Salut!

I have bought some rollerblades and they are very beautiful!  I’m going to skate around Orleans on Friday nights when they close the town to traffic and then go for a drink afterwards and make lots of friends.  It’s all planned!

Except today I nearly skated though my bedroom window so it might be a while yet…!

The wonders of Youtube!  There are loads of postings from the festival now.  Here’s one link for you French speakers out there…

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=jn47i-4oXYA 

Or search the site yourselves and find Matt Redman attempting French - amusing!   

…is much the same in France as in the UK except they pronouce in booling and use bools instead of balls!

Anyway, it was our young adults group end of year party.  It was quite fun, after I calmed down from my little rant after half the group turned up 50 mins late!   After the game we went into town and had a drink in a bar.  All very nice. 

  (Spot the odd one out!)

There were 12 of us there, which is really good…at the beginning of the year we were 6.  Please continue to pray for us, over the summer we will try and decide how to move forward in September and how we can use the group to introduce our friends to Christ but also how we can encourage those in the group who are on the fringes of the church.

Yesterday was a full but fun day.  In the evening we had our weekly Bible study.  We are a little group but growing!  Quite multi-cultural too!

  From left to right…Jessica from Mexico, Dulcey whose family are from Congo, Van from Laos, Paul whose family are from Poland, Me!  (Hilary usually comes too and a new girl called Mavis.)

It’s interesting with all the differernt cultures and ways of expressing and understanding things…not always easy!

After a shorter than usual study we all went together into the city for the national music festival.  It’s the evening where anybody and everybody who plays any sort of music sets up stall in the city centre.  It is really crazy, you walk along the street and in the space of 100m you have a samba band, techno ravers, a brass band and numerous rock bands of questionable quality!  The city was absolutly swarming with young people it really was an amazing atmosphere.  There were 2 chuches there too playing music openly in the street and distributing tracts - got to make the most of these rare oppertunities!

I had parked in a multi-story car park.  When we got back at 12.30 there was a huge rave going on outside the entrance.

We watched as 2 cars got stuck and couldn’t get out of the crowd…I asked the police what I should do and they siad I all I could do was try!  Anyway we went up and got the car and said a prayer and all of a sudden the police arrived and directed me down the entrance ramp instead - hurah!  I don’t think it would have been a good witness to squash people!

Hey there!  I’ve made it back to Orleans!

I was exhausted when I got back to the UK and went straight to a good friend’s wedding, which was lovely…

The next day my mum got baptised, which was an amazing occasion and I felt very priviledged to be there.

The next day my parents and I went to Wales for 5 days.  I mostly slept.  (and had a great time with my mum and dad…even during the fire alarm at 7am!!)

Now I’m back in sunny France.  I’m feeling less tired but need to really get some kind of structure in my days otherwise it’s just far too easy to fill them up with meetings and other not so interesting stuff and not have time to eat anything other than cereal and wear unironed clothes.  (mind you, I survived like that for 4 years at uni…)  No seriously, I think this year I have let other people define my priorities, which was OK because I’m in a training period.  But I’m beginning to realise their priorities are not my own.  I came to France to talk to people about Jesus and not to sit in rooms full of middle aged men.  Things must change!  Please pray with me as I work through things.

I’ve been in Paris on a training course since Monday afternoon.  I got back to Orleans with half an hour to spare before our new Intro to Christianity course starts.  Phew.  Anyway, we were all duly assembled (with portuguese service going on downstairs and a man getting quite excited as he preached rather too loudly)…and no one arrived.

Disheartened we decided to make the most of the cakes and the sunshine and set up a table outside the church and proceeded to much.  Suddenly 2 local Turkish lads turned up on a quad and joined us while waving to all their mates!  Later on 2 other people who are loosely connected to the church joined us too.  It was great.  Not what we expected, but great.  Instead of being inside the church every Wednesday evening we are going to continue to eat cakes outside the front door and welcome poeple to join us - sounds fun!

4 guys from Brixworth Christian Fellowship have been with us at the church for the past four days.  They have been a huge encouragement, not only with their prayers but with their friendship and HUGE quantities of Harribo that they brought with them.    Here’s  little touristy shot of us with ‘Joan’.

I’m seriously tired and it’s going to be non-stop until I head back to blighty on Friday morning.  So don’t expect many post for the next week or so and please pray for me; for energy to hold out and for serious amounts of rest back home.