More fun bug stories

Dear family and friends,

This week has been pretty interesting. The work has been moving a little slowly, but that is because it is vacation month in France, so the entire country has closed down their shops and such and are off doing nonportequoi (I love that word) in other places besides here. But weather has been fantastic, I haven't needed to drive yet and the ward is amazing. One fun thing that happened this week is, while we were driving back to the apartment (it was dark at that point), we were driving on a little road with cornfields on either side and the headlight suddenly illuminated this figure. It was a tall guy covered in reflector gear, wearing an oversized biking helmet and carrying a giant pitchfork. He was just standing at the side of the road, staring forwards. We saw him for just one second and then we drove past. Very interesting and creepy. At another point this week, we were going door to door/porting ( gotta love the french missionary lingo) and we were about to knock on this one door and suddenly we heard sombody say, Coocoo. French people say that all the time but it scared us half to death seeing at it was coming from a dark corner of the garden. it was just an nice old lady, but we were a little jumpy for a while after that. But she offered us a drink and we sat in her garden for a while and chatted. Just having a quick glass of lemonade in this gazebo covered in roses in a french village in the middle of the mountains. Just your everyday kind of thing. :)

By our apartment, there is a ski lift that goes up the mountain behind us, but we can never go on it because it only runs on Saturdays and our pday is on monday. But, one day, while we were looking for houses to port, we took a wrong turn and found ourselves at the top of the ski lift, in a little village, overlooking this gorgeous valley. It was absurdly green and you could hear the bells from the cows they had roaming the sides of the mountain. We now know where we are going for next pday. I know, every week I talk about how gorgeous it is here, but you would be talking about it constantly too, I promise.

But we discovered something not so pretty just yesterday. I have lice. I do not recommend it. We think that I got it while I was in St Etienne, because my head was itching then and it has been since. But I never considered that it would be lice or rather I didnt want to consider it. Then yesterday, I was sitting studying, when after scratching my head, I looked at my hand and found a bug that I didnt recgonize hanging on for dear life to my finger. I stared at it for a little bit, then called the sisters over and they stared at it together for a bit and then we looked at my hair. We came to the conclusion, that I might have lice. We then called the mission president's wife, who described what it looks like and what to do and we came to the conclusion that I probably have lice. And then we went to a member's house, whose children had lice at some point and she looked at my hair and said, yep thats lice.  And my companion has some too. The member gave us her lice comb and told us to use vinegar to wash our hair and to wash all our clothes ans sheets. Which we have been working on since then. So a pretty wacky mission experience. And I know how to get rid of lice now. I never expected to learn that on my mission. I'm so glad that I am not freaked out by bugs. That would be hard.

So a pretty exciting week.

I'm pretty excited for a nap today.

I love you all! God loves you! Despite lice, I am so grateful for the chance to be here serving the Lord! Any thing is possible with faith in the Lord! Trust Him!

Je vous aime!!

Soeur Russell