From France to England

Hello from Darwen in Lancashire, England! :)

My what a week this has been. I write this from the chilly north of England, but only a week ago, I was still at the camp in central France.

Last Thursday, I was still involved in the pastor's retreat. That day I continued to help with childcare and kitchen work. Here are some of my little buddies.

Doesn't get much cuter than that.

The beautiful young ladies :)

In the afternoon I got the special treat of going to Jared and Rebekah Stevenson's house, which is about 10 minutes from the camp. Alexi and Anne Marie from the church in Rouen also came with their kids. We had a wonderful time of fellowship together for a few hours. Jared showed us the house and renovations that are continuing to be done as well as the gardens. We also spent some time talking about spiritual things. Alexi shared his testimony for a while. It was so encouraging, because for some reason, that afternoon I sort of had a breakthrough with French, and I could understand a large amount of what he said. It was so wonderful to hear his story. I also got to talk to his wife and Rebekah for a while about my own family. Again, I tried to just speak French for the most part, and I was amazed at how much I was learning. Praise the Lord for how He is helping me progress! It was very special. Finally I was able to really start to build meaningful relationships with some French people in their own language.

The kids at the house

With Jared, Rebekah, Anne Marie, and the kids

Later that evening at the dinner meal I sat with another family from the church in Rouen and got to speak a lot of French. So special!

On Friday, I had the privilege to join the families on an outing they were doing a mountain nearby. It's the highest point in central France. We had a little picnic in a park at the foot of the mountain, and then took some cable cars up. There were about 800 steps to climb to the top after that. It was a very foggy day, so we kinda got stuck in the clouds. Super cool. :) As we were headed back down the steps, a thunderstorm came in, and we got rather soaked. Thankfully, we all made it back in one piece. It was another great time to get to know the families.

One of the French pastors, David, snapping a few photos :)

When we first got up there, we were completely surrounded by clouds, but then they cleared out a bit. What a view!

That evening we had an end-of-camp banquet. It was about 3.5 hours long, complete with lots of special music, games, and times of testimony. We had it in the nice meeting hall down the street from the main camp building, where we usually do services. 

They were supposed to imitate chocolate melting in a storefront window.

Jared was the last one to melt down, so Alexi shouted, "Le chocolat americain!" haha

Mercedes and Mr. Rick 

Jess and Mercedes

Children of a pastor from Marseilles presenting a special

Saturday morning was sad as I had to say goodbye to the friends at the camp. What a privilege it was to work there! It was especially hard to say goodbye to Mercedes. We were buds. :) 

Right before I left

The rest of the day Saturday I spent traveling home to Rouen with some American missionaries, Paul and Glenda Stetson. They minister in eastern France, but Pastor Stetson was going to speak at the church in Rouen on Sunday, so it worked out perfectly for me to leave the conference with them. It was about a 9 hour drive. Kristi had left that morning to go to Paris to do another music conference. Fred and Ruth Coleman had arrived on Tuesday, and they were all headed there for the week to minister. As we had planned the summer, Kristi thought that even though I'd love to be at the music conference, I get to see the Coleman's all the time at BJU :) , so it'd be a nice time to work in England. I had her apartment all to myself for the weekend though! :) 

Sunday I took the bus to church and met a few guys from the church on the way, so that I would know where to go for the walking bit. We had a very nice service. Afterwards, a number of the church leaders went out for lunch with the Stetson's and I at a crepe restaurant. Then a few of us went over to Alexi and Anne Marie's house to relax and spend time together. It was wonderful to see their home! It was also the final day of le Tour de France, so we watched that for a while. Fun! Jerry and Celine took me home to Kristi's, and I got to stop by and see their home as well. Jerry is one of the elders at the church, and he also offered to drive me to the airport the next day.

