"I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6)

Paris has it all

19 January 2012 | by Bixby

Last Friday night, we made our first foray into downtown Paris. We drove to the metro stop (about 1.5 miles from our place), parked the car and entered the fray. We’ve done it before, but never with three small children and one of us eight months pregnant.

While standing at the Place de la Concorde (where Louis XVI lost his head), we saw these two cars drive up within a matter of minutes of each other. It serves as an illustration that Paris has something of everything. I understand why cities are an attraction to those seeking a better lot in life.

Paris has a lot of people. Duh. However, looking at the sea is different than swimming in it. Living here has made us feel how empty life is apart from Christ. So many live in visible deprivation (like the couple digging through the trash bin just outside our apartment). Everyone is searching. We seem like just a speck (or a drop, to remain with the same analogy).

We praise God that we have something eternal, a treasure that will never fade away. Pray that God will motivate and enable us to shine our light, even if it be comparatively small.

Our new home (for four months)

13 January 2012 | by Bixby

Most of you know that we have moved to Stains for a four month period. We are just a few miles north of the Paris city limits. This is definitely life in the big city. The town itself is smaller than Pessac (population about 37,000 vs. 57,000). But the density is quite different: Pessac has 1,484 inhabitants per square km and Stains has 6,421/km². (Compare that to our home town of Spartanburg, SC, which has 399.9/km² or to Chicago which has 4,447/km².) It’s a town with a small land mass slammed packed with apartment buildings. It has a communist mayor while Pessac has been historically socialist.

Life is more difficult in a city. For example, I have to park the car across the street after I go through an electric gate, then through another automatic garage door that provides entrance into the underground parking. To walk back, I have to go up a flight of stairs, through a locked door, walk through a courtyard, out a locked gate, back across the street, through another locked gate leading into our courtyard, and finally to our door. It’s a lot different than walking out of an unlocked door in Pessac, France, and just hopping in the car that we would leave unlocked half the time.

Right out the office window I can see people passing in all kinds of French and foreign garb, speaking different languages, and from all levels of society.

There are certain advantages. A major Carrefour (our Walmart equivalent) shopping center is less than 500 yards away. Today I walked Ruth to the store than came back and picked her up in the van when she had finished shopping. I’ve also been able to walk to the post office. A great advantage is that the children’s school is also fewer than 500 yards away. It takes less time for me to get from the house to the school gate than for Micaiah to get from his second-story classroom to the gate. We are also less than 2 kilometers from their nearest Metro station which can usher us right into downtown Paris.

Thank you for your prayers for us. I hope to share more soon about the church in Saint-Denis and the kids’ school situation.

    

Skypelizing

6 December 2011 | by Bixby

Last Sunday we had the joy of seeing our coworkers, Michael and Liz Cole and family, be officially commissioned to the work in France by their (and our) sending church. We were able to watch the morning service (in our late afternoon) via Skype. We then ate our supper while they were eating their lunch.

During their afternoon service, I gave the challenge to the church. I don’t think the connection was crystal clear, but I think they could hear and understand me. It is an odd feeling preaching into a computer camera.

We are so excited to think that by the end of the month, the Cole family will be on this side of the ocean! Please keep praying that God will supply the remaining support that they need.

Supporting churches

19 October 2011 | by Bixby

We thank God for the churches that have partnered with us to enable to remain here in France. If they abandoned us, we’d be gone in a hurry. As we are just beginning the early planning stage for next year’s furlough, we made a map a couple of days ago, marking the cities where they are located. Here’s what it looks like:

Ministry workers’ conference in Montauban

19 October 2011 | by Bixby

Last week I had the privileged of preaching twice (once in the morning and again in the afternoon) from the book of Jonah to a gathering of Christian workers that was held in the village of Montauban (just outside Toulouse, France). The gathering was planned and executed by a Christian association that runs a “Bible exposition.” Churches can use their materials as a means of gospel outreach in their communities.

The gathering was small (around 20) but there was a good spirit as someone from each ministry or church gave an update of how God was working in their area, and we then spent time in prayer for one another. It was also good for us to be able to meet people and ministries we had not known previously.

Excursion to Paris

19 October 2011 | by Bixby

Two weeks ago, Ruth and I took the train to Paris for a one-night, two-day trip. Many already know that we have been considering spending four months (January through April, 2012) in the Paris region helping a church there. Our purpose for this trip was to check into the schooling situation for our children and the hospital where our son will probably be born. Thanks to grandparents who were willing to keep our children, it also served as a mini honeymoon. The timing was perfect, coming just a few days after our 11th anniversary. The trip was a success. We feel much better about both the school and the hospital situations. We wrapped up the business part of our trip in the afternoon of our first day. That gave us a good amount of time to visit the city. Living in France does not mean that we know its capital. Ruth had only been in Paris a few times (not counting the drives throughs and airport layovers) for only a few hours each. We enjoyed getting to see a good part of the city on bicycle. Since returning from the trip we have given our consent to go and serve for in the church of Saint-Denis for four months. Please pray for the many details that have yet to follow.

Click on the link below to see a few pictures of our trip.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150874932155122.756673.822180121&type=1&l=f063287570

Distribution time

1 October 2011 | by Bixby

As in 2009 and 2010, it is time once again for our fall distribution. This week we received 5,000 flyers in the mail from the printer. They are brand new. All the content has been reworked and the look has been completely redesigned. The first group of these church invitations will go out tonight. Please pray that God will give our students who will be distributing them the access they will need to all the buildings, and that He will prepare the hearts of the students who will be receiving the invitation underneath their doors.

