 years so we’ll see how President Carter is. But for sure there were a lot of changes this transfer. People changed everywhere pretty much. We got a lot of Bordeaux people and a lot came over here. Tell me about the circus. How’s Sonic going for Whitney? Is she going to work during school? You didn’t say anything about Alex or Paris and how that was. Did he work at the plants this summer or not? That’s cool about your talk. MaMa said it was good. Take lots of pictures when Ivy is there. What did y’all do for Evans birthday? Ok sorry, I didn’t really send the memory card when I said I was. I planned on doing it that day but Elder Clyde wanted some of the pictures that were on my card so we waited a while but its been in the mail probably a week now. I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you. I hear Soeur Christiansen is already home so I never got the chance to talk to her but there is a girl from Houston here now. I forgot her name though. I hope you sent some pics of the river and the nature trail if y’all are there that would be cool. I can’t believe school starts already. You’re probably in Houston now picking up Ivy and Calder, that’s cool. Love, Taylor

Seventeenth email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-08-05T09:32:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, how’s it going? I'm glad you liked the email last week. Everything is good here. Nothing too new has happened. I guess the biggest thing is tomorrow! The baptism- that’s going to be really cool, we’re pretty excited. Everything is good to go. We have been practicing our song but it’s not getting much better. It’s a song that they only have in the French hymn book but it’s a lullaby with some pretty high notes. We had a family home evening at the church with some people from the ward last night. It was the Albertini’s and the family Billet. We just chilled and watched Legacy, it was really fun and relaxing. Oh yeah, happy birthday Dad. It’s a little late but I didn’t forget then I guess Ivy and Evan are the next week. That’s cool that Ivy will be there on her birthday. Is that why they are coming then? What’s Evan going to do? If he has a party or something just walk around and take a few pics for me. Thanks for taking some of the river, that’s what I really want to see. Ok, I’m sorry to have misinformed everyone but Laetitia's cat didn’t die. We were told by someone else that it had died. It’s just very sick. We saw it the other day in fact. They asked us to say a special prayer for it. So we did. I hope it gets better. It’s been to the vet twice now I think, and I know they fasted for it so we’ll see. It was on the verge of death when we were there so it’s going to take a lot of faith from someone. So transfers are at the end of this week. The day we would move is the 12th but we should know what’s going to happen Saturday. We had a zone development meeting this week in Aix. It was good. Soeur Carter did most of it. She just talked about different methods of contacts, stuff like that. It was good. She also gave us a list of the different types of food we should eat. We’re about to go shopping so we can try to get some different stuff. Normally we eat pasta, stuff like that- rice, tuna, and corn, lots of cereal,eggs, easy stuff to make. We never have any time to really cook. Thanks for the sports update in the last email. Jimmy’s in fourth? That’s sweet. And I though Brett retired, what happened there? Oh yeah, “Brangelina girl” (the Muslim girl I talked to last week) actually came to church. I was shocked when I saw her but she is really cool and really liked it. She said she would come next Sunday too and to the cours d'anglais. That’s sweet because normally we just have one guy William there. Eduard, that sucks- hope everything works out. Tell Jace and Clay to email me. I only hear from Eric and of course he doesn’t say anything about them. What day do they go to the mtc? Oh yeah the mini mission didn’t work out because that’s his only week off and he really needs to find an apartment for when he gets married. He was really sorry that he couldn’t do it though. Everyone here likes Obama a lot. That’s the only one they know I think and everyone hates Bush. Someone told us the other day that Bush has done too many things to hurt the Arab people! Dumb. Everyone here also loves Bill Clinton. Sorry I never explained about the syrup. Ok it’s just like a really sugary concentrated thing and you put like an inch in the bottom of your glass then pour water on top. It mixes itself. It’s really good, tastes like punch or something. It’s in all flavors. I really, really like it. It’s really easy too- we buy it every week. I don’t know why we don’t have it there. It’s not all with sugar though. There is mint and some other that aren’t bad. I have no idea where Chateau Miraval is but we’re in the Provence region like aix en Provence and Salon de Provence, Lancon de Provence so it’s probably not far from here. Look it up. Sorry I don’t have that much to say, you have to remember last week was for two weeks. I’m not homesick or anything I just miss hanging out and chilling and just knowing what’s going on with everybody. I really think I’ll get transferred. It’s really not common for someone to stay in their first ville for so long but we had two baptisms or will have tomorrow. Geez, do you realize tomorrow is 6 months for me? Does Andrew seem like he’s doing good? What’s the word on Christa and Matt? When does Sean leave? He will do good. We have another marriage the 8th that going to be cool. It’s Sebastian, a recent convert from like a year ago and this other girl from a member family. We finally got our bikes. I’m not going to lie, I just feel a little weird with the bike and helmet going through town. I would rather walk. People make enough fun of us already but whatever, it’s not that bad. They’re mostly for Sundays when there are no busses. It’s been a while since I’ve used my biking muscles though. We just rode a little bit and I’m sore. I think about what Dan Packard said about having stretch marks where his legs got so big. Where did you get the plan of salvation puzzle thing? Thanks, that is so cool. We haven’t used it yet. I gave a blessing in French to this less- active member. It was good. That’s about it. Well, love y’all. Hope everything is good. Stop running into mailboxes and poles! Bye - Love y’all,
Taylor

