Fait Le Bise

Fellowship at the church in Carcassone.

We had another great day today.  We went to church in Carcassonne and I was given a chance to speak to the congregation.  I thanked them for their help with Jason and told them of the gift we had brought to them.  We brought them pecan pralines.  The singing was beautiful and the sermon was outstanding.  Their new pastor is a really good preacher.  I think he speaks something like 4 different languages. They closed the service with the observance of the Lord's supper.  Janie and I declined the offer to join them.  This church practices close communion and we practice closed.  After the services Jason passed out the pecan pralines and they all seemed to really enjoy them.  They moved the chairs and set up tables and about 20 people stayed to eat lunch.  They put the food on the tables and each table has different foods.  We first ate what was on our table and then those were moved to another table and new dishes were set before us.  We sampled each of these and again more and different foods made it to our table. The meal ends with cheese and then desert. The cheese was very good and the desert was chocolate birthday cake.  It was one of the ladies birthday. They sang Happy Birthday in English, I suppose the English was just for us. 
Last Sunday I was new to this culture but this Sunday I "Fait le bise"d like everyone else. Now for those of you who do not know what that is let me enlighten you.  "Fait le bise" is what you call the way they greet each other here in France.  It is to gesture a kiss to the right cheek and then to the left of the person you are greeting. Now most limit it to just that while others actually kiss your cheeks.  It was not as uncomfortable a thing as I thought it would be.  I have a son-in-law that would hurt you if you tried such a thing with him.
During our meal I got to visit with the retired pastor of the church at Carcassone.  We had a really good Bible discussion and I look forward to our email conversations in the future on various Bible topics.
The services at Walnut Street went very well.  I enjoyed the singing and the sermon.  I look forward to being back there next Sunday.  

The men washing the dishes after the fellowship

Jason cooked a really good supper tonight and after the kids went to bed we watched a movie.  During the movie three bats entered the house for a visit.  We had the doors open to let some cool air in and they came right in.  We turned the lights out and in a bit they left.   Janie was rocking Arianna and carefully left the room with her until our visitors were gone.   Well its off to bed now. God bless you.