Camp is over, and I find myself once again catching up on my journal while riding the train.  This is the train to Italy though, and the power plugs here are different than they are in France and Spain, so my time on the laptop will be limited to battery life.

Thursday night was the camp’s big banquet night, something I found to be very interesting and a bit comical.  First of all, the main feature of the “banquet” was tacos, though it did start outside with a lovely sparkling punch and some hors d’eovres.   Also, though in years past this was a somewhat formal affair, this year’s banquet was attended Middle-Eastern style on floor cushions with a dress code of pajamas.  The event took the entire evening, with lots of skits, music, and three mini-messages brought by three of the teen boys.  We also went around the room reporting what our cacahuete had done for us.  We then got to guess and ultimately find out the identity of who this person was.  Though most of the evening’s skits were lost to me because of the language barrier, I still found things to be rather humorous, and some of the kids were surprising hits.  Timothee Dufour, the tall, skinny, polite boy wearing 50’s style clothing was brilliant in roles as a news reporter and classroom teacher.  Marc Knickerbocker, already known to be pretty humorous, drew lots of laughter as he played the role of President Sarkozy.  For me though, it was most encouraging to see Jeremy, Emmanuel, and Gabriel get up to deliver 20-minute messages.  I think it’s always special to see a young man practicing this role, but seeing this happening with French young men, in a land where the gospel is so much harder to find, struck me as even more poignant.

Did I mention that camp is over?  Then end of camp was far more touching and sad than I expected.  Most everyone left on Saturday, but the tears started the night before during the camp fire.  I think that pretty much everyone in the camp gave a testimony.  Several had gotten saved during the two weeks, many had become convicted to get baptized, and more than a few confessed that they hadn’t been living properly and were resolved to maintain good testimonies in school.  One of these was Mattieu who confessed with a quivering voice that he had lost the confidence of his parents and requested prayer that he would have the strength to live a godly life and regain his reputation with his parents.  Rene-Pierre also spoke about how difficult it was to take a proper stand in school and asked for prayer that he might have the strength to stand alone.  The camp here has a tradition that the fire gets started by the camp staff but then each person that gives a testimony adds some wood to the fire, symbolizing the importance of the individual to keep the work of Christ going.  As the evening wound to an end, the kitchen staff brought out hotdogs and marshmallows and, ironically, I had my first weenie roast in France.  We finally went to our tents around one, and a few of the guys asked to attack the other tent one last time, but everyone fell asleep before they could get their pillows together.

People left in stages the next day, the largest group leaving together to catch a train to Paris in the mid-morning and the others leaving as parents arrived throughout the afternoon.  As the first group left in a small caravan of vans and cars, the rest of the campers chased them down the road, many wiping away tears.  Normally I might think these kids are a bit too sappy, but I’ve come to understand that most of these kids live the rest of the year in small churches with no other Christian peers.  When I left camp during my teen years, it was a little sad that the special week was over, but I knew I’d be seeing my friends for the rest of the year.  These kids will for the most part have to wait a full year before seeing each other again.  It was very touching to see how much love they have for one another, something that was already evident throughout the week but was brought to full light during this last day.

There were two guys that seemed to take a liking to me during camp.  Mattieu Chenier himself is very likeable, with a somewhat quiet, very kind disposition.  He would always root for me at ping-pong and sometimes would donate his “lives” to me during the many games of round-robin.  He was always the first to raise his hand when the staff would ask for volunteers to help with something.  Rene-Pierre was the other guy that took a real liking to me.  At first he didn’t seem terribly likeable to me, just a typical teen in the full throws of a not completely graceful transition through adolescence.  He has a fair amount of mischief, and was constantly stealing my Red Sox cap.  In fact, I didn’t think much of him until late in the second week of camp as he ran by and grabbed my hat and Pierre Knickerbocker commented that he really liked me.  I knew he was right when Rene’s dad came to pick him up on Saturday.  We stood talking with his dad for a couple of minutes, and when his dad indicated that it was probably time to get going, Rene tried asking his dad if he still wanted to talk with Tim.  As they did finally pull away in their aging van I was more than a little surprised to see this crusty teen through the windshield trying to hide giant tears as they rolled down his face.  This goes to show that you don’t always know who looks up to you, and I felt rather guilty for not paying a bit more attention to him during the week.  Within a day, he signed up for a Facebook account and added me as his first friend.  I’ve already decided that when I get home I’ll send him a Red Sox cap, with a humorous wink at his hat-snatching antics.

