Month: October 2014

I count it a privilege to be able to travel around France. Last weekend, we were in the Deep South for a Wedding. This weekend we are in the Far West for a youth conference. On Wednesday and Thursday, we drove several hundred miles to get here, South of Le Mans. The views are so varied. The local architecture as well.

We had a lovely trip. The first part was on motorways, from Chambéry to Montluçon. We hoped to see my grandmother who live there but weren’t able to do it. For the second part of the journey, we travelled for some miles on a roads. It was beautiful. The roads were wide and quiet. Without us knowing we drove through some cultural places. We came across George Sand’s village and house and we had our picnic near the “mare au diable” which is the setting of one of her novels.

Most parts of France are very rural. You can drive for miles without seeing anyone. There are houses scattered around. You drive through sleepy villages, wondering whether you are in 2014 or 1960. This is la France profonde. It lives in the 21st century yet, it seems that many things haven’t changed over the last 40 years. The pace of life is much slower than in other parts of France. The countryside is lovely it the sea and the mountains are very far.

There’re few churches around, and Christians must be easy to drive for a while if they want to get to church. There is still a lot of work to be not here. But it is not glamorous. It needs people committed to building relationship over a long period of time. Pray for the Lord of the harvest to raise workers for the harvest.

Since we came back in the area, I wanted to visit some old friends from many years ago. So yesterday we decided to go and collect chestnut near the house where I grew up and to visit the old farmer who was our landlord at the time.
He is a widower now, and getting older : he is 83. It was good to see him and I think it was a good surprise for him. We chatted for a while. As usual, we were received in the kitchen. That’s the room where guests are usually received. We saw one of his daughters who live near us, we learned.
We had collected chestnuts before going but didn’t have much success. They had either been eaten by wild boars or there weren’t many this year.
There’s a few more people I want to visit. Well do this another time.

It is still nice and warm. We were in the South over the weekend, and we were out in the warm sunshine. Even here it has been a lovely weekend. It was already 13 degrees Celsius and the weather should be fine today. What is going on?

We’re in the Deep South for the weekend where we are attending the wedding of a cousin of mine. We are somewhere between Toulouse, Castre and Carcassonne, in the countryside. It feels remote and wild. It took us 5 1/2 hours to get here.
Everything is different here. The countryside is different. People here are different. They have an accent and strange customs. Some of them speak another language: Occitan. We even saw a couple of bilingual road signs around. They also eat differently: lot of duck product, things like Cassoulet…
It is exciting. We are exploring the Deep South of France.