Tee Time in Paris

2010-11-19T10:15:00.000-08:00

Gill and I enjoyed an excellent weekend in Coventry with Jubilee Church last weekend and I have been reminded/encouraged that to post news on a blog only once every forty years isn't quite a real blog. Therefore...

Some of the things that really encouraged us last weekend were seeing how so many of our friends in the church had so evidently grown so much in the last year or two and to see that the church has virtually doubled in size in that time. Quite amazing.

In Paris, the church plant here continues to grow, albeit at a much slower pace. We have about 30 adult members and a further 10-15 who currently want to become members. Beyond that, there are quite a number more who, perhaps, have not yet got sufficiently involved in the church to think of being members, but who would, nevertheless, think of CVV as their church.

We have just started an exciting project which is effectively a much shortened version of the Alpha Course. It will essentially last four weeks. We felt that to reflect Parisian culture it would be fairly hopeless to expect friends to come to something they are not convinced about for ten consecutive weeks travelling up to an hour to get there! Four of our five life groups have started the course this week with a total of ten guests. Very good news. A neighbour of ours and one of my students are among the ten. We are praying for breakthrough.

I have just reduced my hours with Berlitz so that from next week I will only work there on Tuesday afternoons and Wednesday mornings and then all day Thursdays at a local law firm. The reason for this is that I am starting working for the church plant on a part time basis as a self employed person (in other words, I will bill the church for my services...ummmm... does that mean the longer the sermon, the more I should charge?).

Philip got married to Libby 7 weeks ago in Woking. It was, of course, a wonderful day which was wonderfully wet in the afternoon and evening. Given that the reception was in a tent you can imagine the consequences! Unforgettable.

Gill passed a French test recently and has graduated to the next level at her course run by the local town hall. She has clearly made quite a jump since the summer.

In the summer we loved doing the children's work at the Bible Week (Rendezvous) and then had two weeks in our caravan in three different places (Atlantic Pyrenees, Basque coast and Ile d'Oleron) all of which we loved.

Right, enough for now...

2010-05-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a blog. After a busy 18 months the blog disappeared until one wet day in Paris it returned...

With some very good news: at long last Gill and I have been able to buy a house. No, not in Paris (houses here cost about twice the Greek national debt - and that would only get you a studio of 10 square metres). The house is in Headingley Leeds and is currently occupied by six student tenants. The rent they will pay us should go a very long way towards the rent on this apartment even after putting what is necessary aside to provide for income tax, insurance and maintenance etc. So, together with the salary I earn from Berlitz and the amounts Gill receives from her ironing business, we should have enough to live on from our own income resources for the first time since moving here! Praise God!

I am enjoying my work which recently has mainly been teaching English to French lawyers who, it seems, more and more need English in their work. I work 22 hours or so each week which leaves reasonable time to prepare the odd sermon etc. Actually I don't think all my sermons are odd, although last week I did manage to tell everyone authoritively that Joan of Arc died at the butcher's rather than at the stake - the two words in French sound similar! Gill, went one better when we were registering at a local doctor's surgery when she announced that she was very pregnant rather than saying that she was in good health (not that the two are mutually inconsistent, of course).

The church is enjoying some good times together on Sundays although it remains a challenge to gather more than 60-70% of the church at any one time. We are, however, growing slowly and we are looking for somewhere new and bigger to meet on Sundays. We visited a local hotel recently which could be good although at present they are saying no because they are linked with the medical profession and only rent out their meeting rooms to associations in that domain. We are praying that they will change their mind so that we will have a new place from September.

We have a UK trip coming up in ten days' time, our first this year (although Gill spent a week with my parents a couple of months ago when my mother was not very well).

It is Monday tomorrow so Gill, who has a season ticket, will be going to the dentist to continue a long series of treatments.

On Saturday evening we have what we are calling a Cafe Concert evening to which the church are encouraged to invite their friends. There will be eats and drinks and a number of musical items which will include songs, cello, piano etc. It promises to be a lot of fun.

We will not this summer be able to get to the Brighton leaders' conference, but will try to make it a priority in 2011.

2009-10-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

2 3

We have a couple of hours this afternoon before the ex Coventry folk in the church plant here arrive for a meal and a skype conversation with a number of friends from Jubilee Church this evening. I have run 8 miles today, partly along the Seine, and am now recovered sufficiently to write a blog.

Much has happened in the last four weeks.

Gill thinks I have lost lots of weight recently. She's actually right although I claim the bathroom scales work differently at this latitude and so there's nothing to worry about. Still 5 kilos is quite a lot apparently. Anyway, she wants me to eat more. Last night we were due to go round to a friend's flat to watch a film with her and so we decided to eat before we went out, rather earlier than we usually do. Gill had made one of her excellent pizzas and served me a huge segment. To keep her happy, I ate it and asked for more. I ate another segment and felt absolutely stuffed.

At 7pm our friend rang to ask if we were still coming and we set off down the street carrying my still hot cup of coffee and a dozen fresh scones with jam and cream which, despite looking amazing, I had no intention of sampling due to pizza induced stomach cramps. Imagine my thoughts on arrival when our friend said that the scones would go rather well with her crumble and that her other friend was bringing the main course which we were to have with various salads and breads. I felt like an already overinflated balloon being further inflated to dangerous levels.

Gill has started a French course run by the local town hall. It is about 10 minutes away on the bike and she goes for two hours four mornings a week (not Wednesdays). She is confident she is in the right level and is enjoying it very much saying her teacher is brilliant. As usual Gill is making lots of friends. It is also good that one of the girls from the church plant, Grace, is on the same course.

In the afternoons Gill continues to go as often as she can to the conversation group in St Germain des Pres in the city centre (about 15 minutes on the bike). In ten days' time she and her French friend Lucile are doing a musical evening for the conversation group regulars when they will sing and teach some classic French children's songs.

The church plant is now a year old and we celebrated with an excellent party which included lots of fun and games and amazing food. Our worship times have since the summer really grown in depth and the sense of God's presence which is so encouraging. I am preaching about once a month and am currently working my way through Mark's gospel and it will be the end of chapter 3 tomorrow morning (a challenging section on the unforgiveable sin!). I estimate Jesus could well return before I finish the series!

We have started the Alpha Course and that is going well. We had lots of guests to the Alpha Supper, but almost all of them are unable to come regularly to the eight week course (distance, time etc).

More personal news: we are trying to buy a flat in South London to rent out. The first one we tried last month fell through (fortunately just before our surveyor had visited) and now we are looking at one in Clapham North. Ideally we would like to start renting it out before Christmas. We may need to furnish it a bit first. It is very well located (a few minutes' walk from the tube station). We are hoping that the London rent will virtually cover our Paris rent and then we simply need to find enough money for me to keep eating enormous pizzas.

I bought a new bike a month ago as the old one, though still running, needed extensive and expensive repairs and I judged it was not worth it. However, the new one was stolen after two weeks (while it was chained up against railings in the city centre). That meant a four mile walk home that night as I had no money with me to buy a metro ticket. So I currently use the Paris city council's hire bikes called Velib (see picture 3 above). Occasionally it is possible to find one in prime condition, but more often recently I have had to use velibs (see picture 2 above) with at flat tyres, or with no saddle, with pedals that do not revolve at all, with handlebars which "float" and thus give little direction to the bike, with only first gear....that's perhaps why a one year pass is only €29.

I started a part time job as an English instructor at Berlitz two weeks ago. I work at the company's centre on Avenue de l'Opera which is extremely posh (see picture 1 above). I have to be available at fixed times during the week (roughly 22.5 hours) although so far my clients have frequently not turned up so I have had free time to do other things. It is relatively straightforward and with no preparation at all which suits me fine. The pay is not exactly great: it is apparently equivalent to what the average Roman slave received in the first century AD, but funnily enough, I really have the sense that that is where God wants me (Berlitz, not Rome, that is). And, encouragingly, one of my new colleagues, a young Australian called Nathan, came along to our life group this week and I have already been able to share the gospel with a number of others.

Gill had been offered one morning's teaching at a private school as a replacement for a lady having a hip operation next month. It is a French school, but on Wednesday's it becomes an English school! She is wondering whether this might lead to further work in the new year. That would be good. Wonderfully for her the English day is Wednesday when, of course, she is not at college. She has also started ironing and cleaning for a neighbour on Friday afternoons.

Return of the blog!

2009-09-19T05:17:00.001-07:00

I have been rebuked nicely by a few blog readers recently for lack of blogging and that has prompted me to do something about it. I shall attempt to report briefly on the last couple of months...

We spent a total of 10 nights in our flat between the beginning of July and the 20 Aug which included, of course, the Newfrontiers conference Together on a Mission, Sarah's wedding in Leeds, a few days with Gill's father, a day with my parents...then a week at home before driving south to the Newfrontiers Bible Week at Gagnieres. Then the longest holiday we have ever had and finally returning to Paris.

We had offered the use of our flat to Annalisa, an Edinburgh Uni student of Spanish and French who told us she needed to spend two months in France. Given that we knew we would hardly be here we suggested she became our flat sitter. Great deal for her you might have thought save for one thing...

The day before we set off for Rendezvous our neighbours here on the 5th floor moved out of their flat. That, in itself was not a problem. However, theirs had been the only flat in the whole block which had a serious infestation of cafards (cockroaches). So, as the neighbous moved out, they disturbed all their little lodgers and as the lodgers' food supply diminished, the lodgers, not unreasonably, packed their bags and left too. In their case, they simply entered the neighbouring flats, including the nearest (ours).

