The Musician's Muse

A glimse into my life

2009-04-24T05:12:00.001-07:00

So, my roommate and I don't connect too often, with both of us keeping rather bizarre hours and us both often having quite a bit of work or studying to do. However, when we do, it tends to be some sort of memorable interaction, including everything from philosophical discussions about whether or not we'll be able to fly in heaven and predestination to me vainly trying to convince him that throwing eggs out our windows at people, dogs and moving cars is not a good idea. I also tend to discover all of the awkward ways that I have not yet figured out this culture from my roommate. Imagine his frustration in having to explain to me in what state I must properly leave the bathroom after each time I use it, and the overly-complicated system for what color sponge, rag, or cloth I am allowed to clean what objects and surfaces with, and which things are absolutely forbidden to clean with the incorrect color sponge (who knew that for the first 3 months I was washing dishes with the face-wash rag?). I have also gotten a glimpse into the private nature of the French with regards to food. I honestly think that Greg has an emotional attachment to truly French food. Whenever he has nutella or cheese with baguette, the symphony of sounds of satisfaction that comes from the kitchen is always a treat. He also establishes that it is a proven fact that French food is the best in the world, not merely an opinion, as I assert. He does not listen to my logic and experience in the different cuisines of the world being different, and some even as good (or better!) than French cuisine. He once even chided me for eating Peanut Butter. :-) Whenever I make imported Kraft Mac & Cheese I do it when he's not home...I wouldn't want him to get offended at such an unfortunate excuse for "cheese." Mmmm...America.

Anyway, the latest vignette with Greg concerned several humorous videos of a French guy and some of his friends pulling these ridiculous pranks in public (similar to ImprovEverywhere). The guy is actually from Montpellier, and there is one video which takes you on a little tour of Montpellier!

Here it is, for your enjoyment:

MARIO KART (REMI GAILLARD)
by nqtv

What? Is he back?

2009-04-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, I haven't abandoned this. I just returned to France from an almost 2-week vision trip with a group of students and staff to East Asia. I promise to have a real post up with pictures soon!

In the meantime, enjoy this:

February: Welcome to Spring

2009-03-14T06:39:00.001-07:00

Yes, that's right, we have entered into the joyous world of spring here in the South of France. February was a phenomenal month of ministry and some personal travel. We get a small amount of vacation days to take on STINT, and, well, at the beginning of February I hadn't taken a single one, and now I only have one left. :-)

Here are some highlights and reflections:

The beginning of February was marked by a visit from my parents! After a mess of getting them to Montpellier (they flew into Amsterdam to find that there were zero flights going between Amsterdam and Paris!), we had an amazing time! They got to see Montpellier, the Mediterranean, and then we took off with Erin to go visit Italy!

Here we are in Sête, a city just south of Montpellier, right on the Mediterranean.

Our first stop in Italy was Cremona, the home of Stradivarius and also of the man who made my violin! We visited him, which was one of the top highlights of my year here so far!

City #2 was Pisa, where we of course did the most tourist thing possible:

That night we caught an incredible sunset on the Mediterranean, just a block away from our hotel.

City #3 was Florence, which was simply stunning! That's where we shopped! :-)

After Italy, my parents and I visited Paris, where we saw the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, St. Chapelle, and my friend Andrew! The whole way we ate amazing food (in both Italy and France!) and really really enjoyed just being able to be together. I was very thankful to be able to see them part-way through my year. It helped my longings to get home dissipate quite a bit.

Eiffel Tower:

A visit to Notre-Dame, including mass! This is where I sang (and almost fainted) in
high school, the last time I was in France.

The highlight for me this time at the Louvre was seeing Napolean's Apartments! Wow!

And the thread throughout our whole vacation was to take pictures with my home church's newsletter! Here is my Dad with one of his Italian friends! (Bibiana)

And thus my trip with my parents was ended. I jumped back into ministry for a week in Montpellier, and then took a little weekend vacation to visit a really good friend who is also on this side of the pond!

