A Tour of the Great and the Strange Parts of France and Our Mission

 Our mission ends in 5 days! We look forward to seeing out children and grandchildren, as well as our friends, but we will miss many of the delightful and sometimes strange ways of France and Belgium. Let's list the ways.

OK, in Belgium there is a store named after me!! Yes, we had to go in and buy their treats.

Paris has surprises every few blocks. Even the Metro stations are beautiful.

One of the quirks of Europe is that you have to stand on the right on escalators so people can pass you on the left. Do you want to stand out as a tourist? Stand on the wrong side and don't let anyone pass.

We will miss the people most of all. Here is my Friday morning English Connect class with my Tahitian missionary friends in the Prais France Mission.  I have stories about each one of these great people.

And then we have the missionaries, like Soeur Kalati from Toulouse and the Millwards from Utah. Here we are at the temple after an endowment session and before a yummy lunch last Friday.

And today, Morgan, who just got baptized in January, baptized Damien at our chapel. They are dressed in white for the symbolism of being washed clean of sins. These are wonderful men, and we will miss them and all the new members who have been baptized since we came.

France has fantastic museums. We could go to a different one each week and still not see all of them. The Musée d'Orsay is a favorite. Because we have annual passes, we can go before the museum opens up to the public.  Just Phil and me and Vincent last Saturday morning.

And Manet's painting of Berthe Morisot.  And the main sculpture room in the Musée d'Orsay, which was once a train station.  Instead of tearing down old buildings, they usually repurpose them.

Here is a quick picture of many members of my Relief Society (the Church's organization for women).  We took an impromptu photo last Sunday when I told them I was leaving in a week.

Everything is old. Here are the floors in the Carnovalet Museum today. Cool floors and tiles and street cobblestones and bricks are everywhere.

You are walking down the street, and voila, here is a painted wall on the side of the neighborhood restaurant.

But in our neighborhood and all over suburban Paris, people have big fences up so you cannot see the gorgeous houses on the other side. This is the opposite of my neighborhood in Salem, Utah where people build houses so they can be seen, and they light them up at night so you can see them even better.  Not in France. Put up the walls!

And this is a two-way street.  The French have found a way to make narrow streets work. They wait for cars to go by before they venture out.  This process requires a lot of politeness, which the French actually demonstrate all the time in driving.

Most of the cars in Paris are small.  The parking spots and garages are small and short. The streets and highways are narrow.  Small cars work better than big cars.

OK, now admit it, the baguettes, the croissants, and the pain au chocolats are the best in the world.

Oh yes, I will not miss the many Zoom calls, but I will miss the missionaries and humanitarian-minded people we work with every day. I love the days we get to meet in person.

OK, someone needs to mention the terrible toilet situation. In many roadside gas stations and other places, the toilets do not have seats.  Seriously, are these all designed by men?

But in Paris there are many free toilets on major sidewalks. In France they are toilets, not bathrooms.  No baths anywhere on the street.

And in Brussels we saw an old time street urinal built originally to keep men from urinating on the walls and sidewalks. They used to be all over Paris.  In fact, in the past the smell of urine was strong in Paris, but now city workers come through everyday with street and sidewalk washing trucks. Paris is much cleaner, and it smells better.

Except for one thing.  The strongest smell in Paris now is the smell of cigarette smoke. Teenagers, old people, middle-aged people, people in their twenties--many people smoke and vape, and there seems to be no taboo against it.  Fortunately, the French and Belgians have laws against smoking inside buildings, but no laws about smoking in the outdoor cafes.  Ask for a seat inside!

We have loved living in a place steeped in centuries of history. That history is found in excavations, museums, existing walls, ancient buildings, many churches, as well as in paintings and stories and music. We will miss you, France, with all of your quirks. When I tried to buy our one-way airline tickets home to Salt Lake City, I was shocked at the high prices.  We saved $400 in buying round trip tickets instead.  So we are going on the first step of our journey in going home on Thursday, but then we will come back in September for our return ticket.  There is more exploring to be done!

Thank you to everyone who has supported us in this mission journey. We love serving the Lord in humanitarian ways. We have helped get funds for school supplies for vulnerable children, first aid and emergency communications classes for immigrant women in the Netherlands, warm bedding for new babies in the Netherlands, food like tuna and protein bars packed in bags and distributed at train stations in Brussels,  and so on. We are doing godly work to "comfort those that stand in need of comfort," as we "stand as witnesses of God at all times in in all things, and in all places that [we] may be in" (from the Book of Mormon, the book of Mosiah, chapter 18--try reading it).

'Till we meet again, France.