Days 231-237

19 avril 2010 (Day 231)
Oh blessed Monday mornings. I really should have gone to bed earlier, but I was up talking with you silly Utahns. I cleaned my disaster I call my prison…er room and then I went and taught Andrea English. We went over lots of vocabulary today. I was starving (my stomach was rumbling during the lesson) so I got my SWEET OF THE WEEK, an apricot amadine. It was like an apricot tarte, it was yummy. My lunch was possibly even yummier. I caramelized onions and cooked that with carrots and placed it on a bed of fluffy cinnamon cous cous. Can we say holy wow!
Mother dearest, I studied today. I even enjoyed the studying. I figured I am fine studying everything, just not French lit. I hate it. So I didn’t study French Lit. It was great. I also went on a run. I went for about thirty minutes and saw another rat. I can tell I haven’t run for a while and my foot is still bothering me.
Once I got cleaned up I met Hannah and Jen to have dinner together. We made fajitas with tomato, onion, corn, pepper, rice, beans, lettuce, and chicken. They were delicious! The chicken was so good; I miss having chicken. Poor Jen fell into a sewer grate. Isn’t that awful! She and Hannah were on a walk and one of her legs fell in all the way up to her knee! Jen just started laughing though when it happened; what a good sport!
On the way back to my room (quite late) I saw Katty, the Chinese girl who comes to church with Cecilia who I translate church for because she doesn’t speak French. She ended up coming to my room to get some information about buses and my study materials were everywhere (and I had clothes up drying). Katty got this sort of flabbergasted look on her face and tried to say that it was messy. I just laughed.
21 avril 2010 (233)
Today started very early. I had to meet Elder Ford and Elder Maxfield at the gare (train station) to catch a train at 6:30 am. Luckily the trams were running so I didn’t have to walk there. I brought a nice little breakfast for all of us and we had a nice, peaceful train ride. We met a bunch of the elder others and kept on acquiring more on our way to the zone conference. We first took a train and then a bus. I finally saw Elder Addison Humphrey! Addison went to my high school and so we got to talk a little bit on the bus.
The meeting was really great. I kind of felt a little out of place since I didn’t know anyone but it was really good. Sister Stahlei (mission president’s wife) gave a cute talk about believing and how we need to believe and then there will be miracles. President Stahlei spoke on how we are having New Standards of Excellence in the mission and some tips on how to reach our new standards of excellence.
Our special speaker was Elder Jose A. Teixeira of the Seventy. He shook everyone’s hand and it was great when he got to me because he was like, “Who are you?” That was fun to explain. He spoke on how we choose the mission that we want to serve and that there are no difficult places, only limited faith. He also taught us how we can find while we teach and how we need to apply what we learn on our mission to life. His wife spoke as well (and I may have just credited some of her thoughts to him).
The meeting was fun. It was all in English except for the prayers. They sang their cute mission song and quoted out of D&C. We had a lunch break in between the speakers and got to have pizza and I tried goat cheese pizza. I also met the sister missionaries and some other elders. Everyone was really nice. Sister Elizabeth Smart did give me a bit of a dirty look though when she found out that I was from Utah.
We took a train back into Paris and waited for a while for our train to get back to Nantes. During this time Elder Bourgeois kicked a pigeon into my face and saved me from this awkward old drunk man in the gare. This cute old lady was staring at Elder Bourgeois’ nametag on the way home and so he got the chance to talk to her in the corridor for quite a while about the gospel. Elder Knapp was on quite the spiritual high. Walking from the gare in Nantes to the tram he was just fearless and talking to everyone about God.
22 avril 2010 (Day 234)
Happy Earth Day! I sure did celebrate today. I went out for a morning run and then did yoga on the dock with the sunshine and a slight breeze. A landing duck gave me quite the fright as I was doing yoga, but it was still wonderful regardless. I then cleaned up and got ready to go for a picnic with a bunch of friends at the Japanese Garden. Everyone was naturally late in French style. Gwen (from church) and Emilien (my French pal) came to say hello. All in all we had all four missionaries, Li Tao, Cecilia, ZengChao, Jess, Jen, myself, and Hannah. We all had a really nice time eating and playing Frisbee and heading the soccer ball. The best moment of the picnic was when Elder Mafield told his companion that the no bake cookies were meatballs and so Elder Ford started to put them on his sandwich…the poor kid!
24 avril 2010 (Day 236)
Man is it getting hard to wake up! I did anyway this morning and went shopping. I found myself some new clothes (hurrah!) and then I went and played soccer with the elders. We had a lot of fun kicking the ball around and played a shooting game with Jen, Elder Knapp, and Elder Bourgeois. Jess kicked everyone’s trash with her mad dribbling skills, and Hannah has been improving, lol.
Today was Tao’s baptism. Hannah and I had the chance to sing with the Elders. We sang Beautiful Savior. Li Tao’s baptism was really great. It was so neat when he was baptized because you could really feel the spirit and he was crying. It was so wonderful and I almost cried myself. Li Tao is planning on going on a mission after a year and is going to be a great asset to the church. He is the cutest ever.
I came back from the baptism and decided to go back out to see the Carnival at night and the parade. I ran into Katty on the tram and we went into town to see the parade together. I got some fries for dinner (What?! I was craving fries and it had been a long day). We walked back and forth and saw all the parade together. They definitely aren’t American parades. You can shoot silly string at the parade and everyone has confetti that they throw; it is quite the sight to see!
25 avril 2010 (Day 237)
Today was a really nice Sabbath day. At church all the talks were really good and spiritual. They were talking about getting back to the basics and trying again and forgiveness. I got to translate for Katty which is always a lot of fun. Today I borrowed Floh’s bike and went on the most adventurous ride. I went with the hopes of finding this chateau that I saw whilst on a boat. I didn’t find the chateau, but I had the most amazing ride. I really should have gotten a bike. It felt so liberating to be zooming around in the woods with no one else in sight. There are actually a lot of woods in Nantes and I road along until I couldn’t find the path anymore. It was a perfect Sunday.