Sunday: It’s a Small World

Getting ready for church is usually a small production for us. But in our little 400 sq. foot “house”, it felt like complete pandemonium.

A few months ago during the planning phase of our trip, I looked up where the closest church to us would be on mormon.org. It gave a couple of choices that were within 20 minutes, and I picked the one that was close to a WWI historical site. I even looked at the chapel on google earth--but failed to write down the address. And it turns out our GPS only acknowledges churches that are at least 500 years old, so I was out of luck. We decided to drive to the city and hope for the best.

We headed out 20 minutes late, but we were going for the full 3 hour experience, so maybe that was a good thing. As we entered the city, I chose to go right at the first fork in the road, and at the first block I looked down I saw the same street I had seen on google earth. And sure enough, there was the church a few buildings down from where we were. Am I the only one that thinks google earth is a little creepy? Handy, but creepy.

We went in and sent the kids to primary (the class for kids). No one spoke more than a few words of English, but they did a great job of including the kids. My niece Megan went in with the YW, and was happy to meet a girl that spoke pretty fluent English and could translate.

The craziest thing was that when Ryan went to class, he sat behind a man who started talking to him when Ryan said he was from the US. He told Ryan that he had served a mission in Montana. The conversation went something like this:

Ryan: So did you serve in Helena?

French Guy: Yes.

Ryan: Did you know the Burnsides?

French Guy: I think so. Car wash?

So for those of you who don’t know, my parents (the Burnsides) own a car wash in Helena. The guy had eaten dinner with my parents (and complimented my mom’s cooking) and said he always appreciated the free car washes from my dad. Small world. It's pretty weird to go to a random city in a foreign country and wind up sitting next to someone who has eaten dinner at the house I grew up in.

I do love going to church in other countries, even when I don’t understand much. So much is the same that I almost feel like I’m understanding what they’re saying even when I really have no idea. For the next five Sundays, we’ll be in a city in Switzerland where my cousin served a mission, and I’ve already exchanged emails with the woman who will be teaching Mason and Katie’s class. Again--it’s a small world.

The rest of the day has been surprisingly pleasant, especially since the weather is cold and windy and we’ve spent a lot of the day in our 400 sq feet. We went down and got board games from the Eurocamp office, and Chloe and Andrew spent a solid hour or two playing with the pieces from Jenga and Connect 4. Not actually playing the games, just using them as toys. They are so toy deprived that they will take anything I can get them. Maybe I should find them an empty Coke bottle like “The Gods Must be Crazy”.

We made pizzas for dinner, and were surprised that they turned out since the instructions on the box were in French, Portuguese, and Dutch. And I accidentally bought the equivalent of Spaghettios instead of buying pizza sauce like I thought I had. Luckily I had a jar of spaghetti sauce on hand. And there was enough that Ryan could eat until he was completely stuffed--which hasn’t happened much during the last couple of weeks. I haven’t been keeping people on rations exactly, but it does kind of feel that way, since (as I said in a previous post) once the food is gone, it’s gone. And I was able to add sugar, butter and an egg to the extra package of pizza crust mix and make the closest thing we’ve had to homemade cookies. We’ve all become a lot less picky.

I also have to add in props here for Megan who tells really fun and really long bedtime stories. We all look forward to bedtime. The kids get a story and Ryan and I get quiet. Win-win.

This is the one historical site we went to. It's where WWI ended, and where the French surrendered to the Germans during WW2. We also passed by a WWI cemetery on the way home.

Tomorrow is another rest day, since there’s no way I could get everyone to go back to Paris with only a one day rest. But even the rest days tend to have a little adventure to them.