Some really fantastic things happened in December:
I traveled to Étretat, FR with 5 awesome ladies.
I visited this friend and celebrated Jesus' birthday with her.
Floranie is my friend and incidentally my French language partner. She is kind, gracious, hospitable and grossly overestimates my technological capabilities. She has twice asked me to help her fix up her fancy new TV to her cable and a DVD consol. Neither time was I successful, woops.
I taught 5 full 1 1/2 hour French lessons to 20+ North African women. I'm sure I made numerous mistakes, but nothing too grave.
I continued working with my friend L on English lessons. She still struggled pronouncing the English "-th" and "h" sounds and I struggled figuring out how to teach that. We laughed a lot, drank lots of tea and she fed me many many apple pastries after I told her I love apples.
I met weekly with the ladies from my team for fellowship, prayer and time in the Word together. We are going through 1 Corinthians right now.
Our team had a Christmas party at my supervisor's house and I made THIS:
Brittany, Ruth Ann and I made 12 plates filled with home-made banana bread, chocolate covered pretzels, clementines and sweet candies and gave them to neighbors in our building, our local bakery owner, and our land-lord. We gave them the plates, wrapped up in green bows along with Christmas cards explaining the birth of Jesus in French. We prayed over these plates as we passed them out and it was a fun opportunity to meet some families we've only seen in passing and to let them know that we love them and want to be active in our community and in our building! I'm praying that in the following months, with warmer weather and warmer demeanors we will be able to spend time outside of our building meeting women and girls who are our neighbors.
I met with a small group of women each representing different "sending" organizations. We are all here doing similar work with the same people group and this was a time of sharing and encouragement as well as training for discipleship and ev work. It's such a blessing to be able to partner with other like-minded believers on this side of the world!
I went to England to see Jon. We bought Spongebob drum sticks for a 3 year old friend, drank beaucoup of tea, played games with English friends, played games with American friends, cooked foods that reminded us of home and took a fairly hectic trip back to Paris via boat via bus.
Lots of wonderful friends came to visit us and spend the beginning of the New Year in Paris. We reflected on God's faithfulness to us in our present countries and his faithfulness to us throughout the year. We spent Sunday studying Hebrews together and singing songs in English in my living room and we spent New Years Eve walking through the months of 2012 sharing happy and sad memories but all that reflected the goodness of God. It was a sweet time and I'm so thankful for this time with them.
December was full and draining, but ultimately left me Full.
The Father reminded me of and renewed my joy through the advent season reflecting on the gift of His Son to humanity. I learned about Peace, about joy, and a lot a lot about obedience.
Thank you for remembering me during this time, for sending sweet Christmas cards and tweets and emails and for supporting the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. You are each a huge blessing to me.
I traveled to Étretat, FR with 5 awesome ladies.
I visited this friend and celebrated Jesus' birthday with her.
Floranie is my friend and incidentally my French language partner. She is kind, gracious, hospitable and grossly overestimates my technological capabilities. She has twice asked me to help her fix up her fancy new TV to her cable and a DVD consol. Neither time was I successful, woops.
I taught 5 full 1 1/2 hour French lessons to 20+ North African women. I'm sure I made numerous mistakes, but nothing too grave.
I continued working with my friend L on English lessons. She still struggled pronouncing the English "-th" and "h" sounds and I struggled figuring out how to teach that. We laughed a lot, drank lots of tea and she fed me many many apple pastries after I told her I love apples.
I met weekly with the ladies from my team for fellowship, prayer and time in the Word together. We are going through 1 Corinthians right now.
Our team had a Christmas party at my supervisor's house and I made THIS:
Brittany, Ruth Ann and I made 12 plates filled with home-made banana bread, chocolate covered pretzels, clementines and sweet candies and gave them to neighbors in our building, our local bakery owner, and our land-lord. We gave them the plates, wrapped up in green bows along with Christmas cards explaining the birth of Jesus in French. We prayed over these plates as we passed them out and it was a fun opportunity to meet some families we've only seen in passing and to let them know that we love them and want to be active in our community and in our building! I'm praying that in the following months, with warmer weather and warmer demeanors we will be able to spend time outside of our building meeting women and girls who are our neighbors.
I met with a small group of women each representing different "sending" organizations. We are all here doing similar work with the same people group and this was a time of sharing and encouragement as well as training for discipleship and ev work. It's such a blessing to be able to partner with other like-minded believers on this side of the world!
I went to England to see Jon. We bought Spongebob drum sticks for a 3 year old friend, drank beaucoup of tea, played games with English friends, played games with American friends, cooked foods that reminded us of home and took a fairly hectic trip back to Paris via boat via bus.
Lots of wonderful friends came to visit us and spend the beginning of the New Year in Paris. We reflected on God's faithfulness to us in our present countries and his faithfulness to us throughout the year. We spent Sunday studying Hebrews together and singing songs in English in my living room and we spent New Years Eve walking through the months of 2012 sharing happy and sad memories but all that reflected the goodness of God. It was a sweet time and I'm so thankful for this time with them.
December was full and draining, but ultimately left me Full.
The Father reminded me of and renewed my joy through the advent season reflecting on the gift of His Son to humanity. I learned about Peace, about joy, and a lot a lot about obedience.
Thank you for remembering me during this time, for sending sweet Christmas cards and tweets and emails and for supporting the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. You are each a huge blessing to me.
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