Sixteenth Email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-07-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-07-23T07:16:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-07-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-07-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-07-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

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

Eleventh email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-06-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

Hey, how’s everything going? Sorry I didn’t email you yesterday, we didn’t have time. Everything is good though. Lots has been going on. First of all two nights ago we got a call from out zone leaders saying that for preparation day they wanted to go on a day hike thing in Aix en Provence to Mt. St. Victoire so we decided to do that. We went in the morning. Me and Elder Clyde had to go early so we ran all the way to our bus station at like 7:00. It’s over a mile and we didn’t even stop so I was already pretty tired. Then when we got there we met Elder Hanson and Kelly then Soeur Oliver and Djimi, her companion. We got on this line of busses going to the mountain. It was really fun. We didn’t know really what trail to start on so we just headed up kind of making our own trail. We had some of the amis from aix en provence with us. There were two guys then a 12 year old from a member family. We hiked for like an hour and a half to this spot then just kind of chilled for a while. Pascal and then other ami had to work so they just walked down where we came up but since it wasn’t really a trail we decided to keep going till we found a better way down. We kept walking then decided to just keep on going along the ridge till the summit which wasn’t to bad of an idea. We were on a really good trail by this time. We didnt know really where we were but we could see the town where the bus could pick us up on the other side so we just set a goal to make it there then head back. The only problem was that we had no idea how long it was. I knew it wasn’t going to be just a little walk but whatever, I figured we could do it. We ended up getting on this trail with like chains to hold onto mounted into the rock and just like steep “almost Colorado” stuff. It was really fun though but why I’m emailing today is cause it took us 8 hours or something like that. Really all day we walked really far. It was okay though just took a lot of time. I took a lot of good pictures I’ll send y’all. The town we ended up in had Picasso’s castle so that was cool (I think anyways, that’s what people told us- look it up on Google, its cool). I heard Missouri got flooded right after you left. I’m glad y’all weren’t there for all that- but that’s just what someone told me. The fete de music was this last week- the big Vitrolles party was right outside our apartment. It looked so fun, there were so many people there around this big community bonfire. We walked through all the crowds when we were coming back to our apartment. Then I cut Elder Clyde’s hair that night so he took a shower and I was dancing around our kitchen cooking some cous cous. Then I ate on our window sill and was talking to all the people walking by. They had loud music playing pretty much all night. It was cool but the only thing is almost all of our amis partied to hard and couldn’t come to church the next day. We had the last district meeting for this transfer last week and President Merrill and his family were all there. It was really good, it lasted for like 5 hours instead of 2, but it was really good. He talked about the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy. He had a lot of good stories and examples then Soeur Merrill took us home cause we missed all the busses. This transfer is almost over. I think I might go. The word is that Elder Clyde might train someone else to take his spot as district leader for the next transfer. So we’ll see what happens. I read the story today that you sent about the Marignane airplane pilot. Yeah I know Serge Portellano. I talked about him in the last email cause he’s one of the only families who feeds us and his son Raphael is the one that baptized Barbara. They’re a really cool family and yeah I see those big water planes all the time. They are bright yellow. They have a big one right in the middle of town so that’s cool. Why the heck were you on ldscops.com? haha I figured you ran across it trying to find a picture of the chapel and yeah that’s the right one. So that’s us in Vitrolles- everything is good. I’m fried from yesterday so the back of my neck and legs hurt so bad from being in the sun for so long yesterday but no problems. Well I have to go but I’ll email you next week- maybe I’ll be in another town. Love y’all, Taylor

