Brighton Conference and first days in Paris

Monday 14 July
Having had a wonderful few days at the Together on a Mission conference in Brighton which included being prayed for during the prayer meeting on the Thursday evening (we hadn’t been expecting this!), we managed to say a few goodbyes, especially to Philip, and slip out to cycle back to the caravan site where we had spent three wet and windy nights!
We then drove to Dover, but missed the ferry because of huge traffic problems on the A20 just short of the port. Eventually we took the much later one, but then arrived at our campsite for the night 30 miles south of Calais at 11.45pm only to find it completely locked up. We spent, therefore, our first night in France sleeping in a lay-by!
Saturday saw us arrive at the Bois de Boulogne campsite in Paris having only angered a few Parisian drivers by my unscheduled U turns on the road outside the site. The site is huge and almost totally gravelled, but we have a fairly secluded pitch about 1 km from the entrance. There must be dozens of different nationalities (mainly European) camping here.
Unexpectedly there is no wifi (wireless) internet here. Perhaps France is a couple of hundred years behind the rest of the world so yesterday we had to find Starbucks in the city centre!
Our main task for the next ten days is, of course, to find an apartment. Before arriving here we had already been wondering about an area of the 14th arrondissement near the Parc de Montsouris because of its location vis a vis Gordon and Kerry’s house in Issy and general public transport links across the city. Then a friend of ours (Adrian Horner from Kettering) had rushed up to us on Thursday night in Brighton to say that he felt God had given him a picture of us in an apartment overlooking a park with some water. This we believe may be a real confirmation that this is the right area as there are very few parks in the south area of Paris and even fewer with any lakes etc. So we had a good look round yesterday and liked the area very much. Tomorrow we plan on visiting all the estate agents there. Please pray that God provides for us an apartment in that area.
Today is, of course, the French national public holiday and we hope to see the fireworks at the Eiffel Tour tonight. That will need to be after another trip to Starbucks to post this and scour the internet for estate agents in the 14e etc. Of course, Starbucks might be closed today!