Moved to a new blog site

During my birthday earlier this month, I felt it time to make some changes. One of them is starting a new blog site. Starting new things sometimes means leaving old things behind.

Thanks for following the last couple of years of adventure on this site.

If you would like to follow the new adventure, please contact us with the title NEW BLOG SITE ADDRESS PLEASE and tell us who you are and what you do.

Friends at church in Paris

During the course of my 14+ years in France, I've been able to build some relationships. These friendship are part of the riches and perks of living here longer term. As my list of Facebook contacts has grown to 400+, I'm reminded of different ways and places in France where I've met many of these people.

In church today, for example, we saw:
-an unnamed friend who has gone into the hospital tonight and will be operated on tomorrow.
-Rodrigue, whose wife is godmother of our 5 year hold. He had their 4 year old daughter Joy with him. We visited them in the hospital in the western suburbs when Joy was born.
-Karen, a friend who was the co-leader of a house group at St. Michael's that I led 1996-98. She's getting married to Luc in 13 days. We've known Luc for nearly 7 years now and am pleased that God has brought them together through a small group at Belleville. I'll be photographing their wedding in October.

These friends on the journey help keep me going.

September resumé

It's been nearly 3 weeks since my last entry here. I've been still experimenting with Facebook. It's been fun to rediscover some people from different eras in my lifetime. I still observe that I'm on the older end of the Facebook member continuum in terms of my own age.

We had a birthday bash for my 4 year old daughter on Sept 12. 6 of her friends came to her BUG PARTY, which ended up going very smoothly. Unlike our son, she doesn't have as many friends, at least casual ones. He knows the names of everyone in his class, while she doesn't. She's learning how to stand up for herself better, which is and will be important for her.

September 21-23 was a conference with Erwin McManus of Mosaic Church in Los Angeles. I ended up helping recruit security and it ended up working out well in this area. The conference was excellent, with good and interesting sharing and teaching, as well as interaction between the participants. He definitely has a lot of valuable experience and insight into western culture today. I'll be reading more of him in the near future.

I started reading Bill Hybel's "Just a Walk Across the Room" today. It seems like a valuable book.

One of my current projects, both for ourselves and for la Fonderie, is to research the most effective ways to do e-mail communications. This is a high priority project on my agenda for October.

Next week looks to be a busy one, with another art exposition starting this Thursday night at Le Pavé d'Orsay of la Fonderie, then another play reading the following Monday. The weekly Bible studies at le Pavé d'Orsay start this coming Tuesday as well.

Facebook

Several days ago I blogged about communication.

On Monday I accidentally discovered a new channel of communication: Facebook. I had been invited to become a friend of someone on this site. I accepted this invitation and had to go into it to do so. When I started on Monday, I had about 5 "friends" who had invited me into their network.

It's fascinating to see the network of relationships that have developed when looking at who are the "friends" of a particular person. Some college students had 400+ friends.

As I started clicking on people whom I knew whose names and faces I saw on Facebook, I started sending invitations to different ones to become my "friend." When Monday ended, my friend list had reached around 100, all in 1 day.

I've already started to think about the changes in communication that it would take to get this younger generation more interested in the Great Commission.

Church weekend away

This morning we got up early and drove 45 minutes to the annual weekend of our church. The program started yesterday, but we forgot to sign up early due to our time in the U.S. And so, we were only able to come today. This was fine, as it's much less work going for a day than going for overnight. We worked hard yesterday to continue cleaning and preparing our apartment for our daughter's BUG PARTY this Wednesday.

The speaker was a Frenchman in his 30s or 40s who pastors a Lutheran church in Alsace on the eastern border of France. I didn't catch his name, but enjoyed his talk this morning. One point in his message that struck me was in the text in the Gospels where Jesus, when talking to some religious leaders, said that they didn't know the word of God nor the power of God. There has been a tendency in some churches that I know to be more comfortable with either the "word of God" or the "power of God." Some churches have "solid preaching and teaching," but don't seem to have much power, either in the lives of individuals or in the overall impact on its community. Others seem to see and experience certain acts of God's power on a seemingly regular basis, but don't had a solid grasp on Scripture.

It's unfortunately to see these chasm between the "word of God" and the "power of God." Certainly, "faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God." Sound doctrine is important. But acts of power regularly came along with the communication of the word of God in the New Testament and in the early church. I believe that some of these acts are as necessary in a rationalistic, post-Christian country like France (or like other Western countries) as they are in the middle of the jungle or as they were in the early centuries of the Church.

I'm not sure how this next year will play out. However, I would like to grow in my understanding and experience of both the word of God and the power of God. I want to see more breakthrough, healing, and delivrance in my life, my family's life, and in those whom I come into contact with.