Tenth email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-06-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

Hey! How’s it going? I guess y’all are in Missouri now- that’s cool. I hope y’all are having fun. Tell everyone I said hey. That’s cool that your camps were good. Everything’s going good here, just the same stuff. Actually this morning I was in Marseille for the second appointment for my carte de sejour. It was crazy- just a lot of Muslims. Really they’re everywhere here. I’m pretty sure there’s more of them than French people. But that’s ok, some of them are nice. Yeah, the missionary work here is going good. We’re still working with a lot of people and having a lot of progressing amis. We actually have a rendez vous at the church in like an hour so I don’t think I’ll have that much time to email. We are emailing from this new place -kind of dumb- it’s like a teen center place, ha, so the hours of when there gonna be open are a little unsure. Oh yeah, tell Uncle Chris that that’s the same spot me and Quinton used to fish years ago. That’s pretty cool. It sounds like there doing a little better than we ever did though. Yeah I got a letter from Brian and then Jace so it was good to hear from them. I just read Dad’s email. I can’t believe y’all are driving all the way home from Missouri now. I bet that was a long drive. Sorry I don’t have any idea where the lifejackets are. There should be two for fishing behind the seat of my truck maybe or just in the garage but the other ones are probably at the Zachary’s if I had to guess. I’m not sure though. Sorry this email isn’t very long. We don’t have much time today. You don’t have to put it on your blog. Or you can pick out some stuff to put on there. I know a lot of these emails really make any sense but whatever just change it up a little. I got letters from Melanie and Jenny today cause they were sent to Marseille after I moved to Vitrolles. So that was cool. I’m gonna start to write people more, there is just so little time. I’m gonna try to print out some pictures and send y’all- it’s just hard because we never have any time. I’ll try to get a little box or something to send y’all. I have a lot more papers and stuff just like I sent you after the MTC. Well, I’m gonna go. I’ll talk to yall later! Love y’all, Taylor

9th email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-06-12T14:39:00.000-07:00

Hey, how’s everything going? I hope good. Sorry this email is so late, we didn’t have time to email Tuesday because we were moving into our apartment so we called the zone leaders and they said it wasn’t a problem to do them today. But it sounds like there isn’t even anyone there to get this. I guess its just Dad and Chelsea at home for the week. That’s cool. It’s kind of good that I didn’t email Tuesday, though cause I have some good news. Tuesday we had a rendez vous with the Albertini family. It was really good. Before we even sat down, Laetitia said “Oh yeah, I chose a date for my baptism- I think the 21st sounds good.” So we were really excited about that. It’s in two weeks so we will probably be planning that out and stuff. Everything else is going good. Today we have already had 4 rendez vous and they were all really good. Two of them were with Temoin de Jehovas though so that’s always a little hard but nothing too bad. Then one more with Joelle and Laurent- they are doing really good, we just stopped by to read a few chapters in the Book of Mormon with them. We have already taught pretty much everything so now were just reading with them and trying to see them about once a week. They are still waiting for the divorce thing to work out and to be married and baptized, so that’s really good. Then the other was with a really cool 17 year old kid who I met 3 days ago on an exchange with our zone leader, Elder Kelley. We’re all moved in so that’s a big relief! Everything is good, I really like our apartment. It’s kind of small but that’s ok. If you want to Google map it, it’s the rue de la paix and like I said, it’s just at the base of the rocher. We have gone to the top a few times now- it’s really cool especially at night with the sunset. I’ll have to send y’all a few pictures. Last night we ate with the family Portellano. They are really cool, just one of the more normal families in the ward. Raphael is the one that baptized Barbara. For our pense spirituelle we talked about the 25 seminary scriptures for this year cause he just finished. If you can send me one of those plastic cards with all the scripture masteries for the 4 years I would really like that. I guess I should know them already. But it was really good. We don’t really eat with members that much. Yesterday really was the third time, I think except for a few family home evenings, Are the elders still coming every Monday night? Is Roman still there? I really can’t believe how fast the time is flying by here. I’m gonna find some stuff to send y’all this week. Sorry this wasn’t as long as usual. We don’t have a lot of time- our cours de anglais is tonight in 10 minutes. I hope I get those pictures soon. Love y’all -oh yeah, happy fathers day Sunday, Dad. I don’t know if it’s the same day there,but it is here. So have fun at camp. Oh yeah, Evan said he shaved his hair. I got his letter yesterday. Is it like shaved or just buzzed? I have to go but tell everyone I said hey. Tell the Lovelace’s to email me.

