AND NOW TO WORK!!

Language study was a serious item in those days and, as a new missionary,  you were given a couple of days to unpack and settle in and then you were supposed to start language study. I guess my Dad (your Grandpa) was in charge of our language study, but we were pretty much left on our own as no other missionary knew our language!  I had the good fortune to have learned Bambara (or Jula) as a teenager and so I asked the local preacher (who had been trained at the Bambara Bible School) to act as our language helper. He needed the money and so we thought he was a good choice as he lived right in our extended yard. So we had not been in Santidougou more than a few days when I started language study.  Saying a Jula phrase and writing down the Bobo translation. And at the end of each lesson, I would analyze what I had written, including what I thought to be pronouns, how to say various verb forms, and lists of vocabulary. I loved it!  (A parenthesis here: I do not know if this pastor had a form of sleeping sickness or if he just got sleepy repeating the same things over and over, but I often found him dozing off during our language lessons. Not terribly inspiring!) 

What I learned, I would teach Dad and he would study it with another person, and thus we progressed from day to day.  Every week or so, I would gramatically analyze all of the material I had illicited into categories: verbs, nouns, prepositions, etc. 

In the meantime, you girls were adjusting to life in Santidougou village. And learning the language as you played. You had a pack of friends and they were there at dawn to wait for you to wake up and come out to play!  And of course you learned the language quicker than we did.  You had a box of outdoor toys and the kids loved to investigate those toys - things they had never seen before.  I had an old wooden, jointed doll that had been made in 1911, and was really an heirloom - but somehow it found its way into that box. You kids even named the doll Duasura, after a funny girl in town - and in time that wooden doll was torn to pieces. And that was the end of my childhood antique doll! 

The neighborhood kids were always at our house early in the morning, as dawn broke. Dad was  up early but my inclination was to sleep a while in the morning - for about the first week we lived there!  Our window sills in the bedroom were low, so that any air there was outside would reach us on our beds to keep cool in hot season. Each morning, the first words I would hear were:  "A nyi, a nyi."  "Awo a sege, a sege!"  And as I opened my eyes, there was a line of little brown eyes peering at me above the wimdow sill by my bed!    So I always had an early start to every day.  And the kids patiently waited for us to eat breakfast and pray together before you joined them to play for the day.  It was a fun life for you. And good for us too.

Dad got a job he hadn't counted on in our village - village nurse/doctor.  There had been a nurse stationed there some years before we arrived and there was no other medical help in town, so she took care of everyone's sores and diseases.  You all know how squeamish I am about anything medical, and so the medicat ministry fell to Dad. He usually started about six am, stopped for breakfast at seven, and then finished up his line of patients afterwards.  Plus all the emergencies that came to our door very often, day and night.  He did refused to do baby deliveries, so I got roped into some of those. We did have a midwife (an old Bobo lady) in town so I only got called if it was a pastor's wife or a Christian - or something they could not handle.  Little did they know, I wouldn't be able to handle it either!  But I did do a number of deliveries - among them the wives of our pastors.  And it always gave me a bit of pride to see my children I had delivered when they were grown up and functioning adults!

The first baby I was called for was at four am.  We had a book "Where there is no doctor", and I had read the maternity section of that. That was my training, period! The book said you should have plenty of boiling water on hand (I always did this - but never knew what to do with it except to wash the mother and child after it was all over!) and a bottle of alcohol and some strangs of knitting wool.  Plus a blanket to wrap the newborn in to keep him/her from getting chilled.  So I had my kit ready and when the call came, we started boiling water. It was Rhoda, Tite's mother, and she was in labor with Nahome.  It was a pretty straight forward delivery and all went well - the baby came head first, I cut and tied the cord, washed the baby and wrapped her in a little new receiving blanket from our baggage!  I was pretty proud of myself, albeit a little shaky!!

I think the funniest story of Dad's medical work happened after Royles came and we were leaving Santidougou for Bobo and Royles were taking our place.  Joan was squeamish about sores and so forth like I was, and so Rollo was going to inherit Dad's medical buiness.  He had Rollo work with him a few days and one afternoon they had a Fula lady patient.  You will remember that the Fula women had a custom of breakfing down a young girl's breast as they matured, and thus the grown women had these elongated, flat breasts. This particular lady had a large ulcer on the underside of one of her breasts, which had to be treated and wound with white bandages. Dad had Rollo hold the flat breast out away from the lady's body while he wound the white bandage round and round.  After that, Rollo declared, "Hey, I'm not sure I'm prepared for this ministry!"

