Soiree.

We invited our language school teacher and her husband over for dinner Monday night. It went real well. Angie and I and the kids spoke french for the entire evening, several hours. Suprisingly it wasn't too difficult. Afterwards we breathed a small sigh of relief and talked a little without having to think a lot before hand. The weather has cooled off a little here and there is thunder rolling in the distance. I like bad weather myself. I looked forward to moving here because I knew they got more rain than we did in East Texas. So far we had not had any big storms because the weather has been cool still. I'm looking forward to seeing some good storms this summer. Thankfully the exchange rate has taken a turn in our favor. Over the last week it has dropped 5 cents. If it stays this low or gets any lower I may make a large withdrawal to put into our bank account here just to have while the exchange rate is good. God bless, JASON

Spring has arrived.

It was a beautiful day today. The temperature got up to around 19 and the sun was shining (about 66 Faren). Thursday Angie went with Yvain, Virginie, TJ, Gary, and Judy to the fruit market and to the mall. She found some great deals at the open air fruit market, like 4 kilos of onions for one euro. They went out to eat as well. At the restrooms in the restaurant at the mall you had to enter a code on you recent to be open the bathroom door. Free public restrooms are scarce. I stayed home with the kids, which I enjoyed more than shopping. Yesterday we went to a local fair (Foire du Trone). It took a train, tram, and bus for us to get there. It was nice, a little more expensive than we expected. Thankfully there was no entrance fee only pay per ride. The kids had a lot of fun. Reluctantly I put Andrew on a ride driving the cars (pictured) around a little track. He looked serious the entire ride, but when it came time to get off he would not let go of the steering wheel. I had to literally pry him off. There was quite a bit of cultural things around. You had to pay 50 cents a person to use the restrooms. There was a lot of pictures of women and men "scarcly clad" everywhere, at a kids fair of all places. It was nice getting out and getting some sun. We had everyone over for supper afterwards. Today was nice and relaxing. Just doing some around the house stuff. Looking forward to the services tommorrow. God bless, JASON

Our first visitors.

Bro. Gary and Sis. Judy Orr arrived Wednesday from Vermont. Yvain and Virginie thought that they would arrive Tuesday, but thankfully noticed just before they left for the airport that they would arrive Wednesday. We had a good visit with them. Gary is the pastor of the church in Vermont that Yvain attended while in college in the US. They were also his host family for 9 months. Yvain and Viriginie's son was real excited to see them. They managed to keep it a secret from him. We watched him while they went to the airport to pick up Gary and Judy and then returned to our house. TJ was real suprised when he saw them. He consideres them like his grandparents. We visited for a while, played a little at the language school until it started raining. Gary and Judy lasted a while before the jet lag caught up with them. Today Judy, Angie, Virginie, & Yvain are going to the open air fruit market in a town a little north of ours. The group will probably come over for supper later. Enjoy your day, God Bless, JASON

The results are in.

Pictured above is a local school parade, marching for protection of the environment. It was interesting, they stopped traffic for about 20 minutes and threw confetti everywhere. Ironically, I do not think the confetti is that good for the environment.
The test is finished thankfully. If you must know Angie made an 84 and I made an 81 (she beat me). That brings our semester average to Angie 89.5 and Jason 89.25 (she beat me again - but I guess if she always beats me then the average would be beating me as well- hmm). So according to the school handbook we are now at a language level of "A2-1" which means we "can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has. Can interact in a simple way and provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help." Sounds pretty basic though.

We had several students who are leaving for their perspective fields and we all had prayer for them. It is amazing to me the strength of God's love and faith in him. We have at the school people from various countries and backgrounds all united by a desire to serve God and learn french. One student left a successful medical practice in England, where he even met the Queen, to go to a small carribean Island and live without Air Conditioning to share the love of Christ with the people there. One student leaving today, moved here and learned french hoping to work in an elderly home for french speakers. What an awesome way to serve the Lord. I am looking forward to finishing school and moving on the our main focus here, to share the love of Christ through evangelism and discipleship - starting new churches.

In Exodus 3:7 God tells Moses that he has seen the affliction of his people and heard their cries and knows their sorrows. I have experienced some of that here as well. I have seen the strugles of the people around me, knowing what a difference a relationship with Jesus would make. I have heard their cries for help, I see them walking in sorrow, searching for peace and fulfillment through worldy things. What a difference Jesus would make in their life. I pray and hope that establishing churches here will multiply the amount of disciples of Jesus exponentially so the people here can be delivered from their taskmasters as well. Remember in the next chapter, Moses' complaint, "I am slow of speech and slow of tongue"(4:10). I have experienced that a lot recently. But God did make mans mouth and he has given us the command to go, because he will be with us and teach us what we shall say (4:11-12). He also gave us an Aaron not someone to speak for us but someone to teach us the language (4:15) so we can best communicate with the people here.

