This is the last of a 4 part story, you may want to read parts 1 - 3 before reading this blog post. This series of blog posts chronicles the adventures that my daughter Taylor and I encountered during our trip to France and England. Part 3 ends as we are leaving Grenoble, France which is in the French Alps and we take a train to
Lyon, France the second largest city in France. After this train ride we have only 1 train ride left and this last ride will take us to the airport. The ride to Lyon was pretty uneventful the adventure will begin when we arrive at Lyon.
We are not sure where we will be staying when we get there, we are to be split up among church families for our last 3 nights in France. I was to stay in a home with 2 other team members, my daughter had been stuck with me the entire trip so she was allowed to stay in a different home than where I stayed.
Myself and the other 2 members of our team stayed with David & Irene Bohn, they are a very nice young couple who made us feel very welcome in their home. Our first night we arrived at just about dinner time, the Bohns were very hospitable even when we arrived at a inhospitable time. They made us feel right at home and treated us to the best of anything that they had. Our first meal there we had green pumpkin soup, which reminded me very much of pea soup. It was really pretty good, I wasn't sure if I would like it but I had 2 helpings. Irene spoke a little English but David spoke hardly any, I spoke no French but the other 2 of my team spoke some French. So between the 5 of us we were able to carry on a decent conversation. It turns out that David is a Mime, we had been hoping to see a mime while we were in Paris but it was the wrong time of year for them. David agreed to do some Miming for us and he was very good. It was quite a good evening and I was happy to be staying in their home. The next day we were to hand out in Lyon and see some of the city before heading to the church that night to hang out with the youth group.
Lyon was a very interesting city, Taylor and I stayed together for the most part as we were trying to finish up some souvenir shopping for family members. As we were basically out of money by this time we pretty much walked around and window shopped. Taylor was able to buy a few inexpensive things for her sisters and we managed enough money to eat but we were truly spending the last of our money. From some of the mishaps we had encountered on our trip much of our spending money was used in ways that we had not planned, when my luggage was lost I had to buy new clothes and when we got stuck in Paris without the team I had to buy our tickets to get us to Grenoble as well as our food that was to be taken care of by the team. So most of our spending money was gone early into the trip. We did make do however and managed to enjoy ourselves just the same. Later that Evening when we went to the church we were greeted at the door by a very energetic young lady named Anne-Lise. She was so excited to meet Americans she could hardly stand it. She turned out to be the life of the party that evening and her very friendly and fun personality won over the entire team within a few minutes. It was that night that I learned of her desire to come to the US, she wanted to come here to learn to speak English. I instantly felt that I should invite this girl to come stay with us in America. The more I thought about it the more I knew it was the right thing to do. I decided to ask my wife about it, she wasn't against the idea so I took this to mean yes and I invited Anne-Lise to come to our home and stay for a time. She was so excited that I thought she was going to pass out. Later the next day I was talking with a lady in her church and she told me that Anne-Lise had been praying for someone to invite her to the US for 3 years. I didn't know this until that moment, it was then that I knew that what I did was of the Lord and not of myself.
Back to the story, that night our team was able to teach the French teens how to do the Chicken Dance and the Electric Slide. It was quite fun to watch and the kids all had a great time, after the dancing we had French Pizza and more fellowship time.
It was a fun way to end our stay in France. After the fun with the youth group we each broke up into our smaller groups and went back to the individual homes where we were staying. We each had to make our way through the metro system to the different homes. The home of the Bohn's where I was staying just happened to be located next to the Basketball Arena for the Lyon Pro Basketball team. When we arrived back at apartment building we had to go past the Arena, a game just happened to be going on and the doors were wide open so we went in to check it out. We saw the last few minutes of the game as it was just ending.
I took some photos of the teams congratulating each other. We missed any play action as we were in line trying to buy a hot dog. It was still a fun thing to do, we were able to tell the rest of the team how we snuck into a basketball game. When we arrived at the Bohn's it was late so we pretty much went to bed as we had to get up early the next day for church.
The next morning we went to church and after the service we hung out in Lyon and did a bit more sight seeing.
After that we spent one more night with the families and the next morning we got up early and our host families made sure that we all made it to the train station on time.
Once we were all at the station we boarded the train and went to the Airport in Paris. This was again an uneventful train ride and we arrived shortly at the airport. We made our way to our terminal and got on our plane and flew back to the US. It was a long and short 3 weeks that I look back on with good memories. I wouldn't trade any of for anything. This brings us to the title of the past 4 blogs, "Bon Voyage". Last Wednesday we said Bon Voyage to Anne-Lise.
She came to the US on Sept. 5, 2008 and stayed with us for 3 months. It was quite lively around the house for those 3 months, it was fun and at times frustrating trying to communicate with her. When she arrived her English was not good but when she left she was speaking English quite well. It was her dream to come to America and I am honored that God would choose my family to fulfill her dream. It is humbling to think that you were a part of fulfilling someones dream. She has been gone now for almost a week and the house is quieter for sure. I do miss her but at the same time it is nice to be back to our normal routine for a while. Well I hope you have enjoyed hearing about the adventure that Taylor and I had the privilege of sharing while in Europe.
Photoman
