63rd email from France (the Bureau)

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)

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........

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)

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)

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)

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)

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