Fooled You!

oh hey there! so you definitely thought i wasn't going to write this week didn't you? fooled you! our district leader told us that it was mandatory to write an email to our family each week, so here i am! but i don't have much time at all, so it's gonna be super quick. paris was so amazing as usual. we saw sacré coeur and notre dame and it was just magical. there are honestly so many cool things here. it's stellar. so anyway, this week was pretty slow. we had interviews with the president, and that was in metz, which is about 3 hours away, so we wasted about one and a half days with that. well not wasted, but it kind of felt like it, just because we sat around for a lot of the day until we got to finally talk to president. but it was good. he said he was impressed with my french, but i think he just tells that to everyone to make them feel good about themselves. but honestly, the think that i want more than anything in the world right now is a native french speaker for a companion. i could learn sooooooooo much. because here in mulhouse, we don't get all that much practice to talk with real francophones... we don't teach all that many lessons, so it's kind of hard. the only real time we get to talk to them is at church. i just want to be fluent so bad so that i can communicate with the people easily so that i can be the best missionary that i can be... but anyway, story for the week! we definitely taught someone, AND fixed a return visit! i don't know if i've told you about that man that we met that was french and married a phillipino and has the cutest little daughter in the world (except clara,calm down everyone) but we taught them this week! and it was a lesson in english too haha. what are the chances right? but it was super good. but i'm out of time today so i'll write next week! love you all! buhbye!

BONJOUR!!!!

BONJOUR!!!!

 

ça va mes amis?? so i don't know if you've forgotten yet, but i'm in france. just thought i'd give you a little reminder haha. no but really! life is all sorts of exciting. so to start off, my thoughts for this week are as follows. french keyboards are still terrible, but i'm getting better so it's not taking so much time. bad news about that is that i'm going to return home and be used to a french keyboard and then my typing will be back at 5 wpm. wince. but whatevers. so here's the thing. mulhouse is very muslim. and that's a definite bummer for us. because number one, they are kind of rude. the kids i mean. they think they are pretty funny and stuff and they like showing off, but...... yeah.... the older ones are nice though! and it turns out they really like americans. most people here, when we tell them that we are from america, they ask us what the heck we are doing in france then, because america is so much better. viva l'amerique! haha but yeah secondly, we can' teach them. strictly forbidden. we can talk to them all we want, but it's actually a danger to their lives if we teach them. because part of being a muslim, means that you won't change religions. it's punishable by death. so if they ever plan on returning to their home country, or have relatives there or anything, then they are in serious trouble if they convert to a different religion. frankly it's kind of sad and super scary, but that's life i guess. so yeah.... anyway, thirdly, guess what the word for a transfer in french is? you call it a mutation haha. so i'm going to be mutated like 16 times before i leave france. yeah. wolverine is going to look like such a pansy when i get back haha. also, no email next week. i HAVE to go to paris for p-day.... so i'm not going to be able to. no really i'm so excited to go back there. but yeah we have to go there to do my legality. i have to go to a doctors appointment and then get my legality here in france worked out so that i can stay for another year. then i get to do it again in another year haha. but that's the price you have to pay to live in france i guess. besides, i get to do it in paris. so excited. but yeah so i'm not going to have time next week to write, but just remember that i still love you all k? k.

 

