It has been a few weeks since my last post, and A TON of things have happened! God has been teaching me a lot about what it means to live gratefully and to give thanks for all of the beautiful, mundane, and difficult aspects of my life. He has also been blessing me (and my team) abundantly in the midst of a lot of busyness and things to organize. We have so many reasons to be thankful! Let me share just a few with you...
1. In the beginning of November we were able to go apple picking as a team (the five of us girls) to a nearby orchard owned by a family that knows the Skurs - a family on staff here last year. We had a wonderful time playing, juggling, laughing, and picking apples, and came home loaded down with many enormous bags of Pink Lady apples. We have made so many apple crisps! It was really fun for us to be able to get out of the city and spend time together.
2. Johanna came to visit! Johanna is a dear friend of mine and an Agapé student who has been very involved in the movement here since it's beginning several years ago. This year she is in the U.S. doing an internship with Glaxo-Smith-Klein and so I haven't seen her since I left to go home to the States back in June. It was so wonderful to talk with her, to catch up, to eat frozen yogurt (one of our traditions), and just to hug her. I'm so glad she was able to come and see us!
3. We got to be a part of new life! Pierre has been coming to our once a week Parcours Alpha (Alpha Course) seeker Bible study and recently showing a lot of openness to spiritual things. He went with the group for a day-long outing into the country to focus specifically on a study of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. During the course of the day, there was an opportunity given to anyone ready to accept Christ to pray and ask Him into their heart. Pierre prayed to accept Jesus that day, and has already started making steps of faith and growing in his relationship with God. He was also able to come to our Thanksgiving dinner, and wrote on his hand turkey craft how thankful he was to the Lord for his new relationship with Him.
4. We also were able to have our first ever Agapé weekend retreat with our Christian students who are involved in the movement. It was such a wonderful and encouraging time for myself and my team as we were able to experience the whole weekend from it's beginning planning stages through to it's completion. It was a weekend full of learning, building new relationships and deepening old ones, relaxing time in nature, shared fun, and delicious food. God's hand of blessing and provision was so evident throughout the whole process! Our speakers for the weekend were a young pastor and his wife from Paris who came to share several deep, Bible-based, and immensely practical messages on the Trinity. They also directed a women's time/men's time about purity, relationships, and marriage - and what God says about them. The students were very impressed by the teaching they had to share, and very appreciative of their willingness to come down and speak to us. I am also thankful for the part our student leaders played in organizing the ice-breaker games, planning food quantities, and leading the hiking trip. I am immensely thankful for my teammate Megan who did a fantastic job of planning the menu for the weekend and organizing the purchasing and preparation of the food. We ate very well! Although we (the team) returned exhausted, it was the grateful exhaustion of those who have worked hard and experienced God's blessings on their endeavors!
1. In the beginning of November we were able to go apple picking as a team (the five of us girls) to a nearby orchard owned by a family that knows the Skurs - a family on staff here last year. We had a wonderful time playing, juggling, laughing, and picking apples, and came home loaded down with many enormous bags of Pink Lady apples. We have made so many apple crisps! It was really fun for us to be able to get out of the city and spend time together.
2. Johanna came to visit! Johanna is a dear friend of mine and an Agapé student who has been very involved in the movement here since it's beginning several years ago. This year she is in the U.S. doing an internship with Glaxo-Smith-Klein and so I haven't seen her since I left to go home to the States back in June. It was so wonderful to talk with her, to catch up, to eat frozen yogurt (one of our traditions), and just to hug her. I'm so glad she was able to come and see us!
3. We got to be a part of new life! Pierre has been coming to our once a week Parcours Alpha (Alpha Course) seeker Bible study and recently showing a lot of openness to spiritual things. He went with the group for a day-long outing into the country to focus specifically on a study of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. During the course of the day, there was an opportunity given to anyone ready to accept Christ to pray and ask Him into their heart. Pierre prayed to accept Jesus that day, and has already started making steps of faith and growing in his relationship with God. He was also able to come to our Thanksgiving dinner, and wrote on his hand turkey craft how thankful he was to the Lord for his new relationship with Him.
4. We also were able to have our first ever Agapé weekend retreat with our Christian students who are involved in the movement. It was such a wonderful and encouraging time for myself and my team as we were able to experience the whole weekend from it's beginning planning stages through to it's completion. It was a weekend full of learning, building new relationships and deepening old ones, relaxing time in nature, shared fun, and delicious food. God's hand of blessing and provision was so evident throughout the whole process! Our speakers for the weekend were a young pastor and his wife from Paris who came to share several deep, Bible-based, and immensely practical messages on the Trinity. They also directed a women's time/men's time about purity, relationships, and marriage - and what God says about them. The students were very impressed by the teaching they had to share, and very appreciative of their willingness to come down and speak to us. I am also thankful for the part our student leaders played in organizing the ice-breaker games, planning food quantities, and leading the hiking trip. I am immensely thankful for my teammate Megan who did a fantastic job of planning the menu for the weekend and organizing the purchasing and preparation of the food. We ate very well! Although we (the team) returned exhausted, it was the grateful exhaustion of those who have worked hard and experienced God's blessings on their endeavors!
Some of our students around the table at dinner
The beautiful country house we stayed in for the weekend
5. November also means Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving for my team and I means a traditional, American-style Thanksgiving dinner for about 100 people. Thanksgiving is one of our huge outreaches of the year, and so we have the opportunity to invite many of our friends to enjoy celebrating and eating with us, and also to hear the testimonies of our two of our students who shared the reasons that they are thankful to God. There was so much planning to be done, and so many details to organize! But the Lord granted us favor, patience with each other, and His supernatural, incomprehensible peace. We all made it through, and were able to celebrate together on the other side. Some of the highlights in photos:
My sweet teammate Joelle with her hand-painted signs
Setting up the room before the big event
Chrystelle, a Northern Irish study abroad student experiencing her first Thanksgiving! She joked with me after dinner that she would make her mom cook her Thanksgiving dinner every year! She also added, on a more serious note, that she wished we could know how much our team had blessed her by inviting her to the dinner and pouring into her.
Chelsea, an American study abroad student, thanked us for helping her celebrate Thanksgiving away from home and combat the homesickness associated with this holiday. She was able to bring 4 other study abroad students, none of whom are believers.
Amandine (near the middle holding the whipped cream) brought 4 friends to Thanksgiving (many of whom are repeat visitors!). All of them helped out serving platters and clearing up after dinner, and all of them were able to hear the good news of Jesus from Amandine herself.
My teammates and I after dinner and clean-up standing in front of our Arbre de Reconnaissance (Thankfulness Tree)
Our Thankfulness tree in all it's glory (each leaf features a reason one of our students who came is thankful this year)
One of my favorite pictures - Joelle "eating" some of our leftover corn!
I wish I had more time, space, and energy to share all the blessings God has showered on us during November! I'll stop here for now, and just add a hearty and sincere thank-you to all of you who are supporting me financially and through prayer. I am thankful for each of you - thank you for helping to make this movement possible!
"Soyez toujours dans la joie. Priez sans cesse. Remerciez Dieu en toute circonstance: telle est pour vous la volonté que Dieu a exprimée en Jésus-Christ." -1 Thessaloniciens 5 v 16-18
("Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." -1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
