Nathan

Here are a few photos of the newborn Nathan. I got to see him on Thursday, and he is as cute as a newborn can be. The fun thing was to watch Philippe, his Dad, act silly. It's not often you get to hear your introduction to the Old Testament teacher talk with a sqeaky voice and say Guzzi guzzi guzzi!"




By the way, Philipp took these photos and wanted me to tell you...

Rothenburg

At the Euro-American retreat in Rothenburg, Germany, we CEMists got to listen to conferences on the book of Exodus and how to live relationships the way God wants us to. We also got to hear lessons on love, perseverance and the mission. All very encouraging.

Here are some pictures of the old city of Rothenburg (click on the photo to see them all)

Rothenburg

"Home" Again

We just got back from our 8-day trip across Germany, Switzerland and France early this morning. The trip was great, I met lots of people, had a lot of fun, and learned a lot (is there a convenient synonym of "a lot" I could use?).

We came back a day early because Dolores, who works for CEM and is the wife of Philippe , one of the evangelists here, gave birth to her fist child yesterday! Philippe's father and brother were traveling with us, so we drove (they drove, I slept) through the night to get here today.

So more on the trip and photos are pending. Until then, I'm going to bed (yea, right).

Ach nein!

In less than twelve hours, I'll be on my way to Rothenburg, Germany for the Euro-American family retreat. It'll my first time there, so I'm really looking forward to it!

It's going to be an interesting linguistic experience, being in a German-speaking country with French people trying to speak English. So, to get in the mood, I ran this text through the Google translator in French and German and than back to English.

Enjoy:


In less than twelve hours I will be on my way to Rothenburg, Germany Europe for the American family retired. Ll my first time, so I am very concerned that!

It will be an interesting experience linguistics, which is in a German-speaking country with German people who try to speak English. Then, for you in the mood, I met this text in the Google translator in English and French as well as English in return.

The Last Shall be First

When I came to France, I discovered that part of my ministry was to learn how to play soccer (known as "football" here). This is a bigger effort than you may imagine, considering that I play with as much grace as a pregnant hippo.

So anyways, our church has a little team and we play against other churches... and our team has lost every game it has played since its creation. Our first match of the season, we lost 1-11, and we were playing as hard as we could. There's about as much chance of us winning a game as there is of it snowing in Marseilles.

We had a lot of snow today.

And our team won its first match ever 3 to 1 last night! I even got to play. It was great fun to see the curse finally come to an end!

But it was cold out there!

Foi en Folie!

That's "faith gone crazy" in French, or something pretty close.

It's also the name of the activity we have with the 10 to 12 year-olds every month. Last time, we made pizzas for the church meal on Sunday. So what do you get when you cross 6 kids, 4 adults, and a lot of pizza dough?

Lots of fun and a whole bunch of pizzas (as in almost forty)! Enough for everyone on Sunday, and several days worth of leftovers for us CEMists (our motto: "if it's free and nothing's growing on it, we'll eat it").

Great fun. We'll have to do it again sometime.

The Fuveau Chapel

The church celebrated ten years of existence here on avenue de Fuveau this weekend. Saturday was spent in prayer for the church here and its future, and in the evening we sang, ate and watched PowerPoint slideshows of the church over the last ten years.

Things certainly have changed! Ten years ago, the chapel was a garage, the preachers were younger, and the kids from the youth group were still in diapers (well, they were a bit older than that, but you get the idea).

For the past ten years, the church here has been reaching out to the local community. If you walk into the chapel Sunday morning, you will find ethnic French, North African, American, African and Arab brothers and sisters. People from every social group and class here in Marseilles, who wouldn't be together if it weren't for Christ's love.

Happy birthday, Fuveau Chapel!