Zone Conference; Cirque de Gavarnie

- September 16, 2018

Our Church Week—In a word, meetings. It’s September and the start of the new school year for the northern hemisphere. With it, comes new beginnings for the teachers within the Church System as well as back-to-school meetings. In one way shape or form, we are all teachers at Church whether it’s Sunday School, Primary Program (ages 3-12) Young Men/Women, Relief Society (women’s group) or Priesthood. Even the administrative and music program are teaching-oriented. So, meetings.

Tuesday we had a Tri-Zone Conference in Toulouse, 2 hours to our north. This was our second conference with our new Mission President and his wife. They are sharp right out of the gate and fluent in French and English. The meeting was conducted in French for about 99% of the meeting. Every once in a while, they liked the way such and such was said in English rather than French, so they’d use those words or phrases. We did surprisingly well being that we get lost on Sundays when it is in French. But we are familiar with most of what will be said so that is probably what gave us a better edge on our understanding; plus, it’s a more contained topic (missionary work) than Church which can cover so many topics and personal stories. At the meetings, there are always administrative items to review, reminders about mission rules and of course the inspirational and instructive messages given. It’s always hard to put inspirational messages into words since they go right to our hearts and are motivational. But we came away refreshed and renewed. And it’s always nice to meet everyone and feel energized by the younger missionaries.

We had 63 missionaries there. This time we know the exact count as we were asked to bring the dessertJ

Since we were already in the Toulouse area, we met with 5 missionary companionships, inspecting and making repairs on 5 apartments. It’s always fun to get to know the missionaries better and on their “turf”. They were so appreciative that broken faucets, unglued chairs, holes in the walls, missing light bulbs, etc. could finally be fixed or some improvement made. We still have about 5 more to go but we will do those another time as they are just far enough outside the immediate area that we’ll need to do them another trip.

On Saturday we had more meetings in Toulouse. The new Self-Reliance Program rolled out in France almost 2 years ago. With the beginning of the new school year and new persons in new positions, we had a training session on that program. Plus there’s always the on-going training revolving around such a broad topic. Afterwards, there was another general training meeting followed by department-type meetings according to our specific callings (weekly church assignments).

Something that tickled our funny bone: In French, when a “women’s slip is showing,” you say, “your Mother-in-Law is following you.” It seemed a much more colorful phrase than just our English phrase that states a fact. You can read so much into their flavorful phrase; we’ll let you decide what images or comments come to mindJ

Cirque de Gavarnie—On our Preparation day (P-day), we hiked several hours and several miles up to the waterfalls at Cirque de Gavarnie, kind of a French Yosemite. We drove up and up and up to the 5,000 ft high town of Gavarnie, then hiked from the town up another 1000 ft to the falls. The falls at Gavarnie are the highest cascading falls in mainland France. The largest fall cascades over 422 m/1385 ft.

A la prochaine!

Zone Conference. One of the Elders on a whim started playing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Like flies to honey there was a VERY quick assembly of voices

Another Senior Missionary couple.

Several more come in over the next few months!!

Marc helping a newly-activated member and non-member spouse with their genealogy

Father and daughter

Creative sign welcoming hikers to buy bread.

Gavarnie is on the French-Spanish border but in France.

Pan is bread in Spanish. Pain is bread in French.

Donkeys and mules available for the hike for small children

so they can keep up with the rest of the family

Hiking is BIG in France...with reason,

lots of beautiful spots

Cattle are still pasturing at high altitudes.

They will be brought down in October with their fatted calves

Interesting mountain flower. No stem and no leaves.

It grows as a flower only.

To give you perspective on size, there is a person standing on the right

near the bottom of the snow arch.

Poles preferred--it's steeper than it looks.

Those specks are about 30 people still hiking up

More "people specks"

The air is VERY thin up here above the tree line.

Wild iris. This is the end of their season. We've seen pictures of fields of them.

Plentiful wild flowers.

Heather

Coming down into the timberline. Another 1000 feet down to the town of Gavarnie.

Building is mid-station cafe and "gite" for overnight campers.

Fall berries mixed in with last of summer flowers

Those missionary tags are getting lots of exposure.

Here you can see some of the vertical drop off to the left

Huge cloud moving in. We saw this on the way down. Good example of how the heavy clouds can't make if over the towering mountains. The Spanish border is on the top of the ridge.

It is dry, dry, dry on the other side of this ridge.