We lived in Santidougou that whole first term, and we always think of that as our village, even though we lived many years in Bobo-Dioulasso later on.  As I was finishing up my language study, it was time for us to have another baby. So I had a goal - when I gave my final Bobo language exam (which was to be a Sunday sermon delivered in the language) I wanted to be able to get close enough to the pulpit to be able to read my sermon notes in Bobo!  And so I planned that for a Sunday service when I was about seven months' pregnant with you, Elin.  I did OK with the message - Grandpa Kennedy was my language supervisor - and I passed all my language exams before you were born in December of 1960.

And that bring us to....Our family increases!!

AFRICA - at last!!

It seemed like we had been a LONG time actually getting to Africa!  We had home service (two years) and French language study (one year) and now we were finally on the ship sailing for West Africa!  While we were still in Paris, we had gotten the news that the field conference stationing committee had assigned us to Baramba, to the Girls' School there.  In those days it was the Mali-Upper Volta field together and appointments were made by one conference stationing committee to the two countries.

Being appointed to Baramba was OK with us.  Dad did mention the fact that he had a wife and two daughters and now he was being sernt to live at a Girls' School, but we accepted the appointment. We were to learn Bambara - which I already knew from my childhood in West Africa.  We had two single women in France with us, and they were also to be stationed with us - two more ladies for Dad!  Nureda Carter had been in corresponence with a man back in the U.S. and when he came to visit her in France, she decided to go back to the States and marry him!  One less lady for Dad!

Then the Floyd Bowmans visited us in France on their way to the States for furlough, and they brought the news that the excom had just met and re-stationed us!  Carolyn Wright was to be in Bobo to be bookkeeper there. And our family was to be stationed at Santidougou and learn the Bobo language!  Wow - what a switch!  So before we left Paris, we knew we were to be stationed in the Upper Volta part of West Africa and we also were to learn an unwritten language.  Which we accepted.

When we got on that small passenger ship at Bordeaux we had about two weeks at sea.  We did stop at the port of Conakry, where the Bowers family departed the ship, as that was their destination.  The Arnolds, Pierces and Carolyn Wright were scheduled to leave the ship in Abidjan. And Grace Nelson and Betty Keiffer would stay with the ship until they reached the port in Gabon, their destination.  The days at sea were relaxing, there were play facilities and good staff to care for all of you children. We fed you before our meals and then you went happily off to play in the playroom while we adults had a leisurely meal.  We felt rested and ready to debark the ship when we reached Abidjan mid-afternoon!  On the dock stood two excited father-grandfathers - Walter Arnold and Leroy Kennedy!  They were there to meet us and the Arnolds, and were delighted to see their grandchildren for the first time!

Arnolds had time to get to Bouaké so they drove right through - but we had a dirt road to travel all the way to Upper Volta and Bobo. It was rainy season and the roads were bad, muddy and full of potholes! So Grandpa decided to do it in two days. He had planned to put us up in the Park Hotel - the only hotel in the city of Abidjan at that time!!  We did have dinner there, but the rooms were full and we had to sleep on some single cots, all in a row, in the Methodist church in Abidjan that first night!  After doing some shopping the next morning, we took off for Toumodi and stayed the night with the resident Alliance missionaries there.  The next morning we took off for the Upper Volta border and then Bobo-Dioulasso, where Grandma Kennedy was anxiously awaiting us! 

I pictured Bobo as an enlarged bush town as it was when I had left it eight years before. On the ship from Bordeaux to Abidjan I had saved up as many apples as I could every day and had brought a nice bag for my mother, as I knew she loved apples.  It was my surprise to find they sold apples right in the Monoprix in Bobo.  We had also filled a trunk with food - spaghetti and pasta and other groceries.....and again we found they were all available in the city of Bobo.  We had  Monoprix and one Lebanese store, both well stocked with all the imported foods we would need!   Dad also took us to a hardware store and bought us two twin metal beds with new mattresses.  We were able to use the old mattresses in the Santidougou house for you two girls.  After that first day of shopping, Dad took us out to Santidougou to meet the villagers and see our house, in which we would live for many years. (Also the house where I lived just before I left West Africa to attend High School in the USA). 

Again I was surprised to find the house had an indoor flush toilet!  We used to have an outhouse, a little distance from the main house, which was now empty and Dad eventually made that into a pigeon house. The indoor toilet was a nice surprise.  Dr. R.R. Brown, pastor for years in Omaha, made a trip through West Africa and found there was not a house there that had a flush toilet. He went back to the U.S. and bought a truckload of toilets and sent them out to have them installed in the missionary homes across West Africa! A great gift.  Besides the flush toilet, there was an open shower in one corner and an iron ring stuck into the one wall with a small enamel basin set into it.  There was an inside pantry and an outdoor kitchen with a charcoal pit for cooking.