At the end of Rendezvous Annalisa returned to Paris to find our flat crawling with the little blighters (and some slightly bigger blighters). She was terrified, but brave. She hardly slept for a week and when she did she would wake up to find them crawling over her pillow! However, armed with traps and sprays she began to fight back and, by the time she left in mid August the battle was virtually won. Thankyou very much Annalisa.

The Bible Week was a great time particularly for us as a local church with 95% of our core folk there and almost all camping together on site. It was extremely hot, but that's usual there. I helped with the Just Looking course which was fun. A lady who was on that course received sight in one eye in the main evening meeting. That eye had been blind from birth. Wow. Praise God. Another highlight were the baptisms we held in the river at Besseges at the end of the week. We baptised five folk including one from Paris. We were left wondering how many folk had been baptised there during the days of the Huguenot revival 16-18th centuries.

Our holiday was spent touring in our caravan and hoping to find campsites with available pitches as most had refused to take reservations in advance. We started in mid Provence, near the famour Gorges du Verdon, then we had a wonderful few days at the very beautiful Lac de Serre Poncon further north. Then several days by the appropriately named Lago di Piano in northern Italy and from there we went to the Brenta Dolomites and finally three days at Lago di Garda where we met up as arranged with Philip, Libby and her family and had a lovely time with them. That was not just because they let us have some of their seriously strong Parmesan cheese!

We were very active on holiday with loads of walking and cycling although one cycle route involved an 8 km climb in 34 degrees which, perhaps was rather stupid.

We've now been back in Paris for a month and the church plant has re-started after a long break. In fact, Paris was still virtually dead when we got back as it seems most people refuse to return to the city until the last possible moment at the end of August. There are a number of new folk in the church which is very encouraging and we are starting our first Alpha Course with a special dinner next Friday night. We are hoping for at least ten guests. Our diary particularly for the next two months of weekends is a nightmare!

Gill has an interview on Monday morning for a place on a language course run by the local town hall (basically to determine at which level she should be placed) and I, having applied for dozens of jobs, finally have an interview also on Monday morning, with Berlitz for a language instructor post. It would be a part time position which sounds OK.

With the proceeds of sale from our Coventry house we are buying a maisonette in Kennington South London and hoping to rent it out as soon as possible (ideally to some of Philip's friends from ChristChurch!). That should seriuously help on the income front although rent from a three bedroom place in Kennington is still less than a 1.5 bedroom flat here on Rue Gazan!

We still do not have French social security cover. We hope we get some before we retire.

2009-07-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

We've managed in the last month to sell a house, buy a car and marry off a daughter so it has been most fruitful indeed.

Our house on Spencer Avenue finally sold at the end of June and we now need to decide how best to invest the money left over as we will need some income from it. We do not have enough to buy a flat big enough to live in here in Paris, but we are wondering about buying a flat somewhere else and renting it out (even in London). We need to do some serious research over the next month or so.

We bought a Citroen C3 and have had a tow bar fitted. In France however, you should not drive a car around with towbar sticking out the back unless you are actually towing so it is a detachable one. As usual everything is much more expensive here (second hand cars, towbars etc), but that's life and we're getting used to it. God doesn't seem to mind of course!

We are just back from ten days in the UK. We left Paris on Sunday 5 July to look for the caravan which had been on a farm in the middle of nowhere since last August. We followed the google instructions most carefully and ended up completely lost. However a local kind farmer told us he knew of the caravan place (it's near to the farm where they sell chickens apparently) and he printed out a map for us which was great. The caravan was duly found in one piece although a little dusty. No signature or identity were required by the farmer so we drove off. Actually I suppose we could have taken any caravan there although ours is the only one the C3 is big enough to tow!

We then set off for Calais camping overnight in a recognised motorway service area. At 2.45am I was awoken by metallic scratching noises at the caravan door and suddenly realised it wasn't a simple nightmare, but someone was actually trying to break in (while we lay in bed!). I got up, banged on the inside of the door and shouted (I can't remember in what language) and the person ran away and I heard a sound of a car revving up and driving off. The lock had been broken unfortunately and I spent the next week unable to close the door!

I left Gill at Caterham to take the train to London and thence to Leeds while I drove to Brighton. Just short of the M25 at a roundabout a passenger in the car behind ran up to say that my driving was erratic: when I indicated left I then turned right and vice versa! I wasn't sure whether to believe her so I checked it out at the next layby. She was right, so I finished my journey to the campsite at Brighton by indicating left when I wanted to turn right etc. Really weird. It hasn't happened again since!

As the conference started at Brighton I was involved virtually the whole day in caravan door repairs (unsuccessfully) and got totally soaked cycling to PC World in Hove. I enjoyed Wednesday and Thursday, particularly hearing Terry Virgo speak about things vital to our churches (such as the baptism in the Holy Spirit) and the future of Newfrontiers.

I spent four nights in the caravan at Brighton with Philip who had just recovered from an unpleasant dose of Shingles. It was great to spend some time with him although he was still in pain the first night.

On the Friday morning we drove to Chorleywood to pick up Charlie Gordon one of Sarah's bridesmaids and arrived in Leeds in time for the wedding rehearsal.

Sarah and Gabriel's wedding was a wonderful day and experience for all involved. I had the privilege of walking Sarah up the aisle while Michael and Philip played some of Dvorak's New World Symphony. The service was full of worship and people. The reception was great fun. The newly weds are now in Turkey! You can view some of the wedding photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/thunderthumbs42/sets/72157621480119535/

A couple of days with Gill's father and finally back to Paris for a week before we leave again for Rendezvous on Thursday.

We then have some holiday in the caravan in France and northern Italy as the church here in Paris effectively closes for a month.

I am still looking for a job!

House sale

2009-06-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

Good news indeed. We have today exchanged contracts on the sale of our house in Coventry! Yippee! Praise God. It went on the market at the end of Feb 2008 so it has been a long time. The completion date is next Tuesday!!

Another interesting development is with our application to be included on the French social security system. We first applied an extremely long time ago (January 2004 we think, it's so difficult to remember now!). We managed a number of visits to the local offices which resulted last time in their taking lots of photocopies of our passports, birth certificates etc and saying that they would need to send them off to a different office as our application was "irregular". Anyway they promised this other office would phone us. They didn't of course, but, on Friday we had a letter from them. That's the good news. The slightly less good news is that they are asking us to reply to a few simple questions (we should be OK with that) and asking for more photocopies of documents they already have (our conclusion from this request is that, perhaps as a result of the world economic crisis, the French civil service has sold all its stock of photocopiers).

Church wise, our Sundays in the last month or so have been extremely quiet, largely due to the fact that most weekends at this time of year there is a French public holiday and most people use these weekends to go away. We only had 20 people in the meeting a couple of weeks ago!

A week ago Gill and I had our first trip on the famous TGV train when we went to Nimes where I was teaching on "Pastoral Ministry" to the Newfrontiers South region leaders and wives (in fact there were folk there from 6 other churches too which was great). We stayed with Joel and Cathy Trefcon. I preached at the Marguerittes church on the Sunday and then we spent some time with Jenny Fancett, formerly of Jubilee Church Coventry and in the process of moving to the Paris region this summer. It will be great to have her here as part of the church.

Gill has been enjoying her conversation group held in a very posh part of central Paris. She goes for a couple of hours as many afternoons as she can each week. She is making friends very fast and describes herself as "having a ball" at the moment.

We enjoyed the Fete des Voisins (neighbours party) on 26 May, which is now here an annual event. Although it was a cold evening, we had a great time over glasses of champagne and delicious finger foods. Then after a couple of hours we were invited in by folk on the third floor and we spent more time talking with them and another couple.

We have one of the 40 members of L'Academie Francaise living in our block. He is lovely old man of 94. The members of the Academy are the official guardians of the French language which is quite ironic when you hear some of our attempts to master it!

We are off to the UK on Wednesday as I have a training day near London on Thursday. Then we go to the Together at Envision event on Friday (near Bromsgrove) with all the Newfrontiers churches in the western Midlands. I have the privilege of speaking at the opening meeting on Friday night. In English!!!

Then on Sunday we drive to Bishop's Stortford to celebrate with my parents their 60th wedding anniversary! Then back to Paris on Monday.

Our next trip to the UK is to get me to the Brighton conference on 6 July where I am helping with a seminar on church planting on the Thursday. Gill will be taking the train to Leeds to spend the week with Sarah before her big day with Gabriel on 11 July.

Last thing for now: we are buying a car! Not sure where we'll park it. Bit of a nightmare finding anywhere here for it, but we're told that there's lots of space in Belgium. Well, we'll see.

2009-05-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

Another month has rushed by. Much has happened and for the sake of our reader I'll try to be brief!

We so enjoyed having both Sarah and then Michael to stay for a few days just before and over Easter (they overlapped by 24 hours). Sarah repeated our unfortunate experience of the week before by missing her flight at Charles de Gaulle airport. It was totally not her fault. She left lots of time for the simple train journey, only to find that the trains weren't going that way that day (at least, not all the way!). So I accompanied her as far as Gare de Lyon from where an Air France bus was supposed to take hundreds of anxious passengers to the airport. The problem: no bus. Even a last minute dash in a taxi was too late and the poor Sarah spent what she later described as the worst day of her life waiting for the next flight to Leeds (10 hours).

