CHaNgEs

Coucou mes amis et ma famille!!

       I know I say this literally every week but wow this week was so eventful I don't even know where to start. Obviously, our missionaries have experienced some pretty crazy changes while they've been on their missions. I don't know what type of spiritual high President Nelson is on, but I have a feeling that my mission is going to be filled with changes. Three months in and the temple has changed, missionary calling rules have changed, heck we have two hour church?! I'm so ready for whatever President Nelson is about to do next. He is every mom's favorite prophet right now.

       So yeah, I called my family and the only time it works is at 6 in the morning their time but that's okay HA...I can talk to my mom all day. Today I just called her on our walk to the Versailles Castle (pics next week ) and it definitely makes me feel a little more at home to know I can talk to them every single week. It makes me want to work harder so I can share everything with them face to face. At first I was a little worried about the change because I feel a lot of missionaries learn independence and can focus better when families are not involved, but of course I also understand how this can positively influence missionary work. After they announced this, a sister in the Center just started bawling because one of her brothers is autistic and could never type letters to her. God knows what he's doing and this change is just proof of his love for us.

       Which brings me to the next ~inspired~ change I encountered this week. Yeah so last week I just went on and on about online teaching and how amazing it is, right? Well, this week, the director of online teaching came to our center and discontinued it HA. The reason is because Rome has a new temple, and their Visitor's Center is getting 24 new sisters. Already, most of the people we teach have different time zones, so they don't really need all of us online in Europe. Which means!!!!! I have only 2 days in the Center now and I get to do hecka finding (my favorite thing in the world). A lot of the Sœurs were pretty sad because truly online teaching is so so effective, but I know it's still being done...just by other Sisters. I'm okay with it and I'm excited to do more proselyting all over Paris. I also love my time in the Center because we can always help strengthen the members and it feels like home, so I'm glad I get to do both.

       About this week, I was a father! That's what it's called when we take new missionaries out finding but we're not technically their trainor. It was wild because I've only been here three weeks and suddenly I'm taking this brand new missionary out to talk to strangers in French. Usually I'm not the leader of the conversation, but this time it was me and I was all handing out temple cards and teaching this bright-eyed lil blue how to talk to strangers. It was super fun and then I had dinner with all the blues and my comp because I never got the classic blue dinner ( I showed up to Paris all alone and they forgot me at the airport lol...don't worry all is well. My survival French helped me call the mission office). Anyway, so we got three new Sisters at the Center and I love all of them. We all stay in the same 3 apartments so it's a party every night (after we do areabook calls and work okay, we are hard working missionaries I promise).

      So Valentine's Day was this week and I was a little sad because apparently the French don't celebrate holidays. But me and my companion decided NO we will not stand for this, and we are going to do something. So there's this store in France called "Picard" and Sœur Ethington has an aneurysm every time we so much as drive past it. It's all frozen food but like ~super classy French frozen food~ and they have super cool cakes and dinners and stuff. So we bought a GIANT raspberry cake and brought it back and hid it under thirty layers of aluminum foil so the other Sisters didn't find it. And on Valentine's Day, we whipped it out and the other Sœurs nearly cried they were so happy (not quite sure why because we celebrated four birthdays this week with cake HA). But yeah, that was our Valentine's Day and it was a party.

Le Chesnay. I am so lucky I get to go finding here every day.

O' Tacos. The Elders NEVER stop talking about this place and how amazing it is, and all the Sisters warn me that it is the worst thing I could ever eat. So what do I do? I go there because I need to experience it for myself. And lemme tell you it does not deserve to be called a taco. What I am holding is Cordon Bleu and beef in a flour tortilla with about thirty pounds of spicy cheese sauce. The light in my eyes, that's because I haven't tasted it yet. 

Lil French cottage. These houses are IMPOSSIBLE to get into because they all have gates. So we just look at them and say "that's nice" and then go finding somewhere else. It's rare for somewhere this nice to even answer their gate.

President's kids go to school here. I think they practice wizardry 

Just a rondaboot HA that's how the Soeurs say roundabout now because my first week I had a hard time switching between French and English, so that's how I said it lol Anyway, this memorial is to remember the French wars and we drive by it every day.

We have this little thing we do where we buy random things we don't need. This is our "cookies of the week". Also pastry of the week: Pistachio Eclair. I don't have a picture but it's a bright green long pastry that looks like it's filled with guacamole. But it's pistachio cream and it is so so bomb.

First day the temple has been open since I got here. I didn't take this picture but like seriously the Paris temple is beautiful. There's blue stained glass everywhere and the chandeliers are gorgeous and look like little rainbows when the sun is out. You can look at more pics on lds.org

Bisous tout le monde!!

Sœur McOmber