Day 5: Pray for the Gospel Café

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn—shout for joy before the Lord, the King.”  Psalm 98:4-6

The Gospel Café uses music as an outreach to build connections with French people and create an environment to talk about spiritual things, with the goal of starting bible studies and a new church. Please pray for:

• Consistent funding to rent spaces and pay musiciens
• Direction and wisdom as to the ideal location for concerts
• For the word to get out to more and more people, and especially people who are open to learning more about the Christian faith

Day 4: Pray for our interns

In addition to the prayer conference happening this week, World Team has sent 4 awesome interns, who are helping us with all kinds of things and seeing how God wants to use them, both now and in the future. 

Please pray for these 4 university students who trusted the Lord enough to come to France for part of their summer and serve. Their energy and presence is such a blessing. Please pray for:

• God’s direction in their lives
• Their relationship with the Lord, that it would deepen even more
• That they would gain a lifelong heart for missions
• That their heart for other cultures and people would grow

And here are a couple photos from the prayer walk we led through our neighborhood.

Day 3: Pray for Meru

“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in 

every respect the mature body of him who is the head, 

that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together 

by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, 

as each part does its work.” — Ephesians 4:15-16

The church in Meru is continuing to grow and flourish. After several years of effective ministry there God has continued to bring the church toward maturity. Please pray for:

• Leaders to be raised up and trained to direct the church
• The missionaries as they transition leadership of the church over to the French
• Unity as the church continues to grow
• The church to catch a vision for mission and church planting

Day 2: Pray for Gisors

“Pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, 

so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ…” — Colossians 4:3

The church in the town of Gisor is one of the newest church plants that World Team has begun in France. Several years ago participants of the prayer conference went and prayed in Gisor when there was no work there at all. Now a small church is beginning to grow and show God’s love to that town. Please pray for:

• The team as they host Alpha courses to introduce people to the Faith
• People who have shown an interest in Bible studies
• The first worship services of the church in Gisor
• That the people of Gisor would experience the love of God from this church

Day 1: Pray for Paris

“And should I not have concern for that great city.” — Jonah 4:11

Paris is the heart of France. For the Gospel to take hold in France, it has to take hold in Paris. Right now we are forming a team to begin a church planting movement in an incredibly dense area of the city that has only three churches. We would ask that you pray for:

• The formation of the team
• Our research of the city and its' people
• Finding men and women of peace in the 15th arrondissement
• An open door for the Gospel
• That we would love and serve our city 

Paris Prayer Conference: Introduction

The Paris Prayer Conference is happening this week. Each year World Team invites anyone who is interested to come and see what God is doing in France and to pray. If you are interested in coming next year or in future years, please let us know. Until then we want to share with you what is taking place this week, so that you can pray together with us.

Introducing ourselves

It is interesting how most cultures have some sort of norm in terms of how to meet and greet new neighbors. And unfortunately, a lot of the old cultural norms aren’t really observed anymore. In the States, the old standard was when a new neighbor moved into a neighborhood, within the first few weeks, the surrounding neighbors would come, bringing with them their warm welcome and often some cookies or a jello mold (I don’t know why the jello mold?). In France, the tradition (as far as I understand) was similar but reversed. Here, it was usually on the initiative of the new neighbor to reach out and introduce themselves to the established neighbors. 

Before moving into our apartment, I had thought a lot about how we could make this initial contact, but of course once we moved in, the busyness of cleaning, painting, and outfitting our place kind of distracted me from following through. But this weekend, our opportunity presented itself. 

In France, it is normal to post a note on the eve of a big party or construction work to give your neighbors fair warning that you will be making a lot of noise during a set period of time. Today we knew we would be installing our kitchen, thus creating a lot of noise for a couple days. One day for demo, one day for painting, and the third day (today) for installation. So we decided to stick a note along with some chocolate chip cookies in each neighbor’s mailbox, to introduce ourselves and also to inform them of our kitchen installation this weekend. 

I was a little nervous. Seeing as how we hadn’t run into any neighbors at all so far, I had no clue as to how they would feel about this gesture. But we have been so encouraged. Since the cookie & note delivery, we’ve met 3 neighbors (who stopped by to introduce themselves) and we were thanked by the “Gardienne” (who lives and works in the building). 

So who knows what will come next, but we are very pleased that this initial contact was a step in the right direction. I will post some pictures and details about our kitchen remodel soon.