Our Schedule:

Teaching English and Art together, putting on the GospelCafé concerts, prayer, meeting with our new French friends. It's a good life!


A complete listing of very specific requests for prayer can be found under "Prayer Requests."


For those just getting to know us, please visit the special sections to the right.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

2 in one Day!

It's completely non-existent that we would post 2 times in one day. But 2 wonderful news items were sent to us by our team in France that we had to share it with you, our partners. You know what to do and we are counting on you and thanking you at the same time.


Oh my gosh! Such exciting news. Russell just told me that one of our France Vie partners is getting his desire fulfilled by starting a coffeehouse and our field director and his wife just passed off their church plant (the one we were assigned to - Magny-les-Hameaux)  to Baptiste to be their pastor and will be helping the other French guy with his Gospel House. But what is so incredible and shows God's goodness is they found a space across the street from the palace of Versailles. At first they thought it was to small when they went inside; but, it had a large room in the back too. The owner wasn't going to rent it to them and they became discouraged until later when he came back to them and said they could use it for FREE!!!! This will be in the area where we will be working too when we return. We have not met this Frenchman yet and look forward to that day. He had been in the states for a while trying to see how to do a Christian or Gospel coffeehouse while we were in Versailles working. I am so happy for them. Lord, get us back there! soon.

Here's the second story we want to share. Some of you may remember that we helped the church planting team in Gisor with the beginnings of the Alpha Course this spring. An Alpha Course which is available in many areas of the world including the United States is like a Christianity 101. Who is God, who is Jesus & what does He have to do with me. It's a 15 week course with a new topic each week. There is always a meal each week, a video then a chance to talk about what was on the video.  

The Catholic church in this town is active and the priest invited our group to use a room in their church since we didn't have any place yet. This is still the beginning stages of starting our own church. Don't forget many French have never met a Protestant and some have never met a Christian.

Our team accepted their offer. It's been a great collaboration because THEY also show the Video Alpha Course series. This video series is not about a church denomination.  Soooo... Guess what just happened recently? Read this update from Nate and Erica who just got moved there and are part of this team.

"Imagine you are at ..mass at the Catholic church on Sunday morning and the priest announces: 

"The Evangelical Protestants in town are starting a new Alpha Course next week, and you're invited to attend."

That's not really normal, but our team was surprised to hear it happened last Sunday. We hadn't received the package of posters, brochures, or invitations in the mail yet, and we'd been praying about publicity efforts. God's answer is to have the priest help us!

"God called me five years ago to be a part of organizing an Alpha Course, so this has been a long time in the making. I'm ready to help." 

That's what one woman shared at our first leadership team meeting for the upcoming Alpha Course. There were eleven people present, all gathered in the new living room of our teammates that had moved just a few weeks before.

Some in the group are Catholics, some are Charismatics, some are charismatic Catholics, all helping out a group of traditional Evangelicals. Each one from different areas, different backgrounds, different walks of life. I found myself smiling, wondering, "How in the world did God unite these people in this town for this project?" There is one important thing we have in common: a desire to announce the good news of the Gospel in this town. 

So here we go, the kickoff night is tomorrow, October 2nd. There are still a lot of unknowns, but God is once again opening doors in surprising ways. We'll keep stepping out in faith and see what he'd like to do with it all...

ACTION POINT: For those of you have told us you would like to be actively participating in what we are doing we ask you to pray for these fellow leaders and believers who want to share the "Good News" to a lost and lonely people.



No comments:

Post a Comment