Called to Serve. Paris, France: Happy Birthday Elder Bigler!

Bonjour!

It sounds like you guys had a pretty good first week of no official school, even though mom had to kind of go back for some stuff. It was a pretty good week here as well, one of those that just kind of flies by and you suddenly hit Monday again. I don't have a ton of time, so I'll try to summarize it all as quick as I can.

P-day finished up and we went out porting. I learned that the French language has a lot more offensive words than English, as a grumpy guy walked us off his property. It was something that could have been a bad experience, but Elder Humphrey and I were able to just laugh it off and keep going to the next door.

Tuesday was pretty much occupied by our District Meeting, which took place way out in Rennes. Lots of fun, and always fun to get to talk with other missionaries, although by the time we got home we only had time for a little dinner before the end of the night.

Lorient, France

My birthday came and went kind of like most other days. I mean, I'm still a missionary, even on my birthday. :) We did take a little break though and checked out a little motorcycle dealership that we found, with some super sweet bikes. Pretty cool stuff. And to finish the night and celebrate at least a little bit, we had a crêpe party, with a LOT of crêpes and a bunch of Mormon Messages.

Thursday was a pretty normal day, finishing up with a mangez-vous with a sweet member family. The husband is one of the best examples of being a member missionary that I have ever seen. He just does it so well and all the time. Super sweet guy.

Friday night we had our Malagash couple again. We had also taught them Wednesday evening, which was a pretty crazy lesson. They didn't seem to really understand anything that we were teaching them, mostly due to the language barrier. We were thinking that we'd have to drop them. But when we got there on Friday night, the wife pretty much recited back to us what we've been teaching, the Restoration and all that, and we were just amazed. We had found a Malagasy Book of Mormon that we gave to them, along with a French one, and they were super excited about that. And then, without us even specifically asking her, the wife prayed at the end of our lesson! It was a super cool experience.

Saturday we rode the bus a lot, found a lot of not very interested people, some mean people, some nice people, and maybe got a little sunburned. Then, there was a session of Stake Conference being broadcast to us that evening which didn't work...So, yeah. :)

And Sunday was normal with church and all that, although we had a couple other Elders over here for the conference. Afterwards though, we pretty much stayed inside. I've been having super crazy allergies since I got here, and kind of a nasty cough at the same time, and we felt it would just be best to take a break for a little. We ended up pulling a bunch of garbage and old clothes and wallpaper and ties and who knows what out of the closets and just generally getting rid of a lot of stuff. Missionary apartments are crazy places.

And that pretty much sums up the week. :) It was a good week to have a birthday! It hasn't really clicked in my head yet that I'm 20 now, but maybe someday. :)

Thanks for the emails everybody! I appreciate all of them. :)

Elder Bigler

French-ism: For Tyler: Bacon doesn't really exist much here in France ("Bacon" usually means like, Canadian bacon). But, we have Lardons, which are pretty much little bacon chunks, that go well with pretty much anything. :)

Bonus Photos from Calais and Other Places