Salut!

the campaign ‘The Purpose Driven Life’ seems to be off to a really encouraging start.  After fielding about a million comments like, ‘Jesus never read this book’ I was about to give up all hope.  But things, praise God, have come together.  At least 10 of the youth are reading the book and one girl on Saturday started reeling off all the bible verses she had learnt by heart.  (She was doing this while wearing a metalica hoody and a ‘fake’ axe through the earlobe.)  At the end of the service today the pastor asked if anyone would like to share anything about the first week of the campaign.  6 people stood and shared how they were being encouraged and blessed.  Wow!  Thank you for praying!!

There was an invited speaker all weekend at the Reformed church in the city.  5pm Saturday, a special ‘dabate’ for young people.  Subject: ‘The Micha Challenge.’ 

After learning from painful past experiences I didn’t get my hopes up at all.

I was extreamly surprized to see that about 3/4 of the youth group had turned up at the meeting point…"maybe I am being pessamistic, maybe it will be great, be positive Stace".

We arrived at the church (after a short detour via the boulangerie, mmmmm!), to find that ours was the only group of youth there.  The ‘hip and in touch’, trying-too-hard speaker then went on to ask one of our youth workers, who is 25, which high school he went to.  D’oh!

We started.  A big table.  No projecter, music, videos, games.  Nope, this is France…we must be serious and pump you with information.  I was prepared for this.

But then the debate started.  The collected group of random adults then proceeded to discuss important matters such as: Do cows pollute more than cars?  Is it worse to be a mother or a single women in terms of the job market today?  And the legality of collecting perscription medication.  All of which, as you can imagine, spoke directly to our group of 15-17 year olds as they hung on every word…when they weren’t playing solitere on their iPods or texting.

The trip to the kebab shop afterwards was a huge highlight for everyone…even me.  How much does that explain?!