Bonjour à tous,

In the middle of April, we headed over to see Bart and Annet in Kortessem, Belgium! We showed up at about 10 a.m. It was rainy and cold! I had packed a picnic for us all. Not exactly picnic weather!! :// Bart and Annet’s neighbors are apple farmers, the Vandenholt family. (there are a lot of apples and pear orchards in this region). So we ate our picnic lunch at picnic tables in the Vandenholts machine shed, and they also stayed for lunch! They were a nice family; we enjoyed eating lunch with them, getting to know them a bit, and discussing different topics.

After lunch, Mr. Vandenholt showed us the workings of his operation, picking, separating, packing, and storing the apples. It was interesting! We said goodbye to our newly made friends. Bart (who is always an excellent tour guide) took us on a drive through the countryside to look at the beautiful apple blossoms on the trees! Bart had picked up his father, who has had poor health and doesn't talk a lot because of this. We always like to see him; they call him Bompa (grandpa). Even if Bompa can’t utilize his words much anymore, he speaks clearly with his eyes and mannerisms…A wink here or there or a funny gesture lets you know what he's thinking. He's very sweet; we would have liked to have known him before his illness. While driving along the way, Bart stopped at a strawberry vendor. Big refrigerated lockers on the side of the road where anyone can insert their money and receive some of the best strawberries you will ever eat…Bompa treated us all to a strawberry snack. Bella was in strawberry heaven! :))

Also, while we were there, we met Susan Litwiller and her son Matthew from Michigan. They were out visiting Bart’s. Susan had lived with Bart’s and worked as a nanny when their children were small. Meeting them and getting to know them a bit was a treat!

We ended our trip by taking a short drive to the Amsterdam region with Annet, Susan, Matthew, and Anita, Annet's sister from Nazareth, Belgium. We had never met Anita before; she was a very nice lady! She and her husband were dairy farmers for years, and now they are retired, and she gets to do a little more traveling! :) While there, we visited an older couple (an old friend of Bompa’s), and he walked us through growing and harvesting tulips. As we drove toward home, we saw field after field of the most brilliantly colored tulips. Truly a gorgeous time of the year, and we got to see it all with some of our favorite people in Europe! :)

When we got home, we began preparing for a trip to see contacts in the South of France, one in particular we were very curious to meet. (Mariline) Our SUV is a twee bit smaller than the last one, so packing our camping gear for the first time into the rig was a little challenging. We had to utilize every nook and cranny!! Our first night was in the region of Limoges. We stayed at a nice campsite and had a visit with an older man in this region; he was originally from Holland. He knew precisely who we talked about when we mentioned Menno Simons’ name. :)) We wished we could have stayed another night to get to know him better, but we had to move on! (That night was COLD!! I wondered if we had started using our tents too early and should have just gotten a hotel, but we made it through! )

The next day, we found ourselves in the Pays Basque region, near a small town called Espelette. They have two languages in this area, French and Basque. The food in this region takes a more Mediterranean turn, and is different from the food in the North of France. They use a lot of cheeses, peppers, tomatoes, hams, olives, seafood, and various cakes. The campsite was nice, and we experienced a little rain, but not too much. We did some tract work in this area and visited with different locals. The countryside was much like the Spanish Basque region, hilly and eye-wateringly green. Sheep dotting the hillsides, truly lovely. The locals were very friendly! This region is well known for peppers! Also, the houses are all super similar, and the coloring was unique! Most of the shutters on these houses would have a similar color theme: pepper red, brown, deep green, or sometimes a brilliant blue. They have a much different look from most of France.

***Notice the hanging peppers and the red shutters :))***

Somewhere in Espelette, my phone decided to die an untimely death, so we had to head to a bigger city to get a new one. We ended up in the town of Bayonne. We had not had coffee yet as the coffee machine was broken at the campground, so we walked into the central ville to see if we could find some. As we wandered downtown, we noticed a lot of excitement! It was only 10 a.m.! We realized we had walked right into the “Foire au Jambon”! A festival honoring ham! LOL! They had a huge tent set up with hundreds of kinds of smoked hams and sausages…people were walking around with little pink pig ears on their heads, and pink pig bandanas around their necks. :) In the Grand Place, many diners were drinking coffee at small restaurants. The cobbled streets were packed! We heard music floating on the wind?…ahead, at a large table, were probably 12 older men, two with accordions, all wearing “le beret basque”. They were singing a famous French song in 4 part harmony, (SO BEAUTIFUL), every once in a while the song would require them all to throw in a clap, in which the bystanders would clap along. Some languidly moved their arms while singing as if it were all in a day’s work, once one man stood up and animatedly acted like he was leading them…we sat entranced for a while by the scene. I wish you could have been there..

Next, we ended up at a campsite on the outskirts of a small town; the Pyrenees on one side, the ocean on the other. The next day, we were to meet a lady called Mariline. The campgrounds were pristine! The region had a very desert-like feel; drier, and completely different from what we were used to. This is the Catalan region of France. They speak French and Catalan and are very proud of their heritage!! I think the architecture looks much like Spain; their cathedrals are not as ornate in this region as the rest of France and Spain.