Before getting there, I overnighted in Köln, Germany to see my favorite orchestra, the good old MO. The orchestra was in great form, performing Adams, Nielsen, and Barber with J. Bell. Josh sounded incredible, as did my favorite oboist on his solo in the second movement. :-) I also had the pleasure of spending time with Roger, talking one last time with Jorja Fleezanis (and being invited backstage into her warm-up room to finish our conversation!), and surprising a former collegue of mine by showing up to a concert in Germany!

Jorja warming up with the orchestra:

A view of the incredible hall from backstage:

Josh Bell warming up with the orchestra (heck yeah I got to go to the rehearsal):

After a very uncomfortable overnight train through Germany to Switzerland, catching a bus at 5am in Basel, Switzerland to get to my flight that left just across the border in France, I arrived and met my friend Scott, to go visit our mutual friend Jon.

Myself with Jon and Scott:

The three of us had an incredible time together - we spent a ton of time just hanging out and having great conversations. A stop worth mentioning was to a Turkish Cafe, where we enjoyed a traditional Turkish custom called the Nargile, as well as drinking a lot of çay (chai tea). Mmmm...I brought some back to France with me because I loved it so much.

The other significant highlight of the trip there was visiting a mosque. Jon lives in a highly Muslim area, and so I learned a ton about what the Muslim world is like and what Muslim culture looks like.

Visiting the mosque was one of the most impactful things I have done in a long time. I was absolutely struck with a feeling of deep sorrow, mixed with some anger at the emptiness I saw and experienced learning about their lives. Unlike the hope found in Christ, there is no real hope in Islam - just the 5 pillars which qualify you for consideration into heaven. There is no guarantee. There is no forgiveness, no grace. It broke my heart to see people following empty rituals because that is all they have been taught. I've never really had a heart for Muslim people before, but after this experience, my heart yearns to help them find true joy.

After what seemed like almost no time, Scott and I were on a plane back to France. We spent a layover between our flight and our train in Mulhouse, which is in the part of France that looks like Bavaria! I ate some super stinky cheese, and we had great tea, and enjoyed an incredible dinner conversation. :-)

Getting home: first sleeping car experience for both of us! Yeah sleeper cars!

Scott stayed with us in Montpellier for the next few days, and I took him with me on campus, as well as visiting some of my favorite sites! Again, it was an amazingly fun time spent with good friends!

Fitzy's. Our favorite pub ever. Home of English Club every week (and our team hangout times as much as we can afford the time and expensive drinks!)

THE best crépes ever. Even better than in Nantes, which is actually where they are from. So...take that.

Sigh...I love this café. Best hot chocolate in the world.

You may be wondering whether or not I did any ministry in February. The answer is yes! I just don't have sweet pictures from that part. :-) My team is also putting in a really full month this March, so more details on that to come. In fact, as we speak, we have another vision trip arriving today! The campus is totally on strike, and two campuses are actually blocked, so we're praying that the Lord gives us guidance for how to best use this week with the vision trip here!

Thank you all for keeping abreast and for your prayers. I miss you. Think of me when it snows - I'm getting a tan already. ;-)

Weather

2009-03-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

Just one reason why I really like living in the south of France:

More updates soon...

Flashback to January

2009-02-21T05:45:00.001-08:00

Now that it's almost March, I thought it might be a nice idea to finish my update of January!

We had two big highlights from January, the vision trip from the U of M that came for a week, and our Midyear conference in Nerja, Spain. Here are some pictures from the two events!

The Vision Trip was a group of 9 students and staff from the U of M (and one North Dakotan who also came along). While they were here, we had a lot of fun showing them our city, the ministry, and giving them an idea of what our life is like here. This of course included seeing the sights and the guys treating the girls to a ride on the carousel!

