Thanks and Pranks

Sunday, April 3, 2015

Let's start with the prank.  Here we are in April already and it started with a bang.  Ed did a nasty April Fool's joke on the Elders.  In French April Fools is Poisson d'Avril, which literally means April Fish.  Poisson is also a French family name but not very common.  On Friday we had our weekly DMB meeting (Branch Mission Leader meeting).  Ed is the Branch Mission Leader.  He spun an elaborate tale of a woman he met while in Reims who told her that her family of 8 was going to move to Charleville where her husband was going to be the manager of the new KFC franchise.  Because they had visited family in Utah and had gone to church they all wanted to be baptised.  The Elders were very excited until Ed told them the fictitious woman's name - last name Poisson, first name Avril.  He got them good.

And now for the thanks.  Speaking of Elders, we said goodbye to good old Elder Daines on Wednesday.  We drove him to the gare early in the morning.  He was transferred to Lorient in Brittany.  He was with us for 6 months.  He was an amazing missionary who worked very hard and made a big difference here in Charleville-Mézières.  He will be missed.

Lynn gave all the guys haircuts on Monday.  This happens about every 8-12 weeks.
She also was able to help one of our new members here, Beauty.  She's a real sweet heart.  She had a bunch of clothes that needed some fitting.  They were able to adjust many new outfits for her to wear.  She was pretty excited about it.  She continues to have multiple opportunities to use the old, rickety sewing machine we acquired from an old missionary apartment we closed last year.  It's been a real blessing to help those here who need it.  It keeps threatening to quit working but each time it finds resurgence and continues on.

Without missing a beat we had a new Elder arrive by suppertime on Wednesday.  Elder Asato is a blue or a brand new missionary from Kearns, Utah.  Charleville is his first ville.  We picked him up and gave him a short tour of the town.  He is getting over his jet lag and is doing just great.

As a follow up to our last post regarding our 4 missionaries who were injured in the Brussels bombing, they are all progressing.  Elder Wells and Empty have returned to Utah and are in the University of Utah hospital.  They are healing well.  Elder Norby is still in the hospital in Belgium being well cared for and is accompanied by family.  He was taken out of his coma this week.  His progress is slower because of the seriousness of his injuries but it is steady.  Soeur Clain is still in hospital after getting an infection.  She is expected to make a full recovery, though and looks forward to completing her mission.  All these missionaries and family members are grateful for the blessings they have received, for the medical care they are receiving, for the support they feel from members and family and for the prayers that have been said in their behalf.  We continue to pray for them.

On Thursday disaster struck in the Reims missionary apartment.  A tap started leaking in the night and caused a great deal of damage in the missionary apartment and in the apartment downstairs.  Ed had to head there to take care of things.  He ended up replacing the tap which took a good chunk of the day.  He talked to the downstairs neighbours and viewed the damage.  After consulting with the mission office, insurance papers were filled out by the neighbour and sent to the office.  Everything was operating well when he headed home.

Seriously we need to do a post just on the interesting signs here in France.  This one says "All other Directions".  Really!!

New companionship: Elder Englebrecht from Aurba and Elder Moore in Reims

As most of you know, this weekend is General Conference weekend.  This becomes a little more complicated in France because of the 8 hour time difference and the limited capacity of the wifi in our building.  We have to download and store on a memory stick any sessions so that we can to lighten the load on the wifi.  We have to do this in both French and English.  We can see 2 sessions live but eight hours later in our day.  One session we watch on our own at home and the remaining sessions we watch a downloaded version.  As a result we were at the church from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. last night and from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. tonight.  However, we make the best of the fact that we are blessed with General Conference by sharing a meal together with our Branch members and by visiting with them.  We also had a visit from a family from Lille who are bringing their son here because he will be doing military training in Charleville for a few weeks.  That is good news for us.

Delicious French Chocolate from the Easter Bunny.  Thanks Isabelle.

Elder Wilson picked the great back seat.  That way you could conceivably have a little rest unobserved;)

Well that is it for our week.  Everything else is going well both here in France and at home.  We are truly blessed.

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