Our Father, We thank you for all that you are. Your power, grace, and amazing love for us; for this ministry you have called us to; continue to strengthen us and help us learn the language so that we can reach out to your people here, people that you have created to worship you and bring you honor and glory. It is our desire to deliver them from their taskmaster of sin and direct them to you and give you all the glory for it. Thank you for providing a wonderful support group behind us and laying a path before us. We pray that we will use all the gifts that you have given us to accomplish the things that you have for us to do. Help us to follow you with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Deliver us from weakness and temptation so that we will not get in the way of your blessings, but that we may be in good fellowship with you and recognize your leadership and your Spirit's guidance in our lives. Thank you Father for the wonderful ways you have blessed us so far. For the strength to serve you another day. Au nom de Jésus Christ, Amen.

A sigh of relief.

We breathe a sigh of relief now. We finished our first semester finals today. Glad that it is over. After Friday we get off for two weeks. Tommorrow we have an appointment to have our visa's looked over (carte de sejour). They claim that we left some paperwork out. Angie and I found a couple of babysitters and will travel to the suburb south of us tommorrow. Pray that it all goes well. There are some students that moved here in August that have still not received their carte de sejour and they are leaving in June. That is the way with the French government they seem to take their time with things. It is okay with me. I just walked Lilia and her friend back to her friends house. They took turns saying different French words the whole way. They have an extensive vocabulary and they both have the accent "parfait". It will take a long time for me to acquire I imagine. Above are a couple of pictures of our kids getting caught. Lilia's trash can full of candy wrappers, and we were wondering how all the candy was disappearing. And Andrew getting into Momma's purse at a friends house. God bless, JASON

Our children.

Just a little information about our kids. This picture taken before school one day this week.

Lilia is doing very good. She has been picking up french a lot faster in the last few weeks. She has also been taking piano lessons from one of the other language school students. She is very talented. This week she was making up her own song on the piano, with both hands playing different notes and tempos. I am impressed.

Caleb is also learning quickly. He enjoys sharing what he has learned each day. He is very musical as well. He can already sing about 20 songs and chants in french. Yesterday at lunch he taught me a round that we sang at the same time. He is still very popular at school with all the other students. He is sensitive. We watched a movie with the kids the other day and during a sad part he said, "This makes my heart sad".

Micah seems to be doing well. Fully potty trained (Yeah!) He likes school, I am not sure about his level of speaking. He doesn't talk a lot at school. He likes to play by himself even at home. He does know several songs and words, but he doesn't usually speak it to me. The teacher said that he was very calm and daydreams some.

Andrew likes his school. He is learning a few more english words. He told me yesterday that he wanted to "sit down". His sin nature is also kicking in good. He stomps his leg at times when he is upset. He is real cute when he is sleepy and laughs a lot.

One other note, I did add some videos of Angie and I singing some French Christians songs on youtube and Godtube. Just copy and paste the links below into your address bar, and click 'view more by same . . ' to view some more of them.
http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=581ccf2e167e543c3cbc&page=9&viewtype=&category=mr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olZSWwVW5R0
Enjoy and check back as we learn more ourselves we hope to post them. God bless, JASON

un cours difficile (Difficult lesson)

We had a hard lesson in class today. It was so difficult that I can not explain the reason. It took our teacher several times to explain. She eventually just told just to remeber the that is the way it is and not to try and figure out why. There is a saying that we here frequently, "C'est comme
ça." "That's the way it is". Here are a couple of examples, and the literal translation and the meaning.

Ils ont monté l'escalier à pied.
They have climbed stairs on foot.
They climbed the stairs by foot.

Ils sont montés au huitième étage.
They are climbed to the 8th level.
They climbed to the 8th floor.

Ils sont sortis de la voiture.
They are exited of the car.
They exited the car.

Ils ont sorti les bagages.
They have exited the baggages.
The took out the baggage.

Ils ont passé les vacances à Lyon.
They have passed the vacations at Lyon.
They spent the vacation in Lyon.

Ils sont passés par la Suisse.
They are passed by the Switzerland.
They passed Switzerland.

I can't even explain why that is so hard to get. When do you use être (to be) or avoir (to have)?
Just one of those language learning things. That's the way it is. ALSO, I uploaded me singing some praise songs in French on Godtube.com it should be available within the next 24 hrs, do a search for "il est exalte". God bless, JASON

Une grande surprise pour moi.

We had a suprise when we woke up this morning. About and inch and a half of snow fell during the night. The kids loved it. We had a longer than normal walk to school, as they stopped to play. It was the good kind of snow as well. Real powdery. It was not on the roads and sidewalks but everywhere else was a good blanket. Our services went well again Sunday. We continued learning aspects of the church and we are working on a church covenant. Yvain and Virginie are moving into a new apartment soon and so they didn't eat with us this time because they needed to pack more. I enjoyed watching the services at Walnut Street on Skype. Also, on a different note, we bought some frozen pizzas from the store and it had the ingredients and instructions listed in twelve languages. I couldn't even recognize all of them. Attached are some snow pictures taken from our apartment. God bless, JASON

Saturday

We had a good Saturday. We were invited over by a German couple who are in class with us. Our friends were nice enough to pick us up and take us to their home about 3 miles away from the school. They have 3 boys about the same ages as ours so it was a busy time. We fed the kids first and then we ate. We had a dish with curry chicken and apricots over rice and also a lettuce salad. It was very good and so was the fellowship. We had a great time visiting and the children playing. They are a very sweet couple and we are thankful for the nice day out.