Our Unpredictable Daily Life

 We wake up every day and wonder what we will do that day. We don’t always know. Last week we helped missionaries by renting a cargo van and driving to the airport to pick up the heavy luggage of the just-arrived new missionaries. 

The missionaries themselves took the train to the Eiffel Tower for pictures and lunch, led by some seasoned sisters and elders. Then they took the train to the temple, and they were asked to talk to people on the train on the way there. Since their French is terrible at this point, and they haven’t slept for two days, they were happy to make it to the temple for a picture in front of the Christus.

Then they walked to the Versailles chapel (20 minutes) and enjoyed a great dinner and some instructions.  Once Phil and I got the cargo van from the airport to the Versailles chapel, we sliced watermelon, partitioned lasagne, made Caesar salads, and set up chairs and tables with a few other helpers. 

But the true tender mercy happened the day before. When we rented the van, we drove away, and two miles down the road, Phil noticed on the dashboard that one of the tires was low–really low.  We turned around immediately (not an easy feat on French roads) and returned to the rental place, trying to find the partially hidden building that we had just left.  They found something in the tire, and promptly gave us another van (which was much easier to drive even though it was a manual).  Can you imagine what would have happened if we didn’t notice the low tire and filled the van full of luggage and got a flat on the Paris A-1 (which has almost no shoulders).  We would have caused a gigantic snarl of traffic.  

We helped again on Thursday making croissant sandwiches as the new missionaries met their trainer/companions and received some instruction. They walked to the Versaille train station as we drove their luggage and met them there.

Then we spent Friday helping Kael (the lovely woman who helps the Munns buy and make all this food) get cordon blue, mashed potatoes, watermelon, Caesar salad, and sauces ready for the leaders of the mission–the seasoned sisters and elders who serve as the leaders of their zones.

 We know many of these missionaries because a lot of them come through Paris in their service.  What an impressive group of 18-21 year-olds.  They are full of spiritual insights and full of light and joy.  You can see it in their faces.

And then we spent two days this week submitting expense reports and copying receipts for our humanitarian projects (the most tedious and boring part of our calling). Funny how we have no pictures of this part.

On Sunday we visited Saint Ouen in the north of Paris and loved singing and talking (or listening for me) with the saints. This is a thriving ward. What a joy to attend and partake of the sacrament with these good people. There are many immigrants from both Congos, Madagascar, and La Reunion, the very places my parents served as missionaries and mission leaders.

We spent Tuesday morning in two zoom meetings. Again, no pictures.

So for fun on Monday we drove to the most beautiful chateau we have seen so far: Vaux-le-Vicomte. It took us 90 minutes to drive in traffic, but when we arrived, we were with only a handful of visitors. The chateau is designed beautifully with open arches on the ground floor in the middle so the visitor can see all the way through the castle to the gardens on the other side.

The rooms are beautiful, and the story behind Nicolas Fouquet, France’s finance minister under Louis XIV’s reign, is compelling. Basically, after hosting the king at his opulent home and gardens, the king assumed he was crooked, so he put Fouquet in prison and took all the beautiful things from his chateau, and then hired the same designers to build Versailles. This chateau, though, is beautifully proportioned and its tasteful architecture emphasizes beauty, combining the interior with the exterior.

We toured the chateau and then rented a golf cart (only 20 euros) to drive around the gardens. I got to drive, and we went down steep hills and into sunken gardens and even through a shallow river (with permission). I was laughing the entire way. See the video. Hope it works.

So you can see our lives are different each day. Some days it is a golf cart excursion and some days it is filling out forms. Some days we cut fruit and drive missionaries, and other days are filled with spiritual feasts. Every day is scriptures and Duolingo, the two staples of our lives.  

We love being missionaries and love finding many ways to serve God.