The house was smaller than I remembered it, but it was fine for our family of four.  You all remember how close to the village our place was and of course everyone in the village came to meet us that first day. The people did not wear a lot of clothes - the women wore no tops and the men wore homespun cotton baggy pants. The kids wore nothing for the most part.  Grandma had temporarily hired Paul to do housework for us. He could also cook a few different meals so we took him on temporarily at least. Grandma had also hired Yusufu to sweep and wash the house before we got there, and we kept him on to do housework and help where needed.  He started with us the first day we arrived, and was with us to see us off on the plane from Ouagadougou when we left more than forty years later.  He was like a big brother or uncle to all of you kids, really a part of our family. And still is!

You girls stayed in Bobo with Grandma Kennedy while Dad and I commuted to the village to get the house set up for living.  We had sent our barrels ahead and so were able to unpack our household effects, make beds, get our kerosene frig going (we had bought a new one).  Paul had worked for several families before he worked for us and so he felt in charge of the house!  When we decided to put our big kerosene frig out in the dining room - rather than in the narrow inside kitchen where the frig had always been - Paul tried his best to dissuade us!  He was too old for the work he had always done and so we had him train Yusufu and gave him the road.  Yusufu learned quickly and he was always a part of our family, a wonderful man. 

AND NOW TO WORK!  - we had a whole lifetime ahead of us and we were ready to get started!!

A trip to Remember!

When we think back to that trip, from Paris to Marseilles to Bordeaux, it seems like "the mother of all trips", as they say!  The Arnolds and we were headed at last for West Africa.  We were booked to take a ship out of Bordeaux, but we decided not to go directly there. Instead we took a little vacation time along the way.  None of us had seen the southern coast of France or the city of Marseilles, and so we decided to go the long way around to Bordeaux from Paris.  (Paris being north central France and Bordeaux being the large port city to the west.)

We had heard through friends in Paris that there was a gentleman, Papa Lejeune, living in Marseilles, who ran an inexpensive boarding house for Christian workers and sailors on leave in that port.  So we inquired about it, found the price was affordable, and signed up for a couple weeks stay.  It was a pension, so both lodging and food were included in the price.

We tried to time our sorties in town so that we could be back at the boarding place for meals as we had already paid for them.  It was a good place for children also. We all ate at long tables in a common dining room and each family had his own rooms.  The food was plain, very plain.  For example, most nights we started our meal with "bread soup". The French eat a lot of bread with their meals and that bread dries out quickly so it is not good the next day. Whatever was left over from breakfast and lunch was dried in the oven and grated and made into a soup.  The contents of the soup were some water, bouillon, a few spices and the grated bread crumbs which gave it substance. It really didn't taste bad, but they served it most nights. 

But we did have a good time there, going out during the day to explore that area, which was new to us.  The weather was beautiful.  We had made friends with some Christian people at a church camp earlier in the year, and they lived near Marseilles. They invited our family to have dinner with them and we enjoyed that. They had a teenage son who loved to talk to us, but we could understand little of what he said.  His parents told us that they often didn't understand him either, as he spoke a combination of Marseilles dialect and teenager slang!  But it was interesting to get into another French home.

While we were in Marseilles, we had to start taking our anti malarial drugs.  And this was a battle, especially with Cheryl!  We and the Arnolds were giving the nivaquaine pills to our three children together as we thought that would encourage them to swallow the pills. It worked for Debbi and John but not for Cheryl.  We put the pill in food, gave her milk to drink with it, tried to put it on the back of her tongue and pour in water.... she would struggle as we struggled to get the pill down, and after she had swallowed the bread or milk - or whatever - the pill would always still be there and she would spit it out. We went through several nights of this, but finally got all three kids dosed with their anti-malarial drugs. It was a battle!

We left Marseilles and went as far as Lourdes that first day.  We had some pillows and blankets with us, and we found a rickety, old dormitory where we could rent a room for a dollar a room a night. So we and Arnolds each got a room.  And we saw the sights of the healings and cathedral of Lourdes, the caves where healing had taken place, etc. 

