Fast Trains and City Lights

Sunday, November 23 - Fast Trains and City Lights

Bonjour de la France!

This last week was a great week.  We visited our friend, Hervé, in the hospital again.  He has committed to coming back to church which we feel is quite a success.  He is a great person and is wanting to do what is right for his life.  We want to support him as much as we can.

We visited a local establishment to see about doing some volunteer work for the needy.  It is a great project. This organisation does not provide meals to people but they provide the food for people to make their own meals.  This is a little bit different than the Soup Kitchen that we volunteered at in  Lethbridge.  We hit a little bit of a snag with this opportunity when we were asked to not have our name tags on when we worked.  This is because it is a non-denominational group.  We filled out the forms to volunteer and we will wait to see what happens.

Elder Cook Conference

On Wednesday we went to Paris to attend a conference with Elder Cook, an apostle of the Lord.  This was an amazing event.  There were 280 missionaries there from the France, Paris mission.  We helped put lunch together and to distribute the food.  Elder Cook was a fantastic speaker.  He had us all amazed.  It was a very spiritual meeting where we learned more about being missionaries and about loving our fellow man.  He spoke from the heart and I know that we all felt inspired and uplifted from his message.  He took the time to shake everyone's hand and he made it feel like he was speaking to each individual personally.

We stayed overnight in a hotel and we were able to get some sightseeing in.  We took the train in from Charleville and that was an amazing trip.  We started out on a regional train and then transferred to a TGV which travels at 300 kilometres an hour.  It was awesome.  The trip was fast and smooth and before we knew it we had arrived at the Paris East station.  From there we took the subway and urban trains to Notre Dame Cathedral.

We toured the cathedral and then went to a cool little Café-Terrasse for lunch.  We had a baguette sandwich.  Afterwards we headed to a little district full of small streets, shops and restaurants.  It was a  cool little part of Paris.

We managed to navigate our way to a chapel in Versailles where we helped prepare the meal for the missionaries attending the conference.  There were 10 missionary couples altogether.  A group of us who were staying at the same hotel went out for dinner together.

After the conference we went with the Redds, some friends we had met at the MTC, to tour Versailles and the new Temple sight.  We walked the grounds where Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI had walked.  It was quite extravagant but truly was awe inspiring.  It really helped as the Redds had lived here before and Elder Redd (Dave) is a history and art buff.

Marie-Antoinette had this house brought to France from England.  It is amazing.

The Temple site was wonderful.  It is right by Versailles.  What an amazing undertaking.  They were pouring concrete and working hard.  It's really looking like it's off to a good start.  The spirit we felt was amazing, testifying to us that this is the House of The Lord.

On the way back to our apartment on the train we were able to have a great discussion with other passengers about our religion and about why we were in France.  We really enjoyed the trip and we were able to meet some great people and share with them about what we believe in.

Back in Charleville-Mézières we had some household things to do, one of which was shopping.  Again, we had a wonderful conversation with a Muslim seller at the market comparing our beliefs.  Neither he nor we were trying to persuade the other but we were sharing our beliefs.  It was quite uplifting.

one of the houses Marie-Antoinette brought from England and had reassembled here!

This is a Marionette centre just at the end of our little street.  The puppet is about 30ft tall.

Place Ducal here in Charleville-Mézières

Funny tree down the street

We continue to include our family members in our mission.  We talk to them and Skype them when we can.  They have lots of questions and want to know all about what we are up to.  Their love is a great support for us and we appreciate their involvement.  It makes what we are doing a family affair and we love it that they are part of it.  Today we talked to my brother, Darrell, from New York.  He is going to visit us next summer.

We had a great day at church.  We have both been asked to speak next Sunday and we look forward to it.  Our job is to support the members and the branch and we feel the Lord's hand in our work.

With love we say "au revoir" until our next post.

Lyndi-lou and Eddie, too.