Salut!

The visiting team have done wonders!  We have a wonderful new appartment in the church which will serve as an office for a missionery, Jean-Aime, and another room which will be a multi-use room for the various activities of the church.  The appartment was sooooo disgusting before…we had to scrape grease off the skirting boards with scrapers!  Anyway, it is beautiful and shiny now. 

Here are some of the before, during and after photos…

Jean Aime is super happy!!

  This is the new room for Alpha, womens’ meetings etc. 

  The kitchen was rank but is now my favourite room!

  We had a few problems along the way and I will NEVER believe Changing rooms ever again!!  Sooooo many man hours went into this appartment it was amazing!

Phew!  It was a lot of work and we are 100% grateful to the team from Carey Baptist in Preston who gave their time, energy and a lot of elbow grease to make such a big difference in our church!

Hello there!  In admidst all the stress with my broadband connection…I have managed to get some photos online to show you a bit of the progress in the church….things are on the move!

Life is hectic!

I’m changing my phone line and broadband provider so for the moment everything is cut off!  D’oh!  Although when it is eventually reconnected I will have free calls to the UK!  No pain, no gain!

Ohhh…it’s all anyone can talk about - exciting times!  There was even Chabal on the evening news tonight discussing the love and fraternity within the French team and how this attracts the hearts of the nation - ONLY IN FRANCE!!!  Ha ha ha!!  Anyway, whoever wins I can’t lose!  I’m looking forward to the game lots. 

  There has been an advert for beefburgers on the TV for a few months called ‘Charal burgers’.  At the end there is a manly voice that grunts "Urghhhhh Charal"!  So that’s why  everywhere you go now there are people grunting "Urghhhh CHABAL"!  it was funny for a while…

Yesterday a lot of time was spent organising the DIY which the team from the UK will do.  I’m quite excited by it becuase it seems that finally we will have somewhere modern and warm to have meetings and events in!  Hurrah!  Also, we are going to redo the entrance hall which is covered with horrible rotting carpets on the walll - double hurrah!

  This pictures don’t show anywhere near the level of grottiness!!

Then I did my weekly english lessons and because it is the end of Ramadan we had some very exciting conversations about ‘What is the point of our lives?’  I was able to share a bit of my faith with the ladies.  It was the first time that we had ever talked personally before so I was encouraged to see some of the barriers fall.

In the evening we had the usual Thursday night bible study and I expected the usual group of 5 to arrive half an hour late…BUT NO!!  We were 10 and everyone, except the pastor (!), was on time!!  Amazing!  There are 2 new young adults in the church who came, that was really great to welcome them and 2 guys that have been drifting in and out of fellowship for a few years who made the effort to come.  It was a good evening and God spoke!  What more can you ask for?!

I turned 28 yesterday and ate far too much cake!

It was our normal Bible study evening so I invited the group to come earlier so we could celebrate beforehand.  In true French style most people turned up between 30mins and 2hours late so we didn’t do the study.  Although after an hour of waiting we proceeded to tuck into the pizzas becuase I was fed up waiting!

Here are some photos …

  Millions of cakes!  It’s 11.30am and I’m still not hungry! 

 

Tomorrow Hilary and I are going to Paris for a day long training on evangelism.  I’m really looking forward to it, it should be fun!

This weekend I organised a little mission / encouragement trip to a town 2hrs away, Chinon.  I do a training course with the pastor, Vincent and Claire, who was converted through Alpha is now part of this church…so we went to visit and encourage.

  TEAM ORLEANS!

On the Saturday we did distribution with memebers of the church.

Chinon is a small town with 9000 inhabitants.  1 catholic church and 1 protestant church.  The protestant church is very small with about 30 members and only a handful of youth.  So after the distribution we ate pizza together and then I ran a short youth evening.

Chinon itself is a beautiful town and deffinetly worth a visit.  It has a castle and lots of beautiful little roads…it really is a picture post card town.

 This is me putting my foot where JOAN OF ARC put her foot!!!  WOW!!!

On the Sunday we performed a 15min sketch we had written based on the verse Heb 10v22, how we can come close to God.  It was good fun and I think the church appriciated it.

All in all it was a fun and productive weekend.  After this and then an all day meeting on Monday and 4 hours of driving I am EXHAUSTED!