Love y’all, Taylor

Eighth email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-06-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

Ahh- that’s so awesome! (Lovelace mission calls) I was wondering if they would go to totally different places. That makes me happy. Tell Eric Idaho is a little different than Florida but that’s gonna be so good. Then Jace has a little work to do in that mission. Gotta get them on the right track- I'm pretty sure that that’s the place that just had the big scandal with the Catholic Church and Elder Clyde has a cousin that’s there now- Elder Keck, so that’s cool. I’m really excited for them. I was disappointed last week when they didn’t know yet. Then Clay is gonna do so good learning Spanish. He will be at the MTC a lot longer than Jace and Eric though. It’s ok though, it went by pretty fast for me. Did they do anything when they opened them or just call and tell people? And Bryan, too, that’s really cool, Berlin. I figured you had told them I was in France. We should have stopped to see them on the way to the mtc, Mom, I know you wanted to- just not enough time. Anyways everything here is good. We’re just getting all packed up today to move tomorrow. I’m really excited to get into our own apartment. That will be nice. We already gave alot of our stuff to the assistants to bring in the big car to bring to a members house, Frere Vendrassi then tomorrow were gonna go to Vitrolles with the rest of our bags and meet Frere Renderanaridera and a guy from the rental company to make sure there isn’t any problems. Then after that we should be good to move in but we won’t have any of our stuff till tomorrow night cause that’s when a few members can help us. It’s normally not that big of a deal but since we’re the first ones we have like a bunk bed and desks, chairs and tables, dishes -just all the stuff we need to live there. So I guess we're gonna be busy doing all of that tomorrow but we still have 2 or 3 rendez vous for around noon tomorrow so im sure its gonna be crazy. I’m sure well be running back and forth all day. It was a little stressful last night because as we were trying to get all of our stuff together to give to the assistants today we had 8 elders there. They were just there for the night cause we had zone conference yesterday and 2 of them were headed back to Gap ( it's a city not a store) and the other 2 are going back to Aix en Provence today for blues conference.Oh yeah I got two things you sent me. I got first the pictures in the envelope from Whitneys birthday. Thanks those were good. I have to admit Evan looked more like me than I thought he ever has before in one of the pictures- freaky, maybe it was only cause he was wearing my shirt. Elder Clyde is convinced that our family is wild and y'all were the ones that spray painted on the wall...I said it was very possible but probably not. That’s cool though that she’s driving. I hope she is a little better than Ivy was, probably not though. Then I got the package yesterday at zone conference so that was cool. Thanks for the candy and stuff. ha and the hackeysacks- I’ll start working on doing the five. I never have any time so it might take a while. Yeah President Merrell is amazing. Elder Clyde is convinced he’s gonna be called as a 70 next. I wouldn’t be surprised at all. He’s the most spiritual man I think I’ve ever talked to. Yesterday we were there from 10 to 6 and for the most part he just talked about his life experiences and just the most amazing stories I’ve ever heard of miracles and blessing that he has seen and had. It was really really good. The main thing he talked about was music and the influences it makes on our lives and the difference it can make on our ability to have the spirit with us. He talked alot about how the process worked when President Monson became the president and applied that to how we should act and sustain the new mission president when he comes and do everything we can to have a smooth change making it easier for us and for him. I heard that when President Merrill came he only talked to the old president for 2 hours then took over. I also heard that the old president before him already had the transfers worked out but President Merrill came and just changed everything without even knowing the cities or the missionaries so I’m not sure how it will work with President Carter when he comes but we only have around 4 weeks left. Sister Merrill also talked to us about the Book of Mormon, she is the best teacher I have ever heard I think. I remember at blues conference she talked about the apostasy and it was just amazing. She is really good at using facts and scriptures to explain everything she teaches, yesterday she really explained the history of the Book of Mormon- she used timelines and all kinds of old documents form Cortez and the early Spaniards who invaded Mexico city and also non church history resources about the Mayas and their culture. She even had old national geographic cut outs and compared them with the references and dates in the Book of Mormon. It was really amazing- dad would have liked to hear it. Then she also had a lot of pictures from her trips down there to see the different ruins and stuff it was really neat and interesting. I’m doing really good though, the French is getting better and better- still no French dreams but I hear they will come. Love y’all, Taylor

