Called to Serve. Paris, France: My First Name is Elder

Adam on Skype for Mother's Day

Hey everybody! It feels like forever since we last talked! A whole 17 hours ago... :)

Adam and the Family on Mother's Day Skype

It's always kind of crazy to talk to you guys on Skype. I mean, I've only done it twice now, but it's just a weird experience. One minute I'm in France as a missionary, the next I'm in my living room at home just talking with my family like normal, and then the next minute I'm back in France. It's always really positive though and helps me kind of refocus on why I'm here. It's great to see that you guys are pretty much just the same old awesome family that I left behind. :)

Celebrating Elder Perry's Birthday at a
Chinese Restaurant

As far as the week goes, it was a really good one! Tuesday was Elder Perry's birthday and district meeting in Lille, so between all of the travel time and going to dinner and then missing the last bus, our day went pretty quickly. We went to the chinese buffet here in Calais to celebrate! I ate a ton of sushi and sweet and sour chicken while Elder Perry tried a little bit of everything, even getting me to try one of the fried frog legs that they had there... They're actually pretty good, like I said, if you can get past the fact that you're eating a frog. :)

Wednesday didn't really have much to report, kind of just a normal, windy Calais day.

Thursday on the other hand was something else. First off, it was SUPER windy. Which is normal for Calais, but boy is it intense. And it was raining all day. We had planned to do an exchange, with Elder Bailey coming here to Calais with me and Elder Perry going to Saint Omer. And, as exchanges often do, it just turned into a day of miracles. It's been quite a while since we've found any new amis here in Calais, definitely longer than we would like. But on Thursday alone, we found 4 new amis!!! Which includes 2 young families! Seven hours in the rain and wind later, the Lord blessed us with what we needed so desperately. And more importantly, he will hopefully now be able to bless the people that we've found through us.

Friday we had a passback to one of the people we found the day before. It was in a tattoo shop. I realized that I had never even been into one of those before, and wlking in there, I was kind of glad for that fact. Kind of creepy little place. As we started teaching Joffray, his two coworkers came in and joined us too. So, standing there just in the little entry way of the tattoo shop, we taught a lesson, or rather, mostly testified of our message. Despite the seemingly hostile environment, us two guys in our white shirts and them in their tattoos, we were able to invite the Spirit. Through our testimonies, we started to see a change in the faces of the two others we were teaching, Gwen and Thomas. They were intently focused on what we were saying, and slowly stopped cracking jokes. By the end of the lesson, you could see on their faces not only that they were interested, but that they had felt something. Gwen kept looking intently right at us and nodding every time one of us would testify of something. We left them with a Book of Mormon and some Restoration pamphlets, which they gladly committed to read. Part of the miracle of the whole experience for us was also that nobody came in at all while we taught, except for two girls who seemed kind of lost and walked back out. Thomas even said that it was super "lucky" that no one came and that they're usually pretty busy during that time. We have a different word for "lucky." :)

After that, the rest of the week went by pretty quickly. We had a big huge activity with the young adults of the stake where we went around Calais trying to find the inactive young adults and to invite them to church. After that, we had a barbeque, which really got Elder Perry going. (Fire+a Tahitian)

Adam Celebrating Elder Perry's Birthday
with the Requillart Family

Sunday, was kind of complicated. Just church, second sacrament meeting with the young adults, lunch with the Requillarts, watched a little fireside thing with the young adults, then figured out how to make Skype work for you guys. :) And you know the rest of the story. :)

Well, I think that's about it for this week. Let me know if you guys have any questions or anything that you thought of after I said goodbye. :)

Have fun this week!

Elder Bigler