Bonjour to all of you this bright February day! (January was not fast, but it's gone all ready, so it sure wasn't exactly slow either!) I'm taking one day at a time, and life here is full of funny stuff, sad stuff, weird stuff, exasperating stuff, spiritual stuff, and very memorable stuff too.
Our town was nicked by the hurricane force winds that hit the coast of France last weekend, so we stayed home and Jack brought the lawn furniture in to keep it from settling in someone else's yard. At church the next day, the heat had been knocked out by a flooded basement and it was freezing in the building. Twelve hardy souls braved the first two meetings, but several more showed up for Sacrament meeting, including a giant of a man named Kola, from Togo, who has what looks like tribal markings carved onto his smiling cheeks. He loves what he is hearing at church and from the missionaries, and says he wants to be baptized. He has a wife and 3 children, but so far they haven't come to church with him. The Corga's have an active, Portuguese speaking 5-year-old son, but they are sometimes quite late for church; then Clement (Veronique's 8 year old son, who is not yet baptized) comes sometimes, and his assignment has been to read the Book of Mormon along with me.
This past week, Jack bumped into Kola in town, and he's getting ready to move to England to take a job there. He said that he was coming to church this Sunday and bringing his family with him. Yikes! I AM the Primary. Yep, it's come to that in this branch, what with the ever-present Primary lady, 67-year-old Lucienne, deciding to divorce her husband and leave town until things cool down (is there something in the water here that makes people crazy?). At least with her, she could speak to the kids in their language, and hold them on her lap, and coo and kiss them to pieces, and call it good. The only other women here now are 78-year-old Sis. Demolombe, who can't see well, and is unsteady on her feet; and Marie-Christine, our sole Relief Society teacher, who at 56 is relatively young, but only comes when she is not depressed (and she's very depressed since Sister Bouchard left!). Then there is 38-year-old Veronique, who only seems to come to plague her ex-husband, and always manages to cause a scene, being not afraid to shout at him in the chapel in front of our investigators. Nope, as you can plainly see, I am it, and I had to gird up my loins and go figure out how to get a Primary ready for Sunday. The best place to start has got to be at the beginning, with 'I Am A Child Of God', because that is what they need to know. So, with Jack's translating help with the French manual, I worked on the lesson, and with the ideas that came to me each night.
Sunday came and in walked two little visitors from out of town, Bro. Savreaux's grandchildren, who are active in the church. We waited a bit, but no one else showed up! Unbelievable! Eva, age 7 (a helper type), and her rascally but cute little brother Julien, age 4, would have been such good role models for children untutored in church decorum. They sat expectantly in their chairs while I gathered my wits, and we finally got a fun lesson going based on the Plan of Salvation, using Sis. B's pouch-like wash cloths. We drew our faces on paper and cut them out, and taped them to the pouches; then I explained to them that our spirits (hands) had lived in the Spirit world with Heavenly Father until time to come to earth to get our body (our very own puppet-pouch-person slipped over our hand) and live and be happy until we die (leaving puppet-pouch-person behind) and return to be with Heavenly Father in our Spirit again. They were so cute, and fascinated with my Frenglaise mixture of talking with them (they helped me a lot, and we figured out stuff as we went along), plus drawing on the board is magical and a very practical and neat way to keep things moving too. We sang along to the Primary CD's and colored the blown up big pictures that illustrated the 1st verse of "I Am A Child Of God," and got through the first hour. The second hour we did collages with colored paper pieces and glue sticks (I'm afraid Julien ate half of his stick - ick!), and ended up doing floor puzzles; so now I know they need more stories and stuff like that to fill the time better, for the next group I get. But, I feel good that at least I got a dress rehearsal under my belt, how many times does that happen? Church is always an adventure and we feel absolutely drained at the end of our Sundays, but what a way to go!
Don't take life, or love, or the gospel for granted . . . Make the most of your time on earth, you'll be glad you did.
Love you much, Sister Mom (Joanne) Gran'ma
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