Liz put some of her skills to use a few days ago, teaching some of the ladies in our branch how to make cinnamon rolls. They had never seen this done, but had heard about how good they were. She's using the dining room table and, after they spread out their balls of dough (which Liz pre prepared), she's showing them how to add sugar and cinnamon prior to rolling them up.

Cinnamon rolls and the Relief Society (well, about half of the ladies in our branch). From left to right:

Charlotte Martin, Maryvon Livory, Liz, Christine Hebert.

They had a good time, and I hear that they were able to get the rolls eaten without any problem.

The finished product up close. Yes, they tasted as good as they look. Liz froze the batch at the top, and we fed most of them to our elders at District meeting yesterday. I can't complain, because I did get to eat 2 1/2 of them!

A view of the city of Cherbourg and the harbor, taken from the top of Mount Roule, the highest point on the edge of the city. There is a large ferry boat at the end of the dock, and the huge circular building on the left is Pasteur Hospital.

You can click on the picture to see it enlarged.

This is not a favorite tourist town, but we think it is a beautiful place.

Cherbourg was not a beautiful place in the 1940s. It was one of the most important ports in Europe, and was overtaken by the German army early in the fighting. Thousands of French troops escaped from here on boats to England one day before their conquerors took over the city.

Fort Roule. We visited this place a few days ago. It is now a museum, and we spent about two hours wandering through it and reading about the war. I only took a few photos.

This granite building and a myriad of runnels bored in the "mountain" (it's only several hundred feet high) were a command post of the German occupation of Cherbourg in WW II. You can see some of the tunnel exits/gun emplacements just below the top of the mountain.

What a terrible time this was for France. Within a month of starting the conflict, Hitler had conquered all of Western Europe, and had signed a non-aggression treaty with Russia so he could concentrate on the defeat of England.

This is how Germany kept its war effort going. Youth camps were set up to send boys for fun, games, and indoctrination. Later in the war, many of them were in the front lines, many of them still more boys than men.

Propaganda posters were in place everywhere, attempting to blame the allied forces for all of France's woes. Many of these were supplied by the Vichy government, formed by French collaborators who helped the Germans control the population.

Propaganda notwithstanding, the French resistance did a lot to inhibit the Germans. Some of their information came from the BBC broadcasts from England. This picture was probably used in many places, showing a German soldier romancing a French woman. However, the frame (as you can see in the side) held an illegal radio!

(That's lipstick in the front)

Rationing books and coupons were needed for most basic goods. Gasoline was almost impossible to obtain, so some of the resourceful people built coal or wood fueled generators on their cars to produce coal gas to run their vehicles.

The people in the countryside fared much better, as they had gardens and animals. A black market supplied a lot, even though it was risky and highly illegal to buy goods not controlled by the rations.

All Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothes so they could be identified. Families were broken up, some were sent to concentration camps and extermination camps. These people truly suffered at the hands of their occupation.

The long awaited announcement, May 8, 1945. France erupted in celebration when the news of the German surrender was heard and printed.

It took months to get food supplies and other goods going well again, but it must have been a great relief to know that the worst was over.

Being here, and seeing photos of streets and areas that we know well filled with German soldiers, stores with "Pas de pain" (no bread), "Pas de viande" (no meat), lineups for basics, people being put on trains to be shipped off to camps and German factories made us understand just a little what these people went through for years!

There are dozens of Japanese cherry trees around the city, and most are in full bloom. They look just like the ones in Japan. They are ornamental only and don't produce any cherries, just beautiful spring flowers.

End of the day and end of postings for now. This was a view through the trees as we walked at dusk down our favorite path. You can see a few blossoms on the small cherry tree, but the light was really caught my attention. We'll miss this spot.

(It's about time I got some more photos on our blog. I have others, but they'll have to wait for a later date. I hope to get this up to date within a week, so there will be more after the ones I'm posting today.)

Early morning view of our apartment area. Our building is on the right, and our place is the two far windows on the third floor. We have grass and some flowers year-round, and a balcony that faces south. A lot of our neighbors are retired, and some of the others are professionals. It's most of the time quite peaceful, and we're only about 15 minutes walk from the church and the center of downtown.

Liz and I were going to a home teaching visit and went past this building. Curious as to what it was for (it has a cross on it but is way too small for a church), we stopped and visited. It is a German cemetery in the little town of Orglandes, not too far from Cherbourg.

A view across a portion of the cemetery. Originally there were German and American soldiers buried here, but as another American cemetery was opened up further south, those soldiers were moved to the new one, and German soldiers who had been buried in a number of smaller places were brought here. There are just under 10,000 graves here. We have seen at least three German cemeteries in our area of Normandy.

