Scenes from central Paris and New Orleans

It's been a busy couple of days. We had our first church staff meeting yesterday morning, at which I was appointed official keeper of the minutes. This is ironic, since the notes are in French, but I'm not a native French speaker. Thank goodness for spellcheck programs, even though they don't catch everything.

Last night I had a meeting right by the Orsay Museum. This was about an exciting new ministry possibility that I'm sworn to secrecy on for the time being. Stay tuned for news in future blogs.

Before and after the meeting, I was able to take some photos of the area around there. It helped lift my spirits (after all the world disasters mentioned in yesterday's blog) to see some beauty. These photos are scattered throughout this blog.

My wife's monthly exam for her pregnancy went well yesterday and everything looks good. She probably will need to take it easier physically then she's been doing. I'll get lots of exercise walking our son to and from school starting next week.

Tonight was the first program of the 5th edition of "Star Academy", a French program similar to "American Idol." During the past 4 years, we have found watching this to be useful to get to know French popular music, as well as more about the youth culture here, as most French young people watch Star Ac.

I had a conference call on Skype with Christina from Michigan and Pastor Gilles from Paris. It looks like all things are moving quickly for Christina to come to Paris for this school year and help at Gilles' church. Since I just put out the word earlier this week about these internship openings, I'm amazed at how fast this is working out. It definitely seems like a God-thing.

Despite how well the last couple of days have gone, I still am disturbed by stories and photos that I'm seeing from the southeast gulf coast, particularly New Orleans. It hit home more when learning that former France colleagues, Howard and Trudy Owens, who were living in New Orleans while Howard was working in a Ph.D., probably have lost everything except for their car and the suitcases that they had in their car when they left. They are refugies, along with hundreds of other Americans.