9/23

my oh my I have a lot of news! So my new area is pretty sweet.  There is not a lot of french people in this ville, but it is touching Cergy so I still use the same bus pass that I had a year ago! The ward is very excited to do missionary work right. Right now like ALL of our amies have came from referrals. There are a lot of good things happening here. Yesterday at church we had to sit in a different room because there wasnt enough room in the chapel.

My new comp Elder We... is a balla shot calla! He is SWOLL. Srsly, Arney has nothing on him. He wakes up early to drink like protein energy drinks before he works out. He was trained in Cergy and he loved it. He's in his 4th transfer and he did 2 there and this is his 2nd here.  This is my 3rd young comp in a row and its really good because they have a lot of good ideas. Sometimes I go into robot mode and young missionaries are great because they rely on training and not really just repetition likes sometimes I do.

 Our apartment is very very very small. Its not like too small to function but if we dont keep clean then it is just not even good at all. I kinda knew one of the elders just from being a missionary for so long and seeing him around. He is from North Carolina and went to SVU for EFY and he is training a missionary from Ontario who is a Spanish speaker.

Elder Smith LOVED the NBA rosters and he hated all of the trades involving the nugs.

So there is a recent convert in the ward who got baptized like 3 weeks ago. He has a HUGE rock and fossil collection and he gave me a GIGANTIC diamond. It is like bigger than an american grape. (I say that because grapes here are much bigger)

That's way good that the truck got fixed and that they got to got to Alturas. I'm happy that they got some ducks. I never shot a banded duck. and I'm also happy that Andrew didnt throw up. But I'm sad about dad's shoulder. How long will it take to heal?

We live like one second away from a bball court and let me tell you, Brad is going down when I get home.

hey mom, I'm sad you had a bad week. There is something that cheers me up a lot when I'm kinda depressed and that is listening to the song "you melt the madness" by jericho road. I remember when I was young we went to a concert and they were so cool. and then when I was at svu they were less cool but still awesome. Srsly a bunch of 40 year olds who are trying to be nsync can only entertain a certain audience. but their slow stuff is really really good. and I also think about the words to the 2nd verse of "come come ye saints". but praying also works. I'm glad it got better.

Thats really awesome that Cameron is back out on his mission. Can I get his address? If he's anything like me he needs all the letters he can get. It's pretty sad. 

I'm pretty weirded out because I'm going to be able to watch hockey from this season. Well at least the playoffs. Did melanee ever buy a Lids Sharks hat?

so you know how a little while ago I was really sick of wearing church clothes. Well its way worse. I love being a missionary, but i am just so uncomfortable. I dread getting dressed in the morning.

I think it would be great for me to go to SVU at the julymester. First of all because isnt it cheaper? and also I might as well get back at school instead of sitting around on the couch in Chico dreaming about being on a mission. I dont want to be one of those guys. Do you think I could maybe even get a  job for like a month before I go out? so I can get some monayyyy?

New Area

I just looked up William's new area on Google Map and this is what popped up when I typed in his address....but the photo was taken in Oct 2012, and there is a lot of construction going on, so I think this is the apartment across the street and William lives in the new places in the photo below, which is dated 2013. 

Then I looked for the nearest Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which was only a few blocks away and looks like this-

9/16

wow this week was soooo close to being so awesome! but it was actually not very awesome. Winter hit this week. hard. Its really wet and rainy. One night we were porting in a hurricane and Elder Smith was just wearing a cotton sweater. He didn't have a umbrella or hood or anything. I had my rain coat but it had soaked through so I can only imagine that he was FREEZING. It looked like he had just came out of a swimming pool. We ported for sooo long that night and everyone was pretty nice but no one let us in or really let us talk to them.  We kept going and going and praying but it just never happened. It would have been such a cool story to be able to say that finally, at the end of the night, that we found someone, but we didn't. BUT the next night we were porting and 3 houses on the same road all told us to come back another time. We had sooo many people who had said that we could come back again and this week was when we had planned to do it every single house had somebody else (another member of there family) answer the door and send us away. I feel really good about how hard we worked and how much faith we showed, so I don't really think that this week was a complete failure. 

That is really scary about dad's truck. I'm pretty glad that we didn't sell the Jeep, but i hope its a good vehicle for him. And that's also scary about surgery. If its gotta be done, its gotta be done.

 

I tried a new food this week- pinecone. Yeah that's right. Well not the actual pine cones but the little seed inside of them. The lady who gave it to us told us told us that it tasted like they had been on the floor. That was true, but it was pretty good!

Yesterday at church someone stepped in poo and then marched alllll around the church. So Elder Smith and I spent most of Sunday school mopping up the church. It was pretty disgusting and it smelled so bad. The actually mopping didn't take that long but we made a pretty big mess with all the cleaners and buckets and stuff. and we had to mops stairs. and dry the floor.

What else? Oh I got the package. The cream didn't spill at all and I started using the razors. They fit on the handle I have.

The lady that called you used to live here and we have ported into her family before. It was pretty weird. The lady was like "I have a cousin who is Mormon who is in town, she moved to the United States" and then we saw her at church and told her about that. She was super nice. She was like "give me your parents email address, address, and phone number and write a little note." She is actually in the same ward as a sister in the mission who was in Angers at the same time as me.

So we just got transfer emails and I got transferred to Mantes. my address is 5, rue des Brouets 78711 MANTES-LA-VILLE. I'm going to be in another 4 man. I'm going to miss Elder Smith!

