The Vaudois of the Piedmont Valley

I have stumbled across perhaps the most interesting thing that has happened to me all summer.  While working on a sunday lesson, my mom was given a stack of papers from my cousin, and therein lied the history of our ancestors.  Late last night, after returning from dinner with some good friends, I came downstairs and asked to look at the documents of our predecessors.  In the lamplight I poured over them, and was soon enamored by the beauty of my heritage.  I searched late into the night for pictures and primary documents that would contain any information on the type of people I am descended from.  

Here is their story:

The Piedmont Valley in Italy is surrounded by the Cottian Alps, which serves as a border between Italy and France.  Three valleys run to the Piedmont plains, which are the valleys of Lucerna, Perouse, and San Martino.  In all they are about sixteen square miles.  And nestled in this Piedmont Valley are a wondrous sort of people.  The Vaudois, a race that has existed there since long before any historian could have archived their arrival, were striking in both appearance and attitude.  Their description goes as follows:

Within this little area has...existed from remote times a peculiar race of people, rarely numbering more than twenty thousand. They have retained their primitive appearance and manners to a greater degree than almost any other European community. They have always been noted for the simplicity and purity of their lives, and their absolute freedom from the ignorance superstition and vice which have cursed the countries around them. The men are tall, well-made, graceful in section, vigorous and hardy. The women are fair, endowed with a native grace and refinement and have always been noted for their chastity and modest deportment. Both sexes are frank, hospitable Peaceful and forbearing in disposition.

Traditionally these Vaudois or people of the Valleys belong to a church which is held to be the direct result of the teachings of the Apostles of early Christianity, never having belonged to the Roman Catholic religion. Thus they were the forerunners of the Reformation, having preserved their ancient faith, through the centuries, "in the Vaudois Valleys simple, free, and pure, as in the time of persecution."

How beautiful, don't you think?  They were persecuted for not joining the Catholic church and instead remaining faithful to the New Testament apostles.  And for this they fought an 800 year war against the Duke of Savoy and the pope.  Children were torn from their mother's arms and brutally murdered.  Bodies were skewered and left to demonstrate what being faithful would cause.  However, they never gave in.  After being scattered about Europe numerous times, they always returned to their home in the Piedmont Valley.  And after many unwavering generations, eventually were granted religious freedom.

In the early 1800s, President Snow (who was then Elder Snow) came to the Piedmont Valley to restore the everlasting gospel to the people of Italy.  He was inspired to do so, and found a humble and strong people who were open to the words of our future prophet.  My ancestors, the Cardons, were then baptized and later traveled to Utah in the pursuit of establishing Zion.

Marie Madelaine, daughter of Philippe Cardon and sister to Louis Philip, recounts having had a dream at a very young age, in which three men came to her and told her they were the servants of God.  They then proceeded to tell her all about the restored gospel.  When she awoke, she was acting very strange, and recounted the entire dream to her parents.  Being so young, she soon forgot the dream, but her parents always remembered.  And when their daughter was eighteen years old, the father heard of men in La Tour who were teaching a strange and new doctrine.  He walked all day and all night to the place where the men were, and recognized that their teachings were the same of those in his daughter's dream.  He invited the men back, offering his home to them as their new headquarters.  They accepted his offer.  And upon returning to his home, his daughter looked upon their faces, and suddenly recollected her entire childhood dream.  She knew that they were the same men.  All were later baptized.





◆How moving this is for me to see, and how I hope that they look down on us now, and see that their efforts have been paid in full.  Such gratitude I feel, that words cannot convey it.  I will see their faces again, and look forward to that day.  But for now, I will live the way that they have taught me.◆



For more info, visit this or this.  

Just to clarify...

Just to clarify: this blog is for me.  It is an entirely selfish way for me to become more comfortable with sharing my words with people.  It is in no way altruistic.  I mean, have you ever met someone as serious about writing as I am, yet they're  terrified to show anyone anything they've written?  Chances are you haven't.  Probably because I'm just a baby and take my writing very personally.  But who doesn't?  I really have no excuse for keeping my writings to myself.  Thus this blog.

just daydreaming.

I left my heart in Cambodia.

So I've been thinking a lot about Cambodia.  About the marshy green landscape littered with rice paddies, the soupy weather, the wooden huts on stilts, and the skewered heads and bright fabrics at the market.  About the morning walks to the bakery, the elephant ride to the temple, and the bus ride to the rickety bus ride to the village.  I miss seeing six people stacked precariously on one moped, and water buffalo just hanging out in the shade.  But mostly I think about the people.  At times I am so overcome with missing them that it hurts.  You know that spot in the middle of your chest that just twinges when you miss someone or something?  Kind of like you've swallowed too much water in one gulp and it hurts as it goes down your throat.  It's like a literal heartache.
I have an ongoing battle with nostalgia and often have to remind myself that the best days lie ahead rather than behind me.  Just to seize the day and live in the moment.  However, when that bloody nostalgia gets the better of me, and I am suddenly flooded with it until my ears are bursting with the sounds of days past and my eyes are tearing up as my heart yearns for things that will never come again, I find it is mostly because of memories like Cambodia.  And there's no remedy for this sort of pain, but vomiting words onto a paper (or in this case into cyberspace) always helps closure come quicker.
The people there are just the most humble and hard working humans I have ever met.  They are selfless and loving and beautiful.  The beauty is shown in every wrinkle of their weathered faces, and each hole where a tooth is meant to be.  It shines out of them like moonlight- subtle and quiet.  They don't know they have it, nor do they work to achieve it, but rather it's an innate need to survive in their less that optimal conditions.  Oh how I love them.  Oh how I wish I could pull up on a bus again and see fifty kids with beaming faces running towards me full speed and never putting breaks on- just plowing into my tummy and hugging me and saying words I don't understand.  Except for one word.  "Akon tran." Thank you.
But it's me who should be thanking them.  And although I have let many days and nights go by without  acting on the gratitude I feel, I do love them and thank them.  Thank them for showing me what true happiness is, and to find it one only has to look outside themselves.

Here are some beautifully happy people for you to love as much as I do.  Notice their brightness.