so yeah, this week was pretty hard... we worked really hard, but we have nothing to show for it. remember that catholic family that i told you about last time? yeah, we have had no luck with them. we have honestly made like 5 trips to their house this week, and their dad, the one that we want to talk to, has never been home..... so that's pretty depressing. especially since it takes like 30 minutes to get to their house, so it's like an hour of wasted time. but still, we are going to keep trying, and maybe one day we're going to be able to teach them. we did find out though that they have at least 3 children, one older than us, one a little younger, and then the young boy. we found this out from stalking them. we're getting good at it haha. and yes, that's honestly how it feels now with them. we're just the creepy americans that show up in their neighborhood every day. but yeah so anyway, we taught 3 lessons this week. and that's it. one was to our eternal amis, aka they just keep getting lessons, and they are going to get baptized eventually i think, but not anytime soon. they are called joni and chérizad, and they are a super great couple with a super cute little daughter, but they aren't married yet ha..... so yeah, one day they will. cause they come to church and they are good friends with the bishop and such, it's just a matter of waiting i think. so yeah, the other lesson was to this random man on the street, but he thinks we are crazy now, because we taught him the restoration and so yeah... that was fun. oh also, this week, we've done a lot of just contacting like i said i think, and we've actually found a decent amount of people that have given us their numbers to call, but when we actually do call them, they have either blocked our number, or they just don't answer. so it's kinda a really discouraging. i wish they would just not give us their number and say that they aren't interested ha. that'd be a lot easier. but yeah, so we're gonna keep on working hard, so hopefully in two weeks when i write you, i'll have a great success story. cross your fingers. or better yet, pray.  but yeah, one last happy story before i go. so on saturday, we were doing some street contacting (as usual haha) and we walked over to the basin, which is the usual route, because there usually are people relaxing there or just going for a walk, so they don't have the i'm too busy excuse. but yeah anyway, we ended up finding this guy, he's french, and he married a phillipino girl, and they have the cutest little daughter, so we talked to him for awhile just to get to know him or whatever, and he is so nice. so we found out that he is moving in a little, to just the other side of our area, so we offered him our help if he ever needed, and we reallllllly hope that he takes us up on that offer. but yeah anyway, so we exchanged numbers, and we're planning on calling him on monday to see if we can fix a rendez-vous! i'm super excited. he's so cool. but yeah anyway, on sunday, we decided to take the same route again, and guess who we saw? yup, the same guy with his cute little daughter. she's super shy though, so hopefully we can get over that haha. but yeah so we just talked a little bit with him again and he was still really nice! so i'll tell you all about his baptismal date in a couple of weeks haha. so yeah i honestly can't wait to teach him. or just serve him. or anything i just want to do something useful instead of just contacting all the time haha. but yeah, life is good over here. it's hard sometimes, but that's life right? there are always the good times to make up for it. (hopefully) but elder coleman and i have a lot of fun together, so it's good. but yeah, france is great, hope everything is going well back in les etats unis! i love you all and hope you are doing just splendid! buhbye!

 

ps cool address right? i'm learning how to use technology! haha

--

Elder Matthew Meyers

2 Rue Guillaume Tell

68100 Mulhouse

La France

week 2 in MULHOUSE!

Bonjour mes amis!

 

comment ça va?? vous allez bien? how is everyone? so it's my second week in france! second week in mulhouse. and it's pretty exciting. i'm not going to lie, the first week was super hard. it's hard getting used to the missionary life. the mtc prepares you for a lot of things, but not really for the mission life. it's so much different than the mtc. you actually do things with your day instead of just studying haha. so anyway, this week was good. the mindset that i kinda have to keep is that this is life. my mission is all that matters, because a lot of the time i find myself thinking about after the mission and other stuff like that that is important, but not at the moment. so when i forget about that and honestly just do what president hinckley said and forget yourself and go to work, it's a lot easier and i'm a more effective missionary. oh so also, here are my profound thoughts for the week.  Beavers are gross. i've never seen them before, but we have some that live in the basin next to us, and they are disgusting. i finally know how they filmed the scene in Princess Bride with the ROUS (editors note: Rodents of Unusual Size). they just used a beaver. because that's exactly what they look like. so gross. ROUS ftw haha. next, funny fact, every box of cigarettes that you buy here, has on it "fumer tue" in huge letters. which litterally means, smoking kills haha. so they have that on every box of cigarettes that you can buy, just as a reminder to everyone that they are going to die if they continue being dumb and smoking. too bad it doesn't help anyone... everyone here still smokes. viva la france ha. third, the malk (editors note: milk) here is terrible! no not really, but it's kinda weird. you don't even have to refridgerate it. kinda gross, but it's whatevs. silly malk. so yeah, anyway, here is what i did this week.

 

Monday

this was last p-day, and we actually went to the train museum. cool huh? haha it was actually pretty lame... i discovered that day that i wasn't really a train guy. trains don't do much for me. but cool fact of the day, i don't know if i told you this last email or not, but the fastest train in the world, or at least the one that holds the world record, is called the TGV. and we have riden on a couple of them. the world record is 574.8 km/h. that's fast. but yeah we went there with the rest of our district, which is colmar and belfort. you can look those up on a map if you want. and we shopped and stuff which was fun, since we literally had nothing in the fridge to eat. but don't fret, we're stocked up now. and me and elder coleman, as it turns out, are such amazing cooks. we're thinking about going famous. we're going to make a cook book too. we're going to call it "how to cook AND enjoy your lunch hour", because all of our recipes take less than like 30 minutes. we're kinda cool. also, speaking of which, mom, do you perchance want to send me a cookbook, or just a couple of recipes at least? because we got a cookbook for our mission, but it kinda gets boring after awhile, we need fresh meat. just recipes like soggy bottom biscuits or texas sheet cake and garlick mashed potatoes and just everything!