Besides the talk, I appreciated having more time to talk with some of our friends and acquaintances at church. During the past 7 years, we have built different levels of relationships with different people here. Time, energy, and relational limitations have made it hard to get to know many of the people here. But we are fond of many of them and wish we could know them better and spend more time with them. It's like this was many of our friends in the U.S. as well.

It's both a bane and a blessing of the nature of our ministry to have hundreds of relationships. It's exciting to get to meet and know (at least a little about) many different people from around the world, especially in France and the U.S. But it's also frustrating to try to keep up. Occasionally I think it would be nice to have grown up and lived in the same town for my whole life. But then I think that I would have probably been bored with this.

Communications changes in 19 years (or Getting Torched in Ann Arbor)

19 years ago when I first landed in France about this time, I used to put 10 franc pieces into a pay phone in Albertville, France to speak with my parents once a month. I used handwrite postcards to friends, as well as composed a newsletter every 4 months that I would mail a hard copy of to a letter a service in Washington state that would layout, print, and send to my 600 address mailing list. Turnaround time was often 2 weeks.

Tonight, I spoke with my parents in Colorado over the phone. Phone calls to land line phones in France, nearly all of Europe, and the U.S. are included for free as part of our monthly 29,95 euro phone and Internet charge. I sent an e-newsletter yesterday to a 1,500 addresses. Yesterday I uploaded some new pages to our web site. I also downloaded some financial forms from our organization. We do a news postcard 1-2 times a year that we write, layout, have printed at a local photocopy shop, stamp, and have someone post for us.

The technological changes of the last 2 decades have revolutionized communication possibilities. As to whether this is ultimately more effective, time will tell. It's easy to get communication overload.

Anyway, technological changes allow me to type while listening to a live broadcast of the Michigan Wolverine vs. Oregon Duck football game. While this has been a blessing in past seasons, it hasn't been today or last week. Today I'm been bummed to hear of Michigan getting torched at home in Ann Arbor. This follows last week's "greatest upset in college football history" to Appalachian State, a division AA school.

Before the season began, Michigan was considered one of the favorites for the national championship. It's amazing and sad to see how the mighty have fallen. It's a good reminder that each game needs to played, rather than just analyzed hypothetically.

So, it looks like Michigan football won't be a source of refreshment and joy this season.

Of course, in the end, it is only a game and there's much more significant stuff in life than this.

Back in Paris!!!

We've already been back a week, but I've had trouble getting through to blog. Then the previous couple of weeks before that, there just wasn't much time. So it's been nearly a month since our last entry.

Our older 2 kids started back at their French school on Monday. While our son was a little hesitant to come back to Paris, he hasn't at all hesitated to go back to school. Our daughter had a hard time getting out the door on Monday, but has done fine since then. I brought them to school yesterday morning. Our getting their coats hung up, he zipped off to his class. When I finally got there to greet his teacher, he was in the middle of playing with a plastic castle with some of his classmates. After this summer stateside, I think he'll have an easier time adjusting to the socialization.

We're planning our daughter's birthday party for Wednesday September 12. She wants a bug theme, which is funny for our girly girl. We didn't get to know her classmates or their parents as well last year as we did our son's the previous year. But we hope to build some relationships this year.

We had a leaders meeting of la Fonderie on Saturday. There were quite a few there, which was encouraging. One of the woman is very administratively gifted, so she's already taken over many of those responsibilities that I previously had. This is great, as I didn't enjoy them that much, except for those that enabled building relationships, like meeting people and collecting info on them.

We attended our church on Sunday morning. It was good to see some of our friends again. We hope to see many others this coming Sunday on the annual retreat. I think that one thing that we bring is a feeling of family and of stability. Just by being there, we seem to reassure some of the people.

There is a lot in flux in our ministry lives right now. It will be interesting to see how this year plays out. I have no doubt that we will be busy with people, but I'm just not sure with which particular people will we involved. Neighbors? Classmates and parents? Artists? Church folk? Short-termers?

Summer 2008 is also something way up in the air.

I like the verse in Proverbs that man makes his plans, but God guides his steps. We are trusting Him to guide our steps this year.

Prayer session for my mother

Yesterday I was involved in a session at my parents' church in which we prayed specifically that God would heal my mother from Alzheimers. We were trying to follow the principle from James 5:14 of having the church leaders pray over and anoint with oil a believer who is physically sick.
I appreciated the care and seriousness with which the prayer team leaders took in handling this situation. There were around 12 of us, besides my mother, who were praying in the room. My father, brother, and sister-in-law were part of the team. This doesn't include the hundreds more around the world who responded to a Friday morning e-mail that I sent that requested prayer for her.

