no one should be sick on their birthday....

January 10, 2011
Dear Family,

I'm 23! Kinda weird.

So the big day...early this last week I got a really bad head cold and could hardly stand to walk, I felt soooo sick. I was still sick on my birthday, sad day. I woke up around 10 and turney made me pancakes and then around 1 or so, I went back to bed until 4. While I was awake the first time, we noticed a slight drip coming from our water heater, so we called the office and they scheduled a repairman to come out the next night. We went to Yue's and talked to her about repentance, we are teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. She really liked the idea of repentance and the change that it brings into our lives and how Jesus Christ can help us. She gave me a hankie with panda bears on it :)
We went home to a flooded kitchen :/ I called the elder in charge of apartments and he didn't answer his phone so I left a message that our kitchen was flooded. Then the birthday calls started coming in and in the midst of it I am trying to figure out what to do with this leak that is now a steady stream of water...I get a hold of the old greffier and he is giving me tips while the new one is calling me, about 945 at night. The new greffier says that he is coming out and so we had to stay up and wait for him....he gets to our apartment about an hour later and looks around a bit to find that a small hose or pipe or whatever had come loose and so we were able to stop the leak. That was my exciting birthday :) Today we are getting fancy hot chocolate and patisseries in Paris with some other missionaries.

On Wednesday we went to teach our ami Ngwang and her friends Annie. We talked about the life of Jesus Christ and different things that He did and we watched "Finding Faith in Christ." it is kind of hard with the language barrier, but they really want to learn about the "Jesus tradition." they keep relating it to Buddha and I was able to talk with the Chinese elders about how to help them differentiate between Jesus and Buddha. This week are going over for a traditional Tibetan lunch :)

We saw Nathaly this week and she told us that this Friday she is moving to LILLE! Of all places! I am bummed that she is moving so far away, but I feel like it will be really good for her. The ward there is smaller and all during the lesson I was thinking of different members that would be so good to teach her with. We talked about the plan of salvation with a member and it was so good! Nathaly really opened up and asked him a lot of good questions and it was really good!

Fatilha was last night, we saw her with a member named Marianne who is from New Zealand and it was such a good lesson! Marianne really worked with us in the lesson and help explain things to Fatilha. I think we are going to take Marianne with us every week and she is really excited to work with us :) She served a mission a long time ago and told me at church yesterday that she wants to get more available so that she can work with us.

We didn't go to the visitor center last week because there was no electricity :/ It is back up and running and this week we have a rendezvous’ with someone named Pedro that the elders of St.Ouen found. One of the elders served up in Lille and told me that Pedro reminds him of Xavier. So naturally I am VERY excited for that :)

The health has returned and this is going to be a good week and TONS of work!

Last p-day we went to the Church of the Madeleine and it was beautiful. We then wandered around and ended up on the Champs-Elysées! It was cool to see the Arc de Triomphe and all the Christmas lights! The picture is me at the church of the Madeleine.

I love you!

camille