At the restaurant

Monday morning, Jerry took me to the Paris Beauvais airport to catch my flight over to England. Thankfully, I was able to take my violin as a carry-on again. My flight was delayed awhile, so I spent a long time in the airport, but my flight over was short and sweet, about 45 minutes or so. :) I flew in to Manchester, and was out of the airport so quickly. I met the Cunninghams right away. I had never met this family before, but have a number of connections to them through other friends. It was a joy to finally meet. They have twin sons, Robert and David, who are 15. We all spent a nice evening together at their home in Darwen, which is just outside the city of Blackburn, about an hour from Manchester. The boys are very much into video gaming and just all-around being professional teenage boys. :) I hope to be a good friend to them while I'm here, as they have basically no fellowships with Christians around their age. 

Their lovely home here

Mrs. Cunningham is also going through a very difficult time as she just found out she has breast cancer. She had her first chemo treatment three weeks ago and is on a good week right now. Next week is her next treatment, so that will be more difficult. I will be doing more cooking and things around the house then. We've had many good conversations since I've been here, and it's special to just get to build a friendship.

On Tuesday, we cleaned the house a bit and then had a ladies Bible study with some women from church. We had a time of prayer, Bible study, and then a tea and scones time. :) They are studying "What Do I Know about My God?" by Mardi Collier. 

The ladies at the Bible study and Mrs. C (far right) :)

:) :) :)

Tuesday was also a difficult day for me personally. On Sunday, I Skyped my mom, and she told me some difficult news. One of my cats, Cody, had started to fail in his health about a month before I left, but we hoped he would get better or at least last until I returned home. That day she told me that he had rapidly progressed for the worst, and that I would need to say goodbye. That was very difficult. On Tuesday, she had to have him put to sleep. My cats are very special to me, so that was very hard. He was 13, so he's been my special buddy since I was 8. I am thankful in a way though that the Lord allowed me to be away when this happened. Please pray for my mom and I though, as this is a hard loss. 

Here's a photo of Cody from a few Christmases ago

On Wednesday, Mrs. C and I and the boys went into downtown Blackburn and went shopping. It was special to see a bit of the town, and I was able to get some gifts for friends. I was even able to find a dress for my senior voice recital this year! We got it in the Blackburn market at a shop run by a Muslim man. The dress was made in Italy, and sent to France, bought from France by this man, and he is now selling it in a market in England! Talk about a roundabout trip. :)

In the parking garage with the twins before we shopped. This is them "smiling for a picture" ;)

Mrs. C and I spent a good bit of time working on music for the Sunday service yesterday as well. Today we went in to town and grocery shopped for things for the next week or so. Basically, I'm just helping around the house as I can, with dishes, cooking, cleaning, etc. Please pray that God would use me to truly be an instrument of grace to their family. They already have been to me! 

Tonight we are having prayer meeting at their home. Looking forward to it. It sure is nice to be surrounded by English once again. :) Farewell for now!

I love Camp Arc-en-Ciel and the children therein ;)

Hello from the mountains once again! :)

This week has been quite wonderful. I continued to work in the kitchen during the junior and teen camp and thoroughly enjoyed it. I also continued with the daily chalet inspections. It is a two week camp, and we finished this past Monday. A man from Jessica's church in AL also joined us starting this week. He is here for a month to do renovations and repairs around the camp. It's been a joy getting to know him and have another American here! :)

Again, the days sort of all run together here, but I shall try to recount as much as possible. :) On Thursday, I did the usual activities, but I had some free time in the afternoon, so I went across the street from the main camp building to see the inside of the local Catholic church. It is open daily but only used for mass about twice a year. The building is about 8 or 900 years old (!). So basically, there's this amazing, gorgeous historical building that is empty all day, every day. And since the weather had been hot, and there is really no AC here, it was a cool place to hang out. :) I went in and explored, and then settled and read a bit and caught up on journaling the details of the trip--something I really want to be doing! Here's a little of what it looks like inside:

So amazing!

Check out the stained glass. And no one is ever here!

Friday was a special day at camp. They had this fun game that they set up the night before... basically called "Monkey and Peanuts." Everyone in the camp was given a name of another person there, including the personnel of the camp. You didn't reveal the name that you received, but for the entire following day, it was your job as a monkey to give "peanuts" to your monkey. :) Basically it was a way to get the campers thinking about people other than themselves. Some typical peanuts: a bouquet of flowers, some chocolate, a hand-made bracelet, sweet notes with verses on them or kind words about the person and anything else you could find. You could also have your monkey get an extra dessert at lunch, or have their snack in the middle of the day paid for, etc. It was really neat to see everyone getting creative.

