30th Anniversary

     My parents celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary this month! And not just thirty years, but thirty years of loving each other, sacrificing for each other, being an example to us kids, and teaching us through their lives and their instruction how to fear and love God. I am especially thankful for my parents this Thanksgiving!

Still as much in love as ever, and I hear even more so!

 

 

 

 

  The photo is a bit blurry, but that is a Chateauneuf-du-Pape from 1989! I hear it was exquisite.

A Huguenot Tradition - Advent Breakfast

The French are not big on breakfast. Often very light like a Croissant with coffee. However there are four breakfasts in the year which are exceptionally special. There is a Huguenot tradition in France of having a special advent breakfast that my father grew up with and then did with us, and that I am now continuing. It is often not a huge breakfast, mostly because we would otherwise be late for church, but it is always very special and unique. There are a few things that always accompany it, such as a tangerine with a candle stuck in it, as well as Papilottes (which we didn't have this time since you can't get them in the states. Papilottes are a Christmas-only chocolate that is wrapped in a foil with a joke inside and sometimes a little firecracker.)

Other than those, it varies from time to time. This morning we had eggs, toast, and breakfast sausage; a donut (with coconut on top), fruit cake, a slice of pound cake, a chocolate cigar, peanut butter cups, and hot cider (and of course the orange).

Here are a couple photos of our first advent breakfast:

On Baptism

This is a very rough translation from the original manuscript written in old French on the History of the Vaudois Churches in the Piemont mountains. I read this section on Baptism (which I found is a lot easier to just read than to actually translate!) and I found that some of the things sounded strangely like the "new" Federal Vision stuff...

We are pretty certain that the Vaudoises are our ancestors, specifically Henri Arnaud, a Vaudois Huguenot pastor who led an army of Huguenots back into the Piemont Valley in 1690 (?). This book was given to my father by his father, and tells of the persecutions of the Huguenots during this time period.

On Baptism

The first [sacrament] is called baptism, that is to say in our language, washing by water or from a river, or from a fountain. It must be administered in the Name of the Father, Son, and of the Holy Spirit, to those who, first of all, by the grace of God the Father, looking to his Son, and by participation of [in?] Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us, and by the renewing of the Holy Spirit, who imprints living Faith in our hearts, the sins of those baptized are forgiven, and they are received in grace : and after having persevered [in grace], they are saved in Jesus Christ.

The Baptism with which we are baptized, and that with which our Lord himself wanted to be baptized, in order to accomplish all justice, just as he wanted to be circumcised, is [the baptism] which he commanded his Apostles to baptize with.

Moreover, this baptism is visible and material; [the baptism] does not make a person either good or bad, as we learn in the Scripture of Simon Magus, and of St. Paul. And the reason that the baptism is administered in the midst of the congregation of the faithful is so that he who is received is reputed and held by all for a Brother and Christian, and so that all might pray for him, that he be Christian of the heart, just as he is externally considered to be a Christian. And it is for this reason that we present the Children to Baptism. Those who the children touch the closest ought to do this, just as their parents do, and those to whom God has given this charity.


Jean Leger, L'Histoire Generale Des Eglises Evangeliques Des Vallees De Piemont ou Vaudoises, (France, Leyde: Jean le Carpentier, 1669), 67.