We had an almost-crisis last night as we were going to our apartment. Let me explain our apartment building to you. We live up on the seventh floor, and there's a spiral staircase that wraps around a small elevator going up to the top. The elevator is 100 years old and is essentially a wooden box/cage pulled by a metal cord and enclosed in a column of chain-link fence up to the top. It has a maximum limit of three people, so when all four of us go up or down, I usually volunteer to take the stairs so we don't break it again. This was the case last night, and I made it to the top before everyone else. Elder Dussere, Elder Price and Elder Christensen came up in the wooden death box, but the elevator decided not to stop at the seventh floor and kept going up. FYI, the seventh floor is the top floor, so they were stuck in a stopped elevator seven stories up without any way to open the doors.
Elder Price freaked out Elder Dussere by shaking the elevator in hopes of getting it un-stuck, and I started running to lower levels in hopes of calling it down to a normal level. I couldn't help but laugh to myself the whole time, but they didn't find it so funny. Elder Dussere eventually figured out how to climb out of the elevator, but it's still stuck up there on the 7 1/2th floor.
The second adventure happened on Saturday while we were moving furniture around in Compiegne, north of Paris. We got a phone call from the other Versailles Elders, asking if we would be able to take them to the hospital. One of them had some kind of infection in his mouth, so we had to take them to dental urgent care. We finished up in Compiegne as fast as we could, but still didn't get back to Versailles until around 7:30 pm.
We started by taking them to the hospital next to the temple site close to Versailles, but they didn't have anyone who could help with a dental problem. From there, we went to the American hospital in Paris, who told us the same thing and referred us to a third hospital. At this point, it was close to 9:30, so we called Sister Poznanski to double-check and see if we could go, then went to the other side of the city to the third hospital. We got a little spoiled as we drove around the Arc de Triomphe, down the Champs Elysées, around the place de la Concorde, down by the Seine, past the Conciergerie, and in front of Notre Dame all while they were lit up for the night. I had a little reality check after I inwardly complained that I was hungry. Anyway, the third hospital finally accepted us, wrote up a prescription for medication, pat us on the head and sent us out the door with a list of pharmacies open late at night.
After finding the pharmacy, getting the medicine, and stopping at McDonald's at midnight since no one had eaten that day, we drove home and crawled into bed at close to 1:00 am. After waking up at 4:45 am to go to the airport two days before, the lack of sleep started to catch up with us on Sunday, but we made it through church the next day without falling asleep and everyone is still living! That's a success in my book.
Alright, I have to tell you guys something. Because we had staff meeting and had to go to the dump on Monday, we took P-day on Wednesday instead. We went to the Musée D'Orsay in Paris and saw a bunch of Monet, Van Gogh, Lautrec, and other famous paintings. Yeah, yeah, big deal. Besides that, we went and got real-life BURRITOS. We found the Chipotle in Paris and bought ourselves a big serving of Mexican food. The last time I had Mexican food was 18 months ago in the Salt Lake Airport after going to San Francisco for my visa. It was a big deal, I tell ya. SO awesome.
Seriously though, the paintings were really cool too. I probably liked it more than the Louvre. We weren't supposed to take pictures, but we didn't find out until halfway through. Oops. Still snagged a few though.
Well, I guess I'll also report that we went to the airport twice to drop off missionaries, I learned how to make some really good omelettes, we donated a bunch of furniture to a cool place kind of like a European DI and we went to Amiens and Compiegne twice.
After re-reading what I wrote, you probably all think that we don't do any work at all. I promise we did some tracting and lots of other productive things. Anyway.
It's Fast Sunday this week, so remember to brush your teeth extra well in the morning. Skipping breakfast does NOT give you license to also skip your toothbrush. Quite the contrary.
Amicalement,
Elder Wilson