I spent Saturday and Sunday nights with David Price, a young missionary who just moved with his wife to the nearby town of St. Gaudens only a few weeks before I arrived.  His wife was actually back in the States for a wedding, returning the very day I left, so I never got to meet her other than over a webcam.  Dave had discovered a scenic church up on a hill the previous week when he took a wrong turn, so with some rich late afternoon light left in the day he decided to shoot by there on our way to his house.  We both ended up getting a completely unexpected, surreal treat.  The church was indeed perched on a scenic spot, but with not much else to do when we got there, we decided to walk up around it to see if we could get some other views.  Behind the church we discovered a field with a rickety, hand-made fence and gate sloping upwards towards a crumbling old wall that looked to be the ruins of an old chateau of some sort.  The was a sign welcoming people to enter but to please close the gate firmly behind them.  Figuring this was all part of town or church property, we meandered our way up the field with fantastic views of the valley to our left and an increasingly intriguing revelation of extensive ruins on our right.  A couple of mules grazed in the pasture, adding to the curiosity of this place.

As we approached a section where there were some underground areas, we came across a middle-aged man who was working by himself with a wheelbarrow.  He brushed his hands on his shorts and emerged slowly to introduce himself.  We quickly found out that this was his private property and that he was working to restore what he could of these medieval ruins.  In fact, he had quit his job and sold his 12th generation family home three years ago to buy this land and a small flat in the village.  He explained that officially these ruins didn’t exist.  If you were to look at a town map of his land it would simply show a pasture.  Apparently the chateau that had existed here was a frontier fortress when the British had invaded several hundred years ago as far as Toulouse.  However, the French government doesn’t want to remember this part of history as it is part of its feudalistic past, therefore, it refuses to recognize that there is anything here.  This comes with a curious mix of advantages and challenges.  First, he can do whatever he wants, more or less without worry of government or historical society intervention.  Because it is zoned strictly as a pasture, however, he is not allowed to live there, “build” there, or bring any electricity and water any further than the edge of the property.  He’s allowed to restore the ruins, however, as they don’t exist anyway!  You’ve got to love some of the strange things governments will do.

For the next solid hour, he showed us all around the property, explaining the history and archeological significance of various things.  He had a charming table with a few chairs set in the middle of a grassy area with an ancient, monolithic wall behind it where we sat down and he showed us photos of the area before he began work.  We could see the change or color in the rock walls where he had unearthed about 10 feet of fill.  He then brought us up into the tower, which he had restored and furnished.  Inside on the first level were dozens of ancient artifacts such as keys, knives, and pottery.  There was also a cozy, upholstered alcove with some curtains where I imagine he occasionally spends a night.  Up the stairs brought us to a high-ceilinged stone chamber lit by candle sconces and furnished with a few heavy chairs and a table.  High above was a small sky light, but the room was fairly dim and felt very much like it probably did in its original day.  We went up another set of stairs and then into the incredibly thick stone wall into a very narrow, nearly cave-like passage that twisted around and went up a set of stone steps only about 2 feet wide.  We emerged on the roof with fabulous views of the whole property and the scenic farmland all below.  Just a few miles away rose the Pyrenees, giving the whole scene a dramatic backdrop.  On the roof he had a chaise lounge and chair and a few potted trees and plants.  In fact, in several places around the property he had created charming nooks that begged for you to sit and soak in the surroundings.  The authentic patina of the place combined with these corners of lavender and roses created a setting that was almost beyond surreal.  I found myself grinning and snapping photos like a photographer on a sugar high.

At one point, Dave even got to cautiously witness to the man as we sat in the stony keep of the tower.  The man was fairly open to discuss things but still showed some clear boundaries and prejudice against his experience with “negative” religions.  Dave was able to establish a friendly contact, however, and the man invited him to come back again with his wife.

Church on Sunday morning was a good bit fuller than normal, as a couple of the counselors were still in town and a couple of families had already shown up for next week’s family camp.  Another family with two girls that had been in the youth camp stayed the night to go to church in the morning and were driving home in the afternoon.  I said my final goodbyes to Tim and Elizabeth, and the remaining friends from camp.  Dave and I walked over to a restaurant for lunch and then back to his apartment.  He was a rather nice place within convenient walking distance of most of the center of town.  High ceilings and huge European-style windows give the place a nice feel.  It’s rather large too, with three bedrooms, and a good sized living room where wall-length glass doors open to a balcony overlooking the street below.  In the back is a decent-sized courtyard area that needs a little cleaning up, but Dave has plans to use it for church functions.  Dave told me about how the Lord worked out many incredible things as they moved here.  First was this apartment, where someone walking down the street noticed him looking in the window of a real estate agency and offered him the place where he now lives.  He had expected the process of finding lodging to take a couple of months, and had been looking at places half the size with monthly rents significantly higher than what he ended up getting.  They met somebody who designs furniture for Ikea and now through them and another person have a nicely furnished house, exactly in the style his wife likes, without having purchased any of it.