I also enjoyed helping the students get into French culture a little bit. Here we are having just purchased new scarves to sport back in the States. :-)

One of the biggest blessings to me personally was having 4 other guys here for a week! I spent almost every waking moment with these guys, and enjoyed so much just getting to hang out and have some time with other dudes for a while. I love the women on my team, but having guys here for the week was awesome! This is us at the Skur's house. I'm not quite sure how this happened, but I think it was Ryan Larson's idea...

More importantly, having a boost of 9 fresh, energized workers for the week was a huge encouragement to us as a team. The week the Vision Trip was with us we had more spiritual conversations and were able to share the gospel more times than we ever had our first 4 months here. It was amazing how the Lord blessed us as we and they went out in faith to meet people.

One story that I particularly enjoy was from the middle of the week. Drew (one of the vision trip students) and I went out to go sharing on campus, and after some time with relatively unproductive conversations, we sat down at a small café on campus where many students spend the afternoon. We had sat down next to some guys hoping to talk to them, but they left almost as soon as we sat down, so we waited, and after just a few minutes a group of 5 students sat down. We started talking with them, asking if they had a few minutes to view this short film we were showing and get their opinion on the film. The purpose of the film was to have an easy way to initiate conversations and also to invite students who were interested to a soirée we were having at the end of the week with two short films both based on Jesus' parables.

The group was very interested, but two of the students had to leave for an exam, but asked for my cell # to get together later to check out the film. We ended up having a great conversation with the other three, and invited them to the soirée.

The next day I had a text message from the two who had left early, hoping to line up a time to get together. Their proposed time didn't work, but when we went to campus to have lunch, we ran into them! (Let me just note that the cafeteria is huge, and divided into several sections, so the likelihood of this happening by chance was extremely small) We had a great time just visiting with them at lunch, and asked them if they would come to the film soirée as well. They were very interested, so we parted ways that day hoping they would be able to come the following night.

The night of the soirée they were the first students there, and as we dived into the films we had really good discussions. Part way through the evening another friend of theirs joined us in time for the last film. The film was a modern retelling of the parable of the Prodigal Son. As we discussed the film afterwards, they were pulling out solid biblical themes from the story, and Drew was able to share about what it means to him that God's love for him (and all people) was unconditional and how He is always waiting for us to respond to his call for us to come to Him, just like the father in the story.

(Mélanie, Julian, myself, Peter and Drew (two vision trip students))

Since then myself and the team here has been able to keep hanging out with these guys, which has not only been fun for us, but encouraging as we continue to share what our life as believers looks like to these two friends of ours!

Midyear

The other big highlight from January was our Midyear conference, which was in Nerja, Spain, which is on the Mediterranean coast of southern Spain. It was a week-long conference, where we were able to connect with other STINTers from all around Europe and surrounding countries, share successes and frustrations, learn from each other and get some mid-year training and re-energizing for the second half of our year.

On the way there, Laura, Erin and I actually spent a weekend in London, because it was cheaper to fly to Spain via London (makes perfect sense, doesn't it?). We had a great time - Erin and I got to see many of the sights, including going to Les Misérables in London!

When we got to Spain, it was super refreshing to be in an incredibly beautiful location! We were blessed to be staying in a hotel right on the coast, and the view from my room was pretty awesome:

Probably the highlight of the week for me personally was getting to room with and spend the week with one of my close friends who is also STINTing this year.

As a team it was a really fantastic time to connect with other STINT team from around Europe. Here we are with the other STINT team in France. They're up in the north, where it's rainy and cold! We're glad that we're in the south of France!

One of the big answers to prayer from the week at the conference was that it really brought our team together. After living and working in close quarters for 4 months, we all had sensed an underlying tension on the team that none of us could name or put a finger on. One evening at the conference we talked, shared, prayed and worked things out together for five hours, the resulting conversations of which have changed the dynamics on our team 180 degrees. Since then, we've been closer with each other, more honest, and more comfortable living and working together. It's been one of the biggest blessings I could have asked for the second part of this year.

