Before we knew it

The Neighborhood party went real well. There were only two families that came. Our neighbors, who also worked on the garage, and the family that comes to the bible study that we know well. It worked out perfectly because it was not up to us to keep the conversation going, we could just listen and add comments here and there. It was a lot less stressful that way. Before we knew it, it was 9 in the evening. Saturday we also decided that we would visit a church near Toulouse. Angie had mentioned to me that she wanted to find some english speaking kids for ours to play with occasionally. We contacted a pastor that we had connections throught the language school and visited in their services. We had a good time, we even met the man who started the church 32 years ago. After services we ate with the Pastor and his family, who are missionaries from America, invited us to their house for supper. We enjoyed the time getting to know them better. They have been in France for 11 years and had a lot of good advice concerning life in France from the American Missionaries perspective. We discussed a lot about ministry in France as well. Once again before we knew it, it was 5:00. We enjoyed the 2 hour drive home, nice scenery and the kids all took naps. Coquelicot. This is the name of a wildflower, called a poppy in English, that we have seen all over in France. We pulled over this morning and picked some for Lilia. She said their teacher told them to bring some to school. I am wondering what they need them for. As it is almost the first of the month, I will be getting our finances in order and working on our monthly report, which if you would like to receive just let me know. How about another Micah quote, I haven't posted one in a while, but he is still coming out with them. This morning he suddenly said, "Let's have a picnic by the lake, we can chase squirrels and run over dogs." God bless, JASON

Encouraged

So it really has been a busy couple of days. Seriously. Wednesday I had a good session with my language partner. I had him explain a song to me. I have attached the song below. I like the song and music, but even thougth I knew the meaning to all the words, I could not get the meaning of the song. He explained it to me well.
Then Wednesday night, there was a little excitement. Storms had moved in and we heard some noises like there was a loose shutter beating against the house. Then we heard glass break and loud voices. We looked out the window and found that the neighbors double pane glass door was broken out. We turned off all the lights and listened quietly by the window to try and see what was going on. While there, Angie wanted to move closer to the window. She lost her balance kicking a metal trash can, leaned against the wall and turned the light on. It was hilarious.
Thursday, Caleb had no school because his teacher was on strike. We dropped the other kids off at school. Came back to the house and made invitations for a nieghborhood party (fête des voisins). The party will be Saturday at 6:30. We passed them out to all the neighbors except one that did not have a mailbox, picked up the kids for lunch. On the way back for lunch we stopped by and dropped off the last invitation, Angie had a good converstation with the lady. It was the same lady who stopped by last week asking about the cats. They talked for a while. Turns out that last night a young man stopped by her house with cuts on his arm saying that there were some crazy guys at our neighbors. He was the victim of the broken glass evidently. She said we should talk to our home owner because he is a police man and would know what to do in instances like those. She gave us several jars of jelly that she had made and invited us over sometime. She said she would have loved to come to the party, but this is her first weekend off in a while and so she is going to make a trip to Spain with her husband. Angie was really encouraged to have this contact. After lunch we dropped the kids off at school, made hair cut apointments for me and Caleb. Then we stopped by an association that has scheduled French language conversations. We then went back and got our hair cut. Then returned home. We received phone calls from the home owner and from a neighbor. The neighbor had called to say that she would not be able to come to the party because she jsut lost her husband. Then another neighbor stopped, who has been working on the garage enclosure, he said he and his wife would love to come. Then the plumber stopped by and said he would be there in the morning to fix the problem. We had supper and then bible study. There were 5 who came for bible study. We studied encouragement from Hebrews 12. It went well, the praise, study, and prayer time was great. I am praying that God will bless the party Saturday. It has already given us some contacts and we at least know that one couple will come. I am already encouraged.
Today Caleb is sick and staying home. We are trying to get things ready for tomorrow and looking forward to family night tonight. Attached is the video that I spoke of previously. The song is On s'attache by Christophe Maé (see on youtube). It was a number one hit in France a couple of years ago. God bless, JASON

