Church at the aquarium

Today has been a bit of a dilemma for us. Normally we attend the 9:00 a.m. worship service at the Belleville Reformed Church, where we've been the past 6 years. However, this weekend was the annual church weekend, which is held south of Paris. As is the tradition, there were no services today at the Belleville site in order to encourage everyone to be together this weekend.

With my parents' arrival on Friday, we decided to not go on the church weekend. All the meetings are in French and my parents don't understand it. The weekend is for those who are church member or intend to be involved at Belleville, which is not the case of my parents.

Our car holds 2 in the front and 3 in the backseat. With my parents, we currently are 7 this week, which makes for transportation challenges, as we aren't all able to travel together. We put the wheelchair in the trunk and one of us pushes my mother in it. If we had a minivan, this would solve this problem.

Probably the best church options for my parents are English-speaking ones. However, getting to any of them in the car or on public transport is a huge hassle, both with them and with our young kids.

After wrestling with what to do, the best option seemed to not go to a regular worship service this morning. So I went with my 2 older kids and my parents to the aquarium in which we have a membership.

I was surprised at how hard parking was. The aquarium is located right by the Bois de Vincennes on the east side of Paris. Hundreds of people seemed to be out bright and early to run, bike, and enjoy the day. As I'm usually on my way to church on Sunday morning, this was a new experience for me to see all these people. It stirs in me the notion of wanting to leave Sundays for relationship building and attend a weekly worship service at another time in the week, like Saturday night as my parents do in Colorado.

All 5 of us seemed to enjoy the aquarium. The diversity in the colors and shapes of the different water creatures and plants testifies to the creativity and imagination of the Creator God.

I enjoyed watching my kids and my parents enjoy the aquarium together. We usually don't have these types of moments together, so it seems important to take advantage of my parents' visit with us for the next week to create positive memories. That in itself is a way to worship our Creator. Hopefully my kids will remember this time long after their grandparents have departed this world.