2/18/2010

Fantastic Evening!

I had a meeting last night with one of the pastors of my church here. I thought it was going to be with the pastor who speaks quite a bit of English but I discovered shortly before I got there that it wasn't. It was with the one who doesn't speak a word of English and an intern who also doesn't speak English. We had a very good chat in French. I told them about my plans and why I am in France, and I also asked how I could get more involved. They invited me to come to the youth group this Saturday and get plugged in there, and I may start working in the sound booth on Sundays also. The pastor also shared with me some of his experiences from working in Africa. After about 15 minutes the pastor had another meeting, so then I talked for about half an hour with the intern (named Emmanuel) who just recently graduated from a leadership school related to the church.
After all of this, the pastor invited me to the Wednesday evening service that was about to start. As the service was about to get underway, the pastor said something along the lines of "Hey, I think it would be great if you could share your testimony." And I said, "Uh... en français? Je peux essayer." (in French? I can try.)
And so, with a pounding heart, I gave my first church speech in French without any preparation. I'm not sure how much of it the people understood, but there was very enthusiastic affirmation every minute or so, so I know they got the main points. I know for sure they understood everything God wanted them to understand! As I was sitting in my seat waiting to speak I was planning to talk about how God provides for the projects He wants to achieve. But I ended up talking about following God in the day-to-day decisions and how He has used those to bring me into a job where I can use my really diverse training and interests for His glory. I was very blessed to have that opportunity to share.
After I sat back down, my thoughts turned to the bus. I had used a bus to get to the church and a lot of the busses stop running at 9:00 or 9:30. It was already after that time. If I couldn't catch the bus I had a two mile walk ahead of me to get to the train station, and I wasn't even sure which direction to go. But right before dismissing us, the pastor asked if anyone could give me a ride to Massy and a very pleasant man from the church offered to drive me home. I got home in 25 minutes rather than the hour and fifteen minutes it took me to get there, or the 2+ hours it might have taken if the bus wasn't running and I had to blunder around in the dark.
And, to top it all off, when I got home (10:30 at night, having not eaten supper), I tried another of those oranges I bought and it was actually okay. God was smiling upon me!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good read.