We ate very frugally as none of us had any extra money, and we knew that we could not get to the hotel in Bordeaux for two more days. So that meant another night on the road. We stopped by a sandy beach along the ocean, not far from Bordeaux, and made ready for our overnight stay there.  The men dug out a big square in the sand and covered the recessed place with a layer of pine branches from the trees that grew along that coast. It was wide enough for Dave and Jan and Dad and me to all sleep together.  We put down a wool blanket on the pine branches to keep us warm underneath, used our pillows and put a warm blanket over the top of us.  It was a cold night under those bright stars but we did get a little rest. In the meantime, you three kids were snuggled up warmly in the VW.

We wakened early the next morning and drove on into Bordeaux and found the hotel where we were scheduled to stay until our ship left port.  Dad and Uncle Dave went into the hotel to check us in (we were a pretty bedraggled looking bunch by then!) and then they came back to get us.  But while they were in the hotel, the desk clerk kept telling Dad that Mrs. Pierce was in such and  such a room waiting for us.  Well, the Mrs. Pierce that Dad knew was sitting in the car waiting to get into a room and have a shower and a change of clothes, so he had no idea what the clerk was telling him.

What a surprise for him to finally discover that the Mrs. Pierce in the hotel room was his mother!!  She had been on a European tour and didn't really care for the company she was with, so she made arrangements to go to our hotel in Bordeaux and wait for us there to spend a couple more days together before we sailed!!  What a surprise that was! And we had a great day or two together in that lovely hotel. And Mother got a chance to be with her granddaughters and us for a couple extra days. She flew back to the States from there. 

And so it was off to Africa, our long awaited destination.  The Alliance had a travel rule at that time that stated on a large ship (like the SS United States)  their missionaries travelled by tourist class.  But on a small ship - like the one we were boarding in Bordeaux - missionarites travelled first class.  So we had all the conveniences of first class.  Lovely staterooms, a playroom for the children and a nurse to take care of them. The children were fed early and then cared for while we ate our meals as adults.  It was like a lovely vacation, that week (or so) trip by sea to Abidjan!  They used the same crystal and china for the children as for us adults. One mealtime, John Arnold was drinking out of a thin goblet and bit into the goblet and the blood was running down his chin along with his milk!  It was a good trip and we had pleasant weather and I do not remember anyone's being sick.

Finally we arrived at the port city of Abidjan - AFRICA at LAST!!

Seeing Europe on a shoestring..................

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - or said otherwise: All study and no change of scenery quickly fries the brain!!  We needed to get away from the Paris area with its heavy traffic and wall to wall people once in a while.  And we would come back ready to hit the studies again! Those European countries are so small and close together, and so it was easy travelling out of France.

Our first sortie was to the World's Fair in Brussels.  Several of us in our team decided to go one weekend on the train going from Paris to Brussels. We took a taxi from our pension to the train station. (This was before we moved to the suburbs.)  We had our two heavy girls (more than thirty pounds each!) and their twin strollers and our suitcase with clothes for the weekend and quickly found a taxi to take us.   The taxi was a bit rattly and the rattling got louder and then finally the car broke down altogether, just sort of disintegrated under us! . We hauled the girls and suitcase and strollers and ourselves out of the broken down vehicle and started looking for another taxi to take us to the train station.  Everyone else was there and on the train ahead of us, and we just made it in time to climb on board in the last car of the train bound for Brussels.

Going to the World's Fair is sort of a once in a lifetime experience - but with all of our paraphenalia it was a very tiring weekend.  Once we got settled in the train, all was well, but then came the challenge of getting all of us and our stuff off the train in Belgium and into another taxi, this time to take us to a cheap pension someone had recommended to us. Our whole party stayed there and it was both inexpensive and clean. We were amazed at how beautiful and clean everything was in Belgium and the other European countries in comparison to Paris, which was basically a dirty city at that time in history.

Early the next morning we all took off for the Fair and it was wall to wall people. Arnolds had one child, Bowers had one child and we had our two girls.  A couple of our singles also accompanied us.  It was fun seeing all the wonders of a World's Fair, but it was also a very tiring experience. Both girls fell sound asleep in their double stroller as we wheeled them through the crowds, and we heard a passing couple commenting about these Americans who would subject their childen to a crowd like that!  At least we could say we had been to the World's Fair - but our weekend was pretty exhausting!

Once we had our VW bus, it was much easier to make trips.  The three single women in our group wanted to visit Germany and so they asked if we could all go together and they would pay us enough for the gas. They would stay in hotels in the cities we visited and our family could sleep in the Volkwagen.  Actually this worked out quite well.  We made a soft bed for you two wee girls over the engine in the back of the VW and we each slept in a seat.  We would drop the ladies at a hotel where they spent the night and we would pick them up in the morning and all go sightseeing in the morning. Germany was beautiful and so CLEAN. The rivers and mountains and forests all made a nice change from flat Paris.  We would park our VW in a trailer park and use the facilities there and set up with our little family and spend the evening and night. We met a lot of interesting tourists from other European counties that way too. 

