LDS Missionary: France Paris Mission

New Years & the Oliver's Story

After a couple more unsuccessful days, it was New Year’s Eve. We were invited to the Oliver’s home for dinner. They lived out in the middle of nowhere essentially. Apparently it is a normal thing for English couples to move to the countrysides of France.

We got a small tour of the house and the environs. The house was made completely out of stone and they had tons of land also. President Oliver showed us his next project in the barn which was next to and connected to the house.

“See that stone trough? I’m going to take it out and add on to the house,” President Oliver said. “Actually, I could use some help if you don’t mind. We could do it in a couple of weeks.”

“Yeah, we could do that. We don’t get much service anyway,” Elder McQuay responded.

“Perfect,” President Oliver finished the conversation.

We went inside and he showed us a few rooms before we sat in their living room. It had a fire, some couches, and bookshelves stocked full of old books. This is where I went directly. I have a weird fascination with old books or even old editions of books.

“You like books, Elder?” President Oliver asked.

“Yeah,” I replied after spotting one book in particular that was so old the title was no longer visible. “I love seeing old editions and older books, but I don’t read as much as I would like to.”

“Well, this is the oldest book I own,” he said as he walked over to me and pulled the one I had mentioned from the shelf. “It’s an old Bible with the Apocrypha also in it.”

The Apocrypha included some of the non canonical books of the Bible including the two books of the Maccabees and one I have always been intrigued with, Bel and the Dragon among others.

“Why are there so many English people that move to the countryside of France to fix up old homes and barns?” Elder McQuay asked to get a conversation rolling after we all looked a bit through the Bible and put it back.

“England is running out of land because we have so many people packed in there, so the countryside is really expensive. It’s a lot cheaper here in France because there is so much land available,” President Oliver responded.

“Oh really?” I said. “That’s cool. Are there really a lot of English people that move here?”

“Yeah, I’ve met quite a few in some of my areas,” Elder McQuay said.

“Yeah, my neighbor is also English,” President Oliver said. “It’s just cheaper here.”

“Ok, dinner is ready,” Sister Oliver said as she poked her head in the door. “Come sit down.”

We moved into the dining room and sat down. Sister Oliver had prepared a typical English meal for us. There were baked beans, sausages, Yorkshire pudding, and ham.

‘Finally,’ I thought. ‘Normal food.’

I had never tried Yorkshire pudding, but it wasn’t anything like the pudding that we have in America. It was more of a bread than anything else, but you pour a gravy over it and it tastes amazing. Everything was delicious.

“So what brought you guys to Alençon?” I asked after finishing eating. President and Sister Oliver shared a quick look in each other’s direction because proceeding.

“Well, we had originally moved to a different part of France. We always loved Southern France because it is warm, so we moved in further South and remodeled a home there,” Sister Oliver said. “This is a long story though, so I am going to go start getting the pancakes ready. Nelson can tell it to you.”

She got up and walked away. The focus moved to President Oliver. He took his time, thinking probably about how much he even wanted to share. He finished his last bite of the meal and swallowed hard before beginning.

“So we finished the house and it wasn’t more than two weeks before I got this feeling we weren’t in the right place. So I said to Gail, ‘Gail, we have to move. This isn’t the place we should be,’” He started in his English accent. “She sounded frustrated when she responded because of all the work we had done in that house, but she said, ‘Well, where should we be?’ I didn’t know, but I knew it wasn’t right.

“We started to search for cities on the internet, looking for places that would be close to the church, so we could continue attending church. Our neighbors down there had met and known the Boixel sisters from here and gave us Delphine’s number so that we could go to church there on our way back through Calais to England, because Alençon was one of the cities we had narrowed it to. We stayed a couple of nights in Alençon and liked the little city. We were able to attend church there at the tiny branch.

“It wasn’t more than thirty seconds before I turned to Gail with tears in my eyes and said, “Yeah, this is the place. This is where we need to be.’ She, too, had tears streaming down her face and agreed. We went home and contacted a real estate agent about selling our newly refurbished home. The agent told us that it would take a year at best to sell it though.

“That night, I remember very vividly praying to Heavenly Father, saying, ‘Father, it’s in your hands. If we need to be there, we need to sell this house, so we need your help to get there.’

“The house sold in four weeks. So now we were in a rush getting packed and ready to go and we still didn’t have a place to live. In France, after you sign the papers, you only have three months to get out. We had come up with a good list of homes. We started narrowing them down by distance from the church and then more picky things like whether or not it had an apple tree. The places we had our eye on sold quickly, so we were left with two options.

“One of the places we didn’t like when we saw it. The other, this one, we liked a lot, but Gail thought it was too big for just the three of us. The only problem I had with the house was the price. It was more than we wanted to pay. Again, I prayed to Heavenly Father, saying, ‘Please let our estate agent fight the corner and fight a tough battle for this house or we may not be getting a house in Alençon.’”

Tears began to form in President Oliver’s eyes as he spoke. It was obviously a spiritual and special thing to him. By this point Sister Oliver had come back with a heaping plate of pancakes. She sat down and President Oliver instinctively grabbed her hand. She also had watery eyes from just listening for a moment. She was probably reliving the whole thing again in her mind.

“A few days later, our agent walked in and said, ‘I’ve been fighting your corner and fighting a tough battle for this house...’ exactly word for word from what I said in my prayer. Our agent said the owners settled on the exact price of what we wanted to pay. So that’s how we got to Alençon.”

“Wow,” I said simply. “That’s awesome.”

Elder McQuay must have been mulling it over in his head because he didn’t say anything.

“So how long was it before you became the Branch President?” I asked.

“The Sunday before we arrived, there was the little fight that took place in the branch that led the former Branch President, President Duval, to fall inactive. They still know it’s all true, but they were offended by some of the members of the branch, so they don’t attend anymore.

“After that happened, we were without a Branch President for a few weeks before they asked me to be the new Branch President.”

“That’s crazy, so it was basically inspired that you move here?” I asked in awe.

“I wouldn’t say that,” President Oliver said. “It was a pretty cool experience though.”

After having pancakes, we left and spent the rest of New Year’s Eve in our apartment. We still had to be up at 6:30 on New Year’s Day, so it definitely wasn’t worth staying up until midnight.