Qu'est-ce que votre glace preferee?

Castle with moat and maze

     French Fact # 221: French weddings are crazy. The good ones, anyways. So turns out, you get married and then you have this dinner with everyone you ever knew at like 4 in the afternoon. You chat and it's kind of a buffet, like take what you want and stand around chatting kind of deal. At 7, there will be a several course sit-down dinner. Between each course, there are activities and games that you play. This goes on for a while, eventually ending with the last course at 6am -traditionally onion soup. Then you've got a little time (rest up, folks!) before the wedding breakfast at 9am, a ridiculous BBQ that ends at 4. En fin, after 24 hours of feasting and chatting and games, you're free! Congratulations. If you can move, feel free to waddle over to your bed and collapse for the next few days. 

With Frere Dougie who keeps asking to take us to a basketball game--guess who got permission!

     This week, I was graced with the privilege to work with one of Lyon's finest, Sister Bicchierri, our Italian Sister Training Leader. She is awesome. I have never learned so much. She is really great at contacting and has a reputation of stopping cars to talk to people. Her contacting is great though, because she really hooks them in with a good question or comment or something. For example, what is your favorite ice cream? No matter the answer, we have a message for you that will make you happier than when you eat your favorite ice cream. C'est vrai. I was also introduced to this idea of calls. She said plan in an hour a day to just call people. Call all of your amis. Call the members and chat. Remind them that we're here, make them feel good, and don't ask them for anything. They're nicer and more willing to help you out. I also got some Russian, Italian, and Mongolian testimonies from her. I just have to memorize them now and then I'll be in for sure with all the foreigners.  Speaking of which, we met a lady who isn't interested in the gospel (yet), but she said she'd call me and teach me some Serbian. Another lady agreed to call and tell me if the milk from the dispenser is better than store bought. I eagerly await those calls. We also met an old Muslim guy who was not interested, but he did do a little dance for us. I love all the French! They are so ridiculous. We did find people who are really interested as well. 

Couch tissue box-complete with cushions-Yikes!

     As suspected, we discovered there will indeed be another set of sister missionaries in Chalon. Which means we really have to figure out the bus system. It's rough without a computer, because unlike Annecy, we don't have all the nifty little hand outs that show exactly when and where the buses go. The buses we do know about only travel just outside of the ville, but there is a secret bus line we will soon be infiltrating. Je suis une espione, after all. Sister Packard and I are resting here and continuing with all of our investigators. Hopefully we'll be able to see some baptisms soon. We have some dates set, so hopefully they work out! Also, our district is being pink-washed! We will have 10 Sisters and 2 Elders. Obviously I'm really excited because sisters are my favorite. Haha. I think President thinks I can have a good influence on them or something. There are a lot more sisters who are struggling than I realized. We're all very isolated here. We really know nothing about anyone other than our companions. As the Assistants told me, it's all a big secret, a mission. Anyhow, we super cleaned our apartment to make room, throwing out at least a trash can full of old food from the Dooley's-the senior couple that used to live there. We also killed numberless concourses of moths, with more being added to the death toll every day. There will be no mercy. We also found a blender! Ask me if we have had smoothies at least once a day. Yes. Yes, we have. 

   

In other news, I got to see President Roney yesterday. Whenever I get to see him, my body gets a rush of adrenaline and I get the jitters. I just get so excited I don't know what to do. He told me to go find amis. So we went contacting for half an hour, trying to invite people to the stake conference at Lyon. It was a great meeting. The number one message was that we need to be converted to the gospel and not the church! A lot of members of our branch in particular needed to hear this. People hold grudges and are just really weird about a lot of things. And we also wanted our amis to hear it too, since we do have a lot of weird people in the branch. They have to know it's the gospel that's important. And so do you, I suppose. People are unreliable and silly and have their little ticks, but the gospel of Jesus Christ is perfect. President Roney spoke and asked his wife to stand up as a "petite vacance pour vos yeux". (Little vacation for your eyes). He's a funny guy. We also heard from Elder Teixeica, of the Seventy. Among other things, he told us the story of a bird who would fly every day and work really hard all day to find food. One day, he saw a man with a box, and figured it'd be easier to get food from him. So he asked and the man agreed to give him food, in exchange for a feather. Hesitantly, he agreed, and painfully plucked it out. As you can imagine, this continued to occur day after day, until, VOILA! No more feathers and the man capture the bird and probably ate him for dinner. C'est la vie. I would have eaten him, not gonna lie. The point of the story was that we can't start giving out our feathers. The more we give out, the easier it is to give. Set your standards, stand your ground, and don't give in even once. There is a great quote that says something like it is easier to keep your standards 100% of the time than 99%. You can't make exceptions for extenuating circumstances-LIFE is an extenuating circumstance. There you have it straight from France. By the way, I had to Google translate this, because I forgot English. Just kidding. Kind of.