Seventh email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-05-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

5/27/08

Hey, what’s up? Sounds like everything is good with y’all. Gosh, I can’t even believe Whitney and Evan are done with school already. I didn’t even think it was near that time. It’s really going fast here. The weeks really just fly by here. We’re still in Marseille in the same apartment but we’re with the 2 other Marseille elders now. So that’s ok. I don’t like it so much, you know how I am. I would just rather be by myself than in a room with 4 guys all trying to walk around and no real places to sit. But its not that bad and we’re moving a week from today on the 4th so I’m looking forward to that. I think the office elders are going to drive down and help us move. They have all of our appliances and stuff because they are from the old Marseille apartment that we had to clear out last week. I don’t have an address for you to look online but our apartment in Vitrolles is right next to the big rocher or the big plateau thing. It’s in the really cool looking old part of downtown too, so I’m excited! I’m sure its not gonna be the best but it will work. It’s just gonna be good to just have our stuff to mess with because the apartment we’re in now has been a missionary apartment for years so there is just collected junk laying around- stuff that I would just throw away if it was my choice. So next p-day we should spend all day moving and stuff, this week really has been kinda frustrating. It’s really hard not having the car. We have to get up get ready, study and stuff, then go get on the Marseille metro to the bus station then to Vitrolles. Its just a mess and its taking alot of money. Just the metro is like 3 euros every day, then the bus is 3 euros each way. So its over 10 dollars a day- it’s a little ridiculous but I guess we have to do it. We bought this 7 day pass for 19 but we found out yesterday it won’t even work for the line of busses we use. The girls at the station- I don’t think they like us cause they can’t figure out how to use our credit cards because they have to slide. Everybody’s here has a little chip to scan. So I’m completely out of money now on my card until the first. Just the traveling has cost so much. I have 90 euros in reimbursements I need to send in so that will be good when all of that goes through. Another thing is the last bus from Vitrolles to Marseille is at like 7 so we come back really early every night. Gosh I can’t believe its summer already. I hope y’all are having fun. Tell me what plans y’all have coming up. Are y’all still going to the family reunion thing? I’ll try to get y’all some pictures. The only thing is that it’s like really 25 cents for every picture I would print out. I know I need to for y’all. I just don’t want to spend that much money. What Elder Clyde does is just sends memory cards back and fourth so maybe we can so something like that or I can just print out the really good ones. I have been taking alot though. I have like 280 from the start of the MTC. I bought a book of postcards to of Marseille so I’m gonna start sending people those, there alot easier ha I just need to buy stamps. We didn’t have as many amis at church this week cause it was Mothers Day or “fete de meres” here which is like mother’s party in English. (which I think is cooler anyways ha) They have been having a lot of “greves” or "strikes". But the thing is they're not like actual strikes they're more like scheduled days for not working. People just like sit outside in lawn chairs saying there not gonna work but they know they're just off for that day and they will work the next day. So they don’t get anything more out of it. That really messed up our trip to Vitrolles one day this week cause all the busses and metros weren’t going. Oh yeah everyone asks us about the presidential campaign. We’re not really supposed to talk about it at all. I think most of the people here like Obama. They really don’t like Bush at all. ahh Crawfish sound so good right now. We ate last night at the church with the family Renderanaridera for FHE- it was really good and fun. He has helped us so much to find our apartment. He has gone to every meeting with us and really just done everything to help us. He makes all the phone calls and everything. He doesn’t really work so he is always there to teach with us too, so that’s cool. He always finds people for us to teach. Awesome. We had district meeting yesterday in Aix- that was good. We have us 2 then Soeur Oliver so that’s really good to see her, then then our zone leaders than that’s it just 6. It was really good though. But that was another big mess with the busses, to get back to Vitrolles another thing is that the busses don’t go on Sundays so we had to take a train to church and get someone to pick us up in the town over Marinane which is okay- its just gonna be really nice to finally live in our area. The trains are really cool though, I really wish we had them at home- it would just make it so easy to go to Houston or somewhere for the day. The trip to Angoulem was really cool. I got to see alot of cool sights. There were a bunch of castles. One that really reminded me of Hogwarts, seriously. It was that big with that many spires and stuff. It was really cool. You know how she writes in the Harry Potter books, she writes his name in an english accent like "arry otter" or something like that- that's how they say it here. It's so cool. They don't really pronounce the h or the p. Today we played ultimate frisbee in the park, that was pretty fun. It was really windy. One of these days I want to play ping pong. They have alot of tables here, all the churches have them. So I'm gonna have to get that going. Take this out cause it's wierd to talk about but my arms are shrinking every day. It stinks! ha I got so much bigger in the MTC working out everyday, especially with the powder I had. I'm in really good shape though -we walk alot and its starting to get hotter. It rained really hard the other night. I really liked it. I really missed the rain when I was in the MTC. It's rained a few times here so its not to bad. It's not nearly as humid as it is there so that's good. I dont have that much more to say. I was really hoping to hear where the Lovelaces were goin this week -hopefully next week. Well that's about it. I hope everything is good! Love y'all, Taylor