Holiday Weekend

I keep thinking to myself that I had just updated the blog, but now I realize it has been several days. We enjoyed the long weekend. Monday was a holiday, Pentecost, and the kids had no school. We spent a lot of the time enjoying the outdoors, the temperature was perfect this past weekend. Services went well Sunday. I taught the class for our boys and I think it went well. At the end I asked if Caleb understood me and he said he did. Tuesday we sent the papers off to begin the process for our visa (carte de sejour). I am hoping that it will go quickly and smoothly. After we receive our carte de sejour, then we can get our French Drivers license and Angie can get a carte vital, which reimburses medical expenses. This evening I will have my language session with Cédric. I have many questions for him, from the meaning of a song to phrases in my bible study lesson. Tomorrow Caleb has no school because his teachers are on strike. They are going to close his building and combine their classes with Lilia's building. Parents and teachers are worried that it will be too crowded so they are demonstrating against it. We were able this week to meet our next door neighbors officially. They are a young couple from Spain. They often have family and friends stay with them. They speak French, Spanish, Italian, and some English. I hope that we have the opportunity to have them over. Attached pictures are of the kids enjoying this past weekend. Playing a game on family night, enjoying their first banana split, and playing in the sprinkler. God bless, JASON

Blooming

I ended up receiving a call from Cédric on Wednesday and we had our first language session. It was really good, we introduced ourselves. When he was sharing about himslef, he said, "My mother is Christian. Do you know what that means?" Wow. It ends up that his mother is active in the pentecostal church in town. It was great to find out. In fact Cédric mentioned that he wants to get back to attending church and was interested in coming to the bible study at our home. It was exciting and we had a really good talk. Thursday afternoon I went to print some pictures for Angie. She is going to have couple of months where she will want to stay off her feet some, so she wants to work on scrapbooks. I took my portable drive to the store to get some prints made of the pictures. I thought we had about 700 and they had a sale were you could print 100 for $12. I should have realized that I was in trouble when they took one hour to load onto the machine. There were over 5,000 pictures. Needless to say, I decided I needed to go through and prioritize clean and prioritize some. The Bible study was good. Three came and we learned about Faith. Today I am working on the Sunday School lessons for the youngers kids class. Today is a pretty day, it is supposed to get up to 75. The market in town was the busiest I had seen in a while. I will need to get the yard mowed tomorrow, it has been three weeks since the last mowing. Tonight we will have family night and we plan to make banana splits with the kids. So, probably a large part of Saturday morning will be cleaning up the resulting mess. The yard is blooming all over. There is, what I would call bramble, along our back fence that has three different flowering plants mixed in. I have attached a picture, along with some Fennel (a common vegetable) that grows in our yard, and some flowers in the flower garden. Enjoy and God bless, JASON

Kill them before they open their eyes.

This week has continued to be blessed. Sunday services went well. Sunday night we met a neighbor of ours, who was wanting to kill some kittens. Not as bad as it sounds, perhaps. She had seen a stray cat around that had just had babies and was wanting to find them to end their misery because she knew the mother would not be able to take care of them. She described how she planned on doing it. Awkward. She also said that she must do it before they open their eyes, because once they look at you it is too hard to do. Okay. Nice to meet the neighbors. Monday and Tuesday passed well. I spent a part of both days getting pictures together to print. Leclerc is having a promotion on prints, and so we are going to get some pictures printed so Angie can do some scrapbooking. Lesson is about halfway done for the bible study. I have not heard from my language helper who said he would call today. I hope to hear from him. Yelena will be coming over this evening for supper and to practice music. Last night we lost track of time, which seems easy to do here. We got home with the kids and they played outside some, while we staightened up and started supper. It ended up being 7:00 before we started eating. It worked out okay since the kids did not have school on Wednesdays, but I missed the bible study in Carcassonne. We are still dealing with plumbing issues and I need to go to the store tomorrow to pick up some more items to deal with it. It is supposed to be 75 degrees tomorrow, which I am looking forward to. Attached is a picture of our cherry tree which is producing several ripe cheries a day. I am going to wake Angie up from her nap. Wish me luck :) God bless, JASON

Pajamas evening.

