Salut!

I’ve been feeling pants these past few weeks.  It’s probably an accumilation of many things:  Winter, lack of friends, uncertain future, lack of routine, coming to the end of a training period and being ready to leave.  Hmmm. 

Anyway, I went to an inter-church evangelism meeting last night and my spirits were lifted somewhat.  The meditation was on Joshua 1 - "Be strong and courageous".  In French it translates as ’take courage and hold firm’.  It was encouraging to hear that I’m not the only one feeling down at the moment, that we can take courage from the Bible and from Jesus and we are to hold firm…not necessarily move forward with leaps and bounds, but hold firm. 

After that I found out there is a community centre just up the road that runs all sorts of activities.  One of them being a homework club.  I’m going to go tomorrow and see if I can help there.  (I’m a bit frustrated that nobody thought to mention it sooner…but then my title is ‘Pastoral Assistant’ so everyone expects me to spend all my time at the church - arghhh!!)

So to round up the story - please pray for me at the moment.  A day without structure is hard for me.  Moving from schools and bells and timetables to compleate flexability has and is hard.  I’m TRYING to build structure, but that again is a cultural difference.  Structure and organisation are not important here.  I’m going to stop the rant! 

Yesterday I was invited to the house of one of my English students.  It was great!  I met her 4 children and her husband too and got to eat chocolate cake - yum!  The eldest daugther is about my age so it was nice to chat with her.  I hope we can see each other again soon.  They taught me a few Arab words…I hope I can remember them for next time!

After that I zipped into the city for the Friday night rollerblading.  It was the first time since Christmas I have been becuause it’s been cancelled because of rain.  I had a good wizz round the city although it was so foggy, especially by the river, it was difficult to see!  The fog combined with me huffing and puffing and steaming up my glasses meant that I spent my Friday night in a bit of a haze! 

Saturday morning started at 8am - arghhh!!  We had a women’s breakfast at one of the other churches here in the city and I was helping out with the set up.  I LOVE French breakfasts - fresh bread, croissants, hot chocolate - yum!  The breakfast went well and we had about 40 women come.  The speaker spoke about daring to be yourself and explained about how our self-image is created.  It was very interesting, if not a bit deep for so early in the morning!

All throughout the weekend I have been putting layers of linseed oil on my table.  I feel quite proud!!    The table looks lovely now but I can’t use it just yet as the oil is still sinking in. 

Sunday saw 4 baptisms at the church!  What a celebration!  One of the people to get baptised was a member of the youth group called Marion.  It was a real joy to hear her testimony of how Jesus has changed her life.

 

In the afternoon I went to my rollerblading lesson.  I am still loving it!  The people are so friendly and we have a real laugh together.

And to finsh of a lovely day it was Myriam’s birthday celebration in the evening.  We had a lovely meal together with her parents and collected children. 

The birthday cake was a ‘Galette des rois’ which is a French tradition throughout January.  It is a big pastry style cake typically filled with apple puree or almond paste.  Inside there is a hidden little toy and whoever gets the slice of cake with the toy gets to wear a golden crown and is the king or queen for the rest of the evening.  I great tradition - I love it!!

The French are EXPERTS at getting their car into the tinest space…and if it isn’t really a space they just nudge the cars in front and behind until it is a space!

I am - WAS - rubbish at parking.  I didn’t even try, I went straight to the car park where I knew there would be free spaces.

On a Friday afternoon Fabienne gives me French lessons.  But today she decided that enough was enough and I needed to take my cultural adaptation further.  So we went to the church car park in the rain with willow branches, washing liquid bottles full of water, and pegs!  With all this she managed to make a mock up road and teach me to reverse park!  Miracle!  (I still have to do it for real on my own…so I’m holding abck on the full blown celebrations for the moment!)

 Here is the photographioc evidence!!

I had to write this before i go to bed becuase it’s SOOOOO cool!

Firstly, tonight was the first night someone in the house group actually invited the group to their house!  (It has always been at mine…not though lack of asking others I might add!)  Anyway, it was at a recovering drug addict’s and I was prepared for anything!  But he had made a HUGE effort and had even got together a odd tea cups and saucers.  It was so wonderful!

Then even better…  A girl I have been discipling is married to a very vocal non-believing Catholic.  However, we have been praying faithfully for him and we have been seeing subtle changes in his attitudes.  Tonight he said he would like to come to the house group!  AMAZEMENT!  He said he had work to do but he would listen in! 

So he sat at a side table while we formed a little circle on 2 sofas.  Anyway, we were doing Ephesians 1 and at the end of the chapter it takes about Christ’s authority over the church.  Suddenly, he looms behind me and snatches the bible from my hand.  "Let me read that!"  Uh oh, I thought, I can feel the argument coming.  But he simply read the verse out loud, "And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church and declared, well this means that the Pope’s a load of rubbish!"  He then proceeded to join in the study from behind the sofa and in time came and sat with us.  He even joined in the prayers at the end. 

This is the man who came to Alpha under duress and brought an illegal weapon with him.  Please pray for him - God is moving big style in his life!  Hurrah!

Just before Christmas our idea to plant a church in the South of Orleans hit some set-backs and I was disheartened and ready to give up.There has been a bit of progress this week! 

Amy, a girl from America with a heart for France, has been over this past week and I was able to spend a bit of time getting to know her.  (It’s funny with Americans I find…If someone speaks a different language I seem to be able to allow differences to ride becuase it’s just ‘cultural’.  But becuase we supposedly both speak the same language I seem to forget that there will be cultural differences and misunderstandings too!)  Anyway, Amy has the gift of encouragement or kick up the backsides…becuase we/I seem to be motivated again!

The next day we had a meeting with the secretary general of the French Evangelical Allience (!) to talk about the church project.  He had some wise ideas and questions and has set us off thinking and reflecting again.  No bad thing.  (I was also surprized how normal he was!  I don’t know what I expected but when you meet the big wigs I suppose there is a bit of awe going on.)

After this we had a united prayer meeting for the churches of Orleans.  It was an encouraging time, even if the idea of ‘PRAYER’ seemed to be lost becuase each time a paster came to the microphone he gave a mini sermon…but…!

Tonight is the first house group we have had since our Christmas meal.  Please pray for us that we can put the difficulties of last year behind and move forward towards godliness together.  Merci!

Christmas is over but thanks to my cousins gym memberships and their ‘invite a friend schemes’, I’ve not put on any weight!  Hurrah!  (The real joy of Christmas??!!  JOKE!)

Anyway, I had a lovely time and took every oppertunity to indulge in English goodies such as fish and chips, Roses, mince pies and fresh cream cakes.  I even managed to fit one or two sprouts in as well!

I arrived back in Orleans on Saturday.  Sunday, of course was church and then afterwards it was my first rollerblading lesson of the year - fun!

Yesterday it was the ECM team day in Tours.  It’s 2.5hrs on the train, 10€ less and better for the environment…but I was lazy and decided to make the 1hr journey by car and sleep longer.  I had driven there before so I wasn’t that worried about the directions - I should have been!  I ended up on the wrong motorway in the middle of a forest so the next exit was 34km away!  In total I did a 85km detour to make a 110km journey.  Arghhhh!  Today I am ordering satnav!