After a fun Christmas spent in Paris with surrogate 'kids' Emi and Josh from Switzerland, together with their mum Karen (over from Vancouver) ,and an early January visit from friends Kim and Kerry, over from the UK for a mum-and-daughter weekend break,we thought we were having a quiet start to the year and I could start getting down to organizing the rest of the sorting out, unpacking, decorating etc. WRONG!!!! A few days before it started we heard that there were 3 places on a course we had tried unsuccessfully to get on way back in November.
A flurry of activity followed.....I had to find a kennel for the dogs and arrange for someone to live in the house to look after it and the cats in our absence (thankyou Liz!!!) Gordon managed to book a hotel and flights and before we knew it we, together with one of the other leaders, Johan, were off to...North California!!
The course was run by the church of Bethel in Redding, where Gordon had been twice and Johan once, before and been very impressed with how they live out being a New Testament church, aiming 'to bring Heaven to Earth' ( see the lead pastor Bill Johnson's book 'When Heaven meets Earth' and more later on some of the 'how') . There were about 40 of us on the 4 day course, including about 25 old and new friends from churches in Kent and Wales. As there were 6 folks from Singapore as well, the americans were in the minority!!!
The Europeans were made very welcome by the church, being invited out a couple of times to dinner in people's homes ( yes...the whole gang of us !). Gordon and I stayed over the weekend to participate in the saturday and sunday events and then flew down to LA in order to stay with dear friends Joyce and Jerry ( whose sons Chris and Sean had spent 2 months with us through the Autumn in order to help us with moving and church set-up).
Gordon had to go home after a few days but I got to stay a whole week and visit friends, old neighbours and favourite places ( got to Universal Studios but not Disneyland this trip!!!) Co-incidentally, Josh was staying with Joyce and Jerry at the same time, as part of his plan to check out the film business, his chosen metier, as J and J have contacts in that world It was very strange..and fun...to see him there..2 worlds meeting! AND....the weather was glorious!!! At a time of year when we've known it to pour down with torrential rain for several days, the sun shone with a temperature of 25°C and more!!! It was VERY hard to come back to a miserably grey Paris with feeble attempts at snow. However it was good to see all our friends again, and George ( 3rd leader of the church) had been magnificently holding the fort whilst Johan and Gordon were away. We're now looking forward to sharing all we gained with the church and moving forward with God's plans for Paris!
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