The Bible study went well again. We had four present not including our family. We had really good discussions after the lesson, good comments and good questions. I wish I spoke perfect french. Maybe I am just a little rusty, but it seemed like I mispronounced more words than normal. I am looking forward to starting next with with my language helper. Please pray for Cédrique, not only will he have a big task before him, but he will be hearing the gospel as well. Lilia was able to have her friends from the church in Carcassonne come over for a "soirée pyjama", a sleepover, or literally a pajama evening. I am glad that she is able to have other christian girls over. Their father is a plumber and gave some advice concerning our plumbing problems. He will stop back by this next week and see what more he can do. We are having a friend come over this afternoon and practice music together. Other than that, I am working on the Sunday school lesson for the older kids for Sunday Morning. Attached is a picture of Pajama evening coke floats (coke and ice cream), and a double rainbow that we saw this past week. God bless, JASON

Break time.

The past few days have been a little different. Last week we had trouble with the electricity, now we have been having plumbing problems. It has been draining slower and slower, but Tuesday it stopped draining completely. I bought a snake and crawled under the house and did what I was supposed to (I will not go into a large amount of detail for those with weak stomachs). It has gone back to working slowly now. The only problem is that our washing machine has to be drained into a bucket, because the drain can't keep up. I just have to keep an eye on the bucket and empty it halfway through. If our snake had been longer it might have solved the whole problem, but I bought the longest one available. We called a plumber but have not heard back from him. Since it's a holiday today I think that everyone is taking a break. While I was at the store I was able to help a man from England who didn't speak French solve some issues with his bank card. It reminded me of those early months in France, when we had no clue what anyone was saying. The weather has gotten cooler again, it is supposed to get down to 40 degrees tonight. I am ready for the Bible Study tonight. I think we should have our normal crowd. I am excited about the future of the work in France. My parents have purchased their tickets and plan to be here the first two weeks in September. I am already looking forward to seeing them, showing them around the area, and introducing them to our friends we have been able to minister and fellowship with these past nine months. Tomorrow I think that we will take the kids to see a movie and Lilia is supposed to have two friends come over to spend the night tomorrow. It was supposed to have been for this evening but the older sister was gettting over a slight sickness. Attached picture is of the kids playing Ouistiti at our friend's house last Saturday. Enjoy your day. God bless, JASON

It's a girl!

The title says it all. THe announcement was followed by the delightful squeels of all the kids. They all discussed it yesterday and agreed that they wanted it to be a girl. I was not able to make it to the appointment, the Doctor was behind and so I had to get the kids. There came a downpour, but after we stopped by McDonalds to celebrate, we saw a nice rainbow on the way home. Doctor was surprised to discover that this will make Angie's fifth c-section. Being the fifth one, she wants to have the c-section three weeks before the due date, which will be the 2nd or third of September. Pictured is the sonogram, looking at the baby from the side. God bless, JASON

Mother's Day 1

This is the first Mother's day of the year so far. Mother's Day in France is in June. Angie will be treated twice, which she deserves. The Bible study went well Thursday night. There were two who came, and we had a good study and fellowship. Friday, I spent getting paperwork done and doing some shopping. In the afternoon Angie, Andrew and I visited the jardin aux plantes, a plant garden here in Limoux. It was like a zoo for plants, with labels and information on all kinds of plants. There were two acres and we could have stayed all afternoon, but Andrew was not as interested as Angie and I. They had plants from all over, I think there were at least 10 different types of Roses alone. Saturday, I took the kids for a hike in the hills behind our house. They all really enjoy walking around and exploring. Lilia was facinated by the streams that had formed in all the crevices in the hills. They had formed from the three days of rain that we received. Services went well today. Had a nice restful afternoon, got some reading done, listened to the services at our sending church. Angie is preparing a lesson for the kids at this moment and then it is off to bed. I have attached pictures of us planting our strawberries and tomato plants. They look like they will survive the cold weather and snow. God bless, JASON

