Sami's arrival in Paris, France and a letter from the Mission President

Dear parents, we were thrilled to welcome your daughter to the France, Paris mission today. As you can see, she arrived safely. Thank you for sharing her with us for a year and a half. We look forward to working with her.

Parents often wonder about sending letters and/or packages to their missionary and many of you have asked about the extreme cost of sending packages to Europe to your missionaries. Our advice is to not send packages—if you want to treat your missionary, send money and let them spend it here. The reason for this is because packages are very often not received, if they are received they take a while to get out to the missionary, and, most often, the customs charges are exorbitant. If you list anything for over $25, the customs can be very expensive. Recently we received a package with a value of $50 and the missionary had to pay $56 in customs. We’ve had missionaries have to pay customs charges for over $100. So be aware! Some parents have had good luck ordering from Amazon.fr orAmazon.co.uk and have saved on shipping as well as not having their missionary pay customs charges. Another site to check out is Ravbox.com—a local company with an English website, quick service, American products, and great delivery record to our office.

If you do want to go ahead and send packages from home, we recommend sending all packages to the mission office addressed as follows:

Sœur Samantha Hopkinson

La Mission Française

131 Blvd Carnot code d’accès B25168, 2^eme étage 

78110 Le Vesinet

France

Reasons for sending packages to the mission office instead of to the missionary’s apartment:

• Missionaries are frequently transferred and there is no guarantee that packages will arrive while they are still at a given address
• The post office and other package carriers won't usually deliver to an address unless the correct name is on the mailbox (which usually isn't the case because of the transfer cycles)
• Even with their name on the mailbox, your missionary must be home at the time of delivery (which hardly ever happens during the day with our hard-working missionaries)

So generally it just works much better for packages, especially, to come to the mission office. We collect them and send them out with missionaries in their zone/area when someone comes in to the office.  Letters may be sent to the office OR directly to the missionary’s apartment, if you can time it so they arrive while your missionary is at a specific address. 

Just a note about packages and mail to your missionary: you may want to consider sending a little something along for your missionary’s companion as well. Many of our missionaries never receive mail from home and it would be a wonderful surprise and blessing for them (not to mention building companionship rapport) to receive something as well.

Don’t forget to check out two wonderful FaceBook pages where you may see your missionary appear now and then as well as being able to see what is going on in the mission. One (open to all) is “France Paris Mission Babin” and the other is “France Paris Missionary Families.” The family FaceBook page is a closed group and there must be a photo or post on your own FaceBook page to show you have some connection to a missionary in the France Paris Mission. You must be a family member or relative in order to join, but there is lots of great information and camaraderie from other missionaries’ families there, so it is well worth the effort.

Sending love to you and your family

Sami and Soeur and President Babin

Sami and her trainer Soeur Bishop

first area: Tours, France