 While we’re at it, below are a few a pictures of the student night we had yesterday evening. Since my parents were out of town, we went over to help run it. There were 14 students in addition to the special speaker and our family. There seems to be a good spirit among the students. Pray for continued growth in godliness and in numbers.

The V-Club

22 September 2011 | by Bixby

We have often observed that one challenge of a small church is that a small church typically has all the same jobs as a large church, but with fewer people to labor in these ministries. God has blessed our church recently with a proportionately good number of children, but it has been a struggle to find ways to meet their needs while at the same time not exhausting the few laborers that we have available. In an effort to reduce the number of workers needed for a time, while at the same time not wanting to diminish the ability of any child to progress in an understanding of the Scriptures at his own level, we recently decided to write a 10-week program that would minister to all the children in the same group while seeking to adapt each week’s lessons at an age-appropriate level for each child. Our project for the month of August became the development of the “V-Club” for vérité (truth) and victoire (victory).

We presently have 10 regular attenders, ranging in age from 3 all the way to 12, including two autistic children. Convinced that one of the most important things we could do for these children is to lodge Scripture and basic Bible doctrine into their brains, we wrote the program based on the idea of Scripture memory connected to catechism-style questions and answers about some of the most basic Bible truths.  Tim chose the questions and verses for memory and developed the basic curriculum (choosing Bible stories to support each week’s truth), and I spent about two weeks parked behind the computer screen trying to turn all of that into some workbook materials and take-home verse packets divided into three different levels. We divided all of that into eight lessons (allowing for two review weeks), and we have already had our first two weeks. We are covering four basic divisions of truth: the person of God, the creation of man in the image of God, the fall of man into sin, and the substitution of Christ. We have about an hour and a half each week to work at teaching the children a theme song, the verse and catechism of the week, a Bible lesson which illustrates the truth of the week and then we divide up into three groups according to age level to try to apply what we have learned and work more carefully on the memory assignments for the week. Tim and I are working with Wilfried, a single man in the church, to accomplish these goals each week. At the end of this 10-week period, the children will be subdivided again into smaller classes where several of the ladies of the church will continue with the other programs they have already mapped out for this year.

Both Tim and I have been personally energized about this teaching opportunity, and have been encouraged already at the response of the children and their families. We are also pleased at the thought that this could be a program that we could develop more fully in the future, or at the very least re-use it in another setting. Thank you for your prayers for the children and families of Eglise Baptiste de Pessac (our own included!). While we are grateful for the opportunity to do our part, we are also grateful for the Christians God has given us to work with at the church, and that we are not alone in this effort to shape our children. Please continue to pray that God would raise up a future generation of Christians to be a testimony for Him and to further His purposes in this very secular country.

« Formation biblique »

21 September 2011 | by Bixby

Under the direction of Florent Monribot, the French pastor of a sister church on the other side of the river in Bordeaux, our church is taking part in offering some Bible training on an advanced level. Once a month through the course of this school year, from 9am to 1pm on a Saturday, the students will come to follow a specific, 3-month-long course. I have been privileged to teach the first block on the topic of Bibliology.

Last Saturday was our first class. We had 21 students who arrived on time and eager to study God’s Word. Though the format was new for them (I myself have only done this sort of thing one other time) and though the four hours had to be rather intense in order to cover all the material, the enthusiasm level seemed nevertheless high.

Personally, I found it very energizing to teach such a class. Please pray that the enthusiasm of these students will not wane, and that God will enable us to continue through the whole school year with much profit.

La Rentrée 2011

19 September 2011 | by Bixby

Well, two whole weeks have already passed since the start of school for our kids. Although I have been a little slow on the draw to report to you how their first days back to school have gone, I didn’t want to completely bypass the opportunity to give you my annual mother’s report.

As you might remember, this is Micaiah’s third year back in French school, while Miriam stayed at home last year to receive her K-5 training in English. (See here, here and/or here for previous reports of these back-to-school moments.)

Micaiah was tentatively excited about going back this year, while Miriam was all-out thrilled about getting to be reunited with the friends she had made in K-4 and finally getting to be at the same school as her big brother. (Her previous preschool had been on an adjoining campus.) She became a little more tentative when she learned the day before school started that she would have a “maître” in place of a “maîtresse” (i.e. man teacher instead of a woman), but according to her own report, it took all of about five minutes for her to decide that he was a kind man and a fun teacher, and she has been totally in her element ever since! Micaiah was just a little reticent about being one of the “small kids” again, since moving into the CE2 (3^rd grade) meant he would now share a hallway and a playground with the older elementary classes, but he shared with me in some early morning cuddle time during that first week of school that he really does like school and like his teacher.

So once again we are thanking the Lord for making our paths straight and leading us into another new school year. Miriam has already picked up some great French reading skills. The English reading skills she gained last year have given her a real boost, and I think it helps that she is a little older than most of the other kids in her class. (In France, children are grouped according to birth year rather than the school year, and since her birthday is in February, she is one of the oldest in her class.) Micaiah has become quite the reader in both languages. Thank you for your prayers for our children, and for their continued growth in the educational realm and in their spiritual development. In the next post, I plan to share a little about the Sunday school program we have been developing for our children and the other children at our little church.

P.S. Here’s a little video clip of Miriam reading her first paragraph in French following her first day of school.