As a church we were privileged to have a team visiting us from Mosaic Church Leeds over Easter to serve us in our mission to reach the people of Paris with the good news of Jesus Christ. They were an outstanding team extremely well led and well motivated. A number of the folk from the church here were able to join their activities which often included "treasure hunting". Quite a number of amazing stories resulted including my current favourite: three of us, after praying, compared our "clues" to find we were supposed to be looking for a red sailing boat, a fountain, some steps, some orange clothing and a bad shoulder or neck! We set off for the Jardin de Luxembourg and, on entering the park, we found a large park map which showed the lake in the middle with an image of a little "red sailing boat". Then we saw the "fountain" in the lake as we descended the "steps". Then we saw a man in an orange jacket. We approached him and discovered he was a Chinese surgeon living in Innsbruck on holiday in Paris. He was in fact filming himself! We explained the story of our treasure hunt and asked him if he had a bad shoulder. He did. We offered to pray and he accepted after we had explained what we were going to do. He was healed and amazed. We then started to tell him about Jesus and he told us he had just started an Alpha Course in Innsbruck. Absolutely remarkable!

Gill visited her father, her brother and sister in law for a few days after Easter and then we had a wonderful weekend in Coventry staying with Simon and Carol Collyer and we realised again how many lovely friends we have there. The church is doing very well and has obviously grown a fair bit since we left. Everyone was so supportive and loving. We were truly blessed. A big thankyou to Jubilee Church Coventry. I got to preach in English on the Sunday morning which I enjoyed. I hope the church did too!

Then we spent half a day with my parents and a couple of hours with Philip and Libby in London just before taking the Eurostar home.

This last week we have seen our friend Carla (the gardienne of our block of flats) healed of back pain. Gill saw her on Thursday morning struggling to walk (she explained that she had a twisted pelvis and had pain in her back). Gill offered to pray and Carla duly arrived. We prayed for her and she was slightly improved, but still in too much pain to sit down. She said that the doctor had told her that she had one leg longer than the other. We prayed again and she was then able to sit down for us to verify. Yes, her left leg was a good 1.5cm shorter than the other. We explained that Jesus was well able to grow the left one. We prayed. The leg grew to the perfect length. She was wearing stripey socks so it was quite easy to judge. She was absolutely shocked and could not believe it as she had actually felt the leg grow while we prayed. She was then pain free and went about her work as normal. Then yesterday she asked us where our church meets and this morning for the first time she and Tino came to our meeting (to hear me preaching on giving!!). The moral of the story seems to be that miracles do help people to be much more open to the gospel! Praise God.

I am going to be looking for some part time employment to start any time from between now and the beginning of September.

Good news on our house sale. The previous purchaser was taking far too long and some four months after her original offer, said she would proceed quickly if we reduced the price by £25000. Not surprisingly we declined immediately and in return gave her a 5 day ultimatum to exchange contracts at the agreed price. She failed. We said "bye bye!" to her. The estate agents, Loveitts, then wonderfully found two new prospective purchasers and we are now proceeding rapidly with one of them and at a slightly higher price!!

2009-04-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

I see it has been four weeks since our last post. Sorry for the delay. Lots to report since then:-

1. We have still not sold our house in Coventry. Well, we have and we haven't. An Indian lady who first visited it in October and then many times since has apparently received and signed her mortgage offer and signed the contract. We can't remember when we signed the contract it is so long ago. Then just when we thought contracts would be exchanged, she went off to Ethiopia for three weeks with her work and everything ground to a halt. She should be back now, but with no news this week it appears that normal service has been resumed!

2. Our life groups in the church have started well. It seems that many people were really looking forward to them. Gill and I are leading two at present. For one of them we have chosen to have our meetings in a local cafe. It is quite fun praying there at a table while people are wandering past!

3. We have David Stroud from ChristChurch London coming to visit our leadership team for a day trip on Monday. I am really looking forward to that and trust that he will help bring some more clarity to us as a team. As leaders with our wives we had a good time praying together last night in Creteil. It takes Gill and me an hour to get there on the metro (including a 15 minute walk at the other end).

4. On 15 March I had invited a number of keen rugby fans from the church (French and English) to watch the rugby international here after lunch. It was such a good result of course.

5. We have an outreach team coming here from Mosaic Church Leeds from 10-19 April with the intention of helping us in our mission to reach the people of Paris with the good news of Jesus Christ. We are praying that they will be extremely fruitful and leave behind many new contacts for us to befriend etc.

6. We have both Sarah (6-10 April) and Michael (9-13 April) coming to stay with us for a few days next week and overlapping for 24 hours. 17 Rue Gazan has been a little bit of an hotel recently with Charlie Gordon staying for a week, fresh from her six months in Tashkent Uzbekistan and her friend Amanda from London for the weekend with her. A bit of a squash, but remarkably they were happy to share a single bed!

7. One of our blog readers kindly emailed from Rennes a few weeks ago to give us some extremely helpful advice about our ongoing Carte Vitale saga. Thankyou. The latest position is that we visited again our local social security office, full of confidence that we would explain that the UK DHSS tell us that Gill's name should simply be added to my continuing UK cover. Not so easy as we thought, of course! "Irregulier" was the lady's first comment and, in the end, she took photocopies of everything to send off to another office in a different part of the city with the promise that they would telephone us. Needless to say we have received no such phone call. Nor, if we are honest, do we expect one! It all rather reminds us of the Circumlocution Office in Dickens' Little Dorrit.

8. Gill has had two recent brushes with the law which are worthy of report. To take her mind off her mother's death she decided on retail therapy and a trip to the local Ikea. I gave her detailed instructions as to how to get there (train, train, bus, walk) informing her that all trains on that second line stop at Choisy Le Roi. However, her train failed to stop there and she carried on going in a southerly direction. Unusually there was a ticket inspector on the train. He was minded to fine Gill until she explained that she was English etc. Forgiven, but only just! Then a couple of weeks later on her way to her conversation group she was stopped on her bike by the police for going through a red light. She explained that it hadn't been red. The officer disagreed, but she was nevertheless forgiven again!

9. Gill was 50 on Tuesday. I had organised a surprise short holiday break to Bastia and told her about it on Tuesday morning leaving enough time to pack a few things and get to the airport. However, there were real problems with the trains that morning and, as a result, we arrived at the airport having already missed the final check in time. We speed-walked, jogged and ran (about 12 kilometres) through Terminal 2 to get to the Easyjet check-in desk. The plane had not actually left and I was told to rush through to boarding, but with the warning that we would probably be too late. On turning round to encourage Gill to keep running an extra few minutes, I was horrified to see she wasn't there! I found her 15 minutes later elsewhere in the airport. I think she had tried to get on a different flight (to Shanghai or somewhere). Anyway, despite our disappointment, we had to come up with a plan B. We ended up having a wonderful three days in the sun on the Normandy coast and, by the way, there were storms all week in Corsica. God is very good, of course, as usual, even when you can't always see it at the time!

2009-03-09T07:48:00.001-07:00

Gill's mother died on Sat 21 February having battled with various quite serious illnesses for some time and having been in Lancaster Hospital for a month or so. She was 88. Gill's brother phoned us with the news late that evening which, though a shock, was, nevertheless, not altogether unexpected.

On the Monday the funeral was arranged for the Friday afternoon of the same week (26 Feb) so we hurriedly made arrangements for another trip to the UK. After hours of investigating different possible routes and assessing them for convenience and price, we eventually decided upon the Eurostar and borrowing, once again, my parents' car. The funeral went well and was well attended by family and friends from the village (Warton in Lancashire). All our three children were able to make it which made it more special for us. There was a burial in the church yard and then a very nice reception (mainly for family) in the local inn next door to the church building.

We then drove to Leeds where we stayed the weekend with Sarah and saw a fair bit of Michael too, of course. We enjoyed Gateway Church on the Sunday morning. The church is clearly growing there (as is the other Newfrontiers church in Leeds - "Mosaic"). I returned to Paris on the Monday and Gill spent a further few days with her father before returning on Thursday.

Church-wise, here, we had the very exciting news yesterday that we have had our first convert to Christ, a young Mexican man from a Catholic background who is working for a year as a language assistant (Spanish) in a local secondary school. We pray that this will be first of many thousands of similar stories.

We will be doing another "Treasure Hunt" on Saturday morning where we will gather a few people together to pray for a short while and ask God to give us some clues to follow. These, we write down and then go out into the city to find the treasure (those people whom God wants us to speak to/pray for etc). Scary, but very exciting.

We started four "life groups" last week of which Gill and I are currently leading two, one here in the south and one in nthe north east. We are sure these will prove to be really helpful in gathering people into the core of the church plant as well as, of course, reaching out to our friends and neighbours etc.

We have made zero progress in the last month towards state health insurance. As you may recall from our last post, we deposited our dossiers with the local prefecture of police who take two months to process them. After just over a month and not having heard from them, I was naively beginning to think that we had, eventually, defeated the system and that if we only waited another four short weeks we would get our cartes de sejour which we could then take to the Health Insurance people who would, no doubt after a further delay, give us what we want (Cartes Vitales). Oh, how wrong can you be!

A letter arrived from the police last week informing us that our very carefully put together dossiers were defective and saying we need to provide them with evidence of private health insurance. On applying to a number of insurance companies via the internet I was told that they couldn't help us without our having French social security numbers. Sadly we don't have these. I then emailed the British Embassy who replied promptly saying they don't deal with this sort of thing. I emailed the French government website explaining the problem and they have now replied saying that we need social security numbers. It seems that you get those when you are employed. We're not at present. I rang them and explained and they said that, in our case, which they said was "irregulier", we can go to one of two local hospitals and ask for l'Aide Medicale d'Etat, but on investigating what that actually is it seems that we have earned too much money in the last 12 months to qualify! It's not easy you know this administration thing here!

Gill, who is after all now something of an expert linguist, told me the other day that, if you go back very carefully to the original Greek, a more accurate translation of Revelation 21:4 is actually "and there will be no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain because French administration has been done away with". I didn't believe her, but perhaps someone would like to check for us...!