Electricity

The last few days have been interesting to say the least. It rained all day Tuesday and most of the day Wednesday and is raining right now. Tuesday the power went off a few times during the day, so I started saving the Bible Study handouts that I was preparing. I had almost finished it Monday, but was still changing and adding some things on Tuesday. I knew that the power could go out any moment so I was saving it everytime I changed something. Wouldn't you know that power went out when it was being saved. Wednesday I tried to open the document and got an error. After an hour of working with it, I surrended to the fact that it was lost. I even downloaded an ASCII reader, the document in ASCII was all zeros. Wednesday the power was never on long enough for me to get restarted on it. It was kind of humerous later, because the power would always go out at the most inconvient time. Would you like some more examples? I thought you would. How about when it went out halfway into our microwave popcorn being popped. Yeah, we got 15 popped kernels out of that bag. How about right when you start clothes drying? Twice, right when I got the computer booted up all the way? Right when Angie sat down to read a book? Right when Andrew's Nintendo DS batteries went dead and it needed to be charged? I could go on and on. Right after we went and bought McDonalds because we had no power to cook it came back on. We enjoyed the day in spite of the electrical problems. So far today it has stayed on. I am trying to get the handout done for tonight and then get the lesson typed up, which I would have done Tuesday and Wednesday. I think I will add a sunny picture of some wildflowers:   God bless, JASON

Number 1 song of all time.

Saturday the weather cleared enough for us to go on a walk with our friends. We had a really good time, the kids loved it. Along the trail they have restored huts that shepherds used made completely out of rocks. The kids loved entering each one. Services went well Sunday at the church in Carcassonne. It was good to see everyone. The pastor preached a good message from the Song of Solomon. It is probably the third time in my life that I have heard a message from this book of the Bible, even though it is labeled as the greatest song or the song of songs. My father is writing his Doctoral Thesis on this book, you can read his prospectus by clicking here. I am looking forward to reading it when he is finished. After the services we enjoyed a meal together and had some real good fellowship. Yesterday and today, I have been working on the lesson for the Bible Study this Thursday. I am looking forward to it. The weather has turned cold this week. It was 40 degrees (F) when I went to bed last night, in May. It has been raining for a few hours now. . . okay, I'm back, it is about 20 minutes later. Unbeknownst to you the power went out so the computer went off. It seems to do that occasionally. As I was saying, it is snowing outside now. Big flakes are falling and the temperature is 38 degrees, in May. Wow. We are currently under Alert Orange, which is a weather warning. If it is moved to Alert Red, then they shut down the roads and you will not be allowed to drive, in May. I attached a picture of the snow, you may have to click it and see ir larger to be able to see the snow. Also is a picture of Lilia's concert. I'm not sure if it would rank close to number one, but a cute sing none-the-less. God bless, JASON

The first.

We are getting close to having a normal schedule. Thursday and Friday was spent getting more chores done around the house, as well as doing paperwork. While we were in the states I signed up for an online associates degree program in missions. I started doing some of the required reading, a book called Cross-cultural Servanthood which is very interesting. Lilia's class was part of a jazz concert in Limoux last night. I thought it went very well. They sang several songs, I will try to post some video clips later. We had planned on going on a small hike with some friends, but since it is raining we are going to go to their house instead. First I need to do some garden work. We bought some tomato and strawberry plants the kids are going to help me plant. I also need to get all the finances done and get my report finished. It is the first of the month. Attached picture is Caleb and Andrew on the long flight back to Europe. God bless, JASON