We came away from the conference with some new ideas for a fresh start to how we worked as a team, one primary thing being that we've been focusing on prayer a lot as a team. We've been praying together every week day either at the beginning or end of the day, and the changes that have happened in our ministry have been huge. We've suddenly had more conversations that lead quickly to explaining the gospel, and we've been able to make relational connections with students very quickly as well. We've had one really exciting story in the last week...but you'll just have to wait for that until I have time to type it up!

:-D

More photos...

2009-02-01T09:42:00.001-08:00

Here are some photos from our Christmas conference, Camp Nouvel An.

A view of our main meeting room:

I was assigned to be captain for team 4 - we had a competition on New Years Eve, involving several challenges, including transporting small beans across a room with a straw, stuffing one team member's mouth full of marshmallows, a quiz and blind pictionary (draw with your eyes closed, or use someone else's hand)

We had one day of outreach in the city that we were in (super cool story to follow), here is a picture of my friend Jad out with a fellow STINTer, Natalie, and another student.

When we returned to Montpellier, the unthinkable happened...it snowed! For all you Minnesotans, this is the sum total of snow that we had all season. Winter is basically over already. :-)

Here are some reflections after the conference:

Recap 1.5: More Christmas

2009-01-27T14:19:00.001-08:00

I thought some fun technology would spice this up a bit.

Here are some looks at what our vacation adventures were like:

The idealized beginning to our voyage:

Our expectant voyage through the mountain to Italy:

Our unexpected return to France, after an unfortunate discovery of snow...

Recap 1: Christmas Vacation

2009-01-26T11:03:00.000-08:00

18 Janvier, 2009

Recap I: Christmas Vacation

As we ended our semester her e in Montpellier, it was pretty apparent that all of us on the team were very ready for a break. After four solid months of doing ministry, we were all excited to have a little vacation! Before we ended the semester we had seen the kickoff of what is now an ongoing outreach called Thé-O Show, and we had a very successful Fête de Noël, where we shared many of our Christmas traditions with our friends, and most importantly shared about what the true origins of Christmas are.

A few days afterwards, we took off for the Alps, eager to find snow for Christmas and some R&R. We spent the week in the French Alps in a small little village tucked away way up in the mountains. There was snow in abundance. We spent time sleeping in, playing cards, eating together, and even went sledding in the middle of the night on old air mattresses that were basically dead already, and much more so after we sled on them!

One of the highlights of the vacation was the day before Christmas Eve, when we spent the day in 3 countries! We woke up and had breakfast in France, then drove to Geneva (Switzerland), where we enjoyed part of the afternoon and lunch, then we drove along the north side of the lake and eventually back into France to see and go through Mont Blanc, which is the highest mountain in Europe, and had dinner in Italy! Let me tell you, the pasta in Italy is worth the trip. Wow! We had a little trouble getting back into France, because after we had driven most of the way up the mountain on the border, we discovered that the mountain pass was totally closed! It was so snowed in that there was no way anything would get through, including the semi we found trying heroically to turn around at the top of this mountain pass. On our way back down we talked to a local who told us that the pass was closed 8 months out of the year. Thanks for letting us know before we drove all the way up the mountain! Oh well…

Christmas was a good celebration. We had a fairly traditional meal together and spent time reading and reflecting on the prophetic and gospel writings surrounding Christ’s birth. With no gifts, no tree, no lights, really nothing to remind me of “normal” Christmas, it was nice to be able to focus on why we actually celebrate this holiday. It was difficult to be away from family and from home, but I was also glad to be where I was.

Some pictures of the vacation:

Erin and I in Genève, Switzerland.

Here we are in a cute little town somewhere east of Genève. We think it looks like Stillwater!

One of the highlights of the vacation. Snow!

Lac Léman, just east of Genève, Switzerland

The 5 of us STINTers up in the Swiss Alps. Wow!

A petit promise

2009-01-16T03:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, I will post pictures and update this soon. :-)

It's been a crazy, energizing, challenging, motivating, encouraging, awe-inspiring last four weeks.

