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La Lumière: January 2023

Newsletters
15 January 2023
La Lumiere
January, 2023
click for printable pdf
Garden of the gods
UN
RECAP FROM THE STATES

We are ready to return to France after three months of "home assignment" visiting family and touching base with many of you. The time was very full. We put in over seven thousand miles on the road, traversing eleven states, chaining up over snowy mountain passes and loving the seat warmers. This was not a vacation. We packed in 53 different appointments and spoke at or visited four different churches. If we did see you, thanks for your time! If not, hopefully we'll be able to connect in the future. Focusing on increasing our monthly support, we were able to see an increase from 94% to 98% of our goal. We are encouraged, but not quite there. After seeing God faithfully provide for twenty two years, we remain thankful and confident in his provision and our call to ministry, which we still feel strongly.

Over the holidays Efrem and Silas were able to join us and we celebrated a rare Christmas with our extended family. In Colorado they even put on a little concert for neighbors and friends. We were able to see our former colleagues in France, Darrin and Robin Skur, and we even watched a world cup soccer match together. Some other highlights were walking the river walk in Pueblo, taking in the views at the Garden of the Gods, playing many hands of cards, Silas' first experience driving on snow-packed roads, and exploring anew the trails on top of the Rimrocks in Billings.

Red Rock Canyon Trail

Connecting with friends Darrin and Robyn.

Car on the Rimrocks

Cousins playing in a car on the Rimrocks.

Christmas concert

A little Christmas concert for the neighbors. Subscribe to Efrem's new YouTube channel!

 

Please pray

  • for our transition back to Rennes.
  • that we have good synergy with our teams.
  • that Christ remains the center of everything we do.
DEUX
WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

Jumping back into life in Rennes, Dan is looking forward to working side by side with his new teammate, Alexis, who has reached 100% of his support! He recently designed two banner signs and brochures for the sports ministry. We will work together to film a training video this month. The variety of projects keeps us learning and on our toes. Hopefully we will find good synergy and a manageable number of new projects will be brought to us.

May will be back with the technology team, which includes Darrin and Trent. They've been holding down the fort while she's been away, but it will be nice for the team to be complete again. May continues to give concerted time to the Make Giving Easy project too. Brazil, Colombia, Kenya and Moldova are currently under construction. Creating a giving site for Kenya is an important step forward because it connects a payment gateway that is used in a dozen other African countries, opening the door for more development there. May is in charge of the technical aspects of all of these integrations, so she definitely has her hands full.

Our Signatures

La Lumière: November 2022

Newsletters
15 November 2022
La Lumiere
November, 2022
click for printable pdf
Sunrise over Billings
UN
STILL STUDYING, AND LOVING IT

Even in eternity, we will always have more to learn about our beautiful, glorious infinite God. May and I are currently taking Bible classes online, required Cru training. We are loving it! May is taking apologetics, and my class focuses on God's character and the Holy Spirit. It's pure gold. Two of the most insightful chapters in May's reading were from Tim Keller's The Reason for God, where he discusses the problem of sin and the true story of the cross. It's impossible to distill down to a few sentences, but sin is essentially seeking our identity apart from God; we 'deify' other things. This brings about dire personal, social and cosmic consequences. To explain the cross, Keller dives into the essence of forgiveness, how humanly speaking it costs us something to forgive someone, we suffer as we absorb the debt. On the cross God does visibly and cosmically what every human being must do to forgive someone. On the cross God offers his own lifeblood to defeat evil and and accomplish his loving desire to forgive others. God didn't send a surrogate to absorb the debt, he suffered himself.

Dan's class has also been wonderfully insightful, delving into the essence of the Trinity. Although it helps our finite minds to try to characterize the different roles the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have, I find beauty in the blurring of the lines. For example, the Son has the primary role in salvation, accomplishing it through his incarnation, death and resurrection. But the Father plans it and draws people (John 6:44) and holds us firmly in his hand (John 10:29). The Spirit applies our salvation, giving us spiritual birth (John 3:8), and sealing us (Ephesians 1:13). God is always working together in relationship, inviting us into the eternal love the Father and Son and Holy Spirit have for each other.

Carver Park Reserve

A lovely walk in Carver Park Reserve in Minnesota

 

Please pray

  • for safe travels to Bozeman, Seattle, then Colorado.
  • that we effectively carry our responsibilities, even though we're traveling.
  • that the Lord would be watching over Silas and Efrem while we're 4,500 miles away.
Washing dishes

Helping at a church family event in a Billings, no training required!

Game night

A fun night with a missions committee in Billings.

DEUX
CULTURAL OUTSIDERS

We are currently in Montana and enjoying reconnecting with family and friends and churches. And, for the first time in twenty two years we're in a time zone where we can actually watch the World Series! Sometimes people ask us if we feel the effects of reverse culture shock. May made an interesting observation as we were walking the other day. She said, "It's like we're standing still and everything around us is moving on." So we experience an odd combination of familiarity and disconnectedness. Our cultural and contextual references are depleting. One silly example is how restaurant menus have become vague - i.e. Chipotle - and tough to decipher. If you go there often, you already understand what the options are, but we're confused. We don't look like it because we're speaking English, but we are cultural outsiders in a way.

Our Signatures
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