Normandy, France

The family on Utah Beach.

The Craters still remain from the bombing of Point du Hoc.

We left early Monday for our trip to Normandy with my parents.  It was a great trip.  The kids did well in the car for the 9 hour drive (it took us 11 hours).  It helped splitting them up between our car and the rental car.  We ate lunch at a rest stop and had supper at McDonalds before getting to our hotel in Bayeux.  The hotel was nice, inexpensive, and centrally located.  Tuesday morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and spent a day looking at the sights.  We first went to the Utah Beach Museum.  We arrived just after they opened and beat the crowd.  We spent about two hours there.  It was amazing and as an American with two grandfathers who served in WWII, it was a great visit.  We took a walk on the beach before packing up to head to the next stop.  We stopped next at the town St. Mere Eglise, where there is the Airborne Museum.  When the paratroopers where landing in the town one landed on the church steeple and was captured.  There is a dummy hanging there now in memory of him.  Afterwars we went to Omaha Beach followed by the Point Du Hoc.  It is a piece of land jutting out with views of both Omaha and Utah beach.  The germans could use it too target both beaches.  It was heavily bombed and then Rangers stormed the point before the main landings and scaled the 100 ft cliffs using rope ladders and destroyed the guns.  They then held out until reinforcements arrived.  On the more than 225 men that arrived only 90 were alive and fighting at the time reinforcements arrived.  The next stop was the American Cemetery, which was the highlight of the visit for me.  It is the burial site for over 10,000 American Soldiers who were killed in the battles in Normandy.  We stopped by one more musuem, the wreck museum, containing equipement salvaged off the seafloor.  It was already closed, but we were able to see what they had out front.  We made it back to a hotel and ate supper in a nice restaurant nearby.  We headed out early the next morning for Mont St. Michele.  It is an island in a bay that floods during high tides.  The island has a Cathedral built at the top.  Once again we arrived just in time, because as we left we saw a line of cars about 4 miles long waiting to enter.  The rest of the trip home went well.  We rested Thursday and Friday.  Friday, I took the papers in to turn in for our new house.  A few items were missing so  I will try to get those turned in on Tuesday.  Saturday we went and looked at some caves in the area.  We attended services in Carcassonne today.  God bless, JASON

Day 4 without Angie

My day went well. I made the kids pancakes this morning for breakfast. Afterwards, I worked some more on a promotional video that I have been making. After sandwiches for lunch, we headed to the language school to play, after being there for maybe thirty minutes, Andrew had a dirty diaper, of course I forgot to bring extra, so we walked back to the house. While I was changing him at the house, I got a call from some friends inviting us to come to the language school and play with their kids. So we headed back to the language school. We had a good time playing and visiting. We had hot dogs with Chili for supper, the chili came today in a package from my parents. Many thanks! I'm letting the kids watch a movie and hope to get them to bed early because they are showing signs of tiredness. Attached is a picture Angie took of two books that belonged to Martin Luther. They were taken at a Lutheran Church in Paris. God bless, JASON

Limoux.

We had a great trip to Limoux. We picked up the rental car (an Opel Zafira - 7 passenger) Friday evening. We took the chance to take a couple of language school mothers shopping. Almost all the language school students do not own a car so when one of us have one everyone likes to be able to pick up some stuff from the store that you don't want to have to haul back. We left Saturday morning for Limoux. It only took us about nine hours to make the drive. Andrew got car sick twice (his expressions is - "I'm hot"). Other than that the trip went real well. The car got excellent gas mileage, it was diesel and cruising at 75 MPH (130 km /h) it got 42 miles to the gallon (5.5 liters per 100 km). The rental house was wonderful. About 5 km outside of Limoux, it had a nice yard with a creek running behind it, it was spacious inside with 4 bedrooms and a fireplace. Sunday we went to church in Carcassonne (about 25 km away) at the Èglise Évangélique Baptiste. We gave a ride to one of the members who lived in Limoux. The services went well and we had a meal afterwards. Lilia was excited because there were two girls there about her age. The meal was excellent, we ate salad, soup, rice, quiche, bread, cheese, dessert. The conversation was excellent and very informative. We made it home and rested the rest of the evening. Monday we went back to Carcassonne to get some more minutes for our cell phone, but they were closed. We stopped by McDonald's and got the kids lunch and checked the e-mail. Back in Limoux we went to the office of tourism and got a lot of good information. Tuesday we went shopping and checked out prices and picked up some things. The prices are significantly lower than in Paris and they have a good foreign foods section which sells Dr. Pepper among other things. Tuesday afternoon I visited with another pastor from Carcassonne and one of his members from Limoux. Keep in mind all of these conversations were in French, good practice but exhausting. Wednesday, Angie went out with the young lady we picked up for Church. They had a good visit and afterwards Angie stopped by a couple of Realtors and found out among other things that the rent is about half of what we are paying in Paris. While Angie was gone I was playing outside with the kids enjoying the southern France weather, when a couple stopped by, Jehovah Witnesses, what are the odds. I visited with them for about 20 minutes and learned some good information. Wednesday night we had a couple that we met last July over for Supper. They are a really nice couple, retired from Belgium. We had a really good visit with them, we picked up some new words for sure. Thursday, we took the kids to see a dinosaur and hat museum. We had a really good time, the kids loved all the dinosaurs. Some of the dinosaur bones came from Texas. That afternoon we visited with the young lady and her roommate at our home. They are musicians and we had a good visit and stressed the need for more workers in Limoux. Talking from the other pastors, I learned that they work several small villages in the area during the week as well. One pastor had a Bible study in a different village every day of the week, all started by word of mouth. Angie and I both fell sure that this is were God wants us to work. We came back Friday without problems other then Caleb who was car sick (his key word "my mouth hurts"). Thanks for the prayers for us during this trip. Enjoy the pictures (1- our car, 2- T-rex, 3-giant scorpion, 4-the road into Limoux), I will post more in the Future. God Bless, JASON