I found the time of prayer to be very encouraging. People who love and care for my mother bathed her with prayer. There was intercession for the breaking of links from generational sinful patterns. My father confessed giving in to a feeling that her Alzheimers was inevitable and that he couldn't go anything about it.

As for the results, when we returned home last night, she still had the symptoms of Alzheimers. However, due to a number of different happenstances (which I believe aren't coincidences), I still believe that she will be physically healed of this. A church in Florida who prayed for this situation on Friday night said that healing is sometimes a process involving a number of steps, like when Jesus prayed for a blind man and he first saw things like trees.

So, I think that this is a situation where continued, persevering, believing prayer will be required in the process. If you are praying about this situation, please keep praying in faith.

Pastor Mark had my brother, sister-in-law and me gather around my parents, then had prayers of blessing upon us. He said that my brother and I are people who look both inward, as well as outward. He gave us the words INNOVATION and INSIGHT for us. They also prayed prayers of blessing upon our children as well.

I'm about to head out to Torrington, Wyoming to met my family, who have spent the past week in South Dakota. They enjoyed the time with my inlaws, as well as a visit to Bible Fellowship Church. We are scheduled to fly from Denver to Detroit on Thursday August 16, then fly to France on Tuesday August 28.

10 year anniversary

10 years ago (August 9, 1997), I nervously stood at the altar with my beautiful bride in front of a couple hundred witnesses in Michigan. That begin a new chapter of life for me, after nearly 36 years of singleness.

It's been a very full 10 years. We've lived in Paris for 8 of them and in Illinois for the other 2. We did studies together, with my wife earning an M.A. and me doing a 2nd M.A. (just for fun). We've travelled through most of the 48 states. We survived a rough 1st year of marriage, discovered physical intimacy together, and seen our 3 children brought into the world. The process of marriage and raising children has helped rub some rough edges off both us.

Ironically, my wife (and 3 kids) are in different places this week. They are with her parents in South Dakota this week, while I'm with my parents in Colorado. It seemed important for us to spend this precious time with our parents.

I had some roses delivered to her today, along with a card. Probably a bigger present to her was the opportunity to spend time with her parents, visit her ailing 93 year old grandmother this past Monday, and have our kids get to know per parents and vice versa.

It's interesting to look back at how my wife and I have grown together. We discovered early on that our best travel system is for her to drive and for me to plot out routes and navigate. She prefers to talk with people over the phone, while I prefer to send e-mails. Her spoken French is better than mine, while my written French is better than hers. She's an evening person, while I'm a morning one. While this differences can bring conflict, they also can help us better cover the diverse challenges that life brings our way.

It will be exciting and interesting to see what the next years of marriage will bring, should the Lord give us more. But I'm thankful to have my dear wife in my life qnd to grow together with her.

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One exciting development this week is seeing how the prayer for my mother is developing for this Sunday's special meeting. The prayer team is doing a good job doing preliminary work and praying. I anticipate seeing God do something significant in my mother's life this Sunday.

Live from the Rockies

Since last Thursday (August 2), we've been in Colorado. We haven't had DSL access, so it has been harder to blog and receive our e-mails.

We stayed at my brother's house in Aurora, CO until Sunday August 5. That day, we went to my wife's sister's house in Ft Collins, CO and stayed that Sunday night. On Monday morning, my wife and the 3 kids went with her dad to visit her grandmother in Gordon, Nebraska, then finally to her parents' home in Rapid City, South Dakota. I returned to my parents' home in Aurora.

My wife and the kids will be in Rapid City, SD through Monday August 13, while I'll be in Aurora, CO. On August 13, I'll drive to meet them somewhere in the middle, probably in Wyoming. We'll then drive to her sister's house and stay there that night, then all return to Aurora, CO on Tuesday August 14. We are scheduled to fly from Denver to Detroit on Thursday August 16.

Today my dad and I met with one of the pastors of their church. On Sunday August 12, we and some others in the church will pray for my mother's complete healing from Alzheimers Disease and dementia. During recent days, I have become convinced that we should ask God in faith to heal her.

I'm enjoying this time with my parents. It's a special time that I want to savour, as I don't know how many more times like this that we'll have on this earth. So I probably won't be blogging much this next week.

Back in Farmington Hills, Michigan

Yesterday (Monday) we focused on packing our bags, tightly packing the car, and cleaning the apartment in Caldwell, NJ. We didn't get to leave until NJ after 5:00 p.m.. We finally drove a couple of hours to the Allentown, PA area, where we stayed with Howard and Francine. Howard was my mentor during my ordination councils in 1999 and 2000.

This morning my alarm went off at 4:00 a.m. and we were on ther road by 6:00 a.m. We drove around 550 miles today.

Time to close this entry, take out my contacts, and get to bed.