Dear Friends and Family,
You are often in our thoughts and prayers and we hope you are well and experiencing the peace of God that passes understanding, even in these uncertain times. God has given us some incredible moments of joy in these past couple of months and at the same time we are feeling the fatigue of slogging through an ever changing “normal”.
La Rentrée - Back to School and Life as “normal”
All four of our resilient children are back at our local school and doing amazingly well. There have been a lot of things we didn’t expect serving as missionaries in France, but we still feel our central call is to be family on mission. Over the summer we were meeting for Picnic Church at Bethanie, but as the weather has changed, we recently re-started small church gatherings in our home with other families and friends. Last Sunday Eli read our Psalm for the day in French with an absolutely spot on accent. Silas has recently become a bit of an evangelist - asking his badminton coach whether he has decided to become a Christian yet each week.
Bless Family Camping Week
Just before school started, we helped to lead a camping week for the Bless Network. As part of this week we had the joy of seeing four young adults profess their faith and be baptized. This was a special moment for Joanna and I as we’ve been privileged to watch two of these young adults start following Jesus since we arrived in Normandie. It was inspiring to see these young people, at the edge of their professional lives and facing a world filled with more uncertainty than any of us anticipated, putting their trust in Jesus and declaring that faith publicly.
Prayer Points
Joanna dislocated her shoulder a few weeks ago. Many of you know that this isn’t the first time this has happened and each time has been progressively worse. She is scheduled for shoulder surgery on the 13th of October. Please pray for healing and for smooth recovery following surgery. Please pray for our family as Joanna pretty much keeps us together, and this task will be made more challenging with only one arm for a while.
Please pray for several neighbors with whom we are growing in relationship. It is a trying time for many of our friends here and we are praying this is a moment when many would turn and find true peace and freedom in Jesus. One neighbor is very sick and they don’t know what is wrong with her. Please pray for an opening to speak about the hope of Jesus and for healing.
Please pray for the refugees in Caen with whom we work. Many of them have recently been evicted from a squat where they were living and are sleeping on the streets. It is already getting cold here and this isn’t a good situation for them. There is a small group who have begun meeting for French and English language study with Tom at our church building in Caen. This has been an amazing way to grow in relationship and express the love of Christ.
Finally, several of you have asked about how our financial support is going at this time. Thank you for praying with us about this. We have seen a dip in our monthly support due to people having lost income in the US. So far, that deficit has been covered by one-time gifts. Please pray with us that God would continue to provide for our financial needs here.
Video Update
We recently put together an update video for our sending church, the Gate Community Church. We wanted to share this with you too! Please note, we have been on zoom a lot during the past 6 months… ;)
Thank you so much for your care for us, for praying with us and being part of all that God is working here in France. May you know the blessing of seeing His kingdom come and His will be done in your life.
