Nancy!!

This trip is taking way too long to blog about. I'm sorry if you're bored to tears, no obligation in reading this... more for my personal record keeping. One of the highlights of visiting France was being able to visit people from my mission days who are near and dear to my heart. This is Angelique and her husband, Hevri. We met her as missionaries, she was 25 and was searching for a church and was totally interested in our message. She was one of those people that was just ready. She was baptized and continues to be a faithful member along with her convert husband of 3 years. He is EQ president, she is in YW's and they have a little girl together.

 

We ate at their house and she fed us a bona fide full course French meal. Ben was all confused when they served cheese after the meal. Yeah, it's weird, but awesome. I love cheese. She was so sweet... for the entree she served croques monsieurs, which are toasted ham and cheese sandwiches because she remembered how much I loved them.
The girl on the left is Marine, Angelique's older daughter. When we taught Angelique, Marine was in the throes of her terrible twos. I remember we taught her at the chapel, and one of us would teach while the other would chase Marine around. She is the sweetest girl, in her charming way exclaiming, "Bon appetit!" before each course.

A walk down memory lane...the street I lived on for 7 months

The apartment I lived in for 7 months

We ate lunch at the beautiful Place de la Stanislas where we walked through on almost a daily basis as missionaries. So we found out Stanislas, the statue guy in the middle of the square was the duke of Lorraine and the king of Poland! Weird. Another sign that Ben and I were meant to be.

One of the gates of the grandiose square

And yeah, the guy who took our picture was totally nice, but didn't come close to getting Stanislas in the picture.

Quiche-Lorraine, typical of the region
After lunch we went to the Parque de la Pepiniere, also frequently visited by us as missionaries... a great finding location. At the exact moment that I am smiling in this picture, my wallet was being stolen. Yeah, Ben had just left it on a snack counter and after we took this picture, we realized we didn't have it, ran back and it was GONE! All my id, money, credit cards, everything. So, that definitely put a damper on the day. I did get to fill out a police report at the station with a French officer though, all of it done in French. Kind of fun.

While I was at the station, Ben stayed at the park with the girls and got some great shots.

And the absolute highlight of the day was visiting with this man, Guy Debraine. Do you like Caroline's starfish pose? We frequently visited him and his sweet wife as missionaries. He always made us a homemade fruit tart when we'd visit. His wife was already a devote member of the church, and Guy was the most devote husband and the nicest guy in the entire world, but wouldn't get baptized. He had had all the lessons and been to church, read the Book of Mormon and everything, but for personal reasons chose not to join. So, I've written him every Christmas for the past ten years except this last one. I tried to get ahold of him ahead of time to let him know we were coming to Nancy, but to no avail. He never picked up his phone. So, we decided to just swing by his apartment and I really doubted that he still lived there since I couldn't track him down. Well, I rang the bell and there he was. It was awesome. He was beyond surprised. He is just the same, but was so sad he didn't know we were coming so he could have made one of his fruit tarts. His sweet wife has passed away and he spoke so fondly of her. Really, one of the most high quality people I've ever met.
Later that night we went and visited the church, exactly the same.