A single question.

Another good week, Monday morning was spent shopping. Tuesday and Wednesday, I worked on my lesson for the Bible Study thursday night. I think that I am getting a little faster. I decided to have a lesson on salvation. We looked at the three persons on the cross. Afterwards someone asked a single question and made a remark about something that she didn't know, but had learned. They thought that you didn't go to heaven when you died, only when Jesus returns. It was great to experience someone learning a truth of God's word. It sparked a good 20 minute discussion. One middle age man has attended seminary before and is a mature Christian. He has demonstrated a good amount of Bible knowledge and I know that he will play an important role in our ministry here. We enjoyed fellowship after the bible study as well, there were 4 present (not including my family). I plan on starting another blog for my French Bible studies lessons. I will post the link on the side if you are interested in reading them. Google translator might be able to help out.

Today we spent the morning shopping for Andrew's birthday presents, he will turn four tomorrow. We will have a small party for him tomorrow afternoon. We also picked up some roses to plant in the flower garden. We have seen some beautiful rose bushes here, with what seems like hundreds of blooms on them. Maybe we will have the same success. Traffic was bad in town this morning. Friday morning is the market, and all downtown there are booths set up selling all kinds of merchandise. That takes up the downtown parking. Also the high school parking lot is closed for repaving and there was some kind of sports event in town today. it took a while to find a parking spot for the kids. Tonight is family night and we bought a game called "Croque Carotte". It is a board game that Micah plays in his class and we are going to let him teach us how to play. It should be interesting, I know that he will enjoy it. Attached pictures are of a flock of sheep that blocked the road for a little Sunday afternoon and an Escargot on our back porch. Let me leave you with this little tidbit that had Angie and I laughing all day. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. God bless, JASON

An interesting meal.

We had a meal with a lot of laughs yesterday. We had gathered for supper while we ate frozen pizza. It started with Micah who did something funny, I don't remember what. Next Caleb was talking loudly, telling a story. Angie was trying to tell him to lower his voice because he was talking too loud (something we have to do frequently in France). Instead of getting quieter he put his hand over his mouth and continued telling the story. Next Angie was talking about one of our friends who has a bady due in two weeks, which would have been three weeks last week. She said, "She is one week closer to having her baby in two weeks." That didn't make much sense. Soon thereafter, Lilia said, "Guess what in England they call french fries - chips." That was funny because she had already told us that several times. After the laughter I decided we needed to have a prayer and return to our eating. I called on Caleb to pray and he started his prayer, "Bonjour-là", which is like saying, "hello there". We all started laughing again, and Andrew started holding up his hands and saying, "Stop". We don't know where he got that from.

We are out of school for vacation next week. One day we plan on taking the kids to Paris to see a couple of the sights that they have really been looking forward to.  JASON

The UPS guy drives a mercedes.

It is weird to see the UPS guy and all the big trucks being Mercedes. Here if someone has an American made car they are usually thought of as being rich, examples that I have seen are Pontiac Firebird, PT Cruiser, Hummer, Cadillac. They are several Ford cards sold here. They have some European commercials that you may (or may not) find funny. Examples http://youtube.com/watch?v=aJGtCe_26EQ http://youtube.com/watch?v=X-MZaV9uz6M CULTURAL WARNING: These are european commercials - content is not for animal lovers, or those with light stomachs!! Another cultural thing, We have a couple of German students in our class. We are always picking on them about having beer in their water thermos in class. Another student bought a beer and poured it in his thermos while he was out on break. I wasn't there we he returned and got a drink, but they said he was suprised.

Another funny word today, the French word for a dresser is commode. So, you put your clothes in a commode. There was another humerous moment, but I will let Angie share that one. Another strange thing: Words here as I said earlier are masculine or feminine. We found out today that the word feminine is masculine, try and make sense of that. I had to pray in French today. After I finished, I looked at the teacher to see what comment she had. She said," Wow". There was a moment of silence as the students, including me, didn't know how she meant it. Another student said, "Did God understand it?" She did end up meaning it positively.

Congrats, Krys (we see your name everywhere, it is a chain optometry store here, spelled the same way) for answering the last quiz, question. I will do more of those later. We had good services Sunday, attendence of 9, including my family. Angie and I both have been having many people come up to us and speak french, so we must be adapting some. We are learning more and more. JASON

Liaison

The hardest thing about about French so far is the Liaison. That is the "slurring" of words together. For example, "Qu'est-ce c'est?" (What is that) sounds like "keskuhsay". You have to pay a lot of attention to the Liaisons. If you miss one speaking to a French person they may not even understand you. That has happened a couple of times in class where the teacher didn't understand what we were saying because we missed the Liaison.

