Summer Shopping

At the last youth meeting in Carcassonne, they had a
picture scavenger hunt, I am not sure why but this was
one of the pictures they took.



Andrew with the soccer ball he got for his birthday.

 We had a good weekend.  Services went well Sunday at Carcassonne, there was a first time visitor. We enjoyed a meal after services and a nice Sunday afternoon here at the house, including listening to our home church services in Texas.  Monday the kids started the real vacation.  It was warm, so we let them go swimming in our little pool.  Angie went shopping in Carcassonne, one of the members of the church there wanted to buy each of our kids an outfit.  What a blessing!  July is a month of sales in France and you can find some good deals.  Tuesday, the girls went grocery shopping, (and Angie bought a purse for 70% off) and I managed to finish preparing my lesson for next week.  I played basketball with the guys Tuesday as well. It was 90 degrees, 27 % humidity, and no shade on the basketball court. Somehow I still managed to play for two hours. It was good exercise, but it took a while to recuperate afterwards. Caleb and I got home to find out that Angie had grilled because it was warm in the house.  Today we started working on a video for a church in the states.  Their Vacation Bible School is going to be taking an offering for us and we are making a short video for them.  It is going to be fun to put together, I hope to have it finished by Thursday or Friday.  We are about to leave and visit some friends on Carcassonne and also run a few errands.  We have a new cell phone that we are trying to get used to and we want to use the older one in place of our old prepay phone.  Tomorrow I will have my language session, I will be filming on location in a couple of areas, and also preparing for the Bible Study.  I hope that you are enjoying your summer as well.  God bless, JASON

Preparing for School

We had another good weekend. Saturday night I assisted at the Bible Exposition. I have included several pictures. Seems every day there are several that enter and give us to opportunity to get to know them and usually they leave with some tracts and/or bibles. Services were good Sunday. Caleb woke up with a bad cough so Angie stayed home with him and Andrew. She didn't mind to bad, because she is at the point where she is uncomfortable most of the day. The last few days we finished getting Lilia and Caleb's room in shape. We bought all the kids school supplies and got the all labeled with their names and packed in their backpacks. Tuesday morning I watched over the Bible Exposition. I got to meet and speak with a former member of the church who was visiting from England. Today we had some friends from Carcassonne eat lunch with us. I finished up a sermon today. I am a couple weeks ahead for the Bible Study, so I decided to prepare a full fledge sermon this week, which I really enjoyed. My lesson is ready for Thursday, it will be the second in the series of the sermon on the mount. Tomorrow I will have my French conversation hour. Some of our regulars are back in town so we should have several at the Bible Study. Friday we are meeting someone to pick up some clothes that Angie bought off of ebay.fr. She got some real good deals 52 items for about $100. The boys will have some nice school clothes. Enjoy to rest of your day. God bless, JASON

Internet search.

Friday was an interesting day. I picked up Lilia's desk without problems and then we went over to check on the internet. They found out the order had never been placed for the equipment. Thankfully they had one in stock. I took it home and started setting things up. It would not work, so I called the help desk waited on hold for 10 minutes to find out that our line had never been activated for the DSL. Evidently that order never was placed either. I was transferred to the person to help get it set back up who immediately offered me the “English number” to call. I hung up and tried the number to find it didn't exist. Nice move. I had to call back and wait on hold for 15 more minutes and explain everything again. The final person was very helpful and we should working in 4 or 5 days. She reminded me that at least we have two months free. Sunday services went real well. The pastor has been bringing a series on Peter. We enjoyed some good fellowship after. The key seems to be letting the kids color in another room, leaving us open to talk. Monday we did our weekly grocery shopping, involving three different grocery stores. It has been a rainy Monday but we at least got to see a good looking rainbow. I didn't get those pictures loaded, but as a replacement, Escargo, that I made for supper a few days back. Oddly enough, I was the only one who at any. God bless, JASON

