New Week, New Blog

Saturday we were given good news-we're renting a tractor to complete the trenches! That really helped us as far as morale goes and we were able to get a good amount of work done. I got really sunburnt from being on the roof all day and everyone was pretty sore and sick of the heat, but otherwise work went well. Afterwards we went to town for our first kebabs. People in France are shocked to hear that we don't have kebabs in America. They're Turkish sandwiches that are similar to corn beef I guess but they pull it all off one piece of rotisserie. Alysha Sbitity, a girl our age from my host family, joined us. We appreciated her help ordering and even more her company. What was cool about that evening is that to get from the school to the restaurant we broke into groups and took different routes. We did a prayer walk and just prayed aloud for the people and places we were passing as a small group. That was really cool-praying aloud with no shame (mostly because nobody could understand us) was really different but awesome. When we came across people that looked easy to talk to, we would. We asked them questions about Christianity in the area. Tyler, Erin and I arrived at the meeting spot pretty late because we ended up talking to three groups of people. The first was an elderly lady who spoke English well enough but could hardly understand us. After a lot of digging and misunderstanding each other, she said she was a Catholic and she thinks religion is necessary for young people to learn good character but that you didn't need it as you got older. She said she is distant from Catholicism. When we asked if we could pray for her she looked shocked and asked why we wanted to do that. We explained a little and she asked for prayer for her family. We did that after saying goodbye. We approached a group of three elderly men who spoke no English whatsoever. We didn't really get much across except that two of them were Italian (which we didn't realize until after we tried all the French phrases we knew and then recognized some Spanish-like words) and one was from Algiers. When he smiled at us his dentures fell down a little bit. They were an awesome group of men but we didn't get to witness to them at all. Finally we talked and walked with these two French women. They said about the same thing about being raised Catholic but not going to church anymore. Everyone kept trying to point us to a concert held at the Dominican church. We were a little depressed that this beautiful building that once hosted worship now is a fancy community center. I hope that those who go to it are somehow reminded of the original intentions for the building and consider the God it was built to honor. We prayed for those women. They asked for prayer for their jobs and for their husbands. I got the impression that they were divorced or else had broken marriages. The language barrier (and etiquette) made it difficult to ask those questions but we prayed for them. They were really polite and friendly. If you remember to pray for them, their names were Anna and Gabby. Other groups had similar experiences. Altogether, it was an awesome evening. It was late by the time we finished eating (though it was still totally light out) so we decided to postpone our hike up the hill.

Each of us spent yesterday with our respective host families. It was nice because we all had different experiences. Coming together the next day was a lot of fun-we all had stories to share of our time. They boys all went to a charismatic church with their host family. It was really absurd and they were all stretched when considering their church tradition compared with this one. That was followed by a very strange lunch-hard boiled eggs and vegetables floating in clear, plain gelatin. They went on a hike up a hill after that. Christina and Erin went to a Mennonite church and then had a really nice lunch complete with delicious sausages. That gave them a good avenue to speak with their unbelieving host mother. They went to a mideval walled city after that which was cool for them. Christine and Sarah went to the church Michelle and I attended last week. They really liked the message which was translated for them by their hosts. They had a large lunch afterwards and then went to Vosges, France to see the WWI trenches. They were totally amazed by that and even brought back some bits of barbed wire and shrapnel. They had the opportunity to crawl through some tunnels used during the war. Michelle and I went to Europa Park, a large theme park in Germany. We went with our host family (British Christians), their family (British Muslims) and their friends (French Muslims). It was quite the multi-cultural experience. The park was fun and a lot different than Disneyland. It was a good day for all of us. Today we rented a tractor (HOORAY!) to do the rest of the trench. That's been fun for people to try out. It's been raining pretty hard all day but it just stopped but that hasn't been much of a hindrance for us to work. Matt's wife and daughter arrived today to see all that's going on.