Iaorana! (Tahitian for "Hello")

Elder Bigler Meeting His New Companion,
Elder Perry, for the First Time at Paris
(Visit "France Paris Mission Poznanski" on Facebook)

Hi everybody! I thought I'd send the email to the whole family this week just for fun. :) 

So, I guess you all saw who my new companion was on Facebook before I could even get here to tell you! :) That's pretty much the big news for the week, so I'll start there. :)

Elder Perry and Elder Bigler

Yes, my companion, my bleu, is Elder Perry, from Tahiti! Therefore, he speaks French! Boy was that a surprise. Literally the day before I was talking with the other Elders and I said "I'll definitely be training an English speaker, they always give francophone bleus (French Speaking New Missionaries) to francophone trainers." Should've knocked on wood on that one, right? :) No, but really, I'm super excited for the challenge, and the Lord has already blessed me. I suddenly feel really skilled in French, and I'm picking up on little things that I hadn't until now. It's crazy. I speak French with my companion pretty much all the time too, so it's probably going to shoot way up over the next 12 weeks too, and I feel like his English will too, being in an apartment with three English speakers. He already speaks it a little bit, which is a great start. He's an awesome missionary, and we have really similar goals and desires for our missions. He's a little shy, but much less shy than I was when I got here, so no worries there. :) He's already a really good teacher, and a hard worker. It's gonna be sweet, that's for sure. :)

Other than that, I don't really have much news from this week. Elder Tidwell and I kind of started a diet (his companion is from Georgia. Combine that Southern cooking with a Tahitian, and a diet was basically necessary. :) ). We're just doing a lot of finding right now, and struggling a little bit to actually find people, but we'll get there. We have some good ideas as an apartment, and it's gonna be a good couple transfers. 

Also, yesterday, we all gave talks at church, us 4 missionaries! As usual, pretty stressful, but it went well. I was feeling so confident with my French that I thought I'd just try writing down some notes and giving my talk off of that. Risky move, especially since I've never even done that before in English... But, it worked out really well in the end. :) So, I guess you could say my French is doing pretty good right now. They usually say that around 6 months in the country is where you start to feel comfortable with the language, and I've definitely hit that right now. I thought I was feeling pretty good about 3 months ago when Elder Evans left, but this last week I've felt super confident with it. It's cool to be able to watch myself progress like this. 

Well, that's really about it for this week. Not the most eventful in the world, but definitely a lot of big changes that happened.

Keep having fun back at home! Don't forget to read your scriptures and pray though! :)

Until next week!

Adam

P.S. I uploaded pictures from Isabelle's baptism, and one of me and Elder Perry at St. Merri. I wasn't sure which baptism picture was the best, so I just did all of them. :)

Here's All Four Photos from Isabelle's Baptism - Family and Friends Can Choose the Best for Themselves.
They All Look Great to Us!