|
|
Journal June 26-30, 1962 |
|
|
June 26—It was a splendid baptism [of
Sister Cholet], and it had a profound effect on
Mme Fauchard and Mlle Cauche, as well as on another young woman whom they brought to the service. Sister Cauche is going to Paris to see her father, and so we won’t get to baptize her before she leaves. But she will return, and then… In the mean time, we have her mother and her friend to work on.
June 28—Sister Fauchard has set her baptismal date: next Monday. Her daughter may be baptized in Paris, where she has gone to meet her father. Lynn Bennion got his telegram: he’s on his way to [154] to Paris to be “grand champignon” (senior companion) to one of the new missionaries who just arrived from the United States yesterday. This messes up the Bennions’ plan to split with Elders Peterson and Halliday today. So much the better: we won’t have to eat Bennion cooking: it’s dreadfully healthful. I’m going to miss Elder Lynn. June 30—Another baptism to report: Sister Fauchard went into the water this morning: Suzanne Olympe Yvonne Fauchard, baptized June 30, 1962, by Robins, and confirmed the same day by myself. It was a lovely service, and everybody was impressed. |
|
A necessary sidebar (or bottombar, or whatever) here on sweet, jolly, unsophisticated Sister Cholet. The journal record doesn’t say anything about her progress as an investigator (as we called the folks we taught, in those days), and of course my memory’s even vaguer. It appears that Elder Robins and I baptized and confirmed her, respectively, but we may have done so on the Sisters’ behalf. Not that the statistics matter all that much: she did become one of my four principal mothers-away-from-home in Rennes, and when Valerie and I returned in late 1968, it was three of them (Sisters
Cholet,
Delétang, and
Chaussonnier — Sister
Leroy had come to America) who gathered after district conference for a brief, loving, and tearful reunion.
I did have enough to do with her teaching to know that she had a hard time praying aloud. She would insist, “My prayers are between me and my God; they’re none of your business.” So we’d never actually heard her pray, the day after her baptism, when she invited us (all the district, I think) to her penthouse apartment (actually a garret, converted from 15th-century servants’ quarters, under the eaves of a historic building on the rue des Dames; we were told these structures were built to accommodate the female portion of the retinue of King Charles, when he came to collect his newly-conquered bride, Anne de Bretagne) for a perfectly fabulous oie farcie à l’ail (roast goose stuffed with garlic) in the Breton style. A feast, be it needlessly observed, that she could in no way afford, but that she was not going to be deprived of the privilege of offering us, with the biggest, proudest smile you ever saw on a Breton face. …More, next page… |
|
Back a Page (Journal) |
Such a Life Contents |
First Mission: section start |
First Mission: page index |
Rennes: page index |
Next Page (Journal) |
| Welcome | Stories | Sections | Such a Life | People | Places | Site Search | Do You Know? |
| Updated Aug 2014 | [087Journal.htm] | Page 32-106 |