Amazingly, I was able on Saturday afternoon to watch live the Coventry City : Chelsea FA Cup quarter final on French TV. Lucky it wasn't on TF1 as we can't get that channel to work at present. I have complained and am now told that we have to reboot the system five times and then it should work. I feel a bit like Naaman the Syrian general when told by Elisha to bathe seven times in the Jordan. Ridiculous, but, after all, if it works, I suppose I'll do it.

This Sunday afternoon is the Six Nations Rugby international between England and France. We have invited a number of French and English folk to watch the game with us and a Polish girl who can sit in the middle and be our referee! However, after England's dire performance against Ireland, I'm not feeling very optimistic, but I am sure it will still be a fun and noisy afternoon!

Various travels and visitors

2009-02-09T02:53:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks have been rather busy one way or another for both of us. We have each made a trip to the UK and we have welcomed a number of people staying with us.

Gill's mother is ill and currently in hospital in Lancaster and so Gill took the train last week to visit her and, of course, her father who is in a retirement home in Carnforth. She is glad she did not try to travel the day before, after the UK snowfall when, apparently Eurostar trains were stuck in the tunnel for hours overnight, and, amazingly, her trains were on time. The prognosis for her mum is unclear; she has lost a lot of weight, she is clearly quite ill, she is 88, but she is very tough.

I had a Newfrontiers France team meeting from Thursday to Saturday last week. We often hold these meetings in New Ash Green in Kent at Pete and Kim Carter's house and we are always wonderfully well served by the church there. We had an excellent visit from Terry Virgo on Friday morning who brought us some important encouragements regarding being people and churches of the Word and the Spirit. As ever, we had a great time together as leaders and we spent some time planning towards the Bible Week RendezVous at the end of July.

I am going back to the UK this week for 24 hours as David Stroud is running a series of coaching days this year for leaders of the church plants in major European cities including, at present, Valencia, Dublin, Paris and St Petersburg. That is on Thursday at High Leigh in Hertfordshire and means I will have an hour or so with Philip at St Pancras on my way through on Wednesday afternoon.

Philip, in fact, and a friend of his from London called Matt, stayed with us for a few days towards the end of January. We then had a weekend visit from Han Na Cha and a fleeting one from Hannah Schofield from Coventry at the same time as Simon and Becci Brown were visiting the Perriers so we had some Coventry visitors at our Sunday meeting for the first time which was exciting.

We had more visitors this last weekend, Katy from Bedford and Kat from Norwich which has been fun too.

We are praying that God will show us where in Paris he wants us as a church to meet next. We haven't found anywhere yet. Visitors are still coming every Sunday which is very encouraging.

We have been advised we need to get registered on the french system for social security (essentially that will mean health etc). However, that is fraught with difficulty as seems often to be the case wherever the French and administration are too close to one another! On discovering in December that the UK would continue to cover me for health issues until Jan 2010, but that for some unknown reason Gill's cover exprired on 2 Jan 2009, we therefore cycled in the rain to the local office of the Caisse Primaire Assurance Maladie to register. How naive can you get! We left half an hour later none the wiser having, it seemed, really confused the lady by saying that I had been employed in the UK as a church leader.

Plan B was then needed. I sent Gill back a few weeks' later with Liz, a friend who could help with the language if necessary, with instructions to say that she was simply a student or unemployed and to try to avoid talking about me (always a good plan!). Gill returned with an extremely long list of instructions and documents and photocopies to produce before the matter could be taken any further. One of the required documents had to be obtained from the local Prefecture de Police who deal with foreigners.

Plan C was then needed. Apply to the Prefecture for a Carte de Sejour. I emailed the Police who were helpful, but in the end they told me to ring them. I did and explained the situation. They replied that, being citizens of a European Union state we did not need a carte de sejour. I told them we had to have one in order to qualify for French state health cover! They sounded confused, but told me nevertheless to apply. To apply for the carte de sejour, however, a vast list of documents needed to be provided (no surprise there!) and they would write to us with the list. Eventually the letter arrived and we started putting together the dossier. I have delivered this by hand to them and we are told that it will take two months to process (which isn't bad as I had feared they might have said 200 years). So, assuming they find no problems with our dossier, we might receive the cartes de sejour (which officially we don't really need) in April and will then start again with the Health people (they apparently do take 200 years to process forms). in other words, we are not allowed to be ill until April 2209.

Things are going well.

2009-01-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

The thaw has arrived at last after some bitterly cold days and nights (down to minus 10 at night for a while).

The pollution has been bad recently also here in the city (because of the high pressure) and so, yesterday, we took the train to the end of our line and then went for a long walk in the country which was lovely.

We continue to see new people come to our Sunday meetings every week and, if it were possible to get everyone together at once, we would have quite a lot of folk! However, the habit of being away for the weekend (quite understandable now we know what is it like to live in a huge city) means that we are usually missing a considerable proportion.

We have announced that we are starting four life groups ("groupes de vie") in March of which, initially, Gill and I will lead two until we have trained up leaders to hand over to. We are determined that these groupes de vie will from the start be active in reaching out to friends, work colleagues, neighbours etc.

I have applied recently for a few part time jobs, basically teaching business people English, but as yet have heard nothing. As a leadership team we feel that I will be employed by the church as from some date later this year, whether or not I have any part time work outside the church.

Our house sale seems to be going through. We have, at least, now signed the contract and we understand that the purchaser's survey has been carried out and that she has received her mortgage offer. So...perhaps we might exchange contracts in the next couple of weeks!

Now a story to recount. While Irene, a French girl from the south we know from RendezVous, was staying with us just after the new year, we heard that our gardienne's parents were staying with her and that her mother was quite ill. I felt we should offer to pray for her and so Irene (who knows a little Portuguese which I thought might come in handy as the mother spoke no French or English) and I went down, knocked on their door and announced that we had come to pray for the lady if she wanted us to! This was translated into Portuguese and the answer was "yes". We went in and explained what we wanted to do asking Carla the gardienne to translate our prayers from French into Portuguese so that her mother would understand.

There were eight of us crammed into their tiny front room (Carla, her husband Tino, their 15 year old daughter Philippa, a cousin and Carla's parents, Irene and me). We asked permission, laid hands on the old lady who looked very ill, and prayed. The prayers were translated. The old lady fell asleep so we couldn't ask if she felt any better. Carla, on the other hand, said that she had felt all tingly (pins and needles) while we had been praying. We explained that this was simply a sign of the presence of God! Gill then arrived and we were offered port (as you are, of course, by the Portuguese!).

Three days later, still not knowing what if anything had happened, Carla came up and told us that her mother had got better straight after we had prayed and that the doctor had even pronounced her well enough to go home to Portugal. She was thrilled. So were we. Her mother wanted us to pray for her again before she left and so Gill and I were invited for a meal the following night. I have never seen as much meat on a platter. There was enough for a small village. Every imaginable part of a pig's anatomy was present and apparently I ate an ear and the nose during the evening! Anyway, in the end we prayed again with more translation, this time phrase by phrase.

Two days later Carla visited us again to deliver the mail. She explained that, not only had her mum been healed of a back problem and (almost completely) of her headaches, but that her relationship with her husband Tino had immeasurably improved from the moment we had prayed for her mother's healing. Strange, but wonderful, Praise God! Gill and I then spent an hour sharing the gospel with her showing her that the healing was not just to demonstrate God's glory and love, but was also a sign to her to follow Jesus.

We have Philip coming to stay for a few days from Thursday which we are really looking forward to.

I am preaching on the next two Sundays and want to speak about God's purpose for his church. Please pray that God will hugely help me.

Gill's French is coming on. Constantly she is receiving encouraging words from folk in the church.

Bonne annee

2009-01-02T08:35:00.000-08:00

A very happy Christmas and new year to all and sorry it has been a whole month since we last posted on this blog!

We had a very enjoyable week or so in the UK over Christmas managing to see almost all our closest relatives in various places. My parents were kind enough to lend me their car and 750 miles and a week later we returned it in one piece, but totally covered in mud (more of that later).

Our Paris church plant, CVV, (Le Chemin, la Verite et la Vie) continued well during December and it was a privilege to preach on The Unsearchable Riches of Grace on 14 Dec to a group which included that morning 4 people who were not Christians (one Mexican, one French, one American and one Russian) all of whom were separately involved in deep discussions over our lunch together. We are eagerly awaiting our first convert to Christ. I am sure that will not be long now.

Julian Adams was with us on 21 Dec and, as I had to rush off for the Eurostar before the end and while he was in full prophesying flow, I have yet to hear all he shared, but in preaching he encouraged us strongly to ensure that the power of God is in the very foundations of the church.

Gill has started a new course at Alliance Francaise until the end of January and then hopes to do a further course run by the local town hall not far from where we live.

One of my main prayers, at present, is asking God for guidance and clear direction regarding the use of my time. One option might be to find a part time job locally and be supported by the church part time too.

Financially, we are very encouraged by our first two monthly offerings as a church (we don't pass the plate round each Sunday). Many many French churches are seriously hindered by lack of resources. We pray that we may have the grace to set an entirely different example right from the beginning.

Another prayer is for God's help in searching for somewhere new to meet on Sundays as we are, of course, getting too big for Gordon and Kerry's house.

Some very good news indeed is that, at very long last, we received an offer on the sale of our house and, after a little negotiation, we have a deal!!! Praise God. We still, of course, need to pray that it all goes through smoothly and it is hoped to exchange contracts in February.

