The past two weeks have been filled with food, worship, food, celebration, food, and service. Oh, did I mention food? We were invited to have Christmas Eve dinner with the Pelous family. They picked us up, along with another Temple Missionary couple, the Bairds, at 6 pm Christmas Eve. We started eating around 7 pm and finished around 11:30. We didn't get home until after midnight. Our French dinner consisted of around 6 courses, beginning with Chestnut soup. We then had escargot (snails for you non-French speakers, and Janet even tried one), clams, smoked salmon, raw salmon, breads with various toppings including caviar and goose liver, and shrimp. We were then served a green salad. Next, the main dish consisted of venison, pureed potatoes, vegetables, and sweet potatoes, served with a rich creamy meat sauce. Then we were served 17 kinds of French cheeses to eat with more bread. The meal was topped off with two different "Buches de Noel" or Christmas logs made of several different flavors of ice cream and sorbet. We did not go to bed hungry that night. In fact, we were very concerned about the breakfast we had planned for the senior missionaries Christmas morning. We were not hungry when we woke up Christmas morning.
Marie and Valentin Pelous entertained us with music and games. In this picture, Marie is demonstrating a type of "cat's cradle" game representing the Eiffel Tower. She must have shown us at least a dozen other formations. We also amused ourselves playing with a "Spinning Buttons on string" pioneer game. Wayne was the champion spinner, teaching others how to make it work. The Pelous home was lavishly decorated for Christmas, but the best decoration was the Christmas Spirit they shared with us. Each meal course was interspersed with Christmas music, Christmas stories, and Christmas testimonies shared with one another. It was truly a joyous experience, one we will always treasure.
The father, Sylvain, did most of the cooking, while his wife, Valerie and their son Valentin did most of the serving.
Christmas morning we gathered at the guest house kitchen to share breakfast with the other temple missionaries. We provided bacon and eggs and others provided all the drinks and trimmings.
The day after Christmas we traveled across Paris to have lunch with my deceased brother David's former wife, Yolande, her brother, Jacques, her father, Michel, and her father's friend, Jeanne. Because of the transportation strike, it took us 3 hours to get there. We had to take a bus to the train, the train to the metro, the metro to a bus, then two other buses. Welcome to life in Paris during a strike. Yolande is in good health and keeps quite busy with her work.
After lunch, we shopped for several table clothes at a little kiosk that we remembered from last year. The mall Christmas decorations were very beautiful. Janet is showing off here new Christmas coat Santa brought her. We also added another heart to our collection
For Christmas, Wayne bought himself a beautiful Mollenhauer Tenor Recorder made from Rosewood. Actually, it will also serve as a birthday gift and a father's day gift for the next three years! Janet was not pleased, but got him a drone for Christmas, anyway.
We spent New Year's Eve at the guest house eating a pot luck dinner with many other temple and visitor center missionary couples.
We stayed up until midnight to watch the fireworks around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on our TV. The Champs Elysee was filled with tens of thousands of people. We can only imagine how long it must have taken them to get home with most of the trains and buses not running because of the strike. But those that were running were all free!
On New Year's Day we were invited to a lunch provided by the Zobiri couple. They come from Chartres to serve at the temple. He is an artist who was born in Algeria, and an excellent cook.
We had wonderful 5 course French meal with an Algerian twist.
Just before our New Year's Eve dinner, Wayne was invited to play the piano to entertain a group of refugees from the middle and far east. A sister who serves at the temple is involved with an organization that helps integrate refugees into French society. A few months ago we donated a VHS player and over 100 VHS cassettes of English movies to them to help the refugees learn English.
One of the Sumner family traditions is doing jigsaw puzzles on New Year's Eve and Day. Here's our puzzle. We had to chose a French puzzle, of course.
On Friday, January 3rd, we sadly took down our Christmas decorations. We separated them into two boxes: one of things we want to take home and the other to donated to whoever replaces us in this apartment next September. Janet decided to leave the Christmas candle pyramid with Wayne's promise to buy her a nicer one next year.
We went shopping together on Saturday, the 4th, to find something to decorate our coffee table in place of the manger we took down. After looking in four different stores, here's what we came up with:
The candles turn on and off by remote control, and have a fake flame that randomly moves around. When we turn off the lights, it's quite romantic. As we think about the past year, we realize how blessed we are to be serving in the Paris Temple. We have grown closer to each other and have acquired many new friends with whom and for whom we serve. We pray this coming year will bring us and all of you blessings of peace and joy.
Needless to say, but I always say it anyway: "The past weeks have flown by". With the Paris Temple being closed for two weeks for scheduled cleaning and maintenance, we've been able to do and see things we normally don't have time to do. We've visited Paris together, we've visited Paris and Chartres with our daughter, Janet, and her son, Brandt, and visited dear friends in Rouen again. This blog will, therefore, be long on pictures and short on text. So here goes: The first pictures are of Wayne celebrating his birthday at the Buffalo Grill restaurant in Versailles with two other senior missionary couples.
