Yesterday was the first day of August. We are starting the 10th month of our mission. How can that be? We haven't seen all of France yet and we haven't baptised all of Charleville yet.
But we did have a good week. We didn't do much travelling but we accomplished lots. We did some visiting, some teaching, some service and we had our first District Meeting in Charleville-Mézières. Let's start with the visiting first.
We had the opportunity to visit a member of our ward this week whom we have had a hard time connecting with lately because of circumstances, not because he doesn't want the visit. Any way we did visit him this week. He is always glad to have us over. He is generous and kind and likes to tell stories. We learn a lot about France and the Ardennes from him. He always has a snack for us and a drink of some kind. We thought we would outfox him this time. Lynn brought cookies for him but he had already put out cookies, chocolate and bottled water. We had a lovely visit and he prayed with us. We appreciated his spirit and his affection for us.
Sometimes visiting and teaching are combined. Often we teach a lesson in a home. When this is the case we get to know families better. Such was the case this week. We had two home visits in homes with children. We love doing this. It gives us a chance to be in friends' homes and to share the gospel with them. At the same time we can learn more about them and their families. We also get to know more about the Elders who go to these appointments with us. Often local members will go but because most of our members live quite far from Charleville it is hard for them to make these visits sometimes and so we go in their place. We very much enjoy it. We taught about prophets, the Restoration, the Plan of Salvation and Jesus Christ this week. All lessons were well received.
This week Ed was able to help a new convert. He fixed her toilet which was not working. It needed a new float in the tank. While Ed did that Lynn and two other sisters helped her get her house in order. We also put up a new shelf for her to use in the kitchen. She was very thankful.
We also delivered some furniture to another friend who has been coming to church. We brought two armchairs back from Nancy when we emptied the apartment there as well as a pretty plant stand and a small shelf that we had stored in the basement in Metz. We also gave her a Christmas Tree and lots of ornaments from the storage unit in Nancy. She was very grateful for the help as this is her first home here in France.
Every morning we try to do some form of exercise. Ed runs for an hour usually and Lynn rides an exercise bike or goes for a walk. One of us needs to be better committed to this practise and it isn't Ed. However, this week when Lynn went out for a walk she did an early morning visit through a beautiful Cathedral by our house, visiting a bakery to buy some levure (live, soft, beautiful yeast for making bread), as well as went down by the river and snapped a couple of photos. All was done in the name of exercise! Hmmm. Contemplation and beauty, and ok...a little exercise as well. 45 minutes worth of awesomeness according to her. Below are the resulting photos of her morning excursion.
At our Wednesday night meeting Lynn showed some eager women how to make Chocolate Banana Swirl Bread, which we ate along with popcorn and drinks for a snack after our activity. We also had a lesson by the young missionaries and played a super fun game. A great time was had by all 12 of us who attended.
We are really going to miss Florine, our meeting co-ordinator, as she heads off to Louisiana for 3 weeks tomorrow morning. Bonne vacance!
On Thursday we had our very first District Meeting in Charleville-Mézières. Up until now we had to travel 2 hours each way to St. Quentin. However, at the last transfer we were put into a different zone. We now meet with four Reims missionaries. There are 4 of us in each city. They will travel to Charleville for our meetings which is good news for Lynn and Elder Rivas because they both suffer from car sickness. This week we had our Zone Leaders from Paris attend as well. We had a great lesson and a great meal. Our new District Leader is Elder Ericson from Saskatoon. He did an excellent job with his Formation (Lesson).
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| trying to get Elder Adams in the picture too. |
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| Charleville Missionaries, Elder Adams, Elder Rivas, and the Wilsons |
Ed had a meeting this week with the Facilities Manager. We are going to lose part of the church because of low attendance. He went over the plan and asked us to pare down what we have. We have to have everything done by September. As a Branch we will best decide how to tackle this problem.
At church today we had 23 people. We had two visitors from the Netherlands. It was Fast and Testimony meeting and we had some fantastic testimonies. We were blessed by the spirit that attended our meeting.
That's all we have for this week.
Au revoir de la France,
Lyndi-lou and Eddie, too.
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