La Lumière: January 2023

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.

Connecting with friends Darrin and Robyn.

Cousins playing in a car on the Rimrocks.

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.
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.