Outreach, Shopping, Hiking, & the Accident

Thursday I went to help out the church in Carcassonne with outreach. They had a door to door outreach in the morning. We paired up and went into the North African section of town and visited several apartment buildings. Things went well, we used as an opener and Bible Exposition that is being held at the church in Carcassonne during the week. Many were not home, several were clearly not interested, some did not speak French, some took some tracts and literature, some seemed real interested. Thursday afternoon I worked on finances. Our church has decided to help pay off the rest of our language school expenses and so I was working on getting the money into the account. It ended up not working out. Thursday night I went back to Carcassonne to an open air preaching they were having at the entrance to the walled city, a very popular tourist attraction year around. It was neat to watch the reaction of everyone to the preaching and singing. Many whispers about us being a kind of sect, most ignored us, some looked for a little bit, a few paid attention and stayed, some even talked with us (some foreigners).
Friday, I took Caleb for a father/son hike. We had a great time, we hiked up to the top of the hill behind our house. It was a difficult course considering our house is at 800 ft and the hill tops out at 1300 ft but he had no problems. He really enjoyed spending the time with daddy. Near the top he asked the ultimate question. “Dad, what happens to me if you die up here?” Friday afternoon we went to IKEA and got a few more things for the house.
Saturday – I cleaned up a lot in the yard today. Angie went and got the kids some school clothes. The exciting even happened while we were preparing for supper. Lilia walked into the living room with her cup of water. Suddenly she walks back in the saddest crying voice says, “I'm so dead.” I walked around to see that she had spilled water onto my laptop. I got it dryed up as best as I could while Lilia went to her room crying. Angie said, “I'll get my hairdryer to dry it out.” I held the laptop while she ran the hair dryer. Suddenly I smelt something burning, sure enough she had melted a half dozen of the keys to the keyboard. Evidently I am typing this on the keyboard so everything worked okay. I trimmed the melted edges off the keys and everything seems to be running fine. Keyboard just looks a little different. I had to assure Lilia that everything was okay and I was not mad before she would finally calm down. I will probably order a new keyboard just to be safe because the “ctrl” key is getting stuck even though it is not being pushed.
Services went good on Sunday. We enjoyed a visiting speaker who had been a missionary in France for 50 years. In the afternoon he gave a conference on Jean (John) Calvin that was very informative. We met a couple at the Church in Carcassonne this morning who had just moved to Magrie, the same town that we live in. Amazing. God bless, JASON

After Barcelona

So to update you all since the last blog. We made it home fine from Barcelona and that same night Jason went and wrapped up everything with the short term house rental. He got our last items from the house and cleaned it and went through the house with the owner. He paid for the electricity we used with our dryer and got our securtiy deposit back. So all went well there and our boys did not destroy anything too noticably! Whew. The next day I went and bought a few more things for the house and discovered some new shops for housewares at good prices. Jason stayed home and put together a dresser, shelf and nightstand. Thursday he went to the prayer meeting at the church in Carcassonne and afterward met with the pastor to discuss some future planning. Friday we put together a desk, bookshelf and desk chair. Saturday Jason went for a long walk up the hill behind our house then further on up the next much bigger hill. He said it was really beautiful up there and you could see for miles. Lilia and I did a last dash of shopping before everthing closed at 7pm in Carcassonne. Although we were pleasantly surprised, the housewares shop closed at 7 the next clothing shop we went into closed at 7:30 and the next book store and craft shop, after that closed at 8. Then we went down to the grocery store which I figured closed later and shopped there until 8:30. It was great we found some really good deals.
We had a nice service this morning with the Pastor back off of vacation. Afterward they kindly offered me some of the dishes and things they had there that they are not using at the church. Also, Yelena asked me if we could visit privately some time. So I said sure how about today. That worked for her so we met this afternoon and had coffee. You know sometimes your mind can get to wondering-- what does she need to meet for. Is it going to be good, bad, a reproach... Turns out she just wanted to be friends and she just needed someone to share with and asked me to pray for her. I told her of course, and I was honored that she would ask me. It has been a good day.Thanks for you prayers. God Bless, ANGIE

Take a break.

We have enjoyed a break from shopping. I used to not be able to imagine Angie needing a break from shopping :) We went today with Lynn and Brenda to look at the walled city of Carcassonne. We enjoyed it. It was nice to get out with the kids and take a leisure stroll through an ancient city. God bless, JASON

From Kenya

Hey, I'm in Kenya! We had a good visit and meal last night, fried chicken and fries. This morning I had a doughnut for breakfast then Kenya, James and I went to the office to get insurance on James' new truck. On the way James bought a newspaper from a street hawker in the middle of the street. While we waited in the car for James, Kenya and I visited and then we had a call from Jen Davis, a former student at our language school, they are working in Congo, but are on vacation in Kenya - we may try to meet them on the way home tomorrow. Also while we waited the man who sold James the truck brought the faceplate to the stereo by. Then we did some shopping in a big store with lots of British items I recognized from our vacation house we had in the south of France. I got macaroni and popcorn kernels and Chiclets. This afternoon James and I ate Chinese food at the mall, everyone else had chicken and fries or spaghetti. After we finished they drove me out to see the Rift Valley from a lookout point about 30 minutes from here to the west. Last night the driving was crazy with the people passing from the other direction coming right in your lane so that you had to move over. But today James said we had a first time moment when at a very backed-up round-about the cars trying to squeeze in next to us were getting angry because James, who was actually on the road, was going past them and essentially cutting them off. Then one of the guys reached out of his car and hit our van with his fist. Crazy guy! James just said that the other guy was the one who needed to wait, we were doing right. The rift valley was awesome! James said it goes all the way to Israel. On the "interstate" there were lots of checkpoints for the cops to see if you have insurance and occasionally ask for bribes. They can get in trouble if they ask directly so they find ways to ask indirectly. Like they asked what we were going to do last night. James said going to eat. Then the cop said well what am I going to eat tonight? So now we are back and getting packed up for an early start. We may go to a movie in a little bit or if Samuel is too wiggly we may go shopping. Then we are going to eat Indian food. Tomorrow we will leave Nairobi, "the land of plenty", as they were calling it. Lydia (3 or 4 years old), their daughter who broke her arm last week, is doing good and not in too much pain, she is just trying to keep her sling adjusted right and deal with the inconvenience of having one good hand. The other kids are good Josiah (7) did something this morning that totally reminded me of Caleb. It was cute. They all loved their gifts I brought from France and drawings our kids made for their kids. Thanks for the prayers, I'll go help pack now. - ANGIE

Awesome!