At Easter time we had vacation from school and we three couples - Bowers, Arnolds and we - decided to pool our resources and go in our VW to Holland.  There was a Dutch Alliance center in Holland, right near the sea,  and we made reservations to stay for a week at this missionary home where the price was reasonable - and even included meals. We made day trips and just relaxed there in the beautiful home and grounds. The kids had lots of place to run and play and it was a great vacation for us all.  When Saturday came, the people in charge told us that the Dutch did not take their small children to church, so the men could go with them but the mothers would have to stay at the Center with the children.We thought that a strange custom, but when in Holland, do as the Dutch........

After everyone had gone to church we had a beautiful, quiet morning at the Centre. They had a piano and the three of us women were singing trios together while our four children were outside playing in the grounds. The place was safe and we did not worry about them as we sang our hearts out inside the home!   And then the unexpected happened:  the children came trouping inside with their arms full of purple tulips, beautiful flowers on little short stems!  Cheryl had picked a whole bed of this one color of tulips, with almost no stem at all on the flowers!  It was Springtime and the solid colors were arranged in beautiful beds outside.  Cheryl loved the purple and had the kids help her and they brought them in to present them to their mothers!  We were of course horrified and hated to see the owners come home from church!  The hostess took it pretty well, and piled the purple flowers in flat bowls and decorated the tables with them for lunch that Sunday noon!  Talk about life's embarassing situations.....!!

By the end of that year in France, we were all more than ready for our next step - going to Africa!  We were going to Guinea, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire  and Gabon, and we did not shed many tears when we left la belle France!    But there was still another long trip to make and Arnolds and we took that one together.  It really was...........
              A Trip to Remember!!

Life in the Paris suburbs..............

We tired quickly of the busy city and the pension, of cooking on an alcohol burner and not having a private toilet.  And we waited for the day when our house in the suburbs of La Garenne-Colombes would be ready for us.  The Child Evangelism family finally left for their furlough and we were given the key to our new home. 

It seemed spacious after living in one room - there were two floors: living and dining room downstairs and a tiny kitchen; two bedrooms on the second floor; a toilet on the first floor and a tub and shower room on the second floor.  It was fully furnished with dull shades of brown everywhere.  But it looked good to us after what we had been living in for six weeks!  The windows were long and covered with draperies, and according to good French custom, we had to close the shutters every night and open them in the morning.

We were not alone in the house. On the second floor was the Child Evangelism office which was occupied by their personnel mornings.  On the third floor lived a Swiss couple, newly married.  The phone was in the upstairs hall and whenever the Child Evangelism personnel was not there, it was our duty to answer the phone and take down messages.  Every time the phone rang and we answered, we had to reply with the phrase: L'Association pour l'Evengélisation des Enfants!  What a mouthful! In return, we also had the use of the phone for local calls. 

We moved in with our few suitcases and you girls, Cheryl and Debbi. But before we could do much living we had to do a lot of cleaning. The kitchen was especially dirty, with greasy shelves that Dad cleaned with hot soapy water. We soon had the place settled to our satisfaction and were glad for the space we had. We could also cook proper food for our family.

Cooking food meant going out to buy that food. And that was another learning experience. When we were in France there were no super markets - those came in later, after us.  We had to learn how to shop in our little suburban village.  There was a village square and numerous shops: the butcher who sold beef and lamb; a general grocery store; a creamery for butter and cheese - and oh yes, pork or sausage.  The vegetables and fruit were for sale in an outdoor market twice a week, fresh from the farms.  It took a long time to shop - you had to take your own sacks to contain the groceries as nothing was wrapped for you -  but this also gave us the chance to have conversation in French with the shopkeepers.  There was one store we avoided - a rather large meat shop, with a brass horse's head on the front of the store.  The French were great lovers of horse meat and sold that in a separate store from the beef.   We were not on a budget. We bought what we needed for food and school supplies, kept track of it all in a notebook, and collected from national office at the end of each month and then we were reimbursed.  Kind of a strange system. 

Our house had the most room of any of our group, so we hosted all get togethers there. There was a children's play park down the street from us and in warm weather you girls enjoyed that.  We had taken a lightweight double stroller with us to Paris since we had two heavy girls to take everywhere - it turned out to be both a bane and a blessing.  It was good on the straightaway, but we had to carry both children and stroller up and down the metro steps, which was quite a feat! 

