Big doings in our new digs…

Our church in Guebwiller, France recently moved into a larger facility. It was mostly unfinished when we acquired it. We rushed to make it “tolerable” in December 2007 for a visiting speaker…lots of moving…cleaning…setup…etc. Then it was obvious that the dust from the unfinished floors, walls and ceiling would soon kill us or our equipment and we (ambitiously) wanted to host the 2008 French Christian Education conference “Mathurin Cordier” in the new building in February.

So, we re-moved and re-setup in our old facility and started a manic rush of finish work (almost all of it done by the church and most by a handful of faithful, talented and insanely hard-working people). Well, we got “done” (enough) in time for the conference these last few days and with a fantastic team effort and a smiling Heavenly Father, we had a wonderful weekend together.

I was up in our sound booth (wow, a real-live raised platform for the sound people now!!!) on Sunday morning where we combined the last session of the conference with the Sunday morning service. Surveying the jam-packed room (good-sized for a French church!), I took this little 1-minute video of the worship with my digital camera…(don’t expect any high-quality stuff!) You can get at least an idea of what it looks like:

8Mb avi video of worship time during the conference

Hangin’ on for dear life

We’re in the midst of a 2-week vacation from school right at the moment and boy, I thought I’d have been able to “blog up” some major pontifications! It’s not for lack of swirling thoughts in my gray matter and my spirit. But to get them out and to get them out in a cogent and cohesive way seems to be just too much right now. Right now is for livin’ it and another day will be for writing about it. I pray that the revelations that are so necessary to continue to feed our forward progress will be even more solid and profound (and perhaps succinct?) for the waiting. ;c)

Tomorrow begins “Seminaire Mathurin Cordier” here in Guebwiller, France. Mathurin Cordier (whom I’d never heard of before coming here) was an instructor of John Calvin’s and Calvin later invited him to Geneva to head up a school there. (https://www.ianpaisley.org/article.asp?calvin1.htm). They have named this seminar for Christian Educators in the French-speaking world after him. The school we’re helping with (Collège-Daniel) and the church we go to (Église Josué) are both hugely involved and, consequently, so are we. It’s both tiring and exciting.

That pretty much sums up we’re we are right now, “tired and excited”. God has us on a wild ride of faith and obedience and we’re just sort of hanging on right now.

More when I can breathe a bit…