First French ME in Malaysia

Apr 02, 2014

By Christophe & Anne Lambotte
The Worldwide Marriage Encounter (WWME) programme provides a conducive environment, and encourages and enables married couples to communicate deeply.

In a nutshell, this was how Christophe and Virginie described their rich experience of the WWME Weekend March 21-23 at the Archdiocesan Pastoral Centre.

“Communication between us is not so easy as one of us is often abroad. So, we were very happy to be able to communicate deeply during this Weekend programme,” said Christophe and Virginie, who have been married for 16 years.

They added that the time they spent together during the Weekend was very precious, and that “from now on, we’ll practise this new type of heart communication in our couple relationship.”

Ten young French expatriate couples who live in Kuala Lumpur participated in the first French WWME Weekend in Malaysia. The marriage enrichment programme, called Vivre et Aimer (Living and Loving) in French, was entirely conducted in that language.

According to presenting couple Christophe and Anne Lambotte, the ten participant couples returned home with a “big smile” having “rediscovered each other at a deeper level.”

“Participants spent the whole weekend taking care of their couple relationship. They were happy to talk to each other, within the intimacy of their coupleness, about areas of their lives that were very important to them, including sharing their feelings,” said the Lambottes, who live in Kuala Lumpur.

The other presenting couple, Paul and Anne Valois, live in France, and came to Kuala Lumpur specially for the WWME Weekend. The presenting priest, who lives in Singapore, was Fr Bruno St Girons of the Paris Foreign Missionaries (MEP).

The French Weekend was treated to a surprise when Archbishop Emeritus Murphy Pakiam visited the presenting teams and participants at the ‘welcoming out’ on Sunday evening.

His Grace shared with the presenting teams his experiences as a WWME presenting priest until he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Kuala Lumpur in 1995.

The presenters of this WWME Weekend from France, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur had prepared the programme a few months earlier with the help of modern communication technologies such as Skype.

“We experienced how difficult it is for expatriates to live their couple relationship, especially when the husband is travelling abroad,” said the Lambottes, who are in charge of the spiritual animation of the French-speaking Catholic Community in Kuala Lumpur.

They noted that in view of such a situation, they wanted to give a chance for the French couples here to experience an enriching weekend programme.

This French Weekend would not have been possible without the help of Santiago and Maria, WWME Malaysia National Coordinating Couple, and some Malaysian couples in WWME Selangor/KL who helped with the logistics and other arrangements during the Weekend.