Today was an excellent Sunday! This morning it rained the whole way
to church, but luckily it let up by the time we finished. The meetings were so inspired today; a man with Parkinson’s disease spoke for a few minutes and though he was hard to understand, his testimony was strong. Following that, I had a humbling experience. I was jotting down some notes during a talk and the boy next to me, who is slightly mentally handicapped and was just baptized a couple of months ago, asked what I was doing. I told him I understand better if I write down the points that are being given. A few minutes later I noticed him whack his brother to get him to pay attention and my mind started wandering. He looked at me and said, “Hey, why aren’t you writing anymore? He’s saying something important!” I hurriedly got my mind back in gear: what a reminder by
someone who is fascinated by every word of the gospel that’s spoken--the way it should be. After church, Bénédicte and Hubert, a colleague from work and her husband, picked Kami and I up and took us to their home for lunch. From the outside, the home looked ancient and ordinary; but when we went inside it was stunning! They bought the h
ouse from someone who restored it in 1930, but they have restored it themselves little by little and with a mix of “Art Deco” style and some modern touches. Their windows are done in stained glass and the back wall opens up entirely to the backyard. Her favorite color is blue and it seems to be the theme throughout her home. Her dishes are an azure blue print that reminds me of an old colonial print my mom loves. The French take pride in the fact that each piece of furniture or decoration has a story behind it. For example, in an ob
scure corner there was a little nightstand and the funny thing was that the books on the shelf are actually an illusion. It’s really just a painted board that opens up to a compartment where the bedpan was stored back in olden times before there were toilets in homes. After gawking at her home and sitting down for the aperitif, we began lunch. The first course was a green salad with grapefruit and little pieces of crab. The second course was rice and spinach cooked together. The third course was some sort of fish I had never had but was absolutely delicious! Bénédicte was so excited to have us taste cheeses we had never tried so she had gone out that morning and bought some of the lesser known types. They included a black pepper creamy cheese, one type with so many chunks of green mold I had to close my eyes to eat it--oddly enough, it tasted great--, a hard cheese with a bite, and then camembert to give us something familiar. Desert was crushed up meringue and raspberries with ice-cream. Everything was
delicious! It was fun to once again see both husband and wife do the meal together, from start to finish. It’s a good thing that the French eat small portions or we wouldn’t have been able to try everything. After lunch we hit the road and after about 60 kilometers arrived at one of the oldest mines in the North. For many years the majority of the wealth was based on the carbon mines of northern France. The last one closed down in 2004, however there is still one that is open to visit on Sundays. It is located in a town called Lewarde and the tours are given by an old man who mined his entire life. He was a true “Chti” – which is what they call the northerners that have the strongest accents. They’re usually among the older generation and from the small country towns. Their pronunciation is incredibly difficult to understand and almost comical to listen to. Touring the mine through his stories was absolutely fascinating. We began where the miners came to check in each day and change their
clothes. To conserve space, they hung their clothes from pulleys on the ceiling and showered underneath them. The next room was where lamps were distributed-we saw how the lamps evolved from a simple candle to oil lamps to the modern head lamps. Each morning when a miner took his lamp he would also take a token with a number. At the end of the day, if the women collecting them noticed that there were numbers missing it meant that there were still men stuck underground. Next we went to the room where the carbon was deposited and sorted through. This ta
sk was always done by the children, beginning at age 13. They sorted the pure carbon by hand from what they called “sterile” rocks. I found this interesting because next to the freeway, I have often seen enormous mounds of earth that I learned are deposits of unusable carbon from the mines. These heaps are called “terriles”, so I asked the guide if that was because they were filled with the “sterile” carbon and he said yes! and no one had ever made that observation before. The next part was the neatest as we descended underground to the mine in one of the cages. Once we got down there I learned that before electricity, horses were kept underground to pull the wagons. The
shocking part though, is that they would leave the horses down there for 10-12 years or until they died; inhumane in my mind. They discovered that when they brought the horses back above ground they immediately lost their eyesight so, in the 1900’s, they began to wrap bands around the horses’ eyes and once above ground, they would take off one layer at a time to let them adjust. The old Chti miner explained a lot of the processes and how they evolved. He showed us some of the machinery and turned it on for a minute to show how loud it was. One woman asked if the miners eventually lost their hearing. He laughed and said, “Yes, when we went home and our wives asked us to clear up the dinner dishes.”
Haha. Many of the warning signs were written in Arabic and when asked why, the miner replied that after the first generation of workers died of suffocation from “black lung,” they decided that they would hire more immigrant workers and several Arabs came to enlist. In 1906 there was a disastrous explosion that caused over 1000 deaths, most of which were unidentifiable. In the beginning, entire families were forced to work in the mines yet it was only the father who was paid. 62 percent of their income went to food for survival. However, there was beautiful art touching poetry that evolved from this time period as well. I learned so much from this fascinating visit and am thrilled I had the chance to visit somewhere so typically northern. Bonne nuit…
which is considered to be the most beautiful town square in Europe. I must agree; it was stunning! The town hall was a very ornate building and has a tragic past: In this era, the mark of a great building was symmetry. After construction was finished on this structure, the architect was horrified to find that one end was much longer than the other so he climbed up the bell tower and jumped to his death. Next we ate a delicious Belgian waffle; definitely not overrated! The picture of me and another girl Stephanie is us touching a 
