Les Gens

By far, the thing that I love the most about working with les Petits Frères des Pauvres is that familiar joy of feeling weightlessly happy while being filled with the most rewardingly weighty feelings of love for people. Even though I don't know them all that well yet, I love the people we get to work with. They have lived some amazing stories! This queenly lady above is Yvette. She lived as a child through the horrors of the Nazi occupation in France. As she's grown up, her greatest pride and joy has been her "grand and beau mari anglais" (her big handsome English husband) and her Finnish Spitz.  She's every bit as regal and bright as her photo depicts.

I accidentally made us miss the bus to take this picture. I love the Flemish architecture here. The stormy sky offsets the rich reds and oranges of the buildings. I love the baroque/gothic mixture that you see in the buildings.  

Voilà Renée and Lauren. Renée is such a good sport. We share our silly girly stories with here and she just laughs and plays along. She spent her youth as a tailor, and unfortunately never had the opportunity of marrying. We love taking her on walks around the garden outside of the nursing home where she stays.

Wow, i think my eyes have as many wrinkles as hers!---a testament to the fact that I need more sleep.

Lauren loves Volvos....who knows why...oh wait, I think it's because she loves old people so much and wants to chauffeur them to their graves...yep, pretty sure it's for its usefulness as a hearse.

I have no idea as of yet why there are figures on top of this belfry; I'll look into it. However, what I do know is that one of the local heros is the famous pirate Jean Bart. He stole from the English to help the French--the French marine version of Robin Hood, I suppose.

These are little schémas to help us remember how to recycle properly. The top one says, "Nothing is lost/ wasted here; everything gets transformed." I thought it was a lovely analogy for the gospel. Even though the Lord requires us to give up/ throw out certain things in our lives, nothing is lost; what we abandon becomes something better, transformed by His grace and our sacrificial faith. Romans 8:28

The French seem to love lawn art! They have little shrub designs everywhere just like this tennis racket.

This is Merzaka, our precious little Algerian. She insisted on buying us ice cream....well, she tried to buy us everything just like a real grandmother, but when we refused the drinks, the sandwiches, the sausages, the pâtisseries, we had to get the ice cream to satiate her appetite for giving love.

This is during half time at the center square of the French-German match of the world cup. Holy Cow! The French people smoke soooo much; even beautiful, intelligent people. I know we've done a great job campaigning effectively against smoking in America because it always shocks me when "classy" people do it here. I can't help thinking through my Mormon and American lense, "Don't they realize how trashy that is?" Nevertheless, here in Dunkerque people are exceptionally kind and welcoming...as you can see, this man is smiling at me in a typical French fashion. Ok, all sarcasm aside, Dunkerquers are very kind, very agreeable people; I have been very pleasantly surprised.

We went to a festival on the 5th of July and I fell in love with this crazy mixture of dancing and fighting--nobody gets hurt! You just dance around play fighting! How cool is that...very French martial artsy, eh? Actually, I'm pretty sure it was developed in Brazil.