French Labor Day
May 1, 2006
Today is Labor Day in France, and, celebrating it as we do in the States, that means that we don't have to labor at all. Most of my neighbors are having picnics and barbecuing. I can smell grilled meat from my balcony and windows. Yummmmm. I am trying to catch up on some financial reports that are almost late. Not nearly as much fun as picnics.
Well, this week has been another busy one for me, mostly because I am finally having ‘real’ work to do for IC France. Awhile back Laurent and I talked about starting seminars for Muslim evangelism, to train interested laypeople on what they can do in their own church and neighborhood. It was his decision to start in the Bordeaux area, as sort of a ‘pilot program’ and see how it goes from there. We can make our mistakes and improvements after starting here in our home area. So, the plan is to have four Saturday sessions over the next year. (I think that’s a bit stretched out, but I am following Laurent’s lead in this, as a cultural learning experience). The first Saturday is June 10, then October, then January and then we will finish in May with a whole weekend, designed to then challenge the folks to do something really large (like a neighborhood blitz) at the end of it.
We have been planning out the sessions/subjects for the first one in June, since that is coming up quickly. I will do be doing two session completely on my own (I was chomping at the bit to do at least one, but I wanted Laurent to ask me, because I figured that would show whether he thinks my French is up to par). So as soon as he said, “Do you think you could handle doing a 45 minute session?” I jumped at it, apparently giving him confidence to later give me a second one. I will be doing a session in the morning on prayer as the best strategy for evangelism, including the various prayer guides for Muslims (one of which we print in French--above), as well as prayer walking and other radical ideas like that. Then in the afternoon, we’ll have a split session: I will do a session on the Koran while Laurent does Mohammed, and then the groups will switch. So I will actually have to do three sessions, although two of them will be the same. I am really excited about it NOW. THEN, I will probably be paralyzed with nervousness. I am already gathering all the resources I have to write out my presentation. There will be a few other sessions that day, forming a basic foundation to start from, but Laurent will do those, because they are basically that statistics of Islam in France/Europe, and the necessity of the French to reach out to the Muslims as a people group. He can do that better than me, anyway.
I suppose after that one in June, we will be much better set for the future ones. At this point, we don’t know if there will be 10 people or two hundred there. This is all new territory both for me and for the French Assemblies of God. Please pray for our pilot program to be successful in this region as we start out, so we can continue it all over France. And please pray for me, to prepare well for a whole lot of speaking in French!