Not long into our year in Paris we picked up the VW bus we had ordered and that made outings easier for us.  It was also a large enough vehicle to take us for sorties to various places in Europe during the year.  School continued in the main part of Paris and we found the train system especially efficient and cheap.  I went in the morning to finish up my classes while Dad took care of your girls. I ran in the door at noon, and Dad kissed me as he ran out to catch a train to the city for his afternoon classes. This was not ideal - morning was the best time for classes and Dad needed help in French more than I did. So when I had finished my course, we switched and Dad went to school early each morning. 

I had finished everything they offered at the language school, and so I had a Christian prof come to the house to give me a course in business French. He was a nice man, very jolly and friendly - but he had the most awful garlic breath and body odour of anyone I had ever met!  While you girls played happily with your toys in your bedroom, I was seated with this smelly man at a desk in our bedroom next door.  Was I ever glad when I finished the course he taught!   Actually, he was a nice man and he and his wife even invited our family to their home for dinner one night.

Grace Nelson, bless her heart, would periodically tell Arnolds and us to take off for an evening out and she stayed with our three kids. They loved her and we had fun getting out as adults.  Uncle Dave always wore a French beret so that he would look like a Frenchman. When Dad and Aunt Jan and I were walking along laughing and talking in English, he would walk a few steps ahead, sporting his French beret - so that no one would think he belonged to those loud Americans!! 

When we moved to the suburbs we found a small evangelical church, run by American missionaries but with a French congregation and we made friends there. Dad met a young man, Guy Vogt, who became a language helper to him and they corresponded years after we went to Africa.  I was also friends with a young woman who went to that church and also worked for CEF at our house and that was helpful for me and conversational French. 

Grandma Pierce came to visit us for two or three weeks and while she was there we took her to our church where we attended each Sunday.  They always served communion each week and the cup was real liquor. We never thought to tell her this beforehand and she was so embarassed when she drank the liquor and had a choking spell as a result!  These were dear Christian friends and we attended their camp in the south of France before we left the country.  They were also connected with a French-American Bible School, Chatou.  That was about another half hour on our train line and once a month our missionaries all went out there and had fellowship with the students and attended an English service. 

Dad and the others had no direction in their studies. We were there at a hard time, as the people who had been in charge of the Alliance language students had left and no one else had been appointed and so we were left to our own devices as far as French study was concerned.  You girls were not among French speakers often enough for you to learn more than a few greetings and simple sentences.  You had to learn your French later on in Africa when you were older.

We made some trips while we were in France, and our VW bus was big enough to take others of our colleagues with us.    But that will be for another day.....Touring Europe on a shoestring!

Paris, the Beautiful!

Ah yes, Paris the beautiful - Belle Paris.  That is what everyone thinks when he hears "Paris"!  The city of lights, the city of cathedrals and museums and art galleries. The frequency of art galleries and men in berets and women in fashionable clothes, the haute couture houses!  All of these are Paris in our thoughts.  And there is that aspect of life there.

But there is another Paris, and that is the one where we lived! The language students who had finished a year of study, and were now slated to soon leave for various countries in Africa, met us at the boat train - that's a train that meets the big ships and takes passengers directly to the heart of Paris.  They had also arranged for our housing, for the most part in the rooms or apartments where they had lived for a year.  And they accompanied us to our new digs!

Remember, we had been on a beautiful brand new American ship, being served with linen and crystal at all meals. Sleeping in clean, modern staterooms.  And now we landed in the City of Lights, Paris.  The center of the city is indeed well lit and has beautiful buildings, but everything in Paris is hundreds of years old, including the plumbing and furnishings in the homes!  And it was this Paris that we were now to experience for a year while we learned the French language.

About the extent of Dad's French was "Passez le beurre, s'il vous plaît" - I have no idea why that was the only sentence I had taught him!  I was pretty much at home in the language as I had spoken French all of my young life.  The Arnolds were in the same condition as we were - only he was the one who spoke French and Jan spoke no French and they had one toddler son, instead of two girls like us. There was also another couple, who did not last in Africa through their first term and three single ladies. And that was our Alliance group for the year.

The missionaries assured us that we would have a nice apartment with kitchen, living and dining room and two bedrooms - but it was not ready yet. And so they had arranged for us to live for six weeks in a pension (boarding house).  It was explained to us that our meals would be provided and we would have our family, all would be well. And it was close to the Alliance Francaise, where we were to attend classes.  And so we were taken to the pension on rue Stanislas.

