A Mighty Fortress is our God; Carcassonne

Our Church Week—Lots of traveling this week and more to come over the next two weeks. We were in Carcassonne last for a meeting for Marc with the Stake Presidency and the other bishops and branch presidents of the stake.. That was just under 3 hours for us and central for our Stake. But we took two separate scenic routes over and back so we got to see more of beautiful France. We had a 3-day turn-around period. So we got caught up on some emails, phone calls and happenings while we were gone. But in reality, since Marc can work remotely (at times) we were able to be in contact while we were gone. A lot can happen in just a few daysJ

Jean-Claude made it safely back from Switzerland and loved his first experience in the temple in Bern. He is a recent convert and was with a friend from Portugal who is a long-time member. He was just beaming when we saw him today and couldn’t stop talking about his trip.

Yesterday, we found out Elder Wolfgramm will be transferred tomorrow. He will go about 5 ½ hours to our Northeast, outside of Lyon. As luck will have it, we’ll be traveling right through his newly assigned area on our way home from Lyon this week. We’ll have to see if we can get things timed correctly….perhaps over their lunch hour!

We announced his departure today and there was an in-unison and audible….ohhhhL. He was well-liked, fun-loving as well as hard-working. A great combination! He learned most of his French here and he was a willing student asking for help and working hard trying to get it all right. We’ll miss him too. You always know it’s coming (a transfer) but you’re never quite prepared to say good-bye. We work closely with the young Missionaries—they live around the corner, we go to appointments with them and we take them over and return from Church. And of course we are with them at Church. We are one in purpose no matter the age difference. It’s very unique and we feel very fortunate to interface with them, pray with them and for them, work side by side and teach with them. Just don’t like those good-byes.

They will train over to Toulouse (2 hrs) and Elder Wolfgramm will board the train with all other Missionaries going in his direction. Elder Templeton will wait with other Missionaries and wait for his new companion training in from Switzerland. It’s quite remarkable and one smooth operation.

Giséle got moved while we were gone. Most of the logistics were organized before we left but one always worries that all goes smoothly. We were out of town, the Elders Quorum President (men’s group) and so were the Elders for the first day of the move. Day 2 went more smoothly. Moves are tricky to estimate what size truck and how long it REALLY takes to get the job done. Unfortunately it usually takes longer than you expect. True to form, this one did too.

General Conference—Today was our semi-annual General Conference. We were quite ready for some spiritual nourishment. We are far from a temple and we miss that greatly. We still miss enough of the details of the talks at Church. Perhaps we get the meat and potatoes and miss out on those needed vegetables, vitamins and minerals. It works for a while but then we get rather famished for those essentials.

Since we are 8 hours ahead of Salt Lake City, we watch Saturday morning with the French-speaking congregation then the English-speaking portion stays for the Saturday afternoon session. The translations on Saturday afternoon come out later. Sunday has not happen yet in SLC so we miss both of those sessions until Monday. As well, the talks are reviewed in our other meetings during the 6-month period until our next General Conference.

There were some changes made. Church meetings on Sunday will go from 3 hours of Church to 2 hours. It was emphasized more than once that it’s just not a shortening of our Church hours, but that we will have more time at home to study as families to prepare for the next Sunday: the phrase was Home-centered; Church-supported. Since families are the core of society and our church, the increased emphasis on families makes sense. We’re also encouraged to use the time to serve others, work on Family History and strengthen families in a world that is moving against family values and traditional families.

The women’s group (Relief Society) and men’s group (Priesthood) and Young Men/Young Women’s group will alternate Sundays with Sunday School. We will prepare at home for those Sunday School lessons with our families which will make for richer discussions at Church.

The weather—this blog post could read summer-fall-summer-fall….and we hear next week is back to summer temperatures. We had absolutely gorgeous, balmy San Diego weather all last week, in the 80s. Yesterday it was hot and sunny in the morning. We left to do some errands for Church and it seemed slightly cooler when we got down stairs. Meg went back upstairs and put a thin ¾ sleeve blouse over her short sleeves, just in case. We were at “Walmart” for 25 minutes tops and came out to blustery COLD and icy winds. Something was blowing in….and fast. We about froze until we got home 10 minutes away. In the Alps they still have mid-station huts in the mountains for sudden storms. You just never know living up against the mountains.

Carcassonne—This is one INCREDIBLE castle/fortress….your quintessential fairy-tale castle with lots of turrets and notched walls and very intact. And HUGE…possibly the largest castle/fort in France. We’ll have to research that. Of course, it’s easy to romanticize the Middle Ages. The fortress walls speak volumes on surviving invading armies and the like. It was ALL about protection. And when you see how many LAYERS of protection one needed—including moats, rampart walls, cross-bow slits, watch-towers, murder holes, layouts, keeps for the King, armor for knights and their horses, etc—we see that external threats were inevitable. Every possible measure was taken to survive an attack.

Of course we have our own threats in our day and age. Some are external as in terrorist’s attacks or non-American philosophies infiltrating our borders. But we see internal threats with attacks against traditional family values, declining morals and Hollywood influences just to name a few. We couldn’t help but see we are still “at war” as technologically advanced and “civilized” as purported. No Age is without its challenges. We need our own fortress these days to protect us from today's threats. There's that ole Protestant hymn (which happens to be Meg's Dad's favorite hymn) A Mighty Fortress is our God. That's why we have General Conference--to shore up our own fortress, putting on that full armor of God. We’ll get off our soap box now.

Carcassonne is in a class by itself and it does not disappoint.

A la prochaine!