AUGUST 26, 2007

JoAnn may have just passed what we think was a kidney stone. We’re not sure, because it was over the weekend and she didn't go to a doctor. But it is much better today. The funny thing is that one of our zone leaders passed a kidney stone just last week - only he ended up in the hospital for a day. Hers wasn't so bad, so that is why she is not sure if it was a kidney stone or something else.

We are at the McDonald's WIFI checking the Internet this morning. They have not decided whether we need to come in to work at the archives today or not - whether they will have work for us. The floor where they get the documents for us to work on has been officially closed. There is a hole in the wall now. They still may be able to retrieve documents for us but they haven't made that decision yet. We usually go to McDonald’s for the Internet after work, but this is much better to go in the morning - not so many people and the temptation to buy French fries is gone. They have been having a promotion where if you buy a meal you get a free glass that looks like a Coca Cola can - only in pretty colors.

We don't want to say that we eat too much McDonald's food, but we do have a nice collection of glasses. We have collected all the colors and are currently in a trading frenzy with the Elders so they can get the colors they want. The Elders always get something alike with each companion so they will have something specifically to remember them by and the McDonald's glasses have proven a favorite.

JoAnn bought a cook book here at an English bookstore. The book is "A Little Taste of France" and it has classic French recipes but written in English with American measurements (along with the French). We have tried several of them and they are all very good. We will have to have a French dinner for everyone when we get back.

We had a great Zone Conference this week. The theme was essentially that even when things are hard and seem like nothing good is coming from our efforts, if we just keep putting one foot in front of the other and going forward, the blessings will come and we will see the reason for what we are doing and will be blessed in the process. Sometimes we think what we are doing is hard, but when we think of all the younger missionaries do and have to put up with, we feel very blessed. We really do have it good here. Our friends that are in Mongolia have a much harder mission than we do. It is very primitive there. Basically, France is just like America but they speak a different language. There are some things that are different, but most things are very similar. If you watch people go by in the mall, you couldn't tell that you weren't in America.

Some of our work now consists of doing Indexing via the Internet. It is kind of fun. JoAnn is working on the 1900 US census and Arnold is working on French parish records in the early 1800s. Interestingly, we found some of our zone leader's ancestors in the Kentucky records. This is something that we will be able to do when we get back home too. It is a little tedious, but also interesting. One man was 70 and married to a 35-year-old wife. Her father was living with them - he was younger than her husband. Another family had 21 children - all from the same wife. This indexing will make it easier for someone to do their genealogy - they won't have to search through all the microfilms to find something. They just have to search an index on the computer for a certain name and then be directed to the records where that name appears. It will really speed up their research.