Happy Father's Day

Sunday, June 19, 2016

Happy Father's Day!  We've heard from all of our children today so that of course was very nice.  It was a wonderful day here in France.  We are in Mulhouse at the moment.  We drove here after Church as we have some apartment work to do tomorrow and Tuesday.  It takes us 5 hours to get here so we needed to get here tonight so we could get an early start tomorrow.

We had a week of lunches and service.  On Monday we went out to Lionel's house and helped him haul some things to the dump.  We cleaned out his courtyard and a storage shed.  We took three huge flat-deck loads to the dump.  Lionel made us a great lunch.  We had a bit of a stew with bread and cheese and cherry pie.  It was great.  

On Thursday we went to Le Chesne and helped the Dampt's.  We did some moving, some cleaning, some fixing and repairing.  We left a message and Paulette made us a lovely lunch.  It was another good day.

The Dampt's beautiful old home is 3 storeys, full of lovely wood.  We really like it.

Our third lunch out this week was at Claire and René's house.  We gave a lesson and had a typical French meal with a salad entrée, a main dish, cheese and bread and dessert.  We had a wonderful visit, lunch and lesson.

On Tuesday Michel and Ed went to Villeneuve d'Ascq for a Stake meeting for Bishops, Branch Presidents and counsellors.  It was a great meeting but a late one.  We were able to set some objectives and hear from our Stake leaders.  Because the meeting went until 9:40 we stayed overnight at Jean-Michel's house who is Michel's son.  We left for home early on Wednesday.

Wednesday was a Consecration Day for us in Charleville.  We did a survey on families with passersby on the street.  We had a district meeting and a great meal put together by Lynn and Claire from our Branch.  We had a table set up with church material on the sidewalk in front of the church.  The day went quite well.

For the first time in our life we went to a Medieval Fair in L'Echelle.  Florine from our Branch was part of the event.  She was dressed in medieval attire.  There were booths, sword fighting and food.  We got to shoot some arrows.  There was a display of books and armour, as well as food.  A pig was roasting on a spit as well as other meats.  We listened to a fairy tale narration.  There was music and dancing.  We a fantastic opportunity they have here in France for this.  Medieval everything surrounded by castles and old buildings.  Just a reminder that Echelle's castle was built in the 1400's.  We are constantly amazed by this and feel strongly ties to the past.  It is so moving to us.

Lynn nearly got a bullseye!

Hand-carved pitch-fork and a sweetly medieval-dressed girl

all completely hand-made.  No electric anything used.

All hand-forged with a bellows/fire

King Edward de les Wilsons

Florine in the Bibliothéque (library) in l'Echelle.

When we got home we found out that two Elders from our district missed their train home from Paris and were going to get in late from Paris.  So, we had to go to Reims to get them or else they were going to have to stay overnight.  So, off we went and brought them back.

On Sunday we had good church meetings.  We had Lionel's confirmation (he was baptised last week) and we said goodbye to a great missionary, Elder Gagnon.  He is going to Le Havre Ed talked in church and we were both prepared to teach different Sunday School lessons. (Ed - temple prep and Lynn Gospel Principles).  But......Lynn ended up needing the help of the firemen to gain access to one of our members apartments as she is in very poor health and wasn't responding.  All ended well.

Nice little Deux Cheveaux

As usual the rest of the week was filled up with lessons, interviews, counselling and preparing.

We spent time with our family via the phone and FaceTime which is always great.  We got a great drawing from Sam of the Eiffel tower with a great message saying that he loved us.  

Thank you Sam!  We love the detail in the Eiffel Tower 

Love this!

Sam with his new scripture case.

We were also able to talk to our parents and my brothers.  

At home we had a nice step made by a friend of ours which will make it much easier to get into our front door.  It was a concrete step with tiles covering it.  Very big thanks to Lynn's Mom & Keith Moline.

Au revoir de la France.
Lyndi-lou and Eddie, too.