22nd email from France (Vitrolles)

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