NOTE

2008-05-23T06:08:00.000-07:00

I recently went back and added all the MTC emails to the beginning of this blog. They are very entertaining so check them out if you get a chance- especially the MTC week 7 one- it's the day the French Ambassador came to visit! I'll delete this post soon, just wanted to tell you. Also, drop me a comment so I'll know who's reading!

Sixth email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-05-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

05.20.08
Bonjour!
How’s everything? Everything here is good. Ok, I’m really sorry but this computer is really messed up so I can’t space between words. I guess just try to go through and fix it before you send it to people. (You’re welcome, everyone! It did take some time-Gwen) haha This is gonna be really hard for you probably. Get Evan to do it or something! We’re in Marseille right now. Looks like I’m gonna be here for another six weeks at least. (if everything works out with the apartment we think we’re getting). I’m pretty excited about that. Everything seems to be going good. We’re still in the Marseille apartment for now but we should have the one in Vitrolles soon. I think if everything goes right, we will move in the first of June. Until then we will have four elders at our apartment- us and two of the other Marseille elders. The papers for the new apartment aren’t finished but I think there shouldn’t be any problems with it. President Merrell said Sunday that if we don’t have it by this week, we are definitely going to have to go somewhere else and he said it probably won’t be Marseille and it probably won’t be together. So the Lovelace’s calls haven’t come yet? That’s too bad. I really want to know. Hopefully next week. Today we haven’t done that much. We’ve just kind of cleaned our apartment for the new guys coming in. We had six elders at our place last night because it was transfers, so that was crazy. One of them is going home today so he was really excited. Thanks for the email. It sounds like everything is going good. Barbara got baptized Saturday! It was really amazing. There were a lot of people there. I’ll send y’all some pictures somehow. The program and stuff- it was really good and spiritual. Her sister, Laticia was crying after and the bishope asked me if the spirit had come and “hit her in the face or something”. It was funny. Awesome! Yes, President Merrell did come and was there for the confirmation on Sunday. He didn’t actually do it. She wanted someone from the ward to do it, which was good I think. We probably tried too hard to convince her for President Merrell to do it but she didn’t even know him. Frere Hotz from the ward did it and it was really great. We’re still working with her mom and sister. They should get baptized in two weeks. They are ready. We normally see them like three or four times a week. After the baptism we had a little lunch with them planned at the church. We met there and cooked the food. It was so great. Everything was good, we had so much food. Bet y’all had fun at the campout at the Brooks. Have you seen Daniel at all lately? I never even got to talk to him between school and when I left for the MTC. That’s funny about Whitney’s story. That sounds just like her. I was always tardy, too. It’s a family curse. Guess it worked out for her anyway. I’m actually getting used to waking up early, though. It’s not bad at all anymore. I like to think that I could do it after I get home, too. But going to bed at 10:30 isn’t that easy normally so I’ll see, I guess. I don’t really need anything at all. That’s cool about Alex’s job at the plant. Is he still at Frasch? Did he decide to go to Provo? Probably- that should be cool. Send a picture of my room. I don’t