As well as seeing our respective parents and most of our siblings and some of their families over Christmas we stayed in Michael's house in Bramley, Leeds which Sarah had warned us in advance would be seriously cold and she had wanted us to "implore" him to clean it! In fact, it was not too cold and it was clear that he had definitely cleaned some of it. It was lovely to spend a few days with all our three children, likely to be the last Christmas with just the five of us as Sarah is getting married in July.

Speaking of marriages, we had an enjoyable day meeting Gabriel's family at their farm cottage in the middle of nowhere: in fact it is an old farm cottage on the Castle Howard estate in North Yorkshire. Really quite the opposite of a 5th floor apartment in Paris! No other habitation anywhere in sight, no tarmac on any nearby road and, of course, mud everywhere. There is, in fact, less mud there now as much of it attached itself to my parents' car as we skidded down and then later up the farm track. We had a walk around the estate, a wonderful meal, we all prayed together and finished with a game of scrabble.

Back in Paris it is extremely cold and the lake in the park is frozen over. It snowed this morning and there's a beautiful winter-wonderland view from our balcony.

It is, however, the transforming by the Holy Spirit of the Parisian spiritual and social landscape that we will take even more delight in and we pray that we will see more evidence of that throughout this coming year.

2008-12-05T02:37:00.000-08:00

Wow, we've been in France now for nearly five months! We've found somewhere really nice to live, we've cycled several thousand kilometres, we've helped start a new church, and we've acquired a telephone line!

Our weekend with David Stroud will, we are sure, prove to be extremely significant for the church. He was very well received by all and brought us much wisdom regarding building a large city centre church. On the Sunday morning we had, we think, our largest gathering to date (54 people were there) which was very encouraging. It means also, of course, that we must find somewhere else to meet in fairly soon as there is no way we can fit another ten people in the Neals' house.

We are now preparing to launch small groups (probably to be called Groupes de Vie) in the new year and we will be focussing on how these groups can effectively reach out to unbelieving friends.

In terms of our own time, Gill has re-registered for some more courses at Alliance Francaise for the two weeks before Christmas and for January (concentrating mainly she hopes on conversational French) so she will be back there on her bike on Monday morning. I will probably be looking for some form of part time employment from January onwards for a while. Frankly, I have no idea what to look for at present and am praying for some clear guidance. My current ideas of being a siffleur in the local park or a pousseur on a metro station platform are unlikely to come to much. A siffleur, by the way, whistles for five minutes each day to get people out of the park at closing time, and a pousseur helps push commuters onto already overcrowded metro trains at rush hour.

I am being interrupted this morning by a game of tennis on the clay court below as the losing player has completely lost it and has started to bash the tennis balls at his very placid opponent whilst using what I can only imagine is a (very long) string of the most lurid swearwords. All highly educational for the likes of bloggers six stories up!

Our house sale is still an item of real frustration. The agents have an interested party, a lady who first viewed the property several weeks ago. Then all went quiet and we assumed that she was not interested. Then suddenly she announced she wanted a second look which was, of course, extremely encouraging indeed. I think that she is the first person since the house went on the market in February who has returned for another look. Then she announced she wanted to take her interior designer friend round. So she did. Then nothing again for a week or so. Then the interior designer wanted to take an electrician and, would you credit it, a quantity surveyor to have a look. That was last weekend and nothing since! We are going to ask the agents to start charging her rent because she is virtually living there it seems. We are fully expecting her or the quantity surveyor to want to re-visit next weekend with a cutlery specialist before feeling able to make an offer.

I had my first ever experience of treasure hunt evangelism on Wednesday. We have three UK students in the church who only have to work 12 hours a week as language assistants in local schools and, now I have a bit more time after finishing language school, I decided to throw them in the deep end. The problem was that I had to go in too. And it was cold and very wet and very windy. Anyway after meeting at our apartment to pray, with all of us scared and none of us really knowing what to do, we asked God to give us words of knowledge to help us find the treasure and, as we prayed, we wrote down what we thought God showed us. I wrote down: 1. Red, 2. Right leg and 3. Crossing road. The others had various other things. We went into town and, to cut a long story short, after already getting wet and frozen for nearly an hour, Kirsty and I were stood in the rain near the Metro at Place St Michel when a lady in a red coat approached us walking with a slight limp and asked us for directions which we provided and which involved her in needing to cross the road. We asked her if we could pray for her leg and she explained that she had broken her right ankle two years ago and in wet and cold weather it still gives her some jip (I don't know what jip is in French). We explained that God had shown us earlier that morning that we would meet someone in red with a problem in her right leg. She was delighted and amazed explaining she was a non practising Catholic. We prayed for her and briefly shared God's love with her before she crossed the road to get the metro.

We were so encouraged that God speaks and I intend to do more treasure hunt evangelism next week. Maybe the sun will shine.

Language and technolgy

2008-11-22T02:46:00.000-08:00

Blog – Saturday 22 Nov

We are coming to the end of a notable week for us in which two very significant things have happened. First, we have finished our twelve weeks at language school and secondly, we have received our “Freebox” (more about that later).

I ended up in a very small class at Alliance Francaise, one of whom was studying for fun (he is the deputy editor of the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica), one (a Brazilian) who is needing to attain a certain level before she can apply to take a masters course in Paris next year and another (an Austrian) who wants to teach Political Science at a university in Istanbul. She’s studying French as she is going to do a PhD here. I asked her how many languages she speaks and, unbelievably, she replied: “I don’t know”! In the circumstances, I think I must have brought the average ability level in the class down to a more realistic level!

It has been a very helpful twelve weeks for us both. We only got a little wet cycling to and from college on one occasion which is amazing.

I have mentioned a number of times that we had been waiting and waiting for a telephone line in the flat. Well after nine weeks the company Free eventually sent us their Freebox in response to our application in September. We opened it with great enthusiasm on our return from college on Wednesday. What we found was just under half a kilometre of different wires and cables, two magic plugs and two magic boxes, one for the phone/internet and one for the TV and, worse still, an instructions booklet all in French. I mean, really! Stage one was marked “required time: two minutes”. After 18 minutes I still hadn’t even found the end of the appropriate cable. Things were looking grim. I found myself looking ahead through the booklet and calculating that, if things continued at this rate, it would take a fraction over thirteen years to be fully up and running. By the end of a most frustrating evening, the internet, however, was working with a cable (no wifi), although the TV and the phone were proving much more stubborn.

Miracles do happen and suddenly, overnight, the wifi system started working (and still is!!) and we found that we could get a completely blue screen on the Portuguese TV our gardienne had given us. Following a piece of inspiration we tried our UK TV which had only ever given us blur and fuzz here before. Yippee, it worked. The problem then was deciding which of the 423 channels we wanted to watch. Yemeni TV looks rather dull by the way.

The phone still does not work. Sometimes it turns itself off when you switch the wall lights on. All rather strange really.

We had an excellent day last Sunday with David Pike from Cardiff who came over with Hazel and a couple from his leadership team. He and Hazel brought some very encouraging words to us as a church and we had a good number of people present and a great time of worship. I think that was our “best” Sunday so far.

We have next weekend with David Stroud from ChristChurch London which we are really looking forward to and are trusting that it will be an extremely significant time for us and for the church.

We have another agape meal all together after our meeting tomorrow morning as we are trying to make the most of Sundays in terms of building community as it is not easy to get together much during the week on account of time and distance.

All for now

2008-11-10T06:06:00.001-08:00

Blog – Monday 10 November

We now have less than two weeks to go at language school together. Gill is considering continuing her studies at a place near the city centre someone told her about where you can do conversation classes.

We have a new record time for cycling to college – 10 minutes! Cycling is definitely the way forward. I was reading an article at college last week showing that in Paris, cycling is the quickest means of transport for up to about 3 km.

We also have a new record for unintentional distance cycled, or rather, Gill does! We were cycling separately from Gordon and Kerry’s house to William and Hannah’s on Wednesday evening to enjoy Hannah’s crepes. Gill left first and I followed ten minutes later thinking if I really pushed it I might even overtake her on the steep and long hill up to Meudon. I arrived to find Gill not there which surprised me. I was sure I had not overtaken her but wondered whether I had been going so fast that I might have passed her as a blur. After a further ten minutes she rang to say she was lost somewhere in Clamart which was quite a few miles away! William whipped out his A-Z equivalent and we established her location and gave some instructions. We went out to find her and eventually arrived chez Hannah et William.

In fact, I calculated that Gill must have cycled 55 miles that evening.

On Thursday evening Gordon and I travelled by Eurostar to Ebbsfleet for the France team meeting and returned on Saturday evening. We had a good time as ever with the other guys. We only have seven churches in France at present. There is a very long way to go to say the least, and we were asking the Lord to stretch out his hand to perform signs and wonders and to draw people to himself.

On the train for the whole journey I was engaged in a conversation with a young Tunisian woman living in Paris from a moslem background who grilled me with questions about my faith. It reminded me of 1 Peter 3:15 (always be ready to give an answer...). She did give me one break for five minutes while she did her nails! I have invited her to come one Sunday.

We probably have around 40 people who would consider themselves part of the church right now and seem to be receiving visitors each week which is encouraging. I preached a week ago on the power of the Holy Spirit coming on us to give us power to be his witnesses. We prayed for a few people at the end which was great and one, Nathalie, gave a wonderful testimony yesterday as to what God had done for her.

We have David Pike from Cardiff with us this coming Sunday which we’re looking forward to. He led the first French speaking evangelism team I went on (in 1996 I think it was) to Perpignan.