 

Tuesday

We had district meeting this day. we learned some stuff about how to begin teaching, and then we ate lunch after. twas great. then after this, i went on exchanges with the DL. named elder aarif. so i went to colmar, and honestly, it was so pretty! it's like super alsacian there which is the name of this part of france, and it's just a cute little tourist town. i didn't take any pictures though since we were contacting and i didn't want to look like a tourist. but it was super cool. anyway, we did some contacting for awhile, and then we went to a lesson. the lady that we taught though, funny story. so she is married to a member, and i guess essentially, she set her own baptismal date. the missionaries honestly did nothing. so we were kinda just teaching random stuff that she should know before baptism because she honestly pretty much knew everything else. so we taught about temple work and geneology. it was a good lesson and it was cool to be with someone else that could speak french well to learn some new things. then we went home and ate crepes for dinner and it was simply magical.

 

wednesday

i woke at the usual time and did some studies and then boarded a train back to mulhouse.  then we ate some lunch and did some contacting. yes if you are wondering, that is mostly what we do each day, and no, most of the time, it's not too effective. but then after, we went to teach a lesson to someone we found on a random paper that said calls for august, but we had no other record of her. her name was cécil, and she was a true african. she wore boo boos just like a real african does. super cool. but she was great. i guess she had met with the missionaries before so we kind of just retaught the restoration. she is an evangelist and her husband had heard a lot of good things about the church, and i guess he had a lot of questions, so next time we teach her, we are going to teach them both, because he wasn't there today. anyway, we talked for awhile and then taught our short restoration review, and then gave her a soft invitation, as in when you come to know these things are true, will you be baptized. and at first she didn't understand it, because she said she had already been baptized in her church, so we tried, as delicately as we could, to explain that it wasn't exactly valid, but it was good, and it's honestly a super hard subject to talk about, because you really don't want to offend them, but you have to make them understand the priesthood. but anyway, we think she took it well and said that if she knows these things are true, she would. so we'll see if that goes anywhere. then next we taught joni and cherazad. then are a couple that are just a great couple, with a cute little daughter than is around 2 i think, the only problem is that they aren't married yet. so today we talked about that. we brought a member, frere mortz with us, and honestly, we didn't say anything the whole time. he completely taught the whole lesson. i guess that's just the kind of guy that he is. It was a good lesson overall. so hopefully that affected them in the right way. but that's mostly all this day. oh side note, my comprehension has improved soooo much this week. i'm getting used to the super fast talking, so i can actually understand most of the conversations now! it's great. there are always words that i don't quite understand, but i can usually understand most of it. it's so much better. God really does answer prayers, because the first week, i was so frustrated, but i prayed for that, and it came so much quicker than i expected. woo haha.

 

thursday

so we woke up and did some studying, and then we did some contacting, and then we went to the durand famille for lunch, and they are great. they a couple, probably in around their fifties, whose kids are all gone and married, some in the states, but they love missionaries. they are super nice too. so we ate with them for awhile, for like 2 hours actually, because here, you don't eat quickly. so you kind of just have to go with it. it was super good though. then after that we headed home, and were kinda bleh that we had had like no success. so what we did, is decided to get the Lord involved. so we prayed and asked him to lead us where we needed to go to find people who were ready for the gospel. and we did that right in front of the map, and we both had the same feeling about where we should go. so we then hopped on a bus and contacted whoever we stood next to, and then got off, and did porting in the neighborhood that we ended up in. and yeah, the public transportations here is amazing. it's honestly so good and nice. that is one thing that france has down. they have tons of buses and also 3 tram lines. it's great. so i got a pass for 37 euros when i got here and now we ride it everyday so often. it's great. but anyway, back to the story, we did porting (editors note: tracting? ) in the area, and no real success, but we get back to the bus stop, and do one last house before we leave. a little boy answers the door, and so we say hi is your papa there and he goes and gets him. they were a super cute family. they were catholic, but they said that they would listen to our message, but they didn't have time now, so come back another day around 4. it was terrif. anyway, to make a long story short, we ended up getting 3 new contacts that day! it's amazing what happens when you really ask the lord with faith.

