Finding Family

Disclaimer: For those of you who know we just returned from a trip to Paris, I am sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not through with photo-editing, so you will have to wait. For those of you who prefer to avoid the taboo topics of politics and religion, perhaps you should skip this one. And finally, for those of you who have (im)patiently waited for a post about the church we've found, here you go:

Statistics across the internet vary, but suggest 60-70% of the French people identify themselves as Roman Catholic, 10-15% as Muslim, 35-54% atheist, and roughly 3-5% as Protestant - of which an even smaller number consider themselves "evangelical." Therefore, I had fairly low hopes in finding a solid, Bible-based, church family in such a small population in the French countryside. I had visions of our family taking advantage of open Catholic churches to sit for a minute in prayer, but never meeting a soul and feeling horribly out of place. But God knew where we were headed and He knew I would not do well in such a spiritually isolated condition, so He led us to France Mission, a network of Evangelical Protestant churches with a community right here in Chinon. I found their website back in April and contacted them directly. We exchanged some emails back and forth prior to our arrival and I was able to relax, knowing we would be spending the year getting to know some of our French Brothers and Sisters in Christ. We were so excited!*

True enough, upon our arrival, there was a gift bag waiting for us at Paul & Sylvie's, put together and left here by the members of Eglise Protestante Evangelique du Chinonais (or EPEC for short). It had candies for the children (who shared them with their parents), some Legos and beads, honey from one of the church member's very own bees, and La Bible, which no doubt will be a treasure of mine for years to come. It was a remarkable feeling of belonging which I didn't know would be so precious until I felt it; knowing people here were anticipating our arrival, were excited to see us and would welcome us here.

Our first Sunday here we got to experience that welcome first hand as we were greeted and kissed and welcomed over and over by the lovely gathering of people for "la culte" (the worship service). To our wonderful delight, we recognized the tune of many of the songs due to the fact they use a lot of translated contemporary British and American praise music. For example:

Lumiere du monde venue dans l'obscurite. Tu m'ouvres les yeux et je vois tant de beaute que mon coeur emu t'adore; je sais que ma vie est en toi.

Light of the world, You stepped down into darkness. Open my eyes, let me see beauty that made this heart adore you; hope of a life spent with you.

Et me voici pour louer, me voici a tes pieds, me voice pour dire: "Tu es mon Dieu."

Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down, here I am to say that you are my God.

I still find this to be very cool. Sometimes I try to sing in English while everyone else sings in French, but I find I cannot recall the words when the French is being sung, so I bumble along in my American accent doing the best I can to sing to my King with my fellow kinsmen in their native tongue.

Back to that first Sunday. After the service, we were invited to lunch by Wayne and Margaret, a lovely British couple who retired here in response to God's call to help with the church. It was amazingly refreshing to enjoy an afternoon of conversing where no one had to speak slowly, repeat themselves, or wait patiently while I fumbled for words. Their accounts of their spiritual history was tremendous, having been a part of the great revivals that swept across Canada, the US and England in the 1970's and 80's. What a God send they are!

In the subsequent weeks since, I have managed to sign myself up for the Wednesday night Bible study on the book of Jeremiah, the monthly Friday afternoon study of Philippians, and to help teach Sunday school to Bo's class (there's a whopping 3 students, so I think I will manage okay)! We've had lunch with the Pastor and his family, where we somewhat awkwardly attempted conversation in broken French and English. We've had a meeting with the Pastor where we told him our own history with the Church and Christ. THAT was a linguistic challenge! High school French in the States simply does not account for discussions of faith! My vocabulary is sorely lacking, I'm afraid. And we've continued to attend Sunday services, where we attempt to grasp whatever meaning we can from the sermon, sing along in our poorly pronounced french, bow our heads and say "Amen" at the appropriate times, and get comfortable with exchanging "brotherly kisses" more literally than we do back home.

Having done missions trips to Romania and Japan in the past, for David and me it was no surprise, but is still as awe-inspiring as ever, to see the family of Christ breech borders and languages once again. For it is written, "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Galatians 3:26-29

Car vous etes tous fils de Dieu par la foi en Jesus-Christ; vous tous, qui avez ete baptises en Christ, vous avez revetu Christ. Il n'y a plus ni Juif ni Grec, il n'y a plus ni esclave ni libre, il n'y a plus ni homme ni femme; car tous vous etes un en Jesus-Christ. Et si vous etes a Christ, vous etes donc la descendance d'Abraham, heritiers selon la promesse. Galates 3:26-29

The Main Meeting Room of the Church

*For an interesting article about the changing tide of Christianity in France see this Christianity Today article: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/march/20.28.html