The first great news is that Caleb accepted Christ as his savior Thursday night. The evening devotional that we had was when Abraham was asked to offer his only son Isaac. He asked several good questions afterwards and was obviously feeling convicted. When I went passed his room later that night he was praying in his bed. He told us in the morning that he had asked Jesus to save him. Awesome!

The cold weather is still hanging out. Wednesday was the coldest day in Paris since 1987. Caleb asked on the way home from school if there would be snow tomorrow, when I told him there would be it was sad because he was tired of being cold, he said.

At the kids school they showed a video in Lilia's class about a boy who wanted to dance ballet and fell in love with his best (boy) friend. Afterwards that had discussion where they told the class that that was okay. Lilia said she didn't like it because of the language too. A little idea of what they will face in public school in France. At our school we learned a new verb tense this week, conditional passe. I hope we are close to running out of verb tenses. Friday I went with another language school student to Leroy Merlin (like Home Depot or Lowes), we had a good time just wondering around. Saturday Angie took several of the new language school ladies shopping. January and July are the big sale months in France. Almost everything in the stores at 50-60% off. Angie is good at helping the new ladies at the school get settled. She helps with paperwork, comforts them about cultural things, listens, offers advice when asked, and . . . she just helps in many ways. God has truly blessed me with a wonderful helpmate. Attached are picture of Lilia with a snowball she brought home and Andrew's hair that everyone had fun playing with Friday night. God bless, JASON

A day off.

Yesterday we took a day off from Sight Seeing. We stayed around the house for most of the morning. At noon I took Mom and Dad out to run a couple of errands. I took them shopping, our local large grocery store, Cora, ended up being about four times larger than their Wal-mart. We picked up some candy for the kids for Halloween. The best part of the day was Dad making a pot of his Chili for supper, French ingredients to make Texas Chili. We let the kids stay up and enjoy some candy and a movie. Today Angie and my mom are going to go shopping, while Dad and I hang around here with the kids. We may take them to a park if the weather clears up. Have a good weekend! God bless, JASON

The weekend.

We have been blessed with a good weekend. Yesterday we checked the mail on the way to the park to find out that our local department store was having a sale. Normally 10% of three items purchased goes toward future purchases. Friday and Saturday it was going to be 20%. We had been waiting to purchase a few large things for such a special sale. We picked up an airmatress to use as a guest bed. We also picked up a new stroller. Ours had broken that morning. We also picked up some meat as well. The local stores do not usually carry bigger amounts of meat, so we usually try to pick up some while we are there. Things went well today. I asked Lilia to bring a devotion this morning and she did a really good job. I have been praying and talking with Caleb. He will turn six in December and is the age Lilia was when she was saved. He is a little slower than she was but still I have been trying to make clear how to go to heaven. He has asked good questions about it. He has also asked questions that are not to good. Those moments are funny afterwards. They say something bright that gets you all proud and then they keep talking. Like, kid, "Daddy, I want to be a Doctor when I grow up". Daddy, "Wow, thats great!". Kid, "Or a dinosaur."

I have been told that a hard part of missions work is going home. I am beginning to see that more and more. When we left the country we created a snapshot of life there, including friends, families, locations. When we return we will find that all of that has changed. Places no longer look the same, people and relationships have changed. We have had friends and family that have passed away, lost loved ones, married, divorced, left. It will make it a little difficult to jump back into to where we were when we left. Pictured is my younger sister followed by Angie's younger brother, who both had weddings in the last couple of months. Angie's brother Mike, married Kate, and my sister Sarah, married Justin. Congratulations to both couples. God Bless, JASON

le Tatou

Things are doing well for us. Monday was a holiday here (pentecost) and we went to Cora and bought some fans. They had a sale where you get 20% off the first three items that you purchase, so we saved some money. We looked at some TV's they had a couple that we were interested in but they were sold out. That is not unusual here. We went to another store the same day and they were out of several items (eggs, lunchmeat, lettuce) from the holidays. Our 13 in will work a little longer. We have a busy week of homework. We worked about two hours on Monday night. Thursday in the morning we have a test and that afternoon we both have presentations to bring (I'm doing mine on Armadillos- le Tatou). Friday, and I speaking to the school during the assembly time, about 15 minutes. I will bring the sermon I brought on Easter, which is on the blog previously ( http://abainfrance.blogspot.com/2008/03/la-leon-pour-aujourdhui-le-pques-sans.html ), except with the corrections. This weekend we are having a college professor and a couple of his students, who are here on a school trip, visiting in our services. I am looking forward to their visit. We are also having a visitor from Denmark who has moved to Paris for work. This could break our previous record attendance. Attached is what Angie wanted for Mother's day, and picture of her and the kids. Thanks for the Prayers and God Bless, JASON