 

friday

i'm getting bored of writing and stuff so i'm just going to tell the highlight. we had a RDV (rendez-vous) with someone in the morning at our church, so we get on the tram and head that direction. we are on it, and on the first stop, a lady with a stroller hops on and sits right next to me. and elder coleman was sitting a couple of seats away, so it was just me. so i started a conversation, just about her and her son, who was super cute, and it turns out he is 20 months, and so i told her i had a niece that was almost that age and we just talked about that for awhile, and then i changed the subject to why i was here and such, and i told her we had a message about jesus christ that maybe we could share? and she said she had to get off the next stop, so i asked if we could just exchange numbers and we could call her later to set up a rdv. and she said YES! and i did it all by myself. it was super great.

 

saturday

we taught 2 lessons which was cool.

 

sunday

oh boy, what a day. we had stake conference in nancy, so we got on a train at 710am to go there. we meet up with the other elders in our district and head out. we get about halfway there, and we are jsut sitting there, and then out of nowhere, we hear something, and then it sounds like rocks are flying up and hitting the train. so that was weird. but then the train stops like 5 seconds later, and i guess as it turns out, someone had jumped in front of our train..... so then we sat there for awhile just waiting for them to do whatever they do, and then we went to the closest station and waited another hour for another train, and to make a long story short, we completely missed stake conference. it started at 1030 and we didn't get there until 1ish. and our train back was at 2. so honstely the whole day we were just on a train. and i guess that kind of thing happens often around here... but yeah, you can edit out this story if you think it's too graphic or whatever. but yeah, so that was interesting.

 

so yeah, that's all, time to go shopping! love you all!

 

elder meyers

 

ps, i wrote this all with a french keyboard. be proud

 

Jesus Loves You!

 We Live on the left end

 Nice building and super-cool tram

Meeting House in Mulhouse

pictures! and a better email haha

Okay hi! so this is me writting later because i felt bad for what i wrote earlier haha. HI! don't worry, i'm here at the church right now loading photos and sending them, so i can change it into a english keyboard! how great right? right. anyway, i'm just going to give you a little overview of my week. and you can just throw out my last email haha. i was a little frustrated if you couldn't tell.

Monday: i was still at the mtc. boo. getting on a plane though!

Tuesday: i arrived in france! what?? yeah. super cool. paris is so cool. i sent a picture of the eiffel tower, and honestly, it's so amazing! that was wednesday though, i'm getting ahead of myself. i think i already told you about tuesday though in my email on tuesday... or something.... hopefully haha

Wednesday: first, we started out the day by president telling us where we were going! i'm going to Mulhouse if you didn't know from my last broken email. then after that, i met my trainer! Elder coleman. he's a super cool kid and i'm already learning all sorts of things from him.  next, we toured paris! or at least as much as we could in the little time that we had before we had to go to mulhouse. but we made it to the eiffel tower, which is all that really matters, and it was soooooooooooooooo cool. it's so big! especially since there aren't really any other big buildings around, so the contrast is super cool too. then we got on a train from PARIS EST, and headed to Metz, where we stayed for the night, because elder coleman had left some stuff there and we couldn't get home before 1030, so we stayed the night. metz is super cool. the architecture is beautiful. so beautiful. i really want to live in europe one day now haha.  but yeah we got there and stayed with elder crump, which is actually my grandpa! he trained my dad, elder coleman. cute huh? i know for sure.  so we ate some crepes that we made and then went to bed

Thursday:  we woke up early (as usual) and headed to the train station to catch our train to mulhouse.  that took a couple of hours, but then we were here! not going to lie, compared to metz, i wasn't really impressed haha. but it was cool anyway. it's not the prettiest city in the world, but it's not bad at all. i love europe. it's so cool. so we did some stuff and whatever, and it was cool. but i'm kind of out of time for the day. i need to go do some contacting! which is always okay haha. so i'm sorry i can't finish this, but it's all in my journal, so maybe i'll send it to you one day.