A small teaser from the Swiss Alps:

A brief devotion

2008-12-11T09:33:00.000-08:00

One of my co-workers here in Agapé recently sent out this devotion to all of us working here in France. I thought it to be challenging and very insightful. I wanted to share it with you all.

“I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the LORD.” Psalm 118:17

Dear Friends,

We would like to offer this short devotion for 2009. May it be a source of inspiration for each of us every day of this New Year.

According to a recent study, witnessing is becoming more and more difficult for believers, notably in the West, where intolerance, under the guise of tolerance, has reached unimaginable proportions. The more we live in an environment hostile to the Gospel, the more we remain silent in order to hide behind the reigning political correctness. Those who evangelize have become a ‘rare breed’ to the extent that many Christians believe that witnessing is solely the work of pastors and evangelists who are ‘paid’ to witness and proclaim the works of the Lord.

Such thinking can cause our zeal for sharing the Good News to diminish or even to stealthily disappear. From time to time we may share what God is doing at church, in a prayer meeting or on very rare occasions. So it is not surprising that our fire for the Gospel goes out leaving behind a wisp of smoke without aroma.

In the verse 17 from Psalm 118, King David turns upside down our perspective and understanding. In singing: “I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the LORD,” he clearly linked life and witness. According to the Psalmist, this was a fact of life that needed no changing: “if a child of God lives, he must, therefore, sing and celebrate the works of the Lord.” To be alive simply means “to witness.” The interconnectedness between these two is so obvious that it leaves us no excuse, no justification for our following Jonah on his flight toward Tarsis and away from God’s will.

How often do we recount the works of God? Whenever we participate in the Lord’s Supper? Every once in a while? This verse reminds us of our “raison d’être,” (literally: "reason for being"), the true purpose for our existence on earth. May it not be a grudging necessity. May celebrating and sharing the works of the Lord become an integral part of our daily lives. Therefore, whether in groups, among family or by ourselves, let us all SING without ceasing. And during all the days of 2009, let us say: “If the Lord grants me life, I will proclaim his works and I will sing his praises!” It is a worthy goal and a beautiful expression of our faith!”

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2009!

10 days...4 cities

2008-11-20T06:23:00.000-08:00

20 Novembre, 2008

Within the space of 10 days I had the opportunity to see 4 different cities in Southern France (not including Montpellier!).

View Larger Map

Follow my journeys beginning in…

Lourdes

A week ago I was able to have the opportunity to visit a good family friend from the states, who was visiting the south of France for a few days on a pilgrimage that he was participating in, bringing him over to Spain and Portugal, and for a few days to the city of Lourdes in the south of France.

We spent only about 24 hours together, but it was a most wonderful 24 hours! I learned a lot about the history of the city and was able to ask him all sorts of questions to help me understand many things about the Catholic Church. This was especially helpful as the strong tradition in this part of the world is from the Roman Catholic Church, and it was helpful for me to understand a few more things as Fr. Jim was able to explain them to me.

It was also splendid to have the feeling the whole time that I was hosting him in the south of France, my home for the year. I was thoroughly amused when I first arrived and joined the group he was traveling with for dinner. This was my first encounter with a group of Americans who had just arrived in France as tourists since I’ve been here, and it was rather amusing to me to suddenly discover what small French-isms I had unconsciously picked up already in my first two months here. I found myself wondering why all of the Americans were taking so much effort to cut something on their plate, set down the knife, transfer the fork to their primary hand and finally succeed in eating whatever they were cutting. I hadn’t realized that I was wielding fork and knife concurrently in left and right hands throughout the meal, which is the European way to eat. I was also enlightened when our server brought out bread, which I promptly took and set on the table (as makes perfect sense in France). I realized a little later that Fr. Jim had delicately balanced the bread on his plate so as not to place it on the table, and that he was lifting the whole mini-loaf and taking bites right out of it. I, on the other hand, was tearing off bite-sized portions of the bread, which is the custom here. Funny what little things you don’t realize you’ve started to do until you have someone from your normal culture show you what was normal back in the States.

