Dacia Logan MCV

I justed picked up our car, 2009 Dacia Logan MCV 85ci 1.5 liters. It had 12 km on the odomoter when I got it. We were able to get it insured in Carcasonne for a real reasonable amount. Only 49 euros a month, full coverage. Lilia and I traveled to Massy yesterday to pick it up and get the last few things out of our appartment here. The car is great. It has more room than the Opel Zafira we had rented. I'm looking forward to the drive home to see how well it does on the highways. It is supposed to get 4.8 liters per 100 km in gas mileage. Which is real good for a 7 passenger car. I am sure that I am in France because after we settled all the paperwork, they gave me a bottle of champange. When we get it back home, I will take pictures and post them here. Sunday went real well, we ate lunch with the Pastor's son and daughter-in-law and had an excellent time. Hopefully we will now be able to put all our time and efforts into the search for a house. Picture is Lilia in front of some vineyards near our house.

Houses and Cars

Tuesday – We went and saw a house in Magrie, about 1.5 miles south of Limoux, It was nice inside and had a good yard, three bedrooms, but it was a little difficult to get to, the view was real nice. Angie and I also saw the house in La Digne D'amont. We both decided that it would not be good for the work. The dining area was small and also two bedrooms were had a slanted roof, that made parts hard to reach. We mentioned that we would be interested in three bedroom homes around 100 meters squared with yards in Limoux and we'll see if they what they can find. If nothing, then we will pursue another the one in Magrie. I called the car salesmen today and left a message, he called back and said that the car will arrive the 23rd and that they will have it ready by the 28th. Tomorrow, I will go to Carcassonne and see about getting car insurance. I will also stop by the hertz rental place and see about extending our car rental by a couple of days. Attched are some pictures of the kids at the cross on top of the hill near our house. God bless, JASON

Confirmation

Friday - The beach trip did not go so well. It was a little cool and real windy. We saw 2 large jellyfish and caught a small one, but the worst part was that the wind would kick up the sand and sand blast us. The kids really did not like that. I think it all lasted maybe 20 minutes before we left. The wind has continued to blow all day and it cooled off to about 60 degrees by days end. This afternoon we went to Limoux. On the way I got a call from the Car salesmen who sold us our Dacia. He had the wrong address on a paper, so we stopped by a McDonald's and faxed him the right paper. He said everything was going well. I showed Angie the home that I toured Thursday. The only negative aspects are that is has no parking, no yard, and the front door opens to the street, but it is roomy, around the corner from a school and in good condition, and only about 2.5 miles from Limoux. I mentioned to Angie that maybe God wants us to start out living in a smaller town because we are going to make a lot of mistakes. It's possible. We have another house that I found online that we are waiting to hear back about. It was in Limoux and had a yard, I called and emailed and have not heard back yet. Tomorrow we are getting a visit from the pastor of the church in Carcassonne.
Saturday – We had a good visit with the pastor this evening. He offered to give us a loan for the car. We took him up on it. It is amazing how the love for Christ unites us. Can you imagine loaning someone that you have only met twice $20,000 interest free.
Sunday – Services went real well this morning. We had some good visiting afterwards. There were several visitors. One family from Ireland was spending there vacation in the south. We had a good visit, they come to this church each time they take their vacation here. There were also fist time visitors from Limoux! It was a French lady who had recently married a man from England and they had just settled in Limoux. How amazing is that. I had planned for the work in Limoux to start slowly. I had in mind to spend a year building relationships and having Bible studies before I even brought up the idea to plant a church. If things continue as they have been we could already have a core group. This couple makes four that we know from Limoux who travel to the church in Carcassonne. As soon as this couple introduced themselves and where they were from the Pastor leaned over to us and said, “interesante”.
Monday - Just got a call that said the house viewing for tomorrow was cancelled because the couple decided to stay in the home. So, I scheduled us to see the home in La Digne D'amont, so Angie can see it, and then we will probably try for it. We are currently at McDonalds, just finished some grocery shopping. God bless, JASON

Buying a Car in France 2

We successfully bought a car Saturday. The salesmen at the dealership was really nice and helpful. He spoke French a little slower than the last agent we spoke to thankfully. He showed me the show model which was nice looking and asked if I wanted to drive it but I declined as I had already driven one. I was thinking that the car he showed me was for sale but he finally explained to me that no one has stock for these vehicles, the only vehicles they have are the show model. There is such a high demand for them that they have to be ordered direct from the factory. So we went back inside and ordered one. I did find out that there is no dealer financing for students (We have students visas) because "student" in France is evidently a synonym for "jobless". No problem, I can try to get the money elsewhere. It will take about two months for it to arrive. We purchased a Dacia Logan Laurate edition, 7 passenger, diesel (85) with air conditioning. Brand new from the dealer with everything for 15,440.50 €. What I found really great was there was only one paper to sign. The whole process went really well and now we just have to wait for the car to arrive, tentatively the 26th of July. Now that that is behind us we are moving on with the house hunting.
While I was out car buying Angie was at home with a couple of sick kids. Thankfully all are better now. Just a 24 hours virus. Attached picture was a common sight throughout the day. God Bless, JASON