That night, we understood what it meant to be sandwiched between the Pyrenees and the ocean. The wind wailed ferociously. The gusts were so bad that the side of the tent would slap into my head (hilarious, I know), but ever so slightly annoying after a bit! I finally got up and moved Tyson’s Patagonia bag between me and the tent. PROBLEM SOLVED! Another humorous aspect was that right after we had set up camp that evening, we heard a thunderous noise like a freight train. Sure enough, there was a rail line not that far from the campground!! Surprisingly, with the loud wind, we never even heard the trains at night, and we slept great! No need for a sound machine!

***Because of all the wind the area was a real hot spot for kite surfers..***

We met Mariline the next day in the city of Perpignan. In November, we drove through this region to Spain. For some reason, we had chosen to canvas the neighborhood where Mariline lived, and she had received a packet of tracts in her mailbox. She wrote and requested a bible with large print. Mariline was a sweet grandma who lived in a very impoverished area. She asked that we put a note with our names in her bible to remember us by. She is so lonely; it about breaks your heart. Like many others we talk to, she desires to be near believers and have a closer relationship with God. We visited for quite a while, and she picked out more tracts from our tract bag that she had not read. It was a very nice visit, and later she sent us a message saying how much it had meant to her. That was very special. Sometimes a visit can feel like such a small thing, but we often overlook how much it means to have someone willing to listen, show care, or say a prayer. Mariline's reminder was a lovely one: small acts can have an impact, and it’s something we can all strive to do, no matter where we are! :) Since then, we have continued communicating with her through WhatsApp.

We ended up canvassing a huge neighborhood near her with tracts. Who knows how many Marilines there are in this region looking for a little something to give them hope or point them to Jesus.

I will end with a testimony told by Tyson….

I recount this story from the perspective of someone who understands only in part but hopes to one day understand more fully.

In March, we received an order for tracts in the French language from our friends, The Couthys. They live in Paris and have ordered tracts several times. When we have had the opportunity, we like to hand deliver these tracts and get a view of the daily lives of our fellow Christians spreading the Word in France. The tract order arrived around the end of March, and I included my order and the Couthys in the giant white box from Gospel Tract.. We opened up the heavy box full of tracts with many different messages. I browsed through the different bundles, ensuring the Couthys’ order was included. Everything seemed well, Mr. Penner had completed his job like a pro, as always! As we were preparing to drive to Paris and hand deliver the tracts, we decided to get another empty box we had left over to safeguard their tract order. I scanned the shipment they had ordered, searched every title, separated them, one by one, and laid them in the empty box. Shortly thereafter, we loaded up and set out for Paris... We met the Couthys in front of a Mission outreach for the homeless. They wanted to show us their volunteer work in the city. We gave them the box of tracts and then had a tasty meal of Bretagne Crepes...They were overjoyed to have a refill of tracts as they were fresh out! We returned home later that day and were happy to have visited. Three weeks later, we received a text at 2 am...Why this early!!?? It was the chat we had all set up to communicate between visits, with some encouragements, etc. We never read the message until morning. What we read shocked us....

They opened with a question. “How did you have the foresight to include the Tamil language tracts in the box you gave us?” They then recounted what had happened over the last few days. (I’ll paraphrase what they said as it was in French) It goes like this :

— “Our neighbor lady, whom we have known for a few years, was very sick. We didn’t know exactly how to help, but we noticed some strange tracts in the box you had given us and decided to give them to her. To our amazement,(and her’s) these tracts were in the exact language of our neighbor!! There she lay dying in her room, and the tracts were in her native tongue! She was overjoyed to be reading the Gospel in her own language! The next day, she passed away...We were so happy to have given her these tracts before the end! At her funeral, we recounted how the missionaries in Lille, France, had decided to include Tamil language tracts along with our French order...We still don’t know how you knew to do that!. But, thanks a lot!”—

We read the text and looked at each other with the same reaction. What???. We hadn’t included the Tamil tracts!? We didn’t even know what country that language was from? We thought of the different scenarios that may have occurred. Was the box that we had used empty? Absolutely... Did we sort through all the tracts? Yes! We had carefully separated the Couthys order, as we didn’t want to mix orders. We handled every bundle in the box and scanned the titles to match the order form. We don’t just randomly throw tracts in a box when there is a specific order! We were puzzled!. I decided to send Mr. Penner at Gospel Tract a message. I asked him, “Do you randomly include Tamil tracts in with French sometimes?” With little hesitation, he said, “We aren’t perfect, sometimes things happen.” I then posed this question. “But if you had, would you have inserted them in the middle of a bundle, with French language tracts on the front and back?” “Very Unlikely,” he replied. Very unlikely! Wow!! I was speechless...

As I stated at the beginning of this story, I don’t know what all took place. However, I do know this: a seeking soul, in need of the Gospel in her native language and facing her end in a foreign land, received the everlasting Gospel before her untimely death.. May God be praised!

(Later, at the funeral, the Couthys told the testimony I am recounting now. It spoke to the crowd with such force that three different pastors asked if they could also receive tracts in Tamil!)

Thank you to all who support Gospel Tract through your prayers and generous donations. Your efforts are not in vain.

I know this was a little long, but we wanted to include this testimony. Blessings to you all!

——Tyson and Lydia—-

Vingt-six- (26) The South of France, Madame Mariline & a Testimony..

VINGT-CINQ- A Visit to Bretagne..