#toussaints - Letter 11/1/14

Hey!

So today is All Saints Day (Toussaints), so everything is pretty slow in France. But, it makes up for this being the craziest week of my mission!

Sunday was great! Church was pretty solid that day, and we went over to teach the Guittons! I don't know if I already told you about them or not. They're both converts (he joined in college and served a mission, she joined about 5 years ago) and they went inactive not long after she got baptized. One day they just randomly showed up at church and wanted some missionaries to teach his son, who's turning 8 this month and has never been to primary. So we've visited them a few times, and they are some of my favorite people I've met on my mission :) The first time, when I was with Elder Platt, Jean-Luc (the dad) told me that their goal is the temple, and that I was gonna help them get there. This last time was so awesome! They fed us lunch, then we taught the Restoration to Luca, the son. He's only 7 years old, but he's a genius! He had some really intelligent questions and he answered all of our questions perfectly! He already has a pretty solid testimony of God and prayer. It's obvious that, even though they weren't active for 5ish years, they taught him a lot of the basic principles at home.

Afterwards we went home and made curry with the APs, even though we only ate like 2 bites of it. Then it was off to Paris! We met up with Brother Eaton at his hotel (which was definitely the nicest hotel I've ever stepped foot in) and sat and talked in his room for a while. It was so cool to see him! Ben's the only person from home that I've seen since coming here, and it was totally different with him because he was a missionary. But, it was a lot of fun, and I got the two bags (thank you so much!)

Monday was a pretty calm office day. I knocked out some paperwork to get these two apartments for the couples, then the APs wanted to go to sushi. So we went there then drove them to the store for shopping because we had to buy a couple of apartment items for them and for another équipe. After, it was calm again all evening.

Tuesday we were supposed to have Zone Conference, but we ended up getting another load thrown on us. A new missionary was coming in (he's Chinese speaking, so he was in the MTC longer and just showed up). His name is Elder Martin too! So we picked him up at the airport and drove into Paris to St Merri. The road of the church was blocked, so we had to park like 15 minutes away and haul his luggage across Paris. When we got there, we luckily caught lunch from Zone Conference and then District Meeting. After everyone left the church, we headed out to Bussy Saint Georges (the exact opposite side of Paris from us) to pick up the Saunders couple, who just finished their mission. We got them all loaded up, headed home... and got stuck in 3 hours of traffic. It's usually an hour drive, but it was total standstill traffic. By the time we finally got home, Elder and Soeur Wall took us out to dinner, since Président wasn't there to say goodbye to the Saunders. It was really good, and we had a blast! Elder Bates and I decided there must be something wrong with us, because we totally enjoyed hanging out with two old couples. 

Wednesday morning we took the Saunders to the airport and grabbed breakfast on our way back. It was a chill day, I finalized a lot of things for apartments, right now we're just waiting on some signatures and we can start moving them in. The complicated part is that we have ZERO time to do this, and we're the only ones who can. So I tore my hair out for 3 days this week trying to find a solution to it. For one apartment, I have to just buy the stuff Monday, drive out 3 and a half hours Tuesday, sign the papers and do the inspection, put all the furniture in, and drive home that night because we have OFII Wednesday morning. So, it'll be an adventure. That night the Bousseaus invited us over for dinner, so we went and hung out with them. The missionaries from Cholet stayed the night with us because we're selling their car so they had to drive in and meet us here.

Thursday was the craziest day ever. So the Cholet Elders took off at like 6 a.m. to catch their train, then we drove their car into the garage to sell it. We went through the 2m tunnel again, but it's not as exciting in a small car. But, it's the first time I've driven stick since leaving home, so that felt really good. So I got to drive the car through Paris, then we dropped it off at the garage and the owner of the garage (who loves us) dropped us off at the RER stop, where we caught it and rode for like and hour or so to get home. We spent about 20 minutes in the office, then went to IKEA to pick up some desks and a chair for some other équipes. When we got home, we turned around and drove to Mantes-la-Jolie, where I had to do the inspection with the landlord for us to be able to leave the apartment. He was pretty satisfied with everything except for the hardwood floor, it was pretty wasted. So we'll have to pay a pretty penny to get that fixed. We went down to show that their storage space had been emptied out and...it hadn't been emptied out. The Elders were supposed to work with a member to get it emptied out, but once they were in the new apartment they totally spaced it. So I finished the rest of the inspection, called the Elders to hustle down and help us, and we emptied the whole thing out. We just dumped it in the garage at their church, because it was the responsibility of them and their members, so we washed our hands of it. We drove an hour home, then hopped the metro to Paris to drop off a big order of stuff for the Visitor's Center and the chair for Elder Coulombe. We had these 3 big boxes on a furniture dolly, which was a pain. At our stop, the door broke and we couldn't get off, so we got off at the next stop and tried to get on going the opposite direction. But... a security guy came up and said that it was against the rules to carry all that stuff on the metro, and kicked us out. So we had to walk. Usually from one metro stop to the next isn't too far, but this was an RER, or underground train, which means that the stop we got off at was ridiculously far from where we wanted to be. So I hauled the dolly with the 3 huge boxes across Paris into the Visitor's Center haha. We got everything dropped of and (finally) headed home. Voilà the craziest day of my life :) It was so much fun! But I am still exhausted from it haha.

Yesterday was another laid back office day. I finished finalizing a lot of things for new apartments and went crazy on organizing the apartment system, since I'm somehow missing all the reports I should have up until August. I finally found it all, now it's just copying and formatting :) It's funny, this is all stuff I definitely knew nothing about before the mission, I was pretty hopeless on computers.

Last night was the ward Halloween party! It was cool, it's like being in a ward back home. Last year I was in Épinal, so the branch didn't do anything for Halloween. We were in charge of some games, so Elder Christiansen and I ran the donuts on a string. OK...nothing funnier than watching little kids try to eat donuts hanging from a string without using their hands. At the end we went to all the classrooms and handed out candy while the kids trick or treated, so that was cool :) All in all, really good day.

Today's chill, we shopped and now we're gonna go walk around the gardens at the Château de Versailles. Pretty calm, hopefully :) If we have time, I may buy some new pants. My old ones tore, so I'm running on one pair that I bought in Le Mans like 8 months ago. 

I love you guys so much, have a great week!

Love,

Elder Tyler Martin