Our Progress

Hello to all,

We have finally made some progress on the Internet connection at the chapel and we now have the link to the church genealogy site. We are back on line and we now can hold our long over due Saturday session and prepare the member and friends on the genealogy program of the church. Our branch 2nd counselor, who is as big a genealogy bug as I am, will be the facilitator. He almost danced a gig today when I told him that everything is connected and ready to go.

We had two church officials come today and while one was doing a full inventory, the other was helping get us connected. He was able to use his laptop and information from the French church headquarters in Thoriy to find that one of the connector boxes had gone dead. He carries spare parts in the van and in no time had the Internet up and running. All the frustration over the last 6 months went down the drain and happiness was the end result.

Our Portuguese family is making some strides. Juan is still looking for work, but with the help of one of our members, he is now signed up and is waiting for the call to go to work. But their friend in Portugal, who was taking care of transferring their mail to France, up and died suddenly last week and their bank account couldn't be accessed from France. Sandra prayed all Monday after not making connections with anyone in Portugal. This morning she got a call from a friend and that friend was able to forward her mail and access the bank. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

We had a great Sunday School lesson with them last Sunday about the Plan of Salvation. This sister drinks in the Gospel as if she was the most thirsty person on earth. Her eyes never leave you as you unfold the scriptures and truths of the plan of Heavenly Father. Today as we took a coffee substitute to her home, she said that because of the loss of her father recently and her husbands brothers all the information made sense; especially the part that all mankind will get to hear the Father's Plan here or in the life to come and will make a choice on whether to accept or reject the commandments of Christ so that when the judgement comes we will all be on equal footing.

They still need to find a place of their own so they can be a family, instead of sharing a house with so many others and having all the distractions that are going on, but as we take the challenges one at a time. With the prayers of all and the help of our Heavenly Father, all will get done.

We had a hard time saying good bye to Elder Giles. He said one day that he cried twice on his mission. Once before he boarded the plane after saying good bye to his mother and once in his first city in France when he had no idea what anyone was saying because they were all speaking so fast. Well, he cried once more as we hugged and I said my farewell to him. He sobbed and said he didn't want to leave. I told him he had to take the next step in his life and that this experience would be a great help to him. I told him that I loved him and that he needed to go home to progress further. I wept also because he was raised without a father and he and I bonded well together. I said to him just before I released him, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

We have sent two good missionaries home from here and it is rough to spend 6 months with them and then to let them go home. It is different when they continue on their missions because we see them again at Zone Conferences and other situations, but when we send them home it gets tough.

Our new Elder is Elder Green. We have known him before and once he said that he missed peanut butter. The next time we got together we bought him some good American peanut butter and he was in heaven. We will buy him another jar tomorrow and give it to him as a welcoming gift.

Love you all from Angouleme,

Elder Dad & Sister Mom