After lunch, Dave and I hopped in his car and drove down to a spot in the Pyrenees not far from Lac D’Oo where I had been hiking a week earlier.  We went for what turned out to be about a 3 hour hike partially spoiled at the end by thick cloud cover.  The hike was still a lot of fun and brought us to some very scenic waterfalls and dramatic crevices.  Up high, we emerged from the trees into vast, grassy slopes that were shrouded in the mist.  We continued for a ways, hoping to find our destination of a set of mines.  I was just asking if there were mountain goats in these parts when we crested a grassy knoll to see a flock of sheep grazing on the hillside.  As we got closer, I could see that these sheep had horns, so I’m not exactly sure what kind of animal they were after all.  The closest we got to finding the mines was the discovery of an old, rusted railroad wheel and axel on a stony slope.  We only had just over an hour of daylight left though, and I decided to turn back, not wanting to be caught after dark on the mostly featureless, foggy grasslands.

Back in a charming, ski-village town, we ate crepes for dinner in a nifty street-side restaurant with some remarkable features.  Each table had a unique scene created out of sand, rocks, and other artifacts boxed under a glass surface.  The inside of the restaurant had some ultra-modern touches like backlit glass floor panels that had jets of water rushing under it.  They also had perhaps the most modern bathrooms I’ve ever seen.  There was a toilet that had a rotating, self-sanitizing lid and touchless faucets and blow driers that illuminated your hand with cool, blue light while they were in use.

The next morning I did a load of laundry and a bit of work before Dave and I headed off to the city of Lourdes.  The city’s economy is almost completely based on Catholic tourism, as about three million visitors make pilgrimages to a grotto here where the virgin Mary allegedly appeared about 150 years ago.  As we walked from our parking spot towards the grotto, we passed lots full of tour buses and countless RVs.  We made our way into the busy commercial section of town, full of gift shops hawking all kinds of Catholic trinkets.  We followed a red path marked with handicap symbols through town and soon reached the epicenter, where a large church and crowds of people marked the “holy” site.  We passed a long row of candles ranging from large to human-sized.  I saw some of the larger ones on sale for €150.  At another spot, people filled up water bottles, washed their faces, and splashed water on their children from spigots that I’m assuming gave “holy” water from the site.  Others waited in a long line to walk through the grotto itself, running their hands along the now smooth, stone surface above which Mary allegedly appeared.  The most remarkable (and tragic) site, however, were the crowds of people in wheel chairs that were waiting their turn to be bathed in the water.  The actual bathing took place behind closed doors, but there were gurneys, and medical staff all over the place, creating a bizarre scene that looked like a mix between an outdoor hospital and Disney World.

The church building itself was built right up over the grotto and boasted some pretty interesting architecture.  In some ways, it looked to me more like Cinderella’s castle than your typical Catholic church.  With the crowds of people walking in, out, and around, the place also felt a bit more like the Magic Kingdom than St. Patrick’s.  To realize that most of these people believe in all this reminded me that the Catholic religion requires more blind faith than Biblical Christianity.  It’s simultaneously amazing and tragic.

After returning to Dave’s place, I spent the late afternoon making travel arrangements and hotel reservations for my next week in Italy.  I packed a box of things that Dave will ship home for me, making my backpack load a bit more manageable for the next leg of my journey.  Around 10:30, Dave took me the short distance to the train station where I hopped on an express train to Toulouse.  After a 45 minute wait, I boarded the overcrowded second class cabin of the train from Toulouse to Nice.  The chairs reclined nicely, but frustratingly, my chair was in the back of the cabin with a large suitcase shoved behind it, making a recline impossible.  Taking advantage of my well-honed skills to sleep in nearly any situation, I still managed to get a decent night’s sleep, only waking up occasionally.  I was actually assigned a window seat, but some poser was already sleeping in it, so I was stuck on the aisle.  After a stop somewhere around 5 am, I woke up as disembarking people smacked my face with their bags.  This allowed me to find a vacated seat, though, where I was able to recline and sleep a few more hours until we arrived at sunny Nice around 9.  I had nearly an hour to kill, so I ducked over to a café for some breakfast and then boarded the train for Milan.  I’m finally back in a first-class cabin, and count myself lucky to have a seat.  Trenitalia screwed things up for this trip by failing to include its first cabin, and there have been scores of confused people in my cabin (number two) looking for their seat.  We have enjoyed a fantastically scenic trip, only a dozen feet from the Mediterranean on one side, with views of cliff-defying villages, caves, and tunnels on the other.  We’ve made it to Genova and are now on our way north to Milan with no more views of the sea.  In Milan, I will make my final transfer to the train that will ultimately bring me to Venice.  I hope I can purchase a new plug-converter there, as my laptop is now, after 4 hours of use, left with only 20% of its battery left.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.