Good times

All the kids at the dinosaur museum.

The group at church, Sunday.

We had a lot of good times with our friends.  The Manary family arrived Saturday afternoon and stayed with us until Wednesday.  On Saturday we went and saw the Dinosaur Museum and Hat Museum.  Saturday night Arianna, slept bad and had Angie and I up most of the night.  We all made it to church Sunday, but cancelled our plans to see the Walled City of Carcassonne afterwards.  We ate at KFC and returned home.  Monday afternoon we went to see the Walled city which everyone enjoyed.  Angie and I liked it as well, probably because the kids were in school and not begging us to buy souvenirs.  Tuesday we had a good restful day before they left Wednesday after lunch.  We were very grateful and encouraged by their visit and our kids just loved have new playmates for a few days.  What is really touching is that they were willing to drive here, which took three days.  Just had my language session with Eric.  It is going well, we are working on reading with the right rythym and intonation which is interesting.  French is actually boring rythmically.  Every syllable is pronounced the same and the voice does not change tones as often as it would in English.  It is a hard thing to get the brain to do, but it will come with time and practice.  Eric even had a question about the lesson.  Looking forward to the Bible study tonight and the market tommorrow, weather permitting. God bless, JASON

Feeding and fighting

We found the earthwoom before school.

It is Saturday morning and our friends should be arriving in a couple of hours.  Le me take this chance to give you an update of the last few days.  Thursday during recess at school another girl came up and pinched Lilia's shoulder real hard, leaving marks that were still there three hours later.  This particular girl has always caused problems. Lilia wants so much to be friends with everyone that she still hangs out with her.  I went and had a talk with Lilia's teacher, who immediately told Lilia that she should have come and told her.  They talked to the girl and I hope that it resolves that issue.  We also started Arianna on some solid food this week.  I fed her the first time while Angie was shopping and she seemed to really enjoy it.  Angie fed her some more rice cereal last night and she ate it all up.  Arianna has still been generally fussy a lot.  She wants to be held a lot and even then she may not be happy.  Sometimes she gets in a playful mood.  I have attached a cute video of her trying to attack my shoulder.  It rained hard Thursday evening.  We had one come for the Bible study, some regulars were out because the electricity went out at their house.  It was looking like rain Friday morning so I didn't go to the market.  I ended up getting my Sunday School lesson ready and helping Angie set up for our friends.  At Basketball practice last night, we played a scrimmage, full court, for over an hour.  It was good excercise to say the least.  God bless, JASON

Friends are coming

The weekend went well and we are already well into the week.  Monday we celebrated Valentine's Day by getting some gifts for the kids (pictured).  I have continued enjoying the contact with the basketball team and am considering having an end of year party at our house for them.  I had another language session with Eric that went real well.  He has a lot of work to do on my accent, but we are making progress. The exciting news this week is that some friends are coming.  Our missionary friends, the Manary family, are already on their way to visit with us for a few days.  They have a long drive of about 25 hours ahead of them.  We are looking forward to seeing them. They have four kids about the same ages as ours.  We met them while on deputation several years ago and have had chances to see them again on furlough and at the Greece Retreat.  We are looking forward to spending about 5 days with them.  It will be nice just to talk with them and share stories.  We are getting the house ready now.  Bible Study is tomorrow and I am still planning on going to the market on Friday, weather permitting.  We had the chance to visit with our neighbors some today.  The weather has been nice and people are getting our more.   

It's free

Arianna's passport picture.

We have been blessed with beautiful weather these past few days.  Monday and Tuesday, I prepared next weeks lesson so that I could give it over to me new language helper, Eric.  We had a good time together.  He did well in correcting my pronunciation and helped me with words that had a strong American accent.  Wednesday and Thursday I finished this weeks lesson.  Bible Study was good last night, there were four that came.  We are almost finished with our study on the sermon on the Mount.  Yesterday at lunchtime we had a lot of laughter at the table.  We were talking about being right handed and left handed.  To confuse everyone I said, "I can hold up my right hand with my left."  Micah said he could make his right hand his left and just help his right hand up on the left side of his body.  Soon afterwards Angie was opening an ice cream cone for Angie when it slipped out of his hand and landed right in front of Andrew, who said, "Splash!".  Micah tried to stick the top of his cone in his mouth and had it shoot out, he then tried eating it from the bottom up.  My parents printed out this blog in a blog that they sent us for Christmas.  Angie was reading it and came across the time when Micah said he wanted to go to the lake and chase dogs.  We were reminding him about it and asked why he said that.  He replied, "Because the fish will jump in the water so I can chase them."  That's as clear as mud.  I was at the market this morning and one of the ladies that stopped by the stand, just couldn't grasp how all the stuff that was on the stand was free.  I explained several time that she could take whatever she wanted and that it was free, but it was as if she couldn't grasp the concept.  She mentioned that she didn't have any money and had to leave. A man stopped by later and talked my ear off.  He notice the word "Biblical" on the stand and that got him started on the Biblical diet.  I don't think he took a breath between stories for he next 30 minutes. However, I enjoyed talking with him, more like listening to him.  I am going to work on my Sunday School lesson now.  Next week we have some missionary friends from Romania that are going to visit with us.  We are really excited about it.  Also the local inexpensive grocery store, Lidl, is having American week.  We have already visited one time and picked up peanut butter, ranch dressing, muffin mixes, pancake mixes, 1000 Island dressing, and other American things.  Awesome.  I hope you have a good weekend.  God bless, JASON

