Another trip abroad and another chance to go to church on Sunday. This time we included 3 of our
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| Hyde Park Ward |
girls on this trip. This was the first time that my daughters have left the country and attending church in a foreign land is something they really wanted to do.
Our first Sunday was right off the 11 hour flight from the US to London. We drove from the airport to downtown London. I knew that Sunday’s in London where pretty quiet and we could easily drive downtown, find a place to park and enjoy some of the museums and parks on a nice quiet Sunday. Our first stop was a Hotel near Hyde Park. Although we were not staying in downtown London, we found a Marriott near Hyde Park to change our clothes from the long flight from the US. It was nice to get some clean clothes on and get ready for church.
Church started at 10am and we had enough time to change, eat and find the church. It was an interesting ward. It was the Hyde Park ward and consisted mostly of older people and college students from Queen’s College or study abroad programs from BYU. The church was also a visitor center and was swarming with missionaries which is always great to see. We talked to several people that were there like us, tourist traveling in the area. We even saw one of Paige’s mom’s friends from Southern California that was there traveling. Small world we live in.
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| Notre Dame |
The following week we were in Paris. We found a church that was walking distance from the famous Notre Dame Cathedral. I had told the girls about an Easter Mass that Paige and I saw a couple years ago and how incredible it was. So the girls wanted to attend a Mass in Notre Dame while we were there. We decided to attend the 8:30am Morning Mass in French. They have a 10:30am Mass (Gregorian Mass) that I think is in Latin, which would have been really cool. But we had tickets to the Louvre at 11am so we decided to attend the early Mass and then go to our church down the street at 9:30am.
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| Rose Window NotreDame |
First I have to say the best time to visit Notre Dame is first thing in the morning. You get to feel the reverence of the place because the number of people mulling around and making noise is much less than the normally crowded afternoon. With very few people and fairly quiet, I could actually feel the importance and reverence of this magnificent cathedral. Even if you aren’t religious or spiritual you would be able to feel something for this building. I could feel the over 800 years of religious worship where millions of people have
worshipped thru the centuries. What a great experience and one that I hope my girls never forget.
After a great experience at Notre Dame, we headed to our church for sacrament meeting. This was an interesting experience. Since Paris is a huge tourist destination, the sacrament meeting was held in the chapel and the overflow room. The overflow room had a TV with a live feed from the Chapel. In the overflow room everything was translated into English from the missionaries.
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| Paris France Ward |
It made the meeting interesting as I think there was probably more English speakers in the overflow than French speakers in the chapel. Singing the hymns in English and French at the same time was amusing, as well as the harmonizing melody sung to different words. We kept in sync most of the time, but there were some awkward moments when one group finished before the other. We met several people from all over the world that had traveled to Paris to see the sites.
DWP
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