Leaving Les Cedres

Just when I grow fond of a place, it's time to pack my bags. I settled into a nice life and rhythm at Les Cedres, and though I am excited for all this year holds in using French and serving the French, I was a bit sad to leave. Les Cedres has been for me a slow introduction into life in France and has provided opportunity for language study as well as personal Scripture study. I have officially transitioned to loving French and France! One night we had a music party and it was absolutely fantastic. While Spanish is my favorite language sung (thanks to my sister's vocal chords!), French music grows on me more and more while I toe-tap and bop my head.

We've spent the last days playing games, celebrating different cultures (including an intro to line dancing), taking pictures, drinking coffee, enjoying Massy and Paris; and now most of us have packed our bags and move on to the next place. For some it's back to studies, others to work, others to family. For more it's to the classroom to teach French and for another set, it's to various mission fields--many are nurses, some are teachers, all represent a variety of means and ends in mission and I'm privileged to have learned alongside them and to have shared our stories. I feel wholly inadequate for this coming year, but I see that God wants to use that real inadequacy to his glory, for truly, it's not about us, our abilities, or how best we can serve. It's how God wants to use us and surprise the world by grace made manifest in his people's limits and his strength supplied.

Next, I'm in Sopron, Hungary by way of Vienna for the Greater Europe Mission Annual Conference. I'll spend two days in Vienna afterward, head back to Compiegne to wash clothes and continue setting up my apartment, then cross the Atlantic for a very special wedding. After a whirlwind of activity in the Windy City, it's back to Compiegne for yet more laundry before heading south to the French Alps for a ministry training camp--Groupe Biblique Universitaire (GBU), the French equivalent of Intervarsity. Obviously, for one month, it's a bit of traveling and activity so please keep all of us--me, other GEM missionaries, the McAuleys, and Hemmerles--in your prayers.