know if you have changed anything or not. Yeah, I should write Coach Suarez. He would like that. I don’t know his address or anything and about Coach Bourgeois, that sucks. Does Coach Lebato have cancer? Oh yeah, Happy Birthday, Whitney! That’s crazy. I guess your gonna drive the truck. That’s sweet. Keep working on getting that jeep, though. Oh yeah, Mom, find that kid that owns my car and get the pictures. So yeah there are a lot of iffy things. Just keep praying that we can get the apartment thing going. We have been talking to President all the time, trying to get all the papers worked out. Today is the last day for us to have a car, so we will be taking the bus everyday. That’s not too bad. It will just be a little inconvenient. Sorry again for the not spacing. It will only space if I type really slow but I don’t have time to. Well, I’m gonna go. I’ll let you know how everything is next week. We had seven amis at church Sunday so that’s pretty amazing. That made 85 all together. Our ward is sweet!

Love y’all, Taylor

Fifth email from France (Vitrolles)

2008-05-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

05.13.08

This stupid computer logged me off when I was writing an email to you so it wouldn’t let me sent it so this is my second. So we're in a different place than normal now. The other cyber cafe was full of gamers I guess so we’re down by the shore. We just took some pictures of this huge church. We're gonna go to Aix today for Soeur Douber’s birthday, it should be fun. We’re way later than everyone else though, they already went. It should be a good p-day, though. Anyways everything is good! Just the same stuff. The French is getting better every day. It’s still hard to understand the people -they talk really fast and especially the old people cause they just mumble everything. It was good to talk to y’all. I wish I could have talked to dad more but it seems like y’all are doing good. I feel bad cause you were just telling me how good I was doing on the emails but I don’t have much to say today. I hate to mess up your blogspot. hmm So I’ll try to get some pictures for y’all. I’ve been taking them just haven’t had time to print any out. I’ll try to find a place. Everything will be easier when we don’t have a car and we actually live in the city we are working. I guess we will know Thursday if we are staying or not. I hope everything works out, it’s kinda iffy, though. If we get the apartment in Vitrolles we would probably have bikes. Yeah I think there are bikes from missionaries before us in the bureau that we could use and not have to buy one, so that’s cool. We had our last district meeting yesterday. Elder Green is leaving pretty much for sure. Apparently President Merrell loves to tell people that they are leaving “unless the angel Moroni comes and tells him differently.” ha But Elder Green is really cool. I really liked the day with him in Marseille last week. I will be there again this Thursday cause he has to be here to give a baptismal interview so I will just be with Elder Wright. I hope that goes ok cause you know he came at the same time as me. It should be good though, I think we know enough to get around. The zones are changing too this transfer so that’s gonna change some things. I’m not sure how it was before but some of the boundaries are gonna change and districts. I’m really excited to hear where the Lovelace’s are going. I guess it shouldn’t be before next Tuesday but in a few weeks or something - so that’s exciting. Tell everyone I said hey. I’m gonna start writing stuff during the week to write about because I always forget stuff. I should have alot more to say next week- it’s weird cause I just talked to you yesterday! Well, love y’all - Taylor