Breaking the Ukulele and Getting iPads

This week was fantastic, though very very stressful for the first couple of days, however everything is all good now, because the iPads finally came in! The beginning of this week was fun, last Sunday was hilarious, we didn't have time to sing Happy Birthday to our mission nurse last Saturday, which was her actual birthday, and so we decided to do it unexpectedly last Sunday. We showed up to her house with an almost broken/destroyed ukelele, then threw rocks at her window until we got her attention, and proceeded to sing a Tahitian birthday song in French while playing the ukelele, then at the very end, my companion smashed the ukelele on the sidewalk without further ado. Her face was smiling and laughing through the song, but was absolutely priceless when he busted the uke on the sidewalk. We were all laughing hysterically, and so she came down and we laughed and talked for a while so she could take a picture of us with the busted uke. It was a blast. After that we had a dinner appointment with one of the members, so all in all it was a fantastic day. The week was stressful for the first little bit though, we had received from church headquarters an estimated date of the iPad's arrival on Monday, and so we had made plans for all the Zone Trainings, surrounding that date, where we would hand out the iPads. Unfortunately, they didn't come Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday. 

Good bye to the ukelele. 

Long story short, we had to cancel a few events, and then if the iPads hadn't come this week, lots and lots of events would have been wasted, and many things would have been put on hold. Yesterday, Friday, was the last day the iPads could come in, and they didn't come in the morning, nor all the way up until 4 oclock. The whole week before this my companion Elder Taylor had been digging, making hundreds of calls, and doing everything and anything possible in our power to find out where they were and how quickly we could get them here. Finally, at 4 o'clock in the afternoon yesterday, we get a call from a random shipping company asking us when the best day would be to make the delivery next week. Almost breathless, my companion asked if we could come get them ourselves that day. They said yes, if we could get out there in the next 3 hours. After two and a half frantic hours of running home, grabbing the car, unloading different things to make space, and driving in super thick Friday afternoon traffic, we made it there half an hour before closing time. We now have the iPads, and will now spend the first part of next week in the car traveling around the south of France delivering them to different Zone Trainings. It was a fun week. On a more spiritual note, on Thursday, we had a cool experience. At the end of the day, after we had gotten all our office work done and had waited until we felt comfortable leaving, in case the iPads showed up, we only had one hour left where we could work. We were all exhausted, worn out, stressed, and cranky for different reasons. The last thing we wanted to do was go out contacting, and try to find people, however that was the only thing we had any time to do in our circumstances. Reluctantly, we left the office, and started contacting. However, almost miraculously, as we stepped outside, started walking, breathing fresh air, and talking to people, all of our spirits lifted immensely. It felt like everyone wanted to talk to us, we had a ton of great conversations, and gave out lots of cards and numbers. When we finally had to go home, none of us really wanted to we were having so much fun. It was great for me to remember that when we go that little extra bit when we feel like doing anything else but that, the Lord will bless us in great ways. I hope everyone has a great week, and starts their summer off with some fun!

I love technology. 

This week was a lot of fun for me, even though I didn't get to go out all over the country like I thought I would. Because it's really hard to catch up on all the office work the longer we stay out of the office, we decided last minute that I would stay behind and stay with the Zone Leaders of Ecully, who live in my secteur, and work with them, or be in the office on "exchange" with the husband of the senior couple who works there. It worked out fine, I was able to get a lot of work done while they were gone, stuff that I really needed to do, and I got to go on kind of an exchange with the Ecully ZLs, which was a lot of fun, I learned a lot from them. One of the coolest parts about getting to stay behind though was that I got to hear the testimony of my Zone Leader during the Zone Training where we handed out the iPads, his last testimony before going home. It was powerful, and one of my favorite things that I really remarked on was at the end, he said he hadn't seen a vision, he didn't know with solid indisputable evidence that God lived, but he knew that this gospel is good. He knew that, because he felt so good while teaching it. It made me really reflect on what a blessing I have in my life. It was a very great experience, something I think I'll remember for a while. Sorry this email is pretty short, the rest of the week was fairly unexciting, we caught up with all our office work. I hope everybody gets to think on the many blessing that we have in our lives, they surprise us I think, when we think about them. Have a great everybody, au revoir!