Celebrations

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Well here we are at the end of November already.  Christmas is just around the corner.  You can certainly tell that the festive season is here in France.  The Christmas lights are up and there is a huge Christmas tree up in the "Place Ducale", our main square.  The city workers are also putting up a skating rink there and several booths for our upcoming Christmas Market.

Christmas markets are very popular in France.  Some cities like Strasbourg have had them every year for hundreds of years.  Just about every city has a Christmas Market.  There are crafts, food, drinks, activities, rides and games at these festive markets.  Unfortunately we missionaries have been asked to avoid the Christmas markets this year.  We have been asked to do so as a safety precaution after the terrorist attacks.  Actually, we have been asked to avoid any gathering where there are large groups of people congregating.  Our Mission President has a huge responsibility to keep everyone safe.  Many parents have entrusted their children to his care.  He needs to take whatever precautions are necessary to do so.  

We were able to do four apartment inspections this week.  One in Toul, two in Nancy and one in Strasbourg.  We also spend considerable time scrapping and painting the bathroom in the Elders apartment in Strasbourg.  It was quite a mess.  Peeling paint and mold.  It was nice for us that the Elders stayed and helped us with all the scrapping.  

Nancy Soeurs

Nancy Elders 

Strasbourg Elders Perkins and Orton

Big Yukky Mess

Smiling happy Elders Orton, Egbert and Perkins scrapping away!

Elder Dudfield giving us some of his prized Australian chocolate.  It was great.

After scraping it looked like this.  We had to fill it all in.  Wait overnight for it to dry and then painted the next day.

Just with the undercoating on.  Even this looks lots better.  We now hope it actually lasts.  Still needs 2-3 more coats.

Strasbourg has the biggest and oldest Christmas Market in Europe.   The first one was in the 1500's.  It is spread out all throughout the city in 12 different locations.  It receives 2,000,000 visitors a year.  We obediently avoided the Market for the most part but we did see 2 parts of it as we made the 30 minute walk to and from our hotel to the Elders apartment.   The city is very beautiful and enticing.  We saw beautiful storefronts decorated in many creative ways.  It was amazing.  Such a festive spirit.  We really loved our time there.

A few other celebrations happened this week.  Last Sunday was the rededication of the Montreal Temple.  All of the congregations in Canada took part.  We understand that it was a beautiful event.   What a great message to us of the importance of temples on the Earth today.  What a blessing that is for families!

Speaking of temples, on November 25 we also acknowledged the birthday of our son, Adam, who passed away only 12 hours after being born.  We were sealed to him as a family in the Cardston  Alberta temple on December 20, 2008.  Our grandson, Adam Mossey, was named after him.  What is interesting is that we teach a young woman who was born on the exact same day as Adam.  It really allows us to see at what stage of life he would be at had he lived.  It also allows us to think of eternal families and how we will be able to see Adam again some day.

On Tuesday we journeyed to Reims for a District Meeting that was also a celebration of American Thanksgiving (2 days early).  Most missionaries are from the U.S.  In our district there are 5 Americans, us 2 Canadians and a Belgian missionary.  Anyway, as a group we decided to celebrate American Thanksgiving.  We had a lesson on the history and reasons behind Thanksgiving.  Ed was quick to point out that Canada actually celebrated the first Thanksgiving some time before the Americans.  We had a great feast.  We had roasted chicken with cranberries.   It is very hard to find whole turkeys in France.  It is also hard to find cranberries.  We had to make our own cranberry sauce.  Lynn found some dried cranberries and she rehydrated them in cranberry juice and added gelatin to create cranberry jelly.  We also had green bean casserole, jellied salad, mashed turnips with carrots, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and 2 pies, pumpkin and apple.  We had apple champagne as a drink.  Are you getting hungry just reading this.  It truly was a feast fit for a pilgrim or an Acadian depending on what side of the border you are from.  

Our wonderful Reims District

Our lessons went well this week, Institute, French Gospel and missionary lessons.  Ed had a lot of Branch business to do this week, as well.  Some of this came about as a result of his Stake meeting from last week.  Our Branch is also preparing for some Christmas activities - meals, carol sings, presentations, etc. Christmas is certainly in the air.

Our Elders decorations here in Charleville.  They're feeling quite festive!

We know that Christmas will be here in the blink of an eye.  The busier we are the quicker it will come.  We are getting packages ready to send home to our family.  I can't write anymore just thinking about it.  Bye!

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