The Pink Umbrella =)

August 20, 2011

I forgot to tell you about it last week, when we went on that tour in Paris, our tour guide asked us to take a picture with him. William tried multiple people to try and get them to take a picture of us. No luck. After the first three he just turned to us and said, "Typical French." ha ha It was so nice to know that even Parisians have a hard time with that and it's not just us as missionaries that struggle to get people to be willing to take a picture ha ha. He asked for "funny" ideas from our group. The first idea was, "Um...we could like, sit down and pretend to be reading." We were all a bit lost on the humor of that one, but we did it anyway. And jumping at the chance to steal as much publicity as possible, we just happened to be reading the Book of Mormon. AND Sister Barros whipped out her pink umbrella to draw even more attention to the book. ha ha Anywho...it's posted on facebook now. So here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.230722780300948.62049.169076223132271#%21/photo.php?fbid=243487982357761&set=a.230722780300948.62049.169076223132271&type=1&theater

Great news! Ann, one of our baptismal dates, her daughter AND husband now want to get baptized too!  So they are a ways off, but we're looking at four baptisms in one month now! How cool is that?! =) And we LOVE families getting baptized together. Nothing gets better than that. =)

This week really has been pretty lovely. There's always the hiccups along the way, but overall, wonderful. We had zone conference on Tuesday. I just love zone conferences. You get so super charged afterwards to go out and be the world's best missionaries ha ha.

Oh my gosh. On Thursday we had a crazy day! Sister Moraga's companion finally made it to France. So we said goodbye to her in the morning and sent her off for the mission office to wait for Sister Johnson to arrive. And they  shipped out to Nantes. We then had a rendez-vous in the afternoon with Ann. Another a little bit later on the other side of our area with a new amis and then an hour later with Remy. Okay. So I know that doesn't sound crazy, but it SO was.  There was no way, with the trains and buses we'd need, that we'd be able to make it to everything. So we asked one of the office elders if we could borrow a car for the day. We got the approval. Initially we were pretty thrilled. We'd be able to accomplish otherwise impossible rendez-vous and pass-bys. So it seemed like a brilliant idea in the beginning. Oh my heck. I wanted to KILL that GPS. Driving was SO not fun that day. I thought we were going to die. Everything was going wrong. And just when I thought it couldn't get worse, I got pulled over. Imagine how much getting pulled over in America stresses me, but now it's in French. Panic mode! But this power happy cop pulled me over to tell me that I had cut him off (I promise you I didn't!) When he told us that Sister Barros and I both had that "Seriously?! You have got to be kidding!" moment in our heads. He told me then how turn signals work in France (seriously! I'm not retarded) And then told me that Americans are calm drivers and I need to go be an example to the French. Oh dear... As soon as I pulled back on the road, he pulled up on his little motorcycle to the car in front of me at a light and chewed them out too. After a very stressful driving day, I was SO not in love with cops like that. But, all is well. I didn't get a ticket (I didn't deserve one in the first place) and we made it to all of our rendez-vous! =) Happy day.

Today's been a bit of a weird P-day. We spent the morning in the chapel decorating for a wedding that happened at one this afternoon. We finished a bit after noon. The sister we were helping (our bishop's wife) was SO stressed. Listening to the guests filtering in talking about how tired they were and tried to figure out what they were going to eat for breakfast brought back so many memories. It doesn't matter where you go in the world, weddings always have their common theme. ha ha

After finishing that, we spent the rest of the afternoon playing tennis with the elders on the hottest afternoon we've had all month. But it was so fun all the same. I'm about out of time, but I'll have to tell you next time about our super hero project.

Sorry this email is so jumbled and short. I've been stealing music from the elders and it's cut in a bit. Sorry again. Have a wonderful week!

~Sister Jorgensen