Day 6: Tender Mercies

6 septembre 2009 (Day 6)
Church was great today. We left 45 minutes early and got there 30 minutes late. The French take their weekends pretty seriously so most everything is closed and the buses run less often. We will have to leave our building and be at the tram station before 7:58am to get to church by nine. I don’t think it will be practical to walk and biking in a skirt in the winter doesn’t sound appealing. It is quite different then leaving 2 minutes before church starts! But no worries, we still got a 3-hour block in because church ran 30 minutes over. The Elders said that the church here isn’t very good at ending on time.
The members seemed really nice. I didn’t understand everything that was said, but I do know that Elder Bednar is speaking on Thursday in Versailles and we are invited to go. If I don’t have school I’m going to try to make it. There is institute, and the teacher has my email. The missionaries are going to start up an underground FHE (I guess he disallowed the missionaries from doing it). They are having a Burrito Fiesta Tuesday night. The Church is so true! There have been so many tender mercies so far on this trip, especially when it relates to the church. Cody, a cute Californian studying business management for the semester (in English) has been praying for some American members and voila, Hannah and I came. He is 23 and this is his last semester. He was so excited to have American members that he invited us to his house for pasta. These cute members gave us a ride because we would have had to wait an hour for the bus and we just ate and talked.
I haven’t been too homesick yet. I do go back and forth from loving France (like yesterday) to questioning my sanity (like Friday). Cravings…so far I’ve craved a grilled cheese sandwich, though they have the equivalent, a croq monsieur (grilled cheese + ham) and chocolate milk as of this moment. I’ve gotten a little dehydrated here since they don’t have drinking fountains, and I need more calcium, but I think I may do okay on protein with all the cheese I eat. I also eat all the meat when I go to the Resto-U.