Blog – Tuesday 28 October 2008

It is raining and we can’t believe it!

We had a wonderful weekend in Bishop’s Stortford at my parents’ house celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary with family. There were 23 of us and how my parents at the age of nearly 91 and nearly 84 coped with us all I really don’t know. But then they’ve been married nearly 60 years so presumably know how to pace themselves. Seriously, they are a marvel.

On Sunday morning we visited Bishop’s Stortford Community Church who very kindly allowed us to share briefly what is happening here in Paris and then they prayed for us.

Philip and his girlfriend Libby are staying with us for a few days which is great (for us at least). I thought, however, they were university students and this is the end of October, quite a few weeks before the Christmas holidays. Apparently it is “reading week” for both London Met Uni and University College London but if you go back to the original Greek, “reading week” is actually Ψλζθΰΰ which more literally translated is “vacation”. That is presumably why there is a distinct lack of books apart from one of Libby’s on Paediatric Dysphagia.

The other two on our leadership team are both away this week so I shall have to run the Thursday evening and Sunday morning meetings without their help. That should be challenging. On Sunday we will have no musicians either as they are all in Valence for the weekend for the worship teams from all the Newfrontiers French churches which is being led by Paul Oakley and should be excellent.

Of course, we still do not have a landline and are now in our sixth week of waiting. It might be a lot quicker to walk to the distribution depot of Free.fr (apparently in eastern Bulgaria) to collect the box myself! I am proposing to set off a week on Thursday if it has still not arrived.
College continues much as before. My first teacher (Lucie) is now back from her holiday in Japan and is still keen to come to one of our Sunday morning meetings which is very exciting.

Tomorrow I may have to give a little presentation in class on the causes of and solutions for stress. If so, and given that I am allowed to express personal opinion, I may have some interesting thoughts for them all!

Many people are praying for us. That is so encouraging. If you are one of them, please pray that God would wonderfully help us both in the French language and that he will work signs and wonders in and through the church to bring honour to his name and many people to know him.

All for now.