In Lourdes we were able to visit the shrine and cathedral there, both of which were very cool. We celebrated mass, which pleasantly reminded me of our good old Lutheran liturgy back home (it never ceases to amaze me how similar the orders of service are between the Catholic and Lutheran churches). We toured the cathedral, which was so beautiful. It was interesting because a cathedral was first built there a long time ago, but then was found to be too small later, so they built another one just in front and below it. It was very cool how the two were incorporated, making it look as if they had always been designed together.

Fr. Jim and I spent much time on Saturday enjoying a café and at a sweet little restaurant just next to the river. It was in typical southern French style – sitting, enjoying, taking a coffee, basking in the gorgeous fall weather… It was in all a fantastic day.

I left Lourdes, my heart full from great conversation, and my bag full from gifts from my family that Jim amusingly carried in for me. I got to ride the train back and watch the sun set over the Pyrenees Mountains. Wow. Gorgeous. Unfortunately, I had a fearfully quick transfer that needed to be made in Toulouse, and my first train was late and my second train left early! This left me unexpectedly stranded overnight in…

Toulouse

Fortunately, Toulouse is probably the best city in Southern France for me to have been stuck in. After spending a good 45 minutes in an office with 7 other travelers who missed the same connection, the details were settled and since there were no more trains going to Montpellier that night, 4 of the travelers took a train to a different city, and were assured that the train company would pay for a taxi for them to get the rest of the way to Montpellier. The rest of us settled for first class tickets on a train the next morning, one person was put up in a hotel, one was going to stay with her uncle, and I had accommodations lining up for myself. One woman also informed them that we would need food, and so we were all given a non-perishable “this-meal-would-last-until-2010” lunch box. It was a nice touch.

I mentioned that Toulouse was a good city to be stuck in – this is because Toulouse is home to an ICS (International Campus Staff) team with Agapé. Toulouse was actually the partnership city from the Upper Midwest part of the states several years ago, and when a full-time team was established a few years ago they were able to open up the partnership with Montpellier for sending STINT teams like ours. We had met the team back in October for an in-country briefing, and enjoyed the time immensely. When I discovered myself stuck there, part of me was excited to hopefully spend some time with the team!

I was able to connect with them, and it happened that they lived just down the street from the gare (the train station). Aaron brought me over for dinner, and then I was able to see the city at night with Carrie and Tiffany. It was great! I had never been to Toulouse, and to see the city was really cool. It’s much bigger than Montpellier, and is known as the “pink city,” because many of its buildings are made out of brick, giving it a very predominantly red color. Later that night I was up late with Aaron and another friend of his, Felix, and then after only a few hours of sleep I was back on the train riding first class back home. It’s nice.

My travels were not over. Just three days after arriving back in Montpellier, I was again on a train headed right back in the direction I had just come, but this time stopping in…

Narbonne

Halfway between Toulouse and Montpellier is the city of Narbonne, and thus it was the site of our joint Fall Retreat, called week-end étudiant! (literally, student weekend). Yes, even in November it is still fall here. We don’t really believe in blizzards or cold weather. Any of you staunch Midwesterners, just think of me as you freeze your way to class or work. :-) The purpose of our Fall Retreat was to take a weekend and get away, build community within our Agapé movements and with each other, and spend time focusing on the theme for the weekend, which was faire des disciples (making disciples). It was admittedly stressful leading up to it as we tried to get everything planned very quickly, and suddenly the day that I left Toulouse Aaron had to take an emergency flight back to the states because of a family emergency, leaving them with one less staff person and their whole team pretty shook.

We were also afraid that none of our students would come, but at the last minute two of our students had other things change so they could make it, and we brought four of our students to the weekend! With all of us staff and the students in Toulouse and Montpellier we were around 20 people, and we had an awesome weekend! We did a lot of relaxing, we connected with each other and heard messages about and studied together what it