Being a "Sœur" Missionary

I have been wanting to write about my mission for a while, and I finally scanned a picture that I could include with my post. It is with Sœur Isola (now I know her as Bonnie DeGroff) and we were together for 3 months while we were in Orléans. We worked our tails off and we had a great time doing it.

She was my first companion that was NOT from Utah. It was so nice to be around someone that was from a different place. Luckily, she was also from California, just more up north. In this picture she is wearing my dress and I'm wearing hers. The car we're standing next to is a Mercedes, and the hood ornament is broken off. (we thought that was really funny) We would take pictures all the time. Crazy, fun pictures. One night we decided to put on makeup (which most sister missionaries in our mission did not do since we rode bikes most of the time and it rains a lot in France) and we took pictures of ourselves pretending to be models. We didn't do that all the time, but we did it to have a little bit of fun.

All of my comps up to S. Isola had been from Utah. Nothing against Utah, but some of these girls were a little strange. My trainer was from Beaver UT, and I don't think she had ever really left Utah before she went on her mission. I could be wrong though. She wasn't as bad as my companion from Parowan UT. If I never see her again, I will survive just fine.

I LOVED being a sister missionary. Maybe it was because I got to serve in France, a country that I had been dying to visit for years, and I was just so happy to be there. It was where I learned the most about who I was and what I was capable of. And being a missionary is cake compared to real life. You have money every month in your account; your companion changes every few months so you don't always have to be around them; you get to travel and meet new people; you don't have to worry about boys/girls and the stress of that; your job is talking about your religion and you go around bearing your testimony all the time; you get to read your scriptures for a long time everyday. It killed me to come home. I was never homesick for more than root beer and having a burger at In-n-out. I didn't mind not watching TV, or not listening to regular music. I didn't even mind riding my bike sometimes. Sometime I'll have to post a picture of me riding my bike in a dress with a helmet. It wasn't pretty.

Some of my experiences:
*having a short, hairy, greasy french man ask me and my companion to sleep with him and my companion saying "je ne suis pas facile!" (i'm not easy)
*singing cantiques (hymns) in centreville
*riding my bike by the Loire river during the summer and coming home and having to clean bugs out of underneath my shirt
*watching my trainer ride her bike into a car door that was opened right in front of her
*finding a family that wanted to hear more about the gospel and said that he felt the spirit while we were there
*accidentally going to Paris because we didn't know the train wasn't stopping at the trainstation in Centreville and getting free tickets home because we played the "dumb american". and president saying have a good time and just be on that train going back.
*eating live oysters and frog legs
There are so many many more that I could talk about, but I'm getting old, and I've been home for a long time now.

I met some of the greatest people on my mission. I still keep in contact with most of my companions. Except for the one from Parowan. She needs a post all to herself.

Last August while we were still in Germany, we went back to Orléans for 5 days and it was great.

I would go on a mission again in a second. When our kids are gone, that is what we'll be doing, sending in our papers and going on a mission. And hopefully I'll have a nametag that says "Sœur Holmes".