I'm not homesick. 

I don't want to be negative but really the Kings don't stand a chance. 

I kind of had an idea but idk if it would work. Is there any way that I could do some credits at Butte during the summer and then transfer those to SVU and the go there? or should i really just go out in 4 days? or just give up soccer? I really want to know your opinions. 

hey

 

his district:
 the numbers represent
how many transfers that have
 happened since they've been out
on their mission

so to start things off the potentially almost worst thing ever happened.  I lost my memory card for like 3 days. I looked EVERYWHERE for it. I didn't know how I was going to tell you guys on the email because we had already lost one memory card, but a person who works downstairs waved us over and was like, "hey this is yours", I looked at the pictures and it was you. I was super glad that he was an honest guy. I felt so happy that I wanted to kill the fatted calf (bible joke). I felt like buying him a pastry, but I have no money...

 

This week we got invited over to a member's house for dinner. They live in Thionville. We had to take a train. They were super nice and they made us tartiflette!! Their 19 year old son is like a professional juggler and he did a show for us. It was like the craziest thing I've ever seen. And their less active son came over and brought his girlfriend. It was a really fun night. The train ride home was pretty weird. The train only had one car. It looked like a Jelly bean on the tracks.

 

So not very many of our investigators are very well. They keep either dropping us or are never home when we have appointment. We do a lot of porting and we're hoping something good will happen. We found a really really cool neighborhood, but we kinda have to walk up a couple mountains to get there, but i like it because there is a big dog that always runs out to see us and I pet him a lot.

 

So recently there has been spiders EVERYWHERE and they are the creepy kind with 2 legs forward and 2 legs back on each side. Elder Smith and I are very very cautious. I think the longer I've been on my mission the more I've been scared of spiders and snakes. Isn't that the opposite of what is supposed to happen?

 

This week the weather has been pretty strange. There are really random 20 minute storms where the whole sky is grey but then when it blows past its pretty muggy and hot. Today is sunny though and there's a slight breeze.

 

 I don't really know still about college. Maybe we could *apply* for BYU just to see if I can get in.  I kinda don't know why but I get the feeling that I want to eventually go to school in Utah.  I love SVU and really want to go back. but would it really be the best thing? I don't know if I could come home and then go straight to summer school.  I probably could. Aren't  I supposed to register for summer school during this fall semester?

 

I didn't get a package.

 

I pretty much almost puked in front of an old lady. So I had a HUGE kebab for lunch and then we went door to door. I was feeling ILL. So I was just bouncing around in a daze, feeling BAD. One super nice lady who had a gate was like "no way I'm catholic" so we were walking away and I went to push the gate open (but the gate was a pull-to-open) so I just gave myself the Heimlich maneuver and i let out a super loud gaggy-groany noise and turned around and saw Elder Smith and the old lady just roaring laughing at me. I was super embarrassed.

 

so for transfers we have no idea who is staying. There are a lot of variables. We are BOTH getting new comps and one of us is leaving. I hope we get cool comps, but chances are pretty good because most of the missionaries are really cool.

9/2

hey everyone. So this day (and month) has started out pretty lame. So every month we have to renew our bus passes and the bus lines are all messed up right now and there is only one machine in town for everyone. So there is like a 3 hour wait to charge our passes. So we haven't done that today. Because we don't have our bus passes we have to walk everywhere and we cant buy groceries. Today Elder Smith and I woke up and we were super excited to have a great p-day. The other elders went to Paris early this morning. We woke up and studied and cleaned our house and then we went and checked our mailbox. NOTHING and then the mail lady came and we watched her put every letter in every box, but nothing in ours! and then we walked back upstairs to get ready to go and play basketball. We had to walk cuz we don't have bus passes. We were going to play dunk ball. There is a court with rims that are 8 and a half feet. So we walked like a half hour out there and when we got there, we notice that the court that we were looking forward to playing on since we came to Metz had gotten torn out. So we walked to a different court and played for like a half hour. Elder Smith dominated me. And then we went and got a kebab. I said no tomatoes. I got tomatoes. And they also gave me the wrong sauce. Pretty frustrating haha.

 

But last week was great! We saw some really cool things and we found a new ami. We also saw someone that we have been trying to see since last transfer. So overall it was a good week. The other equipe had a baptism. So that was cool. I got to teach him the law of chastity while I was on exchanges. The only bad part was after the baptism, when we pulled the plug, the font didn't drain, it just flooded the whole room. Elder Smith and I cleaned it up with sponges and buckets.

 

I'm sad. The family that we found told us that they don't want to leave their church. So they don't want to see us anymore.

 

You could look into buying a razor. I kinda need one. Its hard to shave my chin with an electric one tho. Most all missionaries use an electric.

 

Why did Bradley wear a Red Lobster shirt? What is the musical about?

 

I don't think I could get into BYU. They prob don't accept transfer students with so little credits. I'm pretty sure that I want to go back to SVU, but I also don't know ANYONE who will be going there. I would love to be roommates with Josh again. And I talked to prez about doing an ecclesiastical endorsement and he said he'd do it, but i don't really know what he would have to do.

 

Should I move to Texas?

 

Remember when you sent the rosters of the NBA teams? You should do that again sometime.  I've heard some crazy rumors and I wanna know if they're true, but I cant really check Twitter (and you cant believe ANYTHING on Twitter)