For those of you who don't know, C.N.A. (or Camp du Nouvel An - literally, Camp of the New Year) is the Agape Campus France Christmas conference. For the last few years, C.N.A. has been hosted in a retreat center in the small mountain town of Cantan, near Tarbes, in the Pyrenees. The center we stayed at was made up of two main lodge buildings - one housed the girls and included the dining room and a game room that had couches, fussball, a pool table, and a bar for tea and snacks. The other building housed the guys and also included the main meeting room.
It was a lot of fun (and also a bit scary at times) to be a part of the workers for this conference instead of a student. My teammates and I worked with the Agape stinters (American interns) from Paris to organize various aspects of the conference, including the "gouter" (before dinner snacks), the prayer room, the reveillon (New Year's party), and the decorations of the main meeting room. It was really rewarding to spend time planning beforehand (over skype from Montpellier to Paris) with our fellow stinters, and then to see it all come together that week to really bless the students who were there.
Altogether, we had all 5 of our partnership cities represented (Montpellier, Toulouse, Lyon, Rennes, Paris), with about 80 students and 20 staff members and their families. It was so encouraging and exciting to see a bigger, more national picture of ministry in France! One of my favorite parts of the weekend was getting to meet so many amazing people - students and staff - and hearing their stories. Each person had a story, and each story was evidence of God working in France in amazing ways.
During the conference, we had great times together as a large group hearing from our speaker, Michel Petrossian (a pastor from Paris), and worshiping in French. We also had some really cool workshop sessions hosted by different staff members and nightly sessions with different themes. One night, we had different prayer stations where students could fold their prayers into origami, make things out of clay, and paint on a large banner. Another night, we talked about the need for missionaries worldwide and had different booths around the room representing various countries that students can go to as part of a short-term missions trip or a year-long internship with Agape.
In addition, we had a day of sharing where students - organized into two groups - took steps of faith to share the Gospel. One group stayed at the retreat center and did an internet outreach where they sent messages to specific friends asking them to meet up and talk about spiritual things. They also explored various internet resources that they can use to share the Gospel. The second group (I went with them) went to Lourdes - a nearby town known as a pilgrimage location. Back in the day, a young woman (Saint Bernadette) was going to a natural well in a grotto to draw water when she saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. Ever since then, the source was considered a holy site and there are many instances of miraculous healing that have been reported. Today, there is a large, very beautiful church built on the site and many people come to pray. We went into town to do street evangelism and to talk with the people we met about hope - what gives them hope in their lives. It was very interesting for me to see a town like Lourdes, that is so well known as a pilgrimage site and was also a disturbing example of religious tourism. It was distressing to see how people had twisted something beautiful and holy - where miracles occurred and people connected with God - into something so corrupted and commercialized. It was very exciting for me, however, to go sharing with Randy (my partner). Randy is an Indonesian student studying in Rennes (in the north of France) who is learning French to work on his master's degree. It was really encouraging for me to meet Randy, to see him share his faith for the first time, and to hear about his story and how God brought him to faith and to France.
All in all, it was a very eye-opening and encouraging time. God is doing some truly amazing things here! Thank you so much for your continued prayers!
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