One of the peanuts I gave. :) Some souvenirs from America!

In the evening on Friday, we had a big banquet for the whole camp. The campers spent the whole afternoon preparing for it. Some were assigned to music, some for preparing skits, others helped serve the meal itself, others made decorations... it was so wonderful! The theme was "futuristic," so there were a lot of interesting elements. We all dressed up in whatever we could find that we thought would look futuristic yet still dressy for the dinner. I decided to wear a ton of the jewelry that I brought, so I wore four necklaces and two pairs of earrings, plus a whole lot of gold eye shadow. ;) (Oh, and side note: some inspectors came and found things in the main building that were not up to par with electric requirements and such, so we had not not allow the kids inside it any more. So basically we lost the use of our dining room/classroom. Thankfully, we were able to take the games out of the game tent outside and convert that into the dining area. Pray that they can fix the problems quickly and be back inside.) 

The evening was a great bonding time with the campers--full of laughs, skits, special music, great food, and more. The American girls led a game for everybody and sang a very silly rendition of "White Christmas" in English. Jessica and I particularly hammed things up. ;) It was especially cool to see so many of the campers going all out in their particular responsibilities for the evening. Here are a few fun photos from the night:

A few of the counselors looking very futuristic :)

Some of my favorite boys 

And favorite girls :)

Gaby!

a skit

Lynn and I-- kitchen and chalet inspection buddy. She improved my French, and I improved her English. :)

Rewind a little bit: on Friday I had another wonderful experience... and at the Catholic Church no less! I shared it on Facebook already, but for those of you who only see my blog, here it is from my post. I posted a video there as well, but unfortunately I am not sure how to do that on the blog.: Tim said it'd be fine if I wanted to practice there...so here's me singing a little bit in French from a piece I did for a competition this year (minus the acting and accompaniment)  . Cool story: some people in the village heard me singing, and I got to have some great conversations with them. And there was no way to escape speaking in French!  I got to share what I do in America, and also what I'm doing in France. There were two young girls in the group, and after the other two people left, they came back inside. By that time I was reading my Bible on my iPad. They were interested, so I told them I read it because I love the Lord Jesus Christ, and I asked them if they ever read it. I told them it is an important book. We talked about a number of other things, and I found out that they had just arrived on vacation in the village. I told them that I have many friends at the camp who are their age and invited them to come to our meetings where we sing and study the Bible if they want. I also offered for them to meet my friends, so we walked over to the camp building. On the way I met their dad and uncle and got to talk with them a bit too. Then the girls got to meet many campers, counselors, and Mrs. Knickerbocker got to talk to them too. I'm glad they could finally talk to some people who really know French. Anyway, just pray that maybe if they are bored in little Larodde these next two weeks that they might join us for a gathering. It was such an special opportunity to talk to them!

So that was pretty awesome. And getting to sing in there for a while was also just wonderful! It had fantastic acoustics. Also, I DID get to see the girls again... the next day in fact! Jessica and I were preparing "The Power of the Cross" to sing in French for church on Sunday, and they came and listened to us practicing it in the town hall. They were outside the building looking in. We told them that they could hear us sing the next day in the service if they want and mentioned the time. The next day, apparently they showed up after the service and asked Mr. Knickerbocker if they could hear us sing, but the service was done. Pray that their curiosity continues over the two weeks that they are here, and that God would plant seeds of truth in their hearts.

So Friday was a very full day. Saturday was my day off, so I joined the juniors on a special trip they took to to a sort of adventure park about 1.5 hours away. I loved seeing the countryside on the drive. Once we got there, we just spent about 3 or 4 hours letting the kids play on the different games (trampolines, tubing hills, bounce houses, petting zoo, etc.). Lots of French speaking and lots of fun. I just love these children! Here are me and a few of the girl counselors and a dear little camper, Noah, at the park.