Games

Last week went well. Having our paperwork done and

 turned in was a relief.  While there were freezing temperatures and snow in the states, we enjoyed warmer temperatures.  The Bible study went well last week, three were present and we continued our series of studies on the Sermon on the Mount (currently in Matthew 7).  Friday we had a nice family night with the kids.  We had bought a marble obastacle course, where you build up these . . . perhaps a picture would be better than words.  Friday morning, I had a great time at the market.  It was warmer and there were a lot of people out.  Several people stopped by the stand and I passed out a bible, some tracts, and a gospel of John.  I also spoke with a few people who had stopped by before.  Saturday night we had a basketball match.  We lost and I only played about 20 minutes of the whole game, but I did score four points and had three rebounds.  It was at least another chance to hang out with team-mates and get to know

I was proud of my parking job.

 them better.  Sunday services in Carcassonne, went good, Angie stayed home with Arianna and Andrew.  Angie is still trying to get over a cough.  The other kids and I stayed for the meal afterwards and enjoyed visiting.  Sunday night, Angie and I both stayed up to watch the superbowl.  The team I was hoping would win did.  It was nice that Angie stayed up, it was much funner laughing at what the commentators said together.  I think there were only four commercial breaks.  I have a new language helper coming tomorrow, so I am going to get an early start on my lesson.  God bless, JASON

Daddy Jim



Lilia and Caleb with Daddy Jim

 

Micah in the snow.



This is what we called our Grandfather on my mother's side.  I am not sure where the nickname came from.  Daddy Jim, Jim Taylor, passed away on Friday night.  He was a good grandfather.  He pastored churches in Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas for over 50 years.  He served in the marines in World War II and the Korean War.  We received the news Saturday morning.  Read his obituary here.  He is the third grandfather that has passed away since we have been in France, Clyde Clark was my Dad's father, Harold Davis who I consider as my spiritual grandfather passed away these last couple of years.  If I could mention one thing that I had learned early from watching him, is that preachers and christians can have a good time.  He loved to have fun and he could talk to you about so many things.  Saturday it rained almost all day but in the afternoon it turned to beatiful snow.  It kind of made a good summary of our week, things get tough but God's still there and he can turn the bad into good.  Sunday's service was good as well.  I had a little trouble when we sang the french version of  "How Great thou Art".  The text for the message that morning included 1 John 3:2 "My dear friends, we are already God's children, though what we will be hasn't yet been seen. But we do know that when Christ returns, we will be like him, because we will see him as he truly is." We look forward to seeing Daddy Jim again.  Back to work for now.  God bless, JASON

"Government Organization"

This is one of my favorite oxymorons.  This weeks has been spent mainly dealing with the government.  Tuesday morning we made our trip to Marseille, a pretty place by the way.  Everything went good, we had a little trouble finding the Embassy and it took a while to get throught security, but finally we handed off our paperwork and in a few months, Arianna will have an American birth certificate, social security number, and her passport.  We then decided to swing back by the immigration office in Montpellier because we never got the appointment for Angie and we can't reach them by phone.  (turns out they said they don't answer the phone while they are there - frustrating to say the least)  We had to act French a little.  They said that we should have already received the letter for the meeting and that since it was passed there was nothing they could do, Angie would have to return to the states. We were not going to take that as an answer.  We had to show signs of being real upset and explain that it was their fault, they didn't notive her paperwork in the folder with mine, they sayed they would mail the letter for a meeting for her.  We complained enought that they said we could see the boss.  After the boss arrived, they said they could do the medical visit and interview right away.  Sometimes you have to throw a fake fit (learned that from my dad :)  Angie started waiting for the interview and I had to buy the government stamps to pay.  They are usually sold in Tobaco stores.  The fifth store had some and so Arianna and I returned and we finally finished up there.  Thursday we had one couple come for the bible study, he had just got in from work so we just visited a few minutes, shared some prayer requests and dismissed.  Friday morning we prepared the paperwork for the next step in our visa process.  We took a pause to watch some dances that Micah's class put on.  Arianna had a doctors appointment as well, which is why I didn't go to the market.  Her doctors appointment ended up being cancelled.  We turned on the paperwork that afternoon, found out all that we were missing and will finish it up, hopefully, on Monday.  It is frustrating at times all the paperwork and getting all that they want and need, but that is part of life living in any foreign country.  Picture is of Andrew putting together a puzzle, feels liks what we have done this week.  God bless, JASON