50th email from France (St. Raphael)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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