On one of our outings, Elder Jurrus had to go say hello to the cows. They weren't particularly interested in a conversation that day, but we enjoyed watching them in their nice green pasture. Exciting viewing, as you can imagine.

One of many lighthouses in this area. This is the Gatteville lighthouse, and was built in 1835. The light can be seen from the Isle of Wight on the coast of England (about 100 kilometres from here). It is especially interesting because of numbers: it has 12 stories, 52 windows, and 365 steps to the top. The little tower behind it is a weather station.

This is the kind of rock in this area (yeah, I know most people aren't at all interested in "rocks", but I love geology). It is all granite, and the crystals are really large. If they didn't weigh so much, I'd bring a piece home to put on my desk. Maybe Delta will change their weight restrictions before we go home. Not likely.

I really liked this area. The rock is all granite, and the lighthouse was built of material from this same area. The tide was out when we were there, and the elders went wandering to see what they could find. The ocean was beautiful even though the sky was overcast.

These are a shellfish called "Chinamen's Hats" because of their conical shape. We have been told that they taste good, but I tried cooking some once and they came out like rubber! I'll have to find out how to do it right, as they are very plentiful. It takes a knife to pry them off the rocks (these are coarse granite).

Here we are (yes, we are wearing P day clothes) in front of the Gatteville lighthouse. Unfortunately it was closed all month, so we couldn't go in it. Much to Liz's dismay - I am sure she wanted (not) to climb to the top!

In the town of Gatteville which is next to the lighthouse, is a little church called Notre Dame de bon Secours (our lady of good help). It was built about 1090 AD, during the reign of William the Conqueror. And in Montana, we think that a building that has existed since 1840 is ancient!

South of the little church is a much larger and more recent church (probably built in the 1600s and 1700s), and behind that church is an old cemetery next to the residential area. We love the old stone houses that you see everywhere in the villages, and nearly all of them are still used for homes.

Another lighthouse on the east part of this peninsula. This one is in the town of St. Vast, and the grey stuff in the background is Tatihou Island, with a 17th century fort. The lighthouse is still in service, as there is a fishing fleet that still uses the little harbor there.

Just to prove that we really were there - here' s Liz standing in front of the lighthouses. She has done a cross-stitch of this scene - someday you'll be able to see it when we get it hung up in our house in Montana.

We took the elders and went to the American Cemetery at Omaho Beach one P day. It was cold, windy, and snowing off and on. But we were asked to help with retiring the colors that afternoon. What a great experience! Helping to lower and fold the flag with a backdrop of 10,000 graves of American soldiers who gave their lives to liberate France and Europe was humbling. Elder Jurrus and I did one flag, Elder Jurrus and Messick did the other.

We had a branch party for Christmas (yes, I know I haven't put photos on the blog for a long time), and this was my favorite photo. It's of Elder Jurrus on left, Jean-Claude Michel (a recent convert) and Elder Messick, trying to decide who gets the first piece of a chocolate "cake" that must have had 500 calories per slice! It was great.

The branch president and I went to visit a family in a little town called Brix. We had to walk through an old cemetery in the church courtyard to arrive at their door. The moon was showing through the breaking clouds and I happened to have my camera with me.

This statue of Napoleon is next to the harbor and across the street from a city square named after him. I don't know who the sculptor was, but he did a great job representing power and strength of the horse and master.

This is the view we get from a hillside we walk up two or three times a week. The path to the top is 2 minutes from our apartment door, and the view of a portion of the city, the old forts in the harbor (built along with the harbor walls by Napoleon), and the beautiful blue sea never become old.

I took this photo for the houses mostly. As you can see, many of them have skylights, even in this often cloudy city. Electricity can be expensive (although 89% of power in France is produced by nuclear reactors!) and people take advantage of natural light. Behind the homes is one wing of a "lycee", the equivalent of High School. What you see is about a third of the building. How can you find your way to your next class?

This is hard to read, even if you know French. It is a plaque in a church here, and represents what I believe is one of the reasons why religion lost importance in France. It is a tribute to a Catholic leader who was killed "by hate of faith" in Paris during the French revolution. The revolution tried to remove religion and replace it by humanism, and largely, over time, succeeded.

These statues are behind the altar in the Trinity Cathedral here in Cherbourg. This depicts the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist, with the Holy Ghost descending as a dove. There is a small baptismal font in this church dating from the 1500s, presumably for people to stand in while the water was poured on their heads.