We had an entertaining evening yesterday. We had arranged with Jubilee Church Coventry to set up a skype link with them during their prayer meeting when they would be praying for us etc. As we still do not have a telephone line or permanent internet at home we had decided to go to the nearest McDonalds to make use, once again, of their free wifi internet service. We had agreed with Andrew to do a test at 7.00pm; so, before the appointed hour, we set off on the bikes for Denfert Rochereau, found the Mcds easily and entered. After setting up the computer and Gill getting in the queue for a fanta the wifi stopped working and despite all our efforts 7.00pm came and went without success. Plan B was to go to a friend’s apartment not far from there. I rang her only to be told she had no internet, but that there was another McDs at Alesia a mile or so away and a Starbucks. We set off in haste for Plan C (putting back on the fluorescent vests, bike lights and helmets). We found Starbucks quickly and entered. Gill went straight to the back to set up the computer and I went to pay for the internet. I had to wait ages for a French couple to decide whether to order English Breakfast Tea or Earl Grey and then, on the verge of paying, a new member of staff appeared and announced the wifi wasn’t working. I recovered my money, ran to the back, grabbed Gill and we ran out of the cafe to unlock our bikes from the nearby railings and put on yet again our fluorescent vests, bike lights and helmets! We set off for the next Mcds and arrived ten minutes later only to find that, in fact, it was opposite Starbucks and we could simply have crossed the road! Never mind, we found another set of railings and ran into Mcds and straight up the stairs only to find it noisy and absolutely packed. No good for a skype conversation. The time was now getting rather late anyway. We found a little table after a while and tried to log on. Failure. No connection. Couldn’t believe it. Asked some people opposite. They had a connection. Not fair. Considered throwing computer through the window. Didn’t. Good thing too as Gill who had got out her French books anticipating being in there some time, was suddenly asked by a lady whether she was reading the Bible (it was, in fact, her old schoolgirl dictionary!). That led to a ten minute conversation with the lady and her daughter as to why we were in Paris and ended up with one of them wanting to visit our church. Amazing. But we were now very late. Plan D: go home. We rushed home to find we had an intermittent internet connection. We managed to get about 5 seconds of visual before that packed up and, in the end, praise God, we did manage to have a sensible conversation which hopefully provided some material for the church to pray about. God works in mysterious ways...

2008-10-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

Blog – Sunday 19 October 2008
Thankyou to so many of you who have encouraged us about this blog. I am so glad it is proving helpful and shall endeavour to keep it going!
Just to let you know, we still do not have a landline and are now in our fifth week of waiting. It is difficult to know why things should take as long, but there you are. I suggested to my teacher last week that France is part of the developing world and he gave me a funny look, but then he’s probably got a landline and didn’t spend seven weeks in a tiny caravan in the summer!
The church, Le Chemin, La Vérité et La Vie, which may in due course be referred to as CVV, is now two weeks old and seems to be healthy! We have not had the same numbers as we had for the launch Sunday and 35 seems to be more normal at present (no children). Quite a large proportion of folk seem to be away on Sundays/at weekends which in a small church matters rather more than in a larger one.
I preached this morning, in our series on Nehemiah, on the great challenge he faced and the faith he had. People are being kind to me in saying that they think my French is improving which is good. More importantly, I hope they really get hold of the message! Our worship times are steadily seeing more of a sense of God’s presence which is exciting and Gill stepped out this morning and did some prophetic humming!
We are back to college tomorrow morning for our seventh week out of twelve. Gill did quite well in a little exam last week which has encouraged her. I have had some interesting class discussions on the history of the strike in France, women’s rights and other issues of inequality in the workplace. I have continued to have great opportunities to share the gospel with folk in the class.
By the way, our record for cycling to college was, on Thursday, reduced to 11 minutes 35 seconds although we were rather fortunate with traffic lights. Having said that, Gill seems to have developed a rather French colour blindness so that, for her and most Parisian cyclists, traffic lights only ever have one colour (green). That’s all very well until you get to Boulevard de Montparnasse which is about nine lanes wide. It’s interesting to note that for our first couple of weeks Gill would only ever cycle on the pavement for fear of getting too near the traffic or looking the wrong way at junctions.
I suddenly realised on Friday evening that we have been in the city here non-stop since 17 August and that made me want to escape the city for a day. We decided to do a day trip to Versailles on the train. The chateau/palace is immense and amazing (and that’s just from the outside) and the gardens go on forever. Absolutely stunning. Late in the afternoon all the fountains were switched on which provided an unforgettable sight. It did make us consider that this amazing place constructed over three hundred years ago as a display of human splendour and perhaps the finest palace in the world is nothing compared to what God has planned for those who love him.
The Car Show has finished today at last so next week’s parking for our Thursday evening and Sunday morning meetings should be much easier.
We celebrate a notable wedding anniversary this week and return to the UK for a family party at my parents’ house in Bishop’s Stortford on Saturday afternoon which we are so looking forward to.

2008-10-06T10:00:00.001-07:00

Blog – Monday 6 October 2008
Sitting in the park as it is warm again today and we are now in our third week of waiting for our telephone line to arrive. Gill met someone recently who told her that her line took nine weeks to arrive. We might therefore get a landline this side of Christmas (this Christmas, that is).
The church was launched yesterday afternoon. Praise God. In some ways it has seemed a long time waiting, but at last. We had 50 people there in Gordon and Kerry’s house which was, therefore, almost full on our first occasion. Having said that, I am sure there were a few there specifically for the launch who might not be expecting to return another week. Still, we were very pleased with 50! I shall suggest to Gordon that he builds an extension for next month.
We started very late because of when people were arriving mainly due to getting lost and to parking problems (the French version of the Car Show is on at present just down the road and that caused a few parking problems to say the least).
I was anchoring the meeting which I found considerably more difficult in French than any other language I have ever had to use in anchoring meetings, but it was fine really. Gordon preached from Nehemiah 1 although after at least half an hour Gill was still thinking he was preaching about Naomi! Her excuse was that they sound the same in French. She clocked that it might be Nehemiah when she thought Gordon told us to turn to the book of Naomi!
We saw one woman healed instantaneously from back pain which had prevented her from walking normally.
Instead of tea and coffee in plastic cups at the end of the meeting (like we might do in the UK) we had a sort of champagne based aperitif which was great anyway, but also meant that everyone stayed longer to chat etc.
We will not start cell/house/life groups until early next year so Thursday nights we will all be together. This week I am speaking about passion for the Kingdom of God.
Gill was wearing a very fetching outfit on Saturday when she was stopped by a passer-by who suggested she looked like someone out of the 19th century! I think that’s a compliment. She wasn’t so sure!
Meanwhile on Saturday I went shopping on Gill’s bike with a dodgy back wheel (buckled). I reached the nearest major shopping centre and decided to buy some wood to make some 3 large shelves for our bedroom. I don’t know what weight of wood I carried on the bike back to the apartment (at least 2 km), but I must have looked a right sight. It was virtually impossible to steer so I was having to ask 90 year old ladies to get out of my way. All a bit embarrassing, but the shelves look great. The end justifies the means?
Michael has been with us this weekend. Our first visitor staying in the flat. It was wonderful to see him and good to have him around for the church launch too. He managed to break the bath, but that wasn’t too bad as he was with us two nights.
Just before I go as it is beginning to get dark, my new teacher (Anatole) does, as feared, speak quicker than the TGV. Last Monday I noticed that he only took three breaths during the four hour discourse on the French higher education system. I found out the following day that he had actually been teaching on the French Parliament!
Thankyou for all the encouragements and, no doubt, prayers.
Will keep you informed of developments!
George and Gill

2008-09-26T09:11:00.001-07:00

Blog – Fri 26 Sept 2008

It is always sunny here it seems. I am sitting on a bench by the lake in the park typing this blog. Fish are jumping and a seagull is attacking the heron. People are sitting reading in the sun. Others are jogging round. Some ladies are walking or carrying ridiculously small dogs (about the size of a small weasel).

Here is some good news: at last we’ve received the cards to open the gate to get our bikes in and out of the block. No more carrying them through the main door, through the entrance area, through another door, turn right along the corridor to another door, down some steps in the dark, through another door, down some more steps, along a little path and through another door into the shed. Much less likelihood of breaking legs. And, of course, we’re no longer breaking the rules.

Both of us have completed a section of the language course and will, therefore, start in new classes on Monday (both with new teachers). I have reason to be scared as apparently my new teacher can talk at a rate of 3000 words a minute!

We have had some amazing opportunities to share the gospel recently, especially at college. In fact, I think that, for me, the last month has been the most fruitful time of personal evangelism that I have had since I was a university student (a few years ago). My teacher for the last four weeks is off to Japan for a month and tells me she wants to come along to the church one Sunday on her return as does one of the other students. We talked with a German student today (in a mixture of French and English) who is returning to Cologne tomorrow and have encouraged him to look for an Alpha Course.

We are making friends with the gardienne of the apartment block and her family (husband and teenage daughter). They are Portuguese. They invited us in to their flat for a coffee this afternoon.

Now we have an oven, Gill has had an extremely prolific week cooking, it seems, hundreds of cakes, some of which we both took into our classes today. She has roasted chickens and anything else she can lay her hands on (seagulls, herons, ducks etc). Seriously, it is good having an oven and a washing machine installed and we have started inviting people round to eat: two of Gill’s class mates came round the other night and we have a number of folk from the church plant coming round shortly to eat and talk about the new welcome team which I am going to lead (initially) and for which Gill is, of course, the consultant.

Our first meeting of the church plant is 5 October at 3pm. Gordon is preaching and I am anchoring. I wonder if we might have a full room on the very first meeting. Personally we think it is quite likely. The room is nearly finished (just in time).