We lived on the second floor - no elevator of course.  The room was small with a smallish double bed and a three quarter bed in it.  There was also the curtained off bidet and wash basin. And the toilet was out in the hall and used by everyone else who lived on that floor!  Problem number one:  we had just potty trained Cheryl and had brought along a plastic toilet seat insert so she could sit on an adult toilet.  No way we could allow the kids to use that toilet. It was often in stages of complete filthiness. Dad tried to keep it clean using bleach. One night someone had thrown up all over it and left it to be cleaned by someone else - guess who???  So back into diapers went Cheryl, protesting, but nothing else we could do. So now we had two babies in diapers (there were no disposables then - just cloth ones that had to be washed by hand.)  At night the diapers festooned the bedroom and tiny window porch, drying in the air. 

But we didn't have to cook - what luxury! There was a common dining room and we ordered from a limited menu.  The plate of food usually had a ring of grease around the food, but it was edible.  Steak was a favorite and was always extremely rare - actually raw!  We would send the meat back to be cooked more and the French cook could never figure that out. One lady sent her steak back twice to be better cooked and the third time it came back a pork chop. How could anyone cook steak til it was not bloody looking??  We got a glimpse of the cook in her dirty apron, through a basement window. Cats were also lounging around her kitchen! No food inspection there! The oily food was giving the girls diarrhea - remember how we had to wash out those cloth diapers??  Yes, it was an interesting beginning of life in belle Paris!!

We decided not to take the girls to the dining room but to get an alcohol burner and cook for them upstairs. The manager did give us another small room with a table where we could cook for and feed the girls. And Dad was also able to study in there. One afternoon while Dad was fixing food for the girls in that extra room, I came down the hall and saw the whole room aflame ahead of me - where he was fixing supper for the girls!  I grabbed a fire extinguisher on the wall and we put out the fire but not before bruning up a couple items!  The alcohol burner had tipped and caught fire - fortunately no one was badly burned. And we went on cooking for the girls like this until we could move into our apartment.

We were told to go immediately and sign up for classes at the Alliance Française just down the street and around the corner from our pension.  The other missionaries also had to attend there.  Most of us ended up in the first class, except for Dave Arnold and me - we had both spoken French and studied it in College, so he tested out in the fourth and I in the fifth classes, which were the top classes in that school. They only taught the fifth section in the morning so I had to attend that while Dad watched the girls at the pension. Then he went in the afternoon.  This was not a good arrangement, as mornings were the best time for studying.  He says that at the end of the first month, he understood enough to know that the teacher was saying he should take the month over again!  

I finished my four months of the fifth level and Dave Arnold and I sat for the famous French exam.  No matter how well you have done in class, all is based on that final exam for the French. There is a written part and then an oral part with several profs present.  The lists were to be posted a week later in the late afternoon, and one of our single ladies offered to take care of you three kids while we two couples went out to eat and checked the lists at the school to see if we had passed.

We checked the lists, I had passed and Dave had not.  He found out, upon asking, that in his orals, there were certain subjects not allowed and so they had asked him some very complicated vocabulary, some of which he did not know. So they failed him. French exams are for the birds!  And still are....  So he stayed on in that school and I left.

Later in the year Dave Arnold heard that the Sorbonne was giving a French exam and anyone could sit for it and if you passed, you would have a certificate from the Sorbonne, which was worth something.  He told me about it and suggested we leave the kids with our spouses and we would take the all day exam. Which we did.  At noon break, we went to the American embassy restaurant for lunch and were eating together when our Alliance singles came in to have lunch too. They thought it interesting that Dave and I were there eating and our spouses and kids not around, so we had to tell them. The cat was out of the bag!  We went back and wrote all afternoon.  After those pm questions, I was sure I had not passed it. The subjects were things I had never studied and knew nothing about so I just faked it - in French of course!  I would never have gone to the Sorbonne to check the results, I was so sure I had not made it, but Dave checked. And sure enough both of our names were among those who had passed. I still have that old certificate from the Sorbonne among my papers somewhere!

So that was our studying, but we had another life there as well.  We had to move and live in the suburbs, another learning experience which I will continue in the next chapter!

Our growing church........and growing family......

