LDS Missionary: France Paris Mission

Rouen

The train began to pick up speed as it traveled from Alençon to Rouen. It had been an adventure already as I had to change trains in a small city named Argentan. I struggled getting my luggage off the train and back on the other one by myself as it required essentially two trips with the amount of stuff I brought on my mission. I now regretted having brought so much.

The train and its surroundings went dark as the train passed quickly through a tunnel. I sat in my seat and watched as the small towns and vast fields crossed through my tired gaze.

'I've got to be close,' I thought as I glanced down at the long ticket that read SNCF across the top. 'It says 12:36 is my arrival time. It's almost 12:30 now.'

The train went dark again and I watched as the train went through the darkness and slowly approached the light at the end. When the tunnel ended, I was shocked to see a giant cathedral protruding out of the middle of a bigger city. The steeple of the cathedral seemed to reach lightyears above any other building in the city.

"L'arrêt suivant: Rouen Rive Droite," the controller said over the train's intercom.

'This is Rouen?' I thought to myself. 'I'm going to like this city.'

I jumped up as the train came to a stop and grabbed my bags. There were two missionaries waiting for me as I jumped down from the train. Elder Walker, who I had already met when he served in Coutances. The other was Elder Ingram. I had only kind of met him once while I was at a stake conference last transfer in Caen. The Boixel sisters loved him when he had served in Alençon a while ago. They called him Gollum, because he could do a good Gollum impersonation from Lord of the Rings apparently.

Elder Ingram was just shorter than me with dark hair that was a little longer and parted like a typical missionary would wear. He spoke slowly with a country-style accent although he was from Riverton, Utah. His laugh was slow, loud and infectious that seemed to take over his entire body, leaving him motionless outside of the laughter. I found out later other missionaries devoted their time to just getting him to laugh.

"Hey, Elder Abel," Elder Ingram and Elder Walker said.

"Hey, guys," I said simply.

"How was the trip?" Elder Walker asked.

"How was Alençon?" Elder Ingram asked with a slight laugh.

"It was good," I said. "I was shocked to see Rouen though. That cathedral is huge. Alençon was good, really small compared to here though."

"Yeah," Elder Ingram said. "This is huge compared to Alençon. I served there also."

"I heard that you had from the Boixel sisters," I said. "They called you Gollum."

"Yeah," he replied with a loud laugh. "Man, they loved my Gollum impression. Let's get going to the apartment. We'll come back for Elder Whitecar in awhile."

"Wow! Rouen is big enough to have a metro?" I more exclaimed than I asked, as we left the gare and headed to the metros.

"Sure does," Elder Ingram said. "You're going to like Rouen a lot better than Alençon."

"Welcome to our apartment," Elder Ingram said.

It was a building that looked over the Seine river as it ran through Rouen and down to Paris. We lived a few floors up in the building. It was a weird-shaped apartment as you entered into a hallway. It had a long, narrow kitchen on one end of the hallway and a decent-sized room on the other end where the bunk beds, study tables and near the hallway was the kitchen table.

"Can we go walk through Centre Ville?" I asked after I had unpacked some of the main things I would need like books and scriptures onto my desk and my clothes into the closet and dresser. "I can't wait to see what else is in the city."

"Yeah. We've got some time before Elder Whitecar will come through and Elder Walker will leave with him, so we will show you Rouen and then head back to the gare," Elder Ingram said.

We walked out of our apartment and headed into the maze-like part of the tall buildings headed straight for the cathedral with its spires peaking over the tops of the buildings showing where it was located at all times. We passed under an archway with a huge gold clock hanging on it and it opened up into a courtyard where a strange looking building was located.

"What's that building?" I asked upon seeing it. It had a low roof that reached up in the middle to create a steeple-like structure but it was made out of roof tiles, which was different from anything I had ever seen.

"That's the Joan of Arc cathedral. She was burned in Rouen, so they built a cathedral to honor her here," Elder Ingram explained.

"That's a cathedral?!" I repeated. "That's the strangest looking cathedral I've ever seen."

We continued walking until we came upon the main cathedral. The steeple reached seemingly endlessly into the sky. The stone work around the front doors was incredibly intricate with sculptures of biblical prophets and apostles.

"The spire is the tallest church in France," Elder Ingram explained when he saw I was just stunned speechless. "It was the tallest building in the world at one point, but it's not anymore."

We left the courtyard where the cathedral was and headed back to the gare to send off Elder Walker with Elder Whitecar.

"Well, let's go get you a metro pass for the month so that we don't have to use all our one hour passes," Elder Ingram said. "Then we can go get you unpacked."

The remainder of the night consisted of getting to know each other a little bit and Elder Ingram asking about the people in Alençon that he knows.