The activities surrounding the World Day of Prayer brought together 3 of Lamastre's churches: the Catholic Church, the Reformed Church, which is now called the United Protestant Church (Eglise protestante unie- a combination of Reformed and Lutheran French churches) and our Free Evangelical Church. We had our struggles and our differences, but our de-briefing meeting this morning was positive and an acknowledgement of the blessing received by being a part of this effort.
We started in February with a typical Ardéchois meal: caillettes, tome de fromage frais, red wine, mandarines.
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The Wednesday kids' activities attracted 31 children and a number of carers stayed on to observe and accompany. My workshop went well, with interesting contributions from Vito (30ish Italian immigrant), Marie (30ish Belgian immigrant) and my 2 Franco-Australian teens! So proud of the way they helped.
During the afternoon service, 38 people attended. For the evening service we counted 56 with only 3 children attending. This was disappointing because we had hoped to attract more families.
However, we are encouraged, and know that all over the world people were praying for France. This, along with a 21 day prayer effort called 'Pray for France' and we are expecting things to move in France.
I was interrupted in this blog by a phone call which encouraged me a lot. One of our church families went to visit another more isolated family on Sunday and there was a good deal of sharing. The upshot is that hopefully for tomorrow morning's prayer and share time we will have 'a full house' followed by a meal together. Obviously this is unusual because people are not working 'normal' jobs, but it facilitates organising times together.
Please pray for these get -togethers. It's a sure way of building up relationships within our church and for opening up to new people. Our biggest need at present.