Sunday I sang with Jessica in the church service and then did the final chalet inspections before helping with lunch prep. I rested a bit in the afternoon and evening and enjoyed watching a film with the Americans. The campers also had a special time of sharing testimonies of what God had done in their hearts during camp. Quite a few of my little buddies gave their hearts to Christ within these last few days of camp!

Since it was the last night of camp, the teens stayed up late into the night, and I got to play games with them. Playing "Whisper Down the Lane" in French at 2 AM is not exactly the easiest thing I've ever done. :p 

The next day the campers left starting around 10 AM, and all of them were gone by about 4. The goodbyes were very long and emotional. I definitely experienced the true French goodbye. Some photos taken as they were heading out:

My special girls! :)

my "little French boyfriend" ;)

Cutest kid ever!

Being silly with some of the last kids to leave

During much of the evening on Monday we began deep cleaning the chalets. This was a very long process! Tuesday morning and afternoon we spent cleaning them as well. I have a sort of uncanny love for cleaning, so I greatly enjoyed these times! The teen boys' chalets were a special challenge. :) 

Tuesday night began the retreat for pastors and elders from across France. Two families from the church in Rouen came, so I got to see some friends again! Yay! Just love them. 

I will be babysitting children for most of the retreat and helping out in the kitchen as needed. Today was a full day of babysitting. Some children speak only French, others only English, and some both. That made things kinda tricky today when I'd need to tell the kids something. Or they'd run up and start talking to me or asking me something, and I'd have to switch gears back and forth with no warning. It's very good for me! :) Also got to learn a few French children's playground games today. Very fun. 

Finally, I got to see some dear friends today who are missionaries nearby, Jared and Rebekah Stevenson. So good to catch up with them. They also gave us American girls and Mrs. Knickerbocker a surprise by offering us one of their kittens. Mr. K caved in and agreed that we could have one at the camp to help with pest control. So he was dropped off tonight, and we've already had a great snuggle time. :) Photos to come. 

Anyway, thanks for reading through all of this... I hope it is a blessing! Please pray as I leave the camp this Saturday and spend the weekend in Rouen before heading to England on Monday. I will then begin ministering with Art and Debbie Cunningham for two weeks. May you see God's grace in a thousand ways today. I so appreciate your prayers and support.

Camp life :)

It's hard to believe that another week has already passed since my last post. Life at camp feels much slower than life in Rouen, for sure. It has been a welcome change, but certainly an adjustment.

I have trouble remembering which days are which, because they are all quite similar. Well, right after my last post, I was able to move into my own room. I am now living on the premier etage. It was very fun to get to make my own space special. I even made some makeshift curtains out of a bedsheet. :) I also used my jewelry and postcards as decorations around the room. The weather continued to be very chilly up until the last three days, so I collected many blankets. It was in the 50s quite a lot up until Monday, and now the weather has just been beautiful! The rain has stopped, and the sun is shining. The kids are very happy about that. Here are a few photos of my room. :)

I love the old lamp with the fringe. :) Most of the rooms here don't have any lamps, so it's a treat!

Generally, every day I help out with at least 2 of the meals of the day. Lunch is at 12:30, and dinner is at 7. The prep can take anywhere from 2-4 hours. It's been SO wonderful getting to learn more how to cook and also to get to know the ladies in the kitchen. The head cook is usually a young American lady named, Rachel. She speaks French fluently, so it's been nice to get to have the security of knowing that I have an explanation when I need it, but also an opportunity to learn some French too. Two dear, elderly French ladies are working in the kitchen during this two week camp as well as a young girl named Lynn. (I mentioned her in my last post. She and I do the cabin inspections). Tim and Elisabeth Knickerbocker also take turns working in the kitchen, so I've enjoyed the time spent with them as well. The meals are generally all "home-cooked," and I'm pretty sure if there's a "France 15" I've gained it. ;) No, actually the food here is much less artificial, and great care is taken in preparing and presenting it. Generally we start with a bread and salad course and then move on to the main dish. And there is always dessert. :) We slice fresh bread for all three meals as well.