Buying a Car in France

Our car buying process has been moving along slowly. One reason is because of the particular kind of car that we are trying to buy. The Dacia is a very popular car right now and in high demand. We spoke with a dealer here in Massy, he did a search for the one we wanted in the Paris region and could not find one. So he offered us one he has on his lot, the only problem we have with it is that it has no Air conditioning, something Angie was really wanting, being in the south of France in a couple of months. We had planned on buying this particular car anyway yesterday but decided we should check with other dealers. We found a Renault dealership in Versailles who were really helpful. They have one on their lot as well. We are going to check with them today and look at the one they have available. For some reason he did not want to tell me about it over the phone. Maybe it was our language difficulties. If that is not what we want then we may just go ahead and order one direct from the dealer and work out things from there. We have some decisions to make as to how the next few months are going and so we need to move ahead with our car decisions to begin preparing for the future. As always we have prayed for God's guidance and knowledge in our decisions. Hopefully I will know more later today about the process of buying a car in France. I will be going to the dealership alone as Micah and Andrew have been sick to their stomach last night and this morning. With God's help we will get it figured out. Attached picture is of Andrew as he "figured out" how he could get a drink without a cup. God bless, JASON

BBQ

Friday was a holiday here so the school had a BBQ. It went real well. Everyone brought their own meat and then shared side dishes. We had meat cooking on the grill for probably 3 hours. We brought hotdogs for lunch and also grilled some chicken for supper. Others did the same thing. I had the privelege of grilling Octopus for someone, which was a first for me. We played a couple games of volleyball afterwards. Angie felt better and really enjoyed getting out.

We are still waiting to hear from the car dealer about the Dacia. He was waiting to hear from a couple salesmen and said he would call back Monday. Angie has found a couple of nice homes in Limoux that she is interested in as well. She will most likely be traveling there in the next couple of weeks to settle in on one for sure.

Last night we swapped Lilia for two boys from another language school family. Caleb was real excited about his first "spending the night party". So Lilia is getting to spend the night with a friend and Caleb had two friends over to spend the night with him. They have had a real good time together. Attached are some pictures of the BBQ. God bless, JASON

Spring?

Things are going well today. Angie went to the Dr. this morning. She has not had any fever since last week but her throat was still bothering here she felt tired all of the time. Come to find out she has strep throat. He put her on Antibiotics and she should be back to normal soon. We have just came back from out first attempt to buy a car. Here is how it went. We walked around inside the dealership and when no one approached us we approached them and explained what we were wanting. The salesmen (who spoke French like it was a race to get the words out) brought some brochures and showed us the options. I was looking at the Dacia Logan MCV Ambiance, which is the lower class and has the least options, but it turns out that with the options that we wanted (like Air Conditioning and 7 seats), they come standard in the more luxury version and would be cheaper. The Ambiance listed at 13,900 and adding the A/C alone would add 900. While the other version was 15,100 including A/C and other accessories that would be nice to have like a radio. Then he told us that it would not be in until the end of July. That wouldn't work because we are moving the first of July. We then asked if he could look around at what was available at the dealerships in the Paris Area. He said he could check on that and get back with us this evening because the secretary was out to lunch. So now we are waiting for his call and hopefully Angie or I, most likely Angie, will be able to understand him over the phone.
This coming Friday we are having a "Texas" BBQ at the school which we are looking forward to. We are still waiting for the normal spring weather to arrive. It was chilly and windy today. I have attached a picture that I took out of the window during winter and one that I took today. Let me also insert a quote from Caleb this time. He just asked, "Is chocolate made from spinach?" God bless, JASON

On the Road Again!

We picked up our rental car this morning. We are driving a Ford Galaxy. It is nice, standard transmission, diesel, 6 speed, 43 mpg, seats 7. I'll post a picture when we get back. We have already stretched ourselves, I have driven in Paris, France. It wasn't too bad. While we were on deputation, I didn't bother keeping up with how many total miles we drove. We went 5000 in one month. So this trip will not be to bad. I have not bought gas for over 6 months. It will be interesting to fill up at the pump. The display in the car said that it could go 750 km on one tank, so we should be able to make it all the way down there on one tank. We are visiting Limoux which is a small town of about 10000 people. It is about 25 miles south of Carcossonne where there was a accidental millitary shooting recently. That is just east of Toulouse and West of Marseille. It is about an hour from the Spanish border, where we will probably go to fill up with Gas. It is about 45 minutes from the beach, which is the main attraction to us. I will blog and post a lot of pictures when we return. The remaining language school students celebrated the fourth of July with a BBQ today. It was a lot of fun. Be in prayer for us while we are traveling and on vacation. Be in prayer for my grandfather Clyde Clark who suffered from a series of heart attacks and is in the hospital, he is very weak. Also be in prayer for Angie, her blood pressure was high still, so the Doctor told her to lay off the salt. That will be tough for her, especially when I am eating popcorn next to her, which I will. God bless and we will be back with you shortly. JASON

Massy

Our town of Massy is very nice. I was looking at the scenery when I took the boys to school yesterday. It is also, as I recently found out, a wealthy town. I discovered this when telling Yvain about seeing and early 70's model Camaro, yellow with black racing stripes. He explained then that is a rich suburb. The boys were rained out of their field trip to the woods. I noticed there were no posts to answer the last quiz. French has the same amount of vowels that we have but they have 16 different vowel sounds. 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