Ma Vie en France: Because God said "It was good."

Maybe it's just in my head, but when missionaries send pictures and letters home, I feel like there's this unspoken need to be proclaim the sufferings "on the field" we are currently experiencing. Feel free to dispel this myth that is rooted in my head. I'm trying hard to as well. I want to affirm the spiritual infancy and non-existence which is France. I want to tell you how much my heart breaks when I interact with people who know Jesus only nominally or not at all. Both of these statements are true. We all have days here when we look to skies and enter empty churches and proclaim in frustration that God must have left this land. I've even heard a story of a veteran couple who prayed their official paperwork wouldn't clear so they would have to go back to the states. Yeah, it's hard.

But here's the deali-o yo: There is immense joy to be had serving here. And not just because it's France. It happens to be beautiful here in all the pictures because they have a history spanning more than 300 years. And not just because it's personally easy. Someone asked me to explain something in English instead of French to them and afterward commented, wow, you're totally different in English with your facial expressions and hands. I walk around most days living under 50% of my personality. I don't call that fun. And not because I have found my calling to France and am never going "home." In fact, the cultural differences between my American self and the lovely French are much more acute this second time around than the first summer of ministry. I'm not disenchanted, just real.

But the reason for immense joy exists at the core of ministry, at the core of fulfilling the Great Commission and Great Commandment according to the ways God has intimately created us each to do, at the core of following him wherever he leads (if it's to France, to the classroom, to family, to cooking school, to adult education for the blind, wherever!). The core of being used by God, I believe, is joy. Jesus surely didn't walk around with a sullen face--why did people follow him and why could children not resist him? Yes, in the Synoptic Gospels we read Christ prayed for the cup of his sacrifice, the culmination of his being, to be passed from him. He was not exactly leaping towards the cross. But we flip over to John and read that he promises his disciples joy, joy in seeing him, joy in the receiving of what God grants. And the joy will be full and no one will be able to take it away from them. Then he calls his disciples into his ministry, into establishing the Church, and joy as a gift of God in their midst is never renounced. And then Paul, can't get over Paul...he's got joy all over the place and the man is always traveling, often imprisoned, separated from the people he loves AND he's teaching and encouraging joy in churches. Finally, there's James. You must simply love James. "Count it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness." He's writing to those in the Church, those that are inherently involved in ministry and prodding them on to joy despite trials.

Trials, yes, they are here for the taking. The spiritual battle is on and we are all in the thick of it. But in most of my pictures, many of my stories--I'm not trying to paint a rosy picture nor do I want to leave you with a false impression of the spiritual needs here for they are grave--we're going to be having a good time. Not just flippantly good but this is about investing in people's lives, and I think people's lives are perhaps the most significant call to joy I know. They are indeed reflections of a most full and glorious God.

In celebration of joy, here's some of its latest victims.

Me and Tiffany, fellow GEM Euroquester, say goodbye in Paris.