I intend to write the next blog after the church plant launch unless there is anything particular to report in the next week.

2008-09-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie today:

Our new address is 17 Rue Gazan, Paris, 75014, France

Third week completed at language school. I was given 10-15 minutes this morning to give a talk on anything I liked. I chose the gospel. Why not? Others chose Mind Maps and Canadian film festivals!

William has invited one of his new colleagues from work to our launch on 5 October. Good news.

My teacher say she wants to come along to one of our meetings when she returns from a trip to Japan later in the autumn. More good news.

Our washing machine and oven should be delivered tomorrow so we can move from handwashing (the last 12 weeks) to machine washing and I can eat home-made pizza again!

We are going to visit Charlie Cleverly's old church on Sunday morning having been to a different church last Sunday which we loved.

I am sittiing in the park typing this. It is always sunny here. We have barely had any rain in 12 weeks.

I am trying to organise a welcome team for the new church and shall get Gill to give some instruction when we all get together next weekend.

It is a Paris heritage weekend and we will go to a free classical concert on Sunday afternoon.

I saw an old lady pushing her tiny dog around the park the other day in a little box on wheels.

Photos of apartment

2008-09-17T05:11:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo of the apartment from the park. The one with the open window.

This is a photo of our living room, dining room and kitchen with its view over the park from the 5th floor. It has taken ages to upload these from my documents so I am probably doing it wrongly, but it has worked in the end.

I have to get home now to do my homework and so no time to add further pics! Sorry

2008-09-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

Blog – Sun 13 Sept 2008

Two weeks of language school under our belts (I don’t think “sous nos ceintures” works in French) and we are both enjoying it although I have been extremely tired this week (better now).

I have had fun from time to time in class discussions when we have been asked to answer questions such as “is lying acceptable?” or is there such a thing as the ideal man?” To the second, the class were arguing “no” until I intervened with a statement that I know the ideal man and his name is Jesus! They were a bit shocked, but language school must be a good excuse for evangelism surely.

We have done an Ikea shopping trip getting there on public transport as we have no car and asking the kind Gordon Neal to collect us. This has meant we are able now to make better use of the space available in the apartment.

For most of this week summer has continued and it has been glorious to look out over the park.

We are having a few problems with the apartment block regulations: we have no parking space allocated to the apartment. That’s not a real problem as we have no car. We do have our bikes and are using them extensively. The bike shed is the same building as the bin store and is at the back. There are three ways of getting bikes to that shed: (a) through the vehicular access under the block from the road (b) through the ground floor common parts of the block and down some steps (c) hurl them out of our 5th floor window. We have no code or card for (a), carrying bikes down the steps whilst opening a door is tricky and (c) has not been tried yet so (b) therefore is our favoured option, but we have just been informed that taking bikes through the flats is “interdit”. I have asked Mme la Gardienne for the code and a card. She said no. I said why. She gave no reason. The saga will continue as we propose to continue doing (b) until she gives us the code!

I have just conceived a possible fourth plan for the bikes: a visit to the local Bricorama (DIY shop) should do it. A simple rope and pulley system and we’re there. We attach the bikes to the rope outside in the street, go up to our flat and then haul the bike up and store it on the balcony overnight.

2008-09-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

Blog – 6 September 2008
I am typing this sat at our dining room table (for the first time since early July) listening to our vinyl LP of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto in our apartment overlooking the very lovely Parc de Montsouris. It is so good to be in somewhere of our own again after many weeks in the campsite which we thought at times might go on forever!
A very kind friend of a very kind friend helped us move our caravan to a winter storage place last Friday. At the last minute the small campsite just south of Paris we had contacted told us that they had no space! They recommended another which was far too expensive and we then found a third on the internet which was much further away! Anyway this friend of a friend drove me there towing the caravan and we eventually found the place which is a farm in the middle of nowhere in Brie country. We were told by the locals that it was probably the farm near to the farm where they sell chickens.
We then stayed two nights with a couple in Creteil just south east of Paris and then four nights with William and Hannah Perrier in their lovely house in Meudon just south of Paris. Meudon is at the top of a very steep hill which is a battle on the bikes.
We eventually signed the contract for the lease of this flat on Thursday afternoon at the estate agents office by the Eiffel Tower. You sign every page and sign many copies! We collected the keys and took the underground to get to the flat in order to meet the official of the local government who had to inspect the condition of the flat (in great detail). We then camped here for two nights sitting on the floor and sleeping on airbeds. We had three consecutive meals of ryevita, brie and strawberry jam. Still it makes a change from McBaguette and fries.
Lots of people helped us move our furniture in this morning and we are now unpacking boxes into our very small flat which is about a quarter of the size of our house in Coventry! You are very welcome to come and stay if you are under 2 feet 3 inches in height. The flat has a wonderful view of the Park and is very bright and warm and quiet. I am sure we’ll love living here.
Language school started on Monday. Intensive and very helpful. I have done battle with the subjunctive all week and am left wounded but still alive! Gill arrived very late one morning and got severely told off by her teacher. I have 12 in my class from all over the world (Colombia, Spain, Italy, Germany, Brazil...).
Gill managed to cycled down the road on the wrong side the other day forgetting that things are different here.
We had a good time praying and worshipping at William and Hannah’s on Thursday night with a few others.

2008-09-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

Just a very quick post this afternoon to report that at long last we have a moving date!

We visited the estate agents earlier today and have agreed with them that they will let us have the keys this Thursday afternoon which is great news.

This means we will camp there from Thursday night until Saturday when we will hire a van to move our things from storage and get some help in doing so.

Language school started yesterday. Four hours each weekday morning. I am doing battle contre le subjontif whoever he is and he is probably winning!

More news later this week.

2008-08-27T06:02:00.000-07:00

The bare facts of our current situation are as follows:-

We are moving out of the campsite on Saturday (at last)
We are taking the caravan to a winter storage facility to the south east of Paris on Saturday afternoon
We are going to stay with William and Hannah Perrier for a few days
We appear still to be the frontrunners for renting the flat we have found
We are waiting for money to be transferred from our UK bank to our French account
Then we have to get the bank to communicate with the estate agents
Then we can sign a lease
Then local governement officials visit the flat to check it over with us
Then we have the keys!
We have taken our language school entrance exams and we start our courses on Monday (intensive for 12 weeks)

It all takes ages here! However, as you can see, progress is certainly being made, but it's been and still seems to be a long haul.

The campsite is quite large here in Paris. It is first time that I have ever had to remember in the middle of the night which exit to take at the roundabout in order to find the nearest loo block! I calculated last night that in the 31 nights we have stayed here I have walked something in the region of 48.4 km to and from the toilets at night. I am extremely fit at present.

Then there's the cycling. We sold our car last week and now get around Paris on foot or on two wheels most of the time. Yesterday we cycled about 176 km in twelve hours in order to visit the bank manager (who wasn't there), do some emails (at four different McDonalds) and skype various people from a range of different parks. Gill thinks that if things keep going like this she'll be as skinny as Paula Radcliffe and have thighs like Chris Hoy!

We have a busy social life this week (which involves some quite lengthy cycle rides) and that should be fun.

We do hope we have some more definite news on the apartment next time we write!

Thanks to everyone praying for us. Please continue!

2008-08-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

Much has happened in the last five days:-

I have seen a flat which I like in the exact road we want and we have handed all our papers to the agents who appear to like us. It seems to fit almost exactly the prophetic picture our friend Adrian had for us back in July at Brighton. So far so good. We need to organise our finances and get money in the right bank etc, but we remain hopeful of signing the lease and getting the keys before the end of next week which would be great as we start at language school on 1 Sept.

The interesting feature is that Gill hasn't seen it yet! She must be extremely trusting of me! She keeps asking questions about it, has it got this, how large is that, what about this? Most of the time I simply don't know as I didn't notice! The view from the balcony (5th floor) is amazing. I think there is a kitchen and another room or two. I hope there is a toilet.

Gordon and Kerry have arrived. We're visiting them today.

We had a lovely evening with William and Hannah on Thursday and visited Hillsongs last night which was great. The message was very relevant to us (believing promises etc).

Please keep praying that this apartment will actually happen next week and, of course, that our house in Coventry will sell.

Hopefully further good news next week.

Gill saw her first rat last night (it was dead).

2008-08-18T08:08:00.000-07:00

Back in Paris now with Gill visiting her parents in Carnforth who have just moved into a retirement home. She returns to Paris by train on Wednesday evening having sold the car in Kent on the way! I'll meet her at Paris Nord.

Mike Emery and I loaded our belongings into the storage facility this morning. It took 3 1/2 hours and he is now on his way home in the hired van to Coventry. A huge thankyou to Mike (and also to John Beresford and John Harvey for helping us load the van on Saturday morning before Tim and Rosie's wedding).

I had been advised by the storage people to bring with me certain documentation and I duly produced it on arrival this morning. The new man there told me I needed to give him photocopies. I said fine: he could perhaps photocopy them for me in the office. He said no. I said why. He said the machine's broken. I suggested he wrote down the relevant details. He said no. I said why. He gave an inexplicable answer. I left the office and walked half a mile to hotel Ibis where a very nice man photocopied my 2 documents for nothing. Return to storage depot. Produce copies. All smiles this time but I had to sign thirteen different documents (one of them in eleven different places) before we could proceed. Ummmmm!

I now have a French mobile phone (it is one of these modern phones that you can keep in your pocket and which can send and receive text messages in lower case, and apparently you can talk to people through it too if you know how). The number (from UK phones)is 0033 6 63 37 40 43

It's back to house hunting for me for this week. So I am inevitably in McDonalds at present having just tried to buy their cheapest item on their menu (a straw for 2 cents) to justify my using their free wifi again. That was refused so I went for ice cream!