When I'm not in the kitchen, I've been able to take some time for myself to read, catch up on correspondence, relax, and spend time with the Lord. It's been refreshing, but also a little difficult. I am such a social person, and sometimes it is hard feeling a little bit isolated here (especially because of the language barrier). But I do have many wonderful friends, and especially over the last few days, I've really connected with a few campers and other workers here at the camp. My French is continuing to improve very slowly, and it's been fun to try to talk with the campers more and get to know them. Some of them have British or American parents, so they know English. Others just know it from school. So we're both learning from each other. I've especially enjoyed my friendship with Lynn as we inspect the chalets daily. That's been an adventure. Many of the campers have decided to leave us notes in English and French, chocolate, candy, flowers, juice, granola bars, etc. etc. :) They also have enjoyed making little rock art formations outside their doors. It's been great.

 

One of my favorite little buddies is a boy named Gabriel. His mom is British, and his dad is French, so he speaks both languages. He has quite the imagination. During one meal this week, he sat next to me at the table and caught one of the hundreds (literally) of flies that we have here under his drinking glass. He then proceeded to torture and kill it with scissors. It's a comfort to know that boys will always be boys... ;) Here he is with me after he won a medal for a game.

 

I continue to enjoy the services in the evening here and am really learning the French children's songs! I was able to sing in their morning service on Sunday. I sang "Rejoice in the Lord" in French. Come to find out, it was very special to Mr. K's son-in-law, who is French. He is here to teach the teens in the mornings. He lost his father at the age of 15, and apparently that song was sung at his father's funeral, and his mom put the words from it up on their fridge for years after that. He was touched deeply. I felt rather inadequate as I stood up there to sing that morning, and I prayed that God would use it in even just a few hearts. I didn't know if this man really spoke much English, but today he came up to me and thanked me for the song. He spoke English very well! We were then able to have a very good talk about what he has learned from losing his father as well as what I have learned from losing my dad. It was so encouraging. I am so thankful for these sort of graces that are given each day. I would love to tell you all about many more that have come through the Knickerbockers, through creation, through God's Word, through so many ways.

 

Even so, I still struggle with discouragement and other things here. I had a wonderful talk with my mom on Saturday, and God used that to really help me refocus my heart and mind. I am so grateful for my amazing mom! She is a constant example to me.

 

I also have had time to get to know another American girl here, Mercedes. She is doing the laundry for the camp. What a great friend she has been! We have perfected the art of late-night, girl parties. :) We've had a couple movie nights with her laptop and any spoils we could find on the snack shelf in the kitchen. She finds joy in the little things, and it's nice to just simply enjoy those along with her. Here's a photo from one of our particularly chocolate-heavy parties. :)

 

 

Although the schedule generally remains the same from day to day here, things are also a lot less "structured" as some people might be used to at camp, so every day is also an adventure. I never know how much I'll be needed in the kitchen. Some days the meal is easier, and they don't need as much help. Monday was one of those days, and instead of cooking,  I went on a cleaning spree in the main building. I listened to a John Piper message while deep-cleaning the bathroom, and then I swept the bazillion flights of stairs in the building and few other spots. :) It was fun. Here's a picture of the building I was cleaning (also the one I live in). Also, check out the view out my bedroom window at sunrise!

 

Another example of the unexpected each day: because the weather was so nice today, the junior campers got to go to a local lake to swim and hang out. The K's offered for me and Mercedes to join, so we did! It was definitely a highlight of my trip. I also got to really build some relationships with a few campers. I taught them the game "Marco Polo" in the water too. It was a hit. :) Enjoy a few photos! Mercedes is in the third photo from the bottom.



 Well, once again... there is much more that I could write, but I better go for now. Thank you so very much again for your continued prayers! Please pray for these dear children at camp that God would use the messages from Acts that Tim is preaching to really open their hearts to the Gospel and toward following Christ in their day-to-day lives. Thank you also for your prayers for me and my own walk with the Lord! I long to be used by Him each day here.