Called to Serve. Paris, France: Do you have the keys?

Bonjour la famille!

I don't have a ton of time this week, the day kind of got away from us, but I'll try to type really fast. :)

Sounds to me like everything back home is going pretty well! It's surprising that it's already almost the end of the school year! It goes so fast. It's hard for me to really realize that you guys hadn't even started school yet when I left, and now you're finishing up. Time seriously goes so fast.

Speaking of time going fast, this week flew by! We started out a bit slowly, with Elder Perry still not feeling well (he couldn't quite hold down his dinner Monday night, and it wasn't just my cooking...), so we were kind of stuck for a good half of the week. We had Zone Conference and interviews on Wednesday, which we weren't totally sure if we'd make it to, but Elder Perry pushed himself out the door so that Président wouldn't have to drive the 4 hours all the way back up to Lille again.

Zone Conference and the interviews went really well. Président even showed us a clip from Indiana Jones of all things! It was a really inspired conference and it gave me a lot to think about, work on, and apply to the work. My interview with Président Poznanski, I realized after, was my last with him. He encouraged me to keep doing all that I can and to push myself to improve all the time.

Train to Boulogne to Teach

By Friday Elder Perry was finally feeling up to braving the Calais wind enough to head back out. We headed down to Boulogne for the afternoon, where we were finally able to have a real lesson with Louis. He knows a lot about our church, more than a lot of members, but he still hasn't been baptized. At the end of the lesson, we explained how we pray in French (he had only ever done it in Russian before) and he was able to give the closing prayer. A little hesitantly, but he did it and did it well. :) Afterwards, he invited us to stay for a little bit and we played Uno with him, his wife, and his son, who's 6. Funniest little kid! He makes me think of all those kids mom teaches. :) But, I do need to add, hearing a 6-year-old kid speak Russian is pretty bizarre... :)

Between all of that and the train ride back, we moved quickly into Saturday, which got exciting, but not in the way we had hoped...

Contacting at the Beach

We started off the day contacting at the beach (which would be where all of those pictures came from). It was a beautiful day, and the last weekend of vacances, the school break. That evening we came in for dinner and got a call from a member inviting us to eat with them after church on Sunday. Being, well, Elder Perry and Elder Bigler, we jumped on that. :) And, Elder Perry and I have been trying to always take something with us when we visit the members to kind of show how much we appreciate the offer. We were gonna just make some brownies, but we were out of cocoa. Simple enough problem to solve, we have a Carrefour (the equivalent of Walmart) across the street practically, we were just gonna go grab some quick and come right back.

About 24 hours later, we finally made it back.

As we stepped out onto the street, we suddenly looked at each other and realized that neither of us had the keys. We were locked out of our apartment, and it was already 8:00.

Well, since I'm really running out of time, I'll have to make the long story short and just say that we were able to arrange for our District Leader to come pick us up from Saint-Omer, about a 45 minute drive. Thankfully, they have a car down there. He (and his companion of course) got here around 11, and we finally laid down on their floor to go to sleep around midnight. We ended up going to their branch that morning, catching a train after church to Lille to get the spare key that the mission has, and then catching another one all the way back to Calais, and finally getting into our apartment. A pretty crazy series of events that thankfully led to no harm, except that we had to cancel the lunch that started the whole process. By the time we made it back home last night, we were super dead, and we pretty much just ended up crashing.

I was going to relate the whole story to the Gospel, but I really gotta get going, so I'll let you guys see if you can figure out how that would've worked. :)

I love you guys so much! Mom, happy birthday on Thursday, and I'll get to wish it to you a little better on Sunday. :) Can't wait to talk to you guys!

Elder Bigler

More Photos of the Beach and Making Treats Twice . . . just not Brownies.