I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go: #parislife

Hey!

So this week was crazy!

Monday was staff meeting at the bureau, and we got everything laid out for transfer week. After, I asked the Babins to go out to sushi with us for my last time. It was pretty fun, we ate really well and got to laugh and joke and tell stories with them. I'm definitely gonna miss not being in close contact with my Mission President like I have been for 6 months, but it'll still be good :) That night I finished packing my bags and we watched movies haha.

Tuesday was Bleu-Day! We picked them up at the airport without any problems. The coolest tender mercy was when we picked up the missionaries that were at the Madrid MTC. I don't know if you remember, but when I was in Bruxelles I visited a Hispanic family pretty often, particularly their son who was super less active. His name was Chin Hsia Rivas. Nothing ever really happened with him while I was there, except that he finally agreed to start sitting in when the missionaries came. Long story short, he completely turned his life around, and I had the pleasure of picking Elder Rivas up from the airport that day to start his mission in Paris :) We spent the afternoon at St Merri and then took the Bleus back to the hotel for the night. Elder Bates, Elder Edmunds, and I all spent the night in the hotel with them. We figured out that the big t.v's there took USB drives, so we watched Saratov Approach before going to bed :)

Wednesday I went with the Bleus and Elder Christiansen to Consecration Hill one more time before leaving the bureau. It was a sweet experience, just getting ready for my last couple transfers :) Once we got to Paris we took the Bleus to Notre Dame again. That afternoon I met up with Elder Gram and made the transition (officially) out of the office :) I absolutely love the office, but it was the most difficult experience of my mission by far. It felt good to get a new start :) We were running around like crazy that whole day for transfer stuff. As soon as we finished that, the Paris STLs (Sister Training Leaders) called us to give a blessing to a recent convert in the hospital, so we booked it out there and gave the blessing before going home that night.

Thursday was a little more calm. We had lunch with the Volnets in the afternoon. They are a German/Croatian couple that feeds the missionaries every week. After, we went contacting with some journalists! They are students who contacted Church Public Affairs, so President Babin picked us to do the project with them. We basically just went contacting for a couple hours and they followed us with cameras. After they interviewed us for about 20 minutes and took off. As soon as we were done with them we went to Pizza Hut to order food for Mission Council the next day. After we had an English class for some of the members that we teach every week. Only 2 showed up, which was too bad, but next week should be better. Two of our amis, Yannick and his brother Thomas, showed up for Institute that night, so we gave them a little tour of it before they started. According to the Maynards, the couple in charge of it, they had a blast and made tons of friends :)

Friday was Mission Council! All the Zone Leaders and STLs came in to St Merri and we had some trainings from the APs and the Babins for our objectives this transfer. After we had lunch and got to hang out with Elders Mattson, Bayer and Christiansen :) After cleaning everything up, we ran to give Frère Volnet a blessing. He and his wife were leaving to spend a month at the temple in Frankfurt on Saturday and he got pretty sick Friday night.

Saturday was a little more chill. We had a training with all our District Leaders to get them ready for this transfer. One of them is Elder Christian Martin, from Texas, who's in his 3rd transfer haha. He's a Chinese speaking Elder and I'm pumped to work with him this transfer :) It was really interesting to be giving the training, because I've never actually been a District Leader haha. After our meeting and lunch we went contacting and met a super cool guy, another Yannick. We talked to him for almost an hour and taught him there in the park where we were at. We'll be seeing him again later this week. That night we went contacting not far from our apartment for a while and got a couple phone numbers and a guy with a family!

Sunday was a blast in the St Merri ward :) I met a ton of the members, and I already knew some from being in the office and already serving in the same Stake for 6 months. Our ami Marco came and gave some SOLID stuff during Gospel Principles class. He's gonna get baptized, we're sure about it :) He was definitely my favorite person this week. That night after church we had a shift in the Visitor's Center and then finished our weekly planning.

Today we had Conference Call after studies (all the ZLs and STLs call in to the office on a conference call to do announcements and training every P Day). After we cleaned and did shopping. We got kind of hosed because the grocery store didn't open till 3, so we just stayed at home and watched part of Saratov Approach because Elder Gram's never seen it. I know, we live in central Paris and we stayed home and watched a movie. We're boring haha. But, it was fun. Tonight we're in the Visitor's Center again, so I'll keep you updated on how that goes :)

I was reading in Luke today and found something I really like. It's the classic story of Christ calling Peter, James, and John to follow Him. When he tells Peter to cast his net out again, Peter tells Him that he's worked all night, he's exhausted, and he's had no success. But, he casts out his net anyways. And he gets the biggest load of fishes he's ever seen. So missionaries are kind of similar. Often, we spend a full day getting rejected, spit on, yelled at, and we don't see any success. It's hard, and everything says that no matter what we do or change, the results will stay the same. But when we follow the Master's voice and try, we end up finding the people that have been waiting for us. So even when it's almost impossible, it's always worth trusting Him and 'casting out your net' one more time. My goal for this week is to not let all my other responsibilities and stuff distract me from the fact that I'm a missionary and that I can take advantage of every second to bless other peoples' lives.

I love you guys, I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Tyler Martin