Called to Serve. Paris, France: Weekly email number 29

Calais, France

Another week went by already? Crazy. This one was particularly short feeling, although I only spent about half of it in Calais. (By the way, I never remembered to correct myself, but the emphasis is on the first syllable, not the second.)

Well, here we go again. I hope these emails aren't too boring. I kind of just do the same thing every week. If you have any ideas on what I can do to make them more interesting, let me know. :)

Between Tuesday and Wednesday, we really didn't get much done. Elder Perez was feeling super tired and we ended up doing an exchange on Wednesday, so I went with Elder Bouquet, the other French elder in our apartment. He's a pretty goofy dude, so it was a fun day. Filled with a lot of awkward moments and all that, but still fun and pretty successful.

The Lille Zone with Calais and Dunkerque

Thursday Elder Perez had to go do his last exchange in Dunkerque, so I had to take the long bus ride over there with him in the morning, swap companions there, and then ride all the way back over with Elder Fish. All we really had time for was some contacting and a little bit of porting with our lesson with David in between. It was actually a really good lesson! I'm starting to feel like my confidence in French has been negatively affected having a native French companion. I think I've learned a little, but I mostly just feel bad at French most of the time when we teach together. But with Elder Fish, who's going home next week actually, just finishing up, I was able to teach back and forth really well, and really take the lead in the lesson. It was a good experience for me to really boost my confidence a bit, which I needed.

The next morning was our zone conference, so I had to get all 4 of us to Lille. We caught a 7:30 train (meaning we started waking up around 5:30) and headed off. It was a really cool conference. President talked a lot about making sure to have a strategy in everything that we do, specifically finding. It's something that'll be really helpful for us. We also had our interviews that happen every other transfer, and that was really good.

Zone Conference at Lille, France

I told Président and Sœur Poznanski about how I just kind of feel like things are routine for me now, how I've kind of lost the "blue fire" as we call it. It's not that I don't love being a missionary anymore or anything, it's just that the excitement of it all has kind of faded. Being in France has become normal. So, I've gotta work on getting back that excitement. My interviews were pretty simple though compared to the other guys, Elder Perez with his tiredness issue and the other guys just needing to work out their differences. But a boring interview is fine with me. :)

Lille, France

So, by the time we got back from that long crazy day, we pretty much just had time for weekly planning before bed. Then, Saturday, we had to go BACK to Lille for Stake Conference! We got a ride with members this time, to save money, and we pretty much crashed once we got in the car. I've always been really good at sleeping in cars. :) We had the adult session that night, which was fun. Elder Perez bore a testimony at it, which was great, and then he basically went nuts after it was all over, cause apparently every member here in France knows each other, so he had all sorts of people he knew there. I met the brother and sister of the Elder I gave the zucchini to and told them about how it was still at the MTC and showed them the picture I have of it. (See last week's post for photo of the famous Zucchini.)

Then came the real party. We spent the night in the Lille apartment, to save money again. The problem was though, that every other elder was doing the same thing. So we had not just 4 or 6 or 8 or even 10 elders there, but 14. To say the least, it was cozy.

Elder Perez and Elder Bigler

Sunday morning we had the main Stake Conference, and that was pretty good too. Kind of the same thing with Elder Perez, just talking to everybody. :) To get our ride back, we pretty much had to wait to the end of the day. We did a little bit of contacting once we got home and tried to avoid the usual drunk people. Pretty short week overall.

I appreciate the updates and the card from Grandma, they really mean a lot. :) I love you guys and pray for you always. We talk a lot about families with people we see, and, as I always say to them, I'm so thankful for the one I have.

Until next week,

Elder Bigler