Tuesday, July 5

SixTen,

Our apologies for not getting these up sooner, but we have been extremely busy.  We will post two updates today.  The second one should post a bit later today, sometime around 5:00 pm.  We hope that you are blessed by these and enjoy our pictures.

From Left to Right: (Back Row) - Dan, Rich, Geoffrey, Sean, Kenan, Brock, Hun (Front Row) - Caleb, Clement, Ryan, Carey

Today was an awesome day. The day started off just as yesterday did with Rich getting up and making us eggs.  For breakfast Kenan, Caleb, and Clement all joined us for breakfast.  Around 9:30 we left for the day and went to the church.  When we arrived at the church we spent the first hour or so talking about the first chapter in Acts as a group.  Pastor P led us through the passage and asked us to share what our thoughts were on the passage.  After some good discussion and some prayer (all about what we were thankful for in relation to Roubaix) we spent the next hour or so hanging out with Caleb, Clement and Carey (Pastor P’s Daughter). The youth who attend the church are in need of prayer. Prayers for the youth should be specifically for the pressures that they face everyday from outside sources (i.e. Islam, Drugs, Violence, etc.).

From here we had Francois

Francois and Caleb

(an older gentleman who travels between France and Miami).  Francois is a passionate Christian who is originally from Algeria.  He is also our cook for the week and has been making some unbelievably good food.  I asked him today if he loved cooking, his response, “I do not love cooking, I enjoy it.  I love God.”  His passion and zeal can be seen as he moves around the kitchen singing and humming to himself. For lunch Francois made macaroni and cheese, however the cheese was actually Parmesan and he also put marinara on the macaroni. This macaroni and cheese was accompanied with a breaded fish and of course French baguettes (bread may be the national icon for France). When we finished lunch we cleaned the dishes and hung out for a little until we were ready to leave for the soccer fields.  Before we left for the fields Geoffrey

Geoffrey and Sean

met us at the church.  Geoffrey is our translator and also plays soccer with us when we are at the field.  He is a very solid Christian and even stopped playing club soccer because he had games on Sunday that interfered with church.

When we arrived at the field (approximately 2:30 pm) we were greeted by a few players, we had played with a number of these players the day before. These guys seem very interested in us and asked if they could play on our team today.  Unfortunately the numbers didn’t work out so they ended up being on the other team.  We played for approximately an hour and then took a break as more of the guys we had played with yesterday showed up.  We greeted these guys as well and offered to have them play in the game we had going on.  They agreed and we picked up playing again and played for another hour and ten minutes. The entire time we were high fiving the players, saying good job (in our broken French) and just trying to show the love of Jesus.  In both games the “good guys” won (except for Brock in the second game).  But better than that was that after the game we talked with a couple of the players and said that we would be back on Thursday (Wednesday we are going to a barbeque for a church member and praying through his house) and that we would like to go to a café (coffee) after we played.  The players seem very open to this and when we go for coffee we will invite them to the church to talk with them and just hang out.  This goes a long way in helping to develop a relationship.  We will not try to beat them over the head with Jesus, but instead we will simply show them that even the church is an ok place.  Hopefully this will provide Pastor A and P with an opportunity to reach out to them in the future.

When we had finished playing soccer we returned to the church for a prayer meeting with the rest of the church.  During the prayer meeting they asked to pray for us and laid hands on us.  It was a moving time and so awesome to hear the heartfelt prayers that were offered to God.  All of us were left in tears and even though we didn’t understand all of the prayers (as some were in French) we know that they were praying for us to reach out and touch the people we had come into contact with.  After the prayer meeting Francois heated up some of the leftover macaroni and cheese and also got us some cold cut meats/cheese with baguettes.  At this point it was approximately 8:30 pm and we started to clean up around the church.

The night was not over; in France the day hasn’t even started until approximately 11:00 am, which I guess, means that they can go late into the night.  We were invited over to Kenan, Caleb and Clement’s house for dessert. Caleb speaks English that is quite good and Geoffrey came along with us so we had at least two interpreters for when we visited.  We were served delicious crepes

Delicious Crepes

with chocolate and some type of pine nut/sunflower seed. The food was amazing, but the fellowship will be remembered for the rest of our lives.   Their mother was a kind and caring woman who has a deep relationship with Jesus.  Their father was asleep as he had to go to work the next day, but the boys entertained us and we heard stories of them when they were younger.  We had a fantastic time and some of us were even laughing so hard at some of the conversations that we started to cry.  It was a sweet time of fellowship and sharing

Group eating crepes

.  Around approximately 11:30 we called it a night and headed back to our apartment (only about 2-3 minute walk).  We said good night to all of the boys and headed off to get showered and go to bed.