we've taught 6 lessons so far, mostly to uninterested people, but we still are keeping our hopes up that we'll find a golden investigator.  french is kind of hard, they speak so fast, so i'm usually pretty quiet because i don't want to embarrass myself, but i think i just need to get over it and go for it. make a fool of myslef haha. because the more i practice, the better i'll get. the problem is that i can ask them something, but most of the time i can't understand what they're saying back because they speak so fast. i'm just going to have to invest in a sign that i can wear around my neck that says i'm a stupid american, talk slowly haha. but yeah!

just know that i'm doing well and everything is terrific here. i hope all of you are doing fine and not typing on french keyboards, cause that's the worst. love you all and i'll see you soonish!  buy.

elder meyers

The Eiffel Tower

French Pastries... yum!

France Paris Mission Map

Our Apartment Building

Elder Coleman and Elder Meyers

MULHOUSE! (pronounced like toulouse but with an m)

so here's the thing. i hate french keyboards. i feel like i'm seven again and i'm just learning how to type. i have to look at the keyboard as i type and it's the worst. i tried to change it to english but this computer wont let me. it's the worst. i dare you to write me back with your keyboard switched to french just so you can know how frustrating it is haha. anyway! as you may have already heard, i'm in mulhouse!  it's all sorts of exciting. it's almost the furthest east area in the mission. we are right there next to germany and switzerland, and i guess this place has been owned by both germany and france multiple times so it's kinda interesting to say the least. we are in the alsace region, which is just kinda a weird place. but it's cool. so let's see. so many things have happened this week. okay is it okay if i just write to you with the french keyboqrd qs qn english keyboqrd? qnd you Can trqnslqte it back? cause i'm getting super frustrated and i have a lot to say. anyway. so first dqy here. i think i already told you about. but second day. ze got assigned our qreqs qnd they gqve us our companions. it was all sorts of exciting. my companion qs you probably qlreqdy heqrd, is elder coleman. he's q greqt kid. he's from mqrylqnd, zhich is exciting haha, but he's greqt. he's been here for almost a yeqr now, in december. his french is good and he can understand everything, although his accent is a little american and he doesn't talk as fast as they do yet, but overall he's great.he's a good kid, and honestly, i don't knoz all that much about him yet because whenever ze tqlk, ze tqlk in french, so thqt's kindq q chqllenge haha. he plqyed soccer in highschool qnd rqn trqck, so he pqsses in my book. let's see, so lqter todqy, i'll probqbly send you the mqp of our ,ission. elder coleman hqd one, so i'll email that to you later if i get a chnce. so guess zhqt? it turns out thqt the ,ost co,,on nq,e here is ,eyer hqhq. so everyone thqt i tqlk to just zqlks up to ,e qnd tell ,e thqt ,y nq,e is the ,ost co,,on nq,e qround here, except zithout the s, I've honestly heqrd that like 10 ti,es. i sure hope that you can understand this. cquse itùs frustrqting hqhq.

so zednesdqy, ze definqtely sqz the eifffel tozer: it zqs so cool: iùll ,qybe send you pictures lqter: qnd iù, getting ,ore qnd ,ore lqwy qs i go qlong if you couldnùt tell: cquse iù, getting ,ore qnd ,ore frustrqted: but k: tuesdqy zqs good: ze sqz the eiffel tozer qnd then ze just zqlked in pqris q little bit; but ze hqd to be going; so ze got on our trqin qnd zere off; ze couldnùt get q trqin thqt took us here; so ze stqyed in Metz for the night. thqt zqs qctuqlly zqy cool; thqt city is so bequtiful: and then thurday we went took another train and arrrived at home! woo! our apartment is cool, and not too beat up haha. so just a heads up, i'm probably going to be a terrible letter/email writer. cause honestly right now this is so much worse than tracting. it takes so long and i really don't want to do it. just a heads up. but yeah. i hope everyone is doing well, but i'm done writing for today. i just really don't want to right now. so yeah you probably shouldn't send this on to anyone else cause there's nothing really in it. maybe i'll just write a letter. but yeah. i'm doing well and life is good. it's kind of hard and frustrating sometimes because i can't speak french as well as i'd like to, but overall it's going pretty well. but yeah, i love you all and i hope you're doing well. slater!

 

Elder Meyers

 

 

oh yeah, so my address is now

 

Elder Meyers

2 Rue Guillaume Tell

68100 MULHOUSE

La France