Happy USA Mother’s Day; Oo-la-la, our second Spring in France

Happy Mother’s Day! Here in France, it’s 26 May so Meg gets more mileage out of Mother’s Day this year and lastJ

Our Church Week--Marc has been specializing in genealogy ever since High School. He's done beaucoup research during those years. In the past decade, Poussard being French, he's learned and used many French websites. Fancy that we are in France; it's been very useful here to teach others in France about these very specific tools to use that are very specifically useful in France. So he has been helping Church Members in Tarbes, and beyond, with their genealogy.

We believe that the family unit is eternal and continues after this life, so it is important to know who our ancestors are. In our own family, Sunday was a day to pull out ancestral stories we remember, or were told to us as children and that we pass on. We learned about family traditions, where our families lived, how they lived. We brought out family heirloom pieces to show them and in the process they learned about the lives and time in history their relatives lived on this Earth.

Marc helps those interested set up accounts on familysearch.org which is free to all--members and nonmembers of our church. It's a wonderful and helpful site. Marc has helped them upload pictures of their family and create their family trees. Some in our Branch were adopted and are searching for their roots. Some have taken DNA tests (ADN in France) and have learned things about their family backgrounds that they never knew. One French member was surprised to find that she was half British. Such are the benefits of DNA testing!

One distant relative in France found Marc through a DNA web site and asked for help. She was abandoned as a child and raised without knowing almost anything about her family. She travels to French department record offices every three months searching for records in the hope of finding a clue, and plans to continue searching the rest of her life; she is 80.

(If you are any helpful hints to add..... The web page that she uses for her search is here. Madeleine .

Pascale—We went over to Pascale’s to introduce her to Family Search. She will be our new Family History helper. She works 3 jobs so her time is limited. But her willingness is unaffected and we remain in awe.

Valerie and Anne—came over Wed. Valerie was off school--It's VE Day (Victory Europe) Day and it is a bank holiday here, meaning schools, banks and many businesses are closed. We finished up some decorations –paper flowers—for our next repas and Mother’s Day celebration (26 May). During and after, we visited, French-style—6 hours. With the daylight long and us being farther north than San Diego, the sun at 9pm can look 1pm so we were all taken by surprise when it was gradually getting dark around 9:30pm.

We discussed those in need and how to help, future repas, our own time winding down. Since our crepe flowers started to look like a hat, we had a brief “hat party” to celebrate England’s new son.

Elder Gardner—transferred out of Tarbes to Toulon in Southern France this week. He’s been here 6 months. It goes by so fast. Sometimes our days are so packed you feel like you live a full week. There’s a missionary saying we just heard from Elder Gardner as he was ready to depart….the days can feel like weeks, the weeks feel like days; the months feel like weeks and the years feel like months. We couldn’t agree more as our own time is lessening more quickly than we care to admit.

Elder Loh—is from Singapore and just arrived to take Elder Gardner’s place. He speaks English, Chinese and French. It’s likely he’ll see us go as he leaves and finishes his mission the last day of July, 8 days after our release date. We’ve had so many Elders finish their missions from Tarbes. But that is great for us as they come well-seasoned and at the peak of their language ability.

Carcassonne—Yes, again. We thought we had our last leadership training meeting prior to our leaving. It’s a hefty drive--5 1/2 hours for one day. But it’s Carcassonne! Many would love to be in our shoes getting to go to Carcassonne, the largest Medieval Castle complex in France. We love being there (minus the drive). We didn't spend the night this time but walked the castle area after our meeting. The weather was perfect--balmy and warm. It's an entirely different climate and vegetation there. It's always fun to see many out walking or visiting or running to the castle. Of course now, the early tourists are coming and more shops, restaurants, etc are open.

Of course the real reason—the training meeting—is always helpful. The camaraderie is unbeatable and so is the message. That’s what we take away. It fills us up and spiritually energizes us until the next stint. But this was our last, sadly.

Spring?—Well if you beamed in here last Tuesday, you would have thought we were back in winter. Such is the weather pattern up against the mountains in Tarbes. It’s a day-by-day call whether if feels like winter or summer or spring. The sun was warm; but the air was icy cold. We have had colds and virus’ since February; so we'll be very content when the weather is so topsy-turvy. It seems we catch every little sniffle available. We looked out our window and sure enough, there was a new layer of fresh white snow on the mountain at the end of our street. It’s always so beautiful to see the fresh, pure white snow. We’re glad it snowed up high as it just did not seem like enough snow on these mountains to fill up reservoirs and general spring run off to high pasture lands for cattle, sheep and goats—a big part of the economy here in this region.

February was warm, spring flowers were coming out and everything around us spelled spring. But now April and May feel like the end of February should feel. Weather always seems to be the talk of the town, this week was representative of that.

Towns of the week--Towns on our return trip from Paris. Enjoy!

A la prochaine.

Anne/Valerie

Bravo for England's newest son.

Doing family history with Pascale

Lionel giving Elder Gardner a history lesson

Chevez, Elder Church, and Leo

Anne's million dollar view.
Below: the billion dollar view if we could only remove that building blocking
the full view of the Pyrenées

Elder Gardner and Siobhan

Elder Church and Anne's very nice cat

Floraline doing her homework

Meg and Gisele; Gisele is on fire about the decorations and will take over when we leave.

Two Frenchman stopped us in the park to talk about religion.

They recognized our name tags and told us how they talked to our Elders before.

Religion is NOT a popular subject here, quite the contrary.

.....so.....we gave our newest Elders a call and asked where they were.

"Just around the corner," they said. So they hoofed it over.

The teaching belongs to the young Elders who set up a contact with them.

We act in a support role for the young missionaries teaching with them under their direction.

We made their day: 2 very happy Elders - Elder Loh and Elder Church

They are serious about celery in France

We stop and smell the wisteria every time we pass by...just heavenly

We get to talk to Nadya in Canada every week now

Nadya and her new companion, Soeur McGee and their P-day

Nadya in the attic of a house doing a service project
She thought this was a funny attic....kind of a half-attic.
They were helping a member get some things out of the attic.