Week 5 - Travel Plans!

[Another Ed. note: Some context to the story Maren refers to below. I was in Provo last week to give a guest lecture in a marketing class at BYU, and afterward a student came up and introduced herself as Sister Coleman, Maren's MTC teacher. Very fun moment for this missionary dad.]

Hey hey hey Family-

WE GOT OUR TRAVEL PLANS I'M GOING TO PARIS ON MONDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

It literally felt like Christmas. We all went with Elder Lucas to get the mail that day. It was probably one of the top 5 moments of my life. We're going direct from SLC to Charles de Gaulle, we're so lucky. The missionaries going to Lyon have two stops. Our flight takes off at 5:10 on Monday evening, and we have to be at the travel office at 11:30 on Monday. We have the BEST plans, everyone else has to get up at like 2 or 3 or 4 am to catch their flights. I found out we don't go to San Fran to pick up our visas anymore, in case you were wondering about that. We were so distracted all the rest of the day though. Sr. Coleman let us sing "Oh Come all ye Faithful" because we wanted to sing a Christmas song to go along with the mood.

I can't believe we've finally made it. Six more days.

Speaking of Sr. Coleman! I am so happy you got to see her dad!! That's too cool!! She walked in the classroom that day and was like "Can I give you a hug?", except it was in French so I just picked up on her body language. It was sort of weird, but later during a break when we were all out in the hallway she pulled me aside and said "so there was this guest speaker today in my marketing class..." and told me the whole story! She said you didn't want to be a distraction but she wanted me to know that the hug came from you. So so fun. AHH I was so happy. The next day it came up again and everybody wanted to hear the story so Sr. Coleman had me tell it in French so that we could count it as being productive, and I think the Elders pretty much stopped listening after I mentioned you worked at Nike. Haha they were like "can he hook me up?!?". Haha I love my district so much. I'm going to miss seeing them everyday.

We went to the temple this morning and ate breakfast at the temple cafeteria! Manna from the heavens. It was so good. Or at least it seemed soo good after a month of MTC food. Speaking of- I've been on my mission for a MONTH -- crazy!

The MTC laundry room on P-Day

Last Tuesday we had our devotional from Richard G. Scott! He talked about prayer. It was really cool! And tonight they're doing the same thing (broadcasting it to all the MTCs) so we think its going to be another good one. I mean they're all good, but the Tuesday ones are always AMAZING.

Sunday was a rough day for me for some reason. I mean the morning went okay, and I had a good interview with President Merrill (our branch president) and he basically told me that I was going to be speaking in sacrament meeting (because everybody is supposed to prepare a talk and then they announce who it is after the sacrament) so it was nice to have the heads up. I think it went pretty well, it was about repentance and I was able to speak without just reading my talk, which some people do.

I got the package you sent on Saturday! Sr. Walton and I have deep chats every night with petite ecoliers and we'd run out the night before so that was PERFECT. Speaking of Sr. Walton, last night my companion and I went with Sr Walton and Sr Blackhurst into another building to do language study so she could play the piano, and I wanted to hear her. She is so good. She did these awesome arrangements of different hymns mixed together and ahhhh -- spiritual feast.

This last week has been interesting, lots of good stuff, lots of not super fun stuff, but good overall. I don't know, its pretty much just TRAVEL PLANS.

I love you family!! you're the best. the church is true! God is our loving Heavenly Father!

LOVE LOVE LOVE you

soeur hansen