This is a nice family we’ve visited twice, and are trying to “bring back.” They’ve felt “excluded” and that’s too bad. Their last name is Parmentier.
This is a decoration on the side of their house, made by the lady: It’s kind of like a “plastic of paris mural.” Then after she made it, she cut it into 6 pieces and hung it on the wall.
The next part is not very well organized. Sorry. I wrote a long explanation about the community singing we've joined, and put it AFTER these pictures. It's imbedded in an explanation about a funeral we attended last Saturday. Not well organized. Sorry. Just read (and re-read if you have to) to understand.
These are members of the commmunity choir at a “party/barbecue.” Yes, they called it a “barbecue” pronounced with a strong French accent. Lots a people know English words, but they can’t string them together, and their pronunciation is totally French. But lots of them, especially the better educated ones, can at least read English, and some can speak it fairly well.
The question Americans HAVE to ask is How do these people avoid putting on weight? Look at that cake covered with strawberries, on the left! And this is only a small part of all the food.
This next picture is NOT a good picture! Too light. You see Alice! To her right, you see the shorter lady, Sister Sautier, diagnosed with lung cancer about 3 years ago, but she’s beating it! Along with all the other emotions that go with such a catastrophe is the question “Why . . . ? since I have never ever smoked in my life?” The younger man, white t-shirt and levis, is her son-in-law, who is the contractor for the house (beautiful!) they’re building. The blue-t-shirt man is Brother Sautier, released as Stake president, probably 5 or 7 years ago, a member of our ward. The oldest guy in the picture looks really pretty old, doesn’t he?!! (Picture taken by one of the contractor’s hired hands. . .not very skilled!)
Date: 7 Sept. 2008. Yesterday we went to a Catholic funeral!
I’ll explain.
We have joined a community choir. . . you know that. The choir is called “Samm’ Chante.” The Samme is a small river in the area of Seneffe, the town where we live, and "Chante" means "sing" of course, as all of you French speakers already know!! We sang with the choir at the marriage service of one of the grandchildren of one of the choir members a few weeks ago. After the service, we went to a bar and had our Sprite with other choir members, while they had their wine or beer (Belgians drink beer, not wine, usually). (See our blog of Aug 18.) A week ago Saturday, we went to a “Barbecue” . . . well, . . . they served less meat than in the US, but a lot (a lot!) of good food, and we ate outdoors. I would have called it a picnic, but for them, a picnic is really out in the wild! It was hosted by the Samm’Chante.
I'm still explaining, so just stay with me. We (Samm'Chante) rehearse every Wednesday evening, and we learned last Wednesday that the father-in-law of one of the members had passed away, and so we were asked to sing at his funeral service in the local church. Well, this time, we asked to be excused because we didn’t know the music. But we went to the funeral anyway. . . more than anything out of curiosity. It wasn’t too big of a surprise. But at one point, everyone there (except us and about 2 other people) went toward the priest and kissed something he held out to them. We couldn’t see what it was, and I thought maybe they had changed the way they gave “Communion.” Then later in the service, they DID have “Communion.” So after the service, we got to talking to one of the other choir members, comparing funeral services. She wanted to know if our services were very different than theirs, and so we explained, of course. She explained that the “kissing” mentioned above was a “personal farewell” to the deceased. The priest (and one other guy, a “lay minister?”) held small oval picture of what I think was the deceased, of maybe just a small oval picture of a cross, which each person kissed, and which the priest wiped on a cloth before the next person kissed it again. We’ve never been to a Catholic funeral before, so this was new to us.
It’s quite obvious to us that “Mormons” are still very very (!!) unknown here (except of course, for polygamy). In France and Belgium, you’re either Catholic or agnostic/atheist. (Sure, they’ve heard about Protestants, but I think even the Protestants and Jews seem “weird” to these people. And Muslims. . .these Europeans are actually kinda racist about Muslims. African-Europeans get less flak than Muslims do.) I thin k most people here still confuse us with the Amish. And of course what they see on TV about the FLDS strengthens that false idea. Whew!!
The lady who asked us questions thought, of course, that our church had its origins during the 16th or 17th centuries. It’s hard for these people to understand the concept that an Apostasy occurred shortly after the death of the apostles, and that a restoration was necessary.
Today in Fast Meeting, our host, Oliver Snickers, who works for the town of Seneffe, mentioned that a member of the town council has mentioned us to him. I guess we’ll have to see if they tell us at the next rehearsal whether or not we are still welcome to sing with them. I think they won’t kick us out, though, because we add something (we sing pretty well) and because we brought food to the picnic (mentioned above) and we helped wash wine glasses at the last rehearsal (yes, they had a little champagne at the last practice).
Thanks to those who post responses to these blogs. (If you don't, don't feel guilty, really!) We are really (!!) blessed. We wish we could see more people become active or come into the fold, but still, even so, we're blessed.