QUIZ question for you: As you may know French has masculine and feminine nouns. Therefore I pose the following question. If I would say, "I am an American", I would say. "Je suis americain (masculine)." But if I said, "My nationality is American" I would say "Ma nationalité est americaine (feminine)." Any know why please respond with a comment.

Angie is in the Living room watching Star Academy (the French version of American Idol) and Celine Dion was just on there as guest. The Lord blessed us in a special way. Andrew (1 1/2 years old) hurt his arm again last night. Back at Thanksgiving he dislocated his Radius bone at his Elbow. It happened again last night, when I was helping him up. We knew that is what it was because he was not using in the same way as when it happened last time. So today we planned on making the appointment with the Pediatrician that we use here, who speaks English. However when Angie arrived at the school this morning to ask them about making an appointment, the principal said that one of the Language students is a Doctor (medecin). It happened to be Ian whose daughter is in the class with Lilia. He looked at it, found out that it had already popped back into place and explained more stuff to us. It worked out great.

Micah and Caleb sat in class with us Thursday (juedi). They did real well, and I was proud of them, and shocked. They both have been going to school okay for us now. I did have a funny experience one day this week. I walked Caleb to his classroom door and let him in and walked away, thankful that it went well. Suddenly I felt a tug and there he was behind me in tears. He said, "Daddy that was the wrong classroom." Oops (oh la la). Thankfully he calmed down quickly and I again dropped him off, at the correct room. Thank you for taking time to read and God Bless (Dieu vous bénisse), JASON

Culture

Another day is finished (C'est finite). One thing humerous that we learned in language school today was the French word for a suit is costume. After school today we took the kids to a large park nearbye and let them play with several other children whose parents attend the language school. They had a great time. They were tired and fussy on the way home. I don't know what is causing it, maybe all the walking, but the kids are always hungry. We can feed the lunch, snacks, chips, drink and they will still be asking for more. The only thing we know to do is feed them more. Thursday we have a grève, a strike. All the public transportation and sevaral of the schools will not be working. Contrary to the US, things just shut down and people do without. We will have to find somewhere else for our two middle boys to be because all their teachers are striking. No one will take buses, trains, or subway. The people here in France do not seem to mind much, because they all like the freedom to do so themselves. I have found that many of the French seem to like to break the rules. It is illegal to honk your horn unless it is an emergency. You can guess how many times that gets broken. It is also against the law not to clean up after you dog has done his business on the sidewalk. All that I say is you better watch where you put you feet. Caleb has been saying a few things in french that I don't know. Nobody else does either though. He has a good friend at school that only speaks french, but they get along good. No school tommorrow but we are going to the lab to get some practice. God Bless, JASON

Funny & Interesting.

We had some interesting moments. First concerning the language barrier. In all of our class you can sense the frustration of not being able to communicate with others. There is a German couple in our class who speak very little English as well, I can only imagine how lonely they get. Twice now I have been asked directions by a French person and not been able to help them out except to say, "Je parle un peu de français, désolé." (CULTURAL EXPLANATION: The french especially in Paris love to help with directions, if you ask and they do not know, they might even help you find someone who knows, which happened to Angie last week. The will go somewhere not knowing where the place is located and just ask directions several times.) I did go to the bank today and get an appointment to set up our accoutn all by myself, and the teller spoke no english, pretty good huh. One of the students in our class was noticably having communication trouble when he asked the teacher how to say, "Don't rip me off you crazy baker!" Another interesting item, we found out that almost all the baptist churches here do not have a problem with Alocohol as a beverage conservatively; however many of the churches will not even baptize an individual if they smoke. I found that interesting seeing how smoking seemed to be socially accpetable in France and was not prohibited in restaurants until the day before we arrived. A hilarious moment happened last night. Angie and were in the bathroom (salle de bain, or WC) when Micah (3 yr old) came in to use the restroom. He was wearing Lilia's heelies (thoughs shoes with wheels built in). Through a lot of trouble and unsteadiness he managed to do his business and afterwards turned around and said, "Wew". Then he took them off to brush his teeth. You would have had to been there to see how funny it looked him trying to pull his pants up and down. I wish we could have taped it. Both the boys went to school yesterday without any tears, they just walked right in. That was a relief. Yesterday in class we went over how to say when you Birthday is. What are the odds that yesterday, two people in our class of ten had a birthday that day. And on of the kids of a classmate had a brithday, all that same day. There was a joyful singing of happy brithday (joyeaux anniversaire) and later one of the students bought everyone a Twix. Monday in Bible Language class, It was pointed out that part of our homework is to memorize the books of the Bible in french. Wow. That was something that I didn't even consider having to do. I going to have to memorize John 3:16 and the Roman road, etc. It seems a little overwheliming when you think about it, but we will just take a little at a time. Thanks for taking the time to read up on us, God bless, JASON