As close as we'll ever get to Lance Armstrong...

July 25, 2010 – Sunday

We are still adjusting to the time change which means most of us are waking up about 2 or 3 in the morning and finding it difficult to go back to sleep. It makes it easier to get up in the morning for now. Given our penchant for sleeping in however, I am sure we will adjust and I’ll have to drag people out of bed fairly soon!

We were able to find the church this morning only because there were a group of other toursists outside the building that looked like they were also looking for the Mormon church. We all had a nice chat – there were members of the church there from the Netherlands (I didn’t bring up recent World Cup games), Texas, and Thailand. Everyone spoke at least a bit of English however so we had fun talking with them. The church is an unmarked building on a side street which you would not know existed unless you knew it was there. Eventually some missionaries opened the door and we all filed into an open courtyard with the chapel and classrooms along the sides. We joined a Sunday School class (in English) that was already in progress and enjoyed the lesson given by an American living here who works for a security company. There was also a Sunday School class being given in French and one in Chinese. After Sunday School we moved into the chapel, which is actually divided into two separate rooms. We sat in the main chapel where everything was done in French. There was a simultaneous English translation that you could listen to in person in the other room, or sit in the main chapel with earphones to hear the English translation. Steve and the girls used the earphones and I was able to follow almost everything in French. One of the missionaries gave the first talk, and the missionary was Elizabeth Smart. Let that one sink in for a moment… It was rather sobering for me to listen to her give a fairly simple talk in OK French (not that my French is any better, but I don’t think she has been in Paris very long and here she was giving a talk to about 180 people). Of course we don’t know her personally, but do know more about her life than we probably should because of her kidnap and return to her family. It struck me that if you did not know anything about her, you would just see a pretty young woman working to speak French and giving a simple talk about keeping the Sabbath Day holy. But then you realize, that she probably has a greater strength and a greater knowledge of knowing what it is like to depend on God than almost anyone that might have been in attendance at that meeting. But then again, it brought home the lesson that you can’t judge people because you do not know what they have endured in life or the strength that they possess.

The second talk was given by a French member of the church who spoke quickly and was wonderful to listen to. The third talk was given by an American working for the US Embassy who spoke beautiful French. We talked with him after the meeting and he is living there with his young family (3 very cute and active little boys). He grew up all around the world and learned French early in his life. He reminded me of my brother Doug, both in appearance and his ability to speak French (that is a compliment Doug!). We had a good time talking with a few of the members after church – they were from all over the world. There were a lot of black Africans probably from many different French-speaking countries, Americans, Dutch, Peruvian, etc. We also found out that visitors outnumbered members that day. A lot of the members are away on their vacations and it is certainly the high tourist season now.

After church we found our way down to the Tuileries Garden for… the finish of the Tour de France. We found a place along the inside wall of the Tuilieries where we perched on the wall for about 2 ½ hours waiting for the Tour to come by. The wait was not too awful because we found some candy to buy, we had water, we took turns sitting and met a very nice family from Sasketchuwan, Canada (no idea how to spell that – sorry my Canadian friends!). They knew a lot about the tour and took great pictures that they shared with us. We decided in the end that the long wait was worth the experience of watching the best riders in the world pass by us 8 times as they finished the most difficult bike race in the world. It was amazing at how quickly they rode by. It was also amazing to me that the group of riders looks much smaller in person than they do on TV. They probably zipped by us at 30 miles an hour. There were lots of cars – team cars, press cars, police cars, camera cars, etc. that would fly by before the riders, and then came the riders at an equal speed. The first time around they were closely bunched, and then after that there was a front break away pack of about 7 or 8 riders followed by the peleton (is it still a peleton at that point?). We were able to spot Contador (in the yellow jersey) and Lance Armstrong. It was really quite exciting and probably an experience that we will never repeat. We made our way home on the Metro after the finish and pretty much collapsed on our beds.

Another beautiful day in Paris!