Sprinting Through the Airport Into Narbonne

I AM HERE IN LYON! The past 25 hours have been utterly exhausting and hectic, but it’s all good. We went from Salt Lake to Chicago, and the last meal I had on American soil was McDonald's. Then we hit London, but our plane landed late, so they gave everyone going on to Lyon flight express passes, got us all on a bus, then dropped us all off at a certain point and said, “get to gate 74 as fast as you can!”

Think of the scene from Home Alone with the family scrambling through the airport, only times two. We had 20 Elders and Sisters running flat out, pell mell through Heathrow Airport for about a quarter mile, but we made it on the plane! Unfortunately, our baggage didn't, and now none up us have any, but it’s OK, we’re here!

President and Sister Roney

[a few days later]



My area here is the small city of Narbonne, and I absolutely love it. Labor is definitely not cheap here, so all our housework and laundry and food and everything, WE do. I'm starting to become a decent cook! My trainer, Elder Costa, is awesome, he and I get along really well, and he's a lot of fun to be around, he has a lot of energy and momentum for the work. He also places a massive amount of emphasis on being exactly obedient to everything the Mission President tells us. I really appreciate that, I never have a guilty conscience, plus I've already seen the blessings that can come from that.

The area I am serving in is actually pretty new, and we have never had a baptism here, and we've never even had an Ami De L'eglise or set a fixed date for baptism. That’s the name for investigator here in France. Directly translated, it means friend of the church, which I truly love. They are our friends that we try to bring unto Christ. Despite this city's history, I fell such a sense of hope for the Area, we've already seen miracles that have brought us to people, and we are right on the cusp of having two new ami de l'eglise.

Fun fact, I had ratatouille just yesterday, discovering its basically just a bunch of vegetables with tomato sauce, and it was delicious! One of the cool things about France, especially Narbonne, is that it looks exactly like an old French town you would expect, with all kinds of small shops and apartments overhead. Our apartment overlooks the street to the train station, and it’s fantastic. It’s always cool to walk past this old cathedral and think, "that's probably older than my country..." One difficult thing is all the cigarettes, EVERYBODY here is France smokes, and it’s hard to breathe sometimes, but a small price to pay.

I learned an important lesson last night, we were coming back to the apartment after contacting people on the street for just two hours, and had had an incredible amount of success, we talked with 7 people who were interested, gave out two or three copies of the Book of Mormon, and just had a great night. We were close to home, and I could hear and partially see this guy walking our same direction behind us. I had the brief impression to go talk to him, but ignored it thinking we would be late to the apartment (obedience with exactness) and it would be weird to turn around and talk to him. We walked a little further, then I mentioned to my companion if he thought we should go talk to him. He said he didn’t know, it was close to 9 when we had to be back, and we'd already been so successful, reinforcing my own arguments in my head. However, when I mentioned it had been a brief impression in my head, he immediately turned around and said, "Never ignore random thoughts!" in a joking manner. It turned out to be a miracle. Not only was the guy interested, we were able to give him a Book of Mormon, and set up a meeting, which never happens on the street! I figured out pretty fast not to ignore those promptings, and I will try not to! All is well, France is amazing, Au Revoir!

With Elder Costa - Trainer from Argentina

The MTC: Spiritual Growth and Shower Pranks

Hey everybody! This is Parker here, in my fourth week in the MTC, and I'm having a blast! The spirit here is incredible. Every devotional, sacrament, every lesson we give to a fake investigator is such a learning and spiritual experience! That part of the MTC is great, though I'm getting very tired of the food. Learning French is amazing. I wonder at how much we've learned in these past three weeks, I know there's no way I could have done it without the spirit of the Lord. He has helped me so much here in the MTC.

We had a little scare earlier this week. About half of the missionaries going to France got very sick in our zone, including my companion, so that was scary. But I didn’t get sick, for which I am grateful.

My district leader played a hilarious prank on the incoming missionaries on our floor the other night. They all came in, and he took his journal out and explained that he was the shower manager for our floor, and that we need to sign up for shower times around fifteen minutes each. Because they were stateside missionaries we could only give them times on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. All of my district would go out there at different times asking him questions about our shower times and when we could shower, if we could trade times, if we could sign up for a different one, that kind of thing. In reality, you can shower either when you get up in the morning or when you go to bed, it doesn't matter, but we had them good and convinced! We informed them that unfortunately we weren't informed ahead of time of their arrival, so we had to give them the 5:30 in the morning time, a whole hour earlier than required to get up. This elicited groans of distress and pain so comical we were dying laughing in the room. We tried to be quiet, but our district leader kept a straight face and told them sorry, they had the 5:30 time. We told them half an hour later right before bed time that we were joking. They had their alarms set already, and they were not happy, but we were laughing.

I'm growing so close to God and my Savior here, it’s amazing. I know with such a strong and unshakable testimony that God loves me, and that Jesus died for me, and that because of that, I can live with him again. I'm grateful for that.

We're psyched this week, we get our travel plans on Friday!!!!!!! I hope everyone is doing good at home, miss y’all! Au Revoir!

Wrapping Things Up at the MTC

Bonjour everyone! This is my last email from the MTC. Everything is fantastic! We got our travel plans on Friday, and we head out of here on the 18th, so next Tuesday I will be on a plane headed for Lyon, the travel time is 24 hours! I'm stoked even though the jet lag will wreck us and we'll have to adjust to new country. I'm so excited to head off to France -- finally! This time at the MTC has been fantastic though, the devotionals are great, and I've made so many friends.

Today was the last day we got to go to the temple though, it was really sad. The temple was always such a great experience. The Provo temple is so beautiful. This will be the last P-day for roughly two weeks, so I promise the next time I email I will be in France! My time here at the MTC has taught me such spiritually uplifting things, I will be sad to leave. I know my Heavenly Father in a way I never have before, and I'm so grateful for this opportunity I have to go on a mission and serve Him.

Elder Parker Whiting

This is one of the elders from France. He speaks pretty good English, and we can all practice our Frenchwith him all the time. He is such a great person and is so funny!

This guy in the sick onsie pajamas is from New Zealand. He has a super awesome accent beside being good at Soccer!