Our little church was growing. Milt learned to preach to a group of five or six as if it were a crowd of five hundred. And from the beginning he was a good preacher. Other people started to come - neighbors, students, interested people. We had an abundance of youth, so you girls, Cheryl and Debbi, always had babysitters.  Our youth group was getting too big for the house, we needed more space. With the house Milt had bought came a two car garage, a pretty solid cement building right behind our home. So he transformed that into a youth center and meeting room for the youth and this worked very well. Wednesday nights we had prayer meeting in our living room, the youth met for their meetings in our converted garage and on Sundays we had the Odd Fellows Hall!  We never lacked for babysitters for you, Cheryl, or for Debbi after she was born.

We had three bedrooms in our new home, a large one for us with Cheryl's crib in there too. A small one for Dave and a larger room for Donna, which doubled as a guest room when we had company.  And then you came along, Debbi, and we needed more room to house everyone.  So Dad built a rough room in the basement, kind of dark and dank, but it made a room of his own for David! Then we moved two cribs into his old room for you two babies and we were all set for sleeping. 

Dad had long been connected with Word of Life (youth) ministries - since his conversion. He had worked at their camps and knew Jack Wyrtzen well. So the spring before you were born, Debbi, we invited Jack to come with his singers and entourage to conduct a youth rally in the local high school.  Dad was busy with the meeting and I was sitting with you in my arms, Cheryl, on an aisle seat. You were wide awake and ennervated from the loud music and you were bouncing up and down and made one huge jump right out of my arms onto the cement floor! I heard the crack as your head landed and was petrified. People came to our rescue and you were crying - the meeting went on but Dad had to take me home to take care of you and get you settled!  The next day you were fine but we were sure scared that evening when it happened.   The rally gave us some exposure in the Christian community and some others joined us.

Our second baby was due about the 1st of July. I wanted to have an early birthday party for Cheryl and Grandma Pierce drove up to help us celebrate and stay with you while I went to the hospital to have our baby.  Days went by and no baby and finally on July 15th - your actual birthday, Cheryl - they took me to the hospital and I was there in labor all day. Dad stayed right with me and walked me up and down the hall and stayed beside me until I went into the delivery room.  Some of the other women in there saw Dad calmly walking me around and asked me afterwards who my doctor was - they had never seen him before - he seemed so nice!  They were shocked to hear that it was my husband - I guess their men were nervous wrecks for the birth of their children!  I remember looking up at the clock on the wall - a little after seven pm - when you gave your first cry, Debs!  Another girl and born on her baby sister's first birthday too!

So now we had another person in our church, baby Deborah Lee!  The youth were all delighted and we never lacked for babysitters. We remained there in Rutland for one year, and were scheduled to sail for France for language study in June of 1958. It was recommended to us that we make a speaking tour in the New England district, to let people get to know us, their new missionaries. So we arranged a ten day tour - a different church every evening. And what a trip that was!!  Two babies in diapers (and that was before disposables!), all of our paraphenelia. We dressed in African clothes, I sang and we even sang together  and Dad spoke of our plans and gave a short message. It was a grueling tour but went well and it did give us a good prayer base in our district of New England when we left for the field. 

Dad consulted with the District Superintendant and they decided to ask a certain couple from Nyack, to come to replace us in Rutland. He was from Maine, so used to New Englanders. They seemed like a sharp couple, lauded by the College.  We decided to just leave the house and everything in it set up for them.  We did everything we could to make their entry into the ministry easy.  And then we took off for New York City to embark on one of the first voyages of the SS United States, headed for France!

What a beautiful ship and our party of three couples, two singles and four children had a beautiful voyage across the Atlantic. They had playrooms for the children, the dining facilities were wonderful and our staterooms were comfortable. The trip was only four or five days, but it was just the rest we needed after our strenuous packing and car travel.

(A sad interval in here...... after we arrived in France we heard little from Rutland and wondered why but soon found out. The new pastor and wife were not happy. They did not like the house, they hated the gas and wood stove combination and wanted the church to buy them a new stove. It really set them off when someone commented that some of the best meals they had ever tasted were cooked on that stove!  The wife was an organist and we had no organ, so she did not even attend the Alliance church but became the organist at the liberal First Baptist church in town.  And he started drinking - heavily.  At first people hated to tell us this but little by little we got the whole story. And in a very few months the DS had to go in and forcibly remove this couple and send in an interim!  Our poor little congregation really suffered.   Dad had even built a small, attractive church on the property next to us - which we owned.  The people loved it but again the new pastor and his wife scorned the new little white church!  The church eventually recovered, but the news was hard on us, to see our two years of hard work thrown to the wind.  The couple left town and the church did recover and still exists today.)

As for us, we werer in Paris, beautiful Paris, and ready to start language study....and that is another chapter!