Hey Mom!
So, there is a little perk to working in the office. The president says I can use my lunch hours during the week to get a head start on my emails to you each week.
I have had a great week here in the office. I am still really loving it here. I am serving around some awesome missionaries. One of my favorites is Elder Bühlmann he is from Switzerland and he is our greffier right now! ( I am going to try and attach a file that explains what each person does in the office. I am feeling a little to lazy to type all that out.)
Anyways, let me start with Saturday. After sending your email I went shopping with Elder Draleau. I really like the system we have worked out here for eating. We all buy food together and split the cost. We spend about 60 euros each week, that divided by 5 makes food really cheap. However we eat REALLY good. Since I have been here, we have had pizza, quiche, several different types of pizza, lots of simple salads and a few other interesting meals. The
food we all buy together usually is used for dinner each night and lunch on Sunday. Other than that, lunch every day at the office is every man for himself. We have a kitchen here at the office and if we don’t have any food we make a quick run to a grocery store and get whatever we want. I have yet to do so but it would also be very easy to go out to eat.
Oh! I totally forgot to tell you. Last Wednesday when I came to Versailles, President called me the night before and asked me to drive the car from St. Brieuc to the mission home. I think I already told you that, but then as I was driving to the mission home I was asked to drive to Paris to pick up my new companions. So I dropped Elder Jomie off at the Gare du Nord (also the place where I had my passport and money stolen in 2008) and then I picked up my new companions and hung out at the Church at St. Marie not too far away. I tell you all this
because I got to drive all across Paris. It was crazy and actually kind of scary. There were scooters and motor bikes everywhere! I also drove around the huge round about at Arc de Triomphe. I was thinking all about you that day and how much I know you want to come visit Paris!!
Anyways, back to my week, Sunday was good. The ward here is pretty huge and there are a ton of missionaries. Its kind of a little depressing because between the size of the ward and the speed at which missionaries change here makes it hard to have a sincere relationships with the members. I bet that would be really tough in the United States. The wards are so big there, it would be so tough to really get to know everybody in 6 weeks. The church here doesn’t even have the new missionaries introduce themselves since there are so many of us and we change so often. After Church on Sunday we came home and had a Pizza. It was really good and actually reminded me A LOT of your homemade pizza! After that we did some planning and then went to two different RDV’s both of which went well . The work here in the office is going wel, but we need to find more people to teach. We have had some pretty good contacts lately and I am sure there will be many more to come. Aside from that we didn't do a whole lot on Sunday.
Monday was also good. It was kind of exciting to come back to the office for a new week. I am really enjoying the work here at the bureau. A typical day as a missionary in the office goes like this; We wake up at 6:30 eat, exercise, shower/get ready and start personal studies around 8 and do that until companionship studies around 8:35-40ish. We leave our apartment around 9 and walk 5 minutes to the office where we start off our day by checking our office email, and listening to phone messages. After that we start working on our projects that we each have. We work till whenever we are hungry and feel like taking a break for lunch (typically around 12) but sometimes we are so busy that we don’t end up eating until 1 or 2. When Lunch finally does role around, we go to the kitchen to make something or we see if anybody else wants to go to the grocery store and buy stuff. It seems like just about every day there are people who need to make a run to the grocery store and its really close so that is nice. After lunch we go right back to work and finish around 5 (usually). Sometimes we have to stay late to help President with something and sometimes we leave a few minutes early to go to a RDV or something like that.
After 5 its missionary work. We don’t have a ton of ami’s here but I’m sure we will find some good people to teach here soon. Around 8:30 or 9 we all meet back up at the apartment to plan, write in our journals, make dinner, eat and then get into bed.
Our apartment here is pretty small but I will try and upload some pictures sometime this next week. I am trying to upload some pictures from off of my hard drive but it is taking A LONG TIME. Oh another thing about Monday is we have a staff meeting. This is where everybody in the office (President, The Assistants, and all the other Office Elders get together and talk about what they need from everybody else in order to solve problems or to finish their projects for the week. Its pretty cool I like it. So far I really like everybody here in the office. We are all getting along really well.
Another cool thing is that President updates us on the Temple here pretty much as soon as he hears about it. So if the project gets accepted we will be some of the first people in the World to know about it which is pretty awesome.
Okay Tuesday wasn’t anything special. We had district meeting which was cool. Elder Draleau is our District Leader and we mostly just talked about our goals for this transfer. Wednesday President asked us to go pick up a sister who was going home early due to health problems so me and Elder Draleau went and did that while Elder Gardner stayed in the office and worked. It’s a little weird being in the office because it is so different from being a normal missionary in the field.
Thursday was my 1 year mark! It was pretty weird. Time sure does go by fast here on the mission. After 5 we went to “consecration hill” which isn’t to far from here. When President Staheli was the mission president here he had a tradition to take all the newly arrived missionaries to this place overlooking Paris not to far away from the mission home to have a few minutes of quiet time to reflect on the 2 years to come and to write some goals/impressions down in our Journal. The Office Elders here sometimes hit their year marks while they are serving here and its kind of a tradition to go back and “re-consecrate” ourselves. So we went. It was a really pretty view and Elder Draleau and sneaked around and printed of a “Happy Year Mark” card and gotten everybody in the office to sign it including President and his two daughters which was super nice. Elder Draleau is a super awesome guy. Maybe my favorite companion so far. He bought me a “year Mark Patisserie” also which was a berry crumble. It was amazing. After that we contacted around the area until it was time to come home and call it a night.
Yesterday was good too. We drove out to a place called Plaisir not too far from here. You should look it up on Google Maps. We went out there for a RDV but the lady wasn’t there so we headed to another RDV with our Ami Jean. He is a really cool guy and a great ami, the only problem is he is leaving to go to Africa for 3 months so we wont be able to teach him for a while here. But we are trying to get into contact with the mission over there to pass them his contact
information.
After our last RDV with him it was time to come home. I do quite a bit of driving here. I am the only one in our Companionship who can legally drive here. The drivers license from the United States are really weird here. We can only drive for one year starting with the day we arrive in France. Its complicated how it all works and to be honest I am not really even sure.
I am still really loving it here at the Office. Oh!! I got a nice little Package from Aunt Annette. She sent me a Tie and a Happy Year Mark Tie. I thought that was really nice. I feel like I have so many letters to write! Oh goodness! Ha ha!!
I guess I should probably get going here soon.
I am super excited for your packages. Thanks so much for taking such good care of me. And Thanks in advance for the Suit. That will help out a lot here!
Alright mom! I love you! I gotta go! But I hope you have a wonderful week and I will be praying for you so you can get that job!
Love you!
Elder Morgan