We had an extremely frustrating morning in McDonalds last Thursday (in fact I spent 5 1/2 hours in 2 different McDs that day!) battling with internet access, public phones and non existent numbers. By lunchtime I had nearly decided that perhaps we should be trying Madrid not Paris, but that afternoon, before we left for the UK on Friday, I did manage to contact the estate agents regarding a flat near the park where we want to live and have arranged to view it on Wednesday afternoon. The lady on the phone spoke so fast and I had no pen to write down any details that it's a fair chance that I completely misunderstood her and could turn up on the wrong day at the wrong time at the wrong flat in the wrong road! It might be a bit small, but I'll try to see it anyway.

I am sorry I cannot post any photos with this blog, but the cable for my camera is in storage now buried beneath thousands of boxes.

Gordon and Kerry are due to arrive on Wednesday and William and Hannah should now be in Paris but I can't contact them at present.

That's all for now.

George

2008-08-09T04:56:00.001-07:00

Blog – Saturday 9 August 2008

This is being written while staying for a one night stop in a small campsite on an island in the middle of the Loire near Nevers on our way back to Paris after a wonderful holiday first in Provence and then in the Alps. Whereas the French may not speak in an intelligible language they certainly do have a very beautiful land!

We baked in the sun in Provence (Cucuron, for any who know the region) and enjoyed cycling to and from lakes and markets. Amazingly, the campsite had internet access so we were able to check that there were still no apartments in Paris available where we want one! After three days we drove north into the Alps (La Grave near Briancon) which was absolutely stunning and we were easily able to keep our minds off the fact that upon return to Paris we have nowhere to live (yet)!

We did some arduous walks at high altitude and I managed a 1000 metre descent in 90 minutes including getting lost. We took a steep chair lift descent one day near Les Deux Alpes and decided to climb back to the start (in the rain). It was an almost impossible climb and at the top we passed the sign banning people from that particular route which was reserved for VTT (mountain bike) idiots! Having survived that, Gill nearly lost her life an hour later when trying to cross the road and forgetting to look left first! The next day I very nearly took the lives of two ladies by virtually running them down whilst asking a policeman for directions! Apparently, the well used excuse, “pardon, je suis anglais”, doesn’t often wash in cases of manslaughter.

We have now been in our lovely caravan for five consecutive weeks and we are still married! It is under 6 square metres. That’s quite small, by the way (our house in Coventry is 200 sq m!). We are looking for an apartment of about 70 sq m. That is going to seem like a mansion after this.

Another potential purchaser viewed our house in Coventry this morning (Sat). We trust he will quickly make an offer.

William and Hannah Perrier still do not know when they will get the keys to the house they are renting in Paris. If they do get them by 17 Aug then we may be able to store our things in their garage. If not then we will investigate storage facilities.

Sarah and her boyfriend Gabriel are coming to visit for a few days next week. They will have to join us at Bois de Boulogne Campsite! We are looking forward to seeing them, but it’s all going to be a bit tight in 6 sq m!

Life is challenging and certainly not boring. It would be nice to be able to see into (even) the immediate future, but we can’t. God can, though and that is extremely comforting!

By the way, both Briancon and Macon have McDonalds. Don’t even think of trying their McScargots et Frites. Stick to coffee.

RDV

2008-08-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

Blog – 2 August 2008

Sitting in the shade of some oak trees overlooking vineyards and hills from our campsite in lovely Provence! What a delight!

We’re having a restful day (apart from 90 minutes cycling in 35 degrees!) after the excitements of Rendezvous which ended yesterday morning in Gagnières. What an excellent week! We loved spending time with Michael, with the team that Pete Carter leads, with the group from Coventry and with our new friends from Paris. Including William and Hannah Perrier and Gordon and Kerry Neal, the Paris group numbered about 20 almost all of whom were very open to receiving the Holy Spirit especially on the last night. For those of you who know William, he sang an interpretation to a tongue one night which was quite breathtaking!

My two sessions with the Just Looking group went well especially the Thursday on the baptism in the Spirit when we had 39 people there thirsty for God. That made it so easy to pray for them after the teaching.

Gill did well in pressing on with French conversation and is now back to more systematic study in anticipation of our language course which will probably begin on 1 Sept.

Accommodation wise there are still some significant hurdles to overcome. The people who looked twice at 3 Spencer Ave a week ago have apparently decided the ground floor is too small for them and are now looking elsewhere! Disappointing, but God is still in charge! We failed to find an apartment in Paris before RDV and, therefore, we’ll recommence our searching as soon as we get back to Paris next Saturday. This means we will have to go back to the campsite with the caravan for a while. Still, it is summer!

As far as the new church is concerned, it is looking like our first Sunday will probably be 5 October with the existing Paris church having a final celebration party the night before. We can’t wait to get going. In the meantime we will visit other Paris churches on Sundays such as Hillsong.

As you will have gathered from the above, our two big prayer needs are the sale of our house and the finding of an apartment. Hopefully we can report breakthrough on these very soon!

Off to Rendezvous

2008-07-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Our last few days in the campsite at Bois de Boulogne have passed in fairly traditional manner with lots of visits to McD restaurants in the mornings and early afternoons, but without success on finding an apartment yet! Still, we are not downcast as we are surviving the caravan life well and we are now off to Rendezvous. Actually we are in McDs again while waiting for Emily's flight to arrive very late from Rome.

The very promising news is that the estate agents and John Beresford between them have found a couple who may want to buy our house!!! We think they are doing a second viewing this afternoon and we hope they will then make a sensible offer. They have, apparently, nothing to sell. We hope there will be some even better news, therefore, in the next few days.

We have had a busy social life this week in the evenings with a posh meal with Gordon and Kerry and others on Tuesday, a lovely time with Amandine on Wednesday and a soiree with three folk from the existing church last night at the end of which they prayed for us which was great.

After RDV we are intending to keep to our holiday plans of three nights in Provence and a few more in the Alps on the way back to Paris. Then it will be back to Bois de Boulogne on 9 Aug. We will need to keep our eyes open during this time in case apartments do at last come up. If absolutely necessary we can end our holiday early and get back to Paris quickly.

Signing off for now....

Paris update

2008-07-22T06:52:00.000-07:00

Blog – 22 July 2008

Since the last posting we have discovered that there are 66 McDonalds restaurants in Paris and quite a few more around the city limits. We’ve now visited most of them and can recommend their double McCroissant and fries. Actually the reason we keep going there is to use their free wifi internet access as the campsite doesn’t have any. Basically, our days go as follows at present:-
· Get up (not often all that early)
· Have breakfast
· Read Bibles and pray together
· Cycle to McDonalds to search the internet for 2 bed apartments in the very particular area of Paris we would most like to live in (near Parc de Montsouris in the 14th arrondissement)
· Come away disappointed an hour or two later!

So far we have not found any apartment which is in this area and which is also affordable and available. It is extremely frustrating indeed and we are very keen to find one and secure it before we leave for Rendezvous on Friday morning (we are picking Emily up from near Orly Airport at midday).

If this doesn’t happen by Rendezvous then we have got some difficult decisions to make. Do we, for example, cancel our planned holiday immediately after RDV and come straight back to Paris to continue searching for apartments? What do we do about the planned removals on 17 August just after Tim and Rosie’s wedding? Mike Emery is due to help us. We don’t really want to cancel/postpone that so we may need to look for temporary storage facilities around Paris for our furniture etc. Do we come back to this campsite in our caravan or do we look for other options? Lots of “don’t know” answers at present.

We do believe that God wants us here. That is so clear. We do believe it would be good to live in the area of Cite Universitaire for many reasons and the prophetic word we received at Brighton immediately after we had been prayed for on the Thursday night, confirms that. We also received a word from someone else at Brighton that one particular door would not be easy to open, but would after much patience and prayer. Is that this?

We have a busy social life this week here before RDV. Tomorrow evening we have a meal with Gordon and Kerry Neal and the two leading couples from Sel et Lumiere (the existing Newfrontiers church here). We will need to discuss how and when best to close Sel et Lumiere. On Wednesday we hope to see Amandine. On Thursday we are seeing another couple from Sel et Lumiere (who can’t come to RDV) at their studio flat in the city centre). Then on Friday we strike camp, collect Emily and drive south.

We are getting to know parts of the city quite well and feel confident on the public transport system (metro, tram etc). We have cycled many miles and I went for a run yesterday in the Bois de Boulogne.

Our French bank account with HSBC is open. Gill’s debit card works well. Mine does not! We will have to go back to the branch in the 15th arrondissement to sort it out!

Talking on the phone is interesting, but on the whole I am managing well. Gill has just bought some Narnia books in French to read.

News hot off the press! The estate agents have emailed us to say that there is a potential purchaser looking at our house on Friday. Apparently she has nothing to sell. Please pray she buys the house.

Brighton Conference and first days in Paris

2008-07-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

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!

Jubilee Farewell and Michael's graduation

2008-07-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

We were given a great farewell party by Jubilee Church on Sunday (lots of love and lots of gifts) and we left feeling happy and undeserving! We drove straight to Leeds for Michael's graduation early this morning which was fun. Then an exhausting few hours emptying and cleaning his house and moving him to his new address in Bramley (a few miles from Leeds). Then a quick trip into the city centre and a meal with Michael and Sarah before driving back to Coventry for the last time!

We leave Coventry tomorrow morning for Paris (via the Brighton Conference) which we are really looking forward to.