Rainey Days

This week represents the first week of the Muslim fast of Ramadan. Based on the lunar cycle, the Muslim calendar has only 354 days, so the month of Ramadan comes 11 days earlier than the year preceding. Millions of Muslims around the world will be fasting from dawn until sunset, denying themselves not only food, but water, medicine, tobacco, and sexual relations during those hours. Once the sun sets, Muslims break their fast with a huge meal, usually a festive family time. I can remember breaking the fast with one family in Palestine years ago, as we all gathered around the table in their dining room. A radio in the corner blared out the prayers of the sheikh (religious leader) who would indicate the moment when we could all begin eating. I couldn’t understand the Arabic, but they were all poised, literally with one hand over the piece of food they were going to grab first, as the sheikh chanted out the prayers. All the sudden, the father nodded his head at the family, and they g...

Every now and then there are moments when I think I have finally caught up with everything. The seasonal newsletters are written and posted My quarterly financial reports are (finally) finished My apartment is clean (even the dish drainer is empty, Mom) I actually went to the gym a few times this week Laundry is done, folded, and put away My plants are even watered I’m not caught up on emails, but let’s be realistic, is that humanly possible? In September I read through Proverbs, as part of my Read Through the Bible in One Year plan, and as always, I am impressed by the emphasis on discipline in the book of Proverbs. And every time I read Proverbs, I think about how undisciplined my life is. In certain areas, I can maintain discipline, but like sticking my fingers in the proverbial dam, as soon as I manage to control one area of my life, something else breaks down. That’s why it’s so nice when I have everything done—even if it’s only for a few seconds, anyway! In other news: I have ste...

This week was the Fall Pastor’s Retreat for the Southern France Assemblies of God. I went as a representative of the IC France ministry, and I really enjoyed it, since I am getting to know more and more pastors. The retreat was held at a beautiful Christian campground in south central France, lovely in its country setting and used by churches and Christian groups as a retreat center. Oddly, though, the campground doesn’t have a central meeting hall; instead, they have a “big-top” tent, where we had our two days of meetings. The mornings were spent in praise, prayer, and sermons on the theme of “The Church, Its Ministries, and Money Issues.” Thrilling! The afternoons were reserved for business meetings and reports from the various committees. As in June, the best times were during the meals. Being French food, the meals are excellent, and each time, I meet new and different people. Here is a funny story for those of you who enjoy my penchant for embarrassing myself: during the se...

Several times in the past I have mentioned my colleague, Weléli and her husband Charles. Since their relocation to Bordeaux, she has become my best friend here. We work together every day, our desks facing each other in the same room. We talk for hours, and slowly over the past few weeks, we have talked about more personal and painful details of our lives. One day she told me that over her 8 years of marriage, she has been unable to conceive. After consulting doctors, she and her husband tried in-vitro fertilization three times, but that was unsuccessful. They finally gave up, not able to handle emotional roller-coaster any more. She is 42 years old, but believes that with God anything is possible. She and her husband have wept, prayed, fasted, and trusted God for the past 8 years. When she was telling me all this, my heart broke for her pain. Weléli is a former Muslim who moved to France to be a live-in babysitter for her sister already living here, 15 years ago. When she co...

Today I got the chance to do something I have wanted to do for months! I worked on the “CoffeeBus” of my church in Bordeaux. The CoffeeBus is a ministry that converted an actual bus into a mobile café; each Thursday, an evangelism team drives into a ghetto north of Bordeaux center, parks the bus, and serves free coffee and other goodies to anyone who enters the bus. There are tracts and Bibles on each café table, along with muffins or other refreshments. While some team members walk the neighborhood with tracts, others sit at the tables in the bus to start conversations with the people who enter. Since the neighborhood there is low-income housing, it is also filled with Muslim immigrants; voilà pourquoi j’y suis allée! (That’s why I went). During July and August, the ministry stops its usual trips there, so this was the first day back in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain all day here. For those two reasons, we didn’t have many people come. There were about 1...

In just a few minutes here in France, CNN International will begin rerunning its original September 11, 2001 footage as part of its anniversary memorial. When I heard that CNN was going to rebroadcast the footage, I made a mental note to watch, but now as the time draws near, I’m not sure I can do it. I think its right and appropriate to remember such an egregious attack against our country, but I’m not sure I can handle the emotional content of the images combined with my own memories. I’ve spent almost an hour writing and rewriting this post, and it comes down to this: I can’t write about it. I can’t say what I want to say to commemorate the heroes and the fallen. The only thing I can do is pray for the families whose loved ones never came home that day. Looking back over the past five years, I think our nation has become stronger, but when circumstances like 9/11 force us to realize how weak and fragile we are, I hope that we remember that the Lord is our salvation. May God ...

When I was a kid, my family used to play a game called Dark Tower. It was a quest to cross a medieval kingdom, aquiring three keys to storm the Dark Tower. If you solved the riddle of which key opened which lock, you won. That was not too difficult. The hardest part was making your way through the kingdoms, turn after turn, gathering the necessary keys. There was a motorized machine (before computer games!) which told you what happened on your turn: you could get lost, for example, or be struck by plague or worse yet, be attacked by brigands and lose your gold and your warriors in a raging battle. Fortunately, you could buy a scout (so you wouldn’t get lost), a healer (to solve those pesky plague problems) and best of all, a “beast” to carry all your gold. That way even if attacked by brigands, your gold was still safe, even if all your warriors died. Several times lately, since we’ve begun this massive moving project to our new building, I have wished I could buy a beast. It w...

This past week was a good mail week! New pictures of my adorable niece Sydney arrived on Tuesday; a bunch of ladies from my church sent a card; I got a surprise packet of sermon notes from my brother’s church plant “launch service”; a missionary friend emailed to ask if she could visit France for Christmas; and a comment on my blog made my day on Sunday! Christy’s email was la cerise sur le gâteau! (the cherry on the cake) for me. We met in 2002 in Springfield, Missouri interviewing with the Foreign Missions board. Both hip, young singles, we hung out a lot that week and later served as emotional support for each other during the stressful months of fund-raising. We chose to be roommates at School of Missions in 2003 for five weeks, before heading our separate missionary ways—Christy to St. Peterburg, Russia to work with Teen Challenge, a ministry for drug and alcohol addicts, and me to France to work with Muslims. I haven’t seen her since that School of Missions; its kind of amazing ...

"Suffering for Jesus" is what my dad has always said over the years anytime I spent a day at a Mediterranean beach. It's his little joke and I humor him (smile, roll the eyes). But the last few days, I've paid back all that beach time in blood, sweat, and the tears will come soon, no doubt! We've been doing the actual moving that we cleaned the building and packed for. Wednesday we unloaded two truckloads of boxes that had been in storage (this includes all of our stock of CDs, cassettes, books and Bibles in Arabic, French, and English--that means HEAVY boxes!) Then yesterday starting at 9 am, six of us started by loading all the furniture and boxes from our present office into the moving truck and then taking that load to the new building and unloading it. Then we did it all again with a second truckload until 9 pm. Of course both of these locations involve going up and down stairs with heavy loads of archives, files, etc. And no matter how wonderful and friendly...