This morning I worked in the hotel room, and then drove to the Audoins' home again where I had been invited for lunch along with Hervé Dubois and Helen Hayes who will be married tomorrow. Helen doesn’t speak French, and the Audoins don’t speak English, so Hervé and I did a lot of translating during the meal, which was very enjoyable once again.

After lunch Hervé and Helen and I went through the details of the wedding arrangements and agreed to have a brief rehearsal at 2:00, before the start of services. The wedding will follow shortly after the service. Helen asked if we could have a cell phone on line to her church area back in Michigan, and I told her that would be fine, though I wasn’t sure how well they’d be able to hear.

I gave Mrs. Audoin a break from food preparation and had dinner at the hotel. It was pleasantly restful. The salad bar is wonderful at the hotel. Generally, the French put a lot of emphasis on the quality of the fruits and vegetables. Things must be just ripe and at their best, not picked a week early for shipment somewhere. As a result the salads and raw vegetables served with vinaigrettes of various kinds are wonderful. I made a meal of the salad bar and was quite content.

After dinner I worked on preparing the sermon I will give tomorrow. And I decided to make an early night of it. As I was working I received a text message from my good friend David Baker. He was on his way back from Asia to his home in New York and had an hour’s layover in Atlanta. He wanted to know if I were in the States so we could talk on the phone and catch up on the news. It’s expensive to talk on cell phones internationally, so we deferred the pleasure of a conversation. Still it's sometimes amazing how we can keep in touch with friends and family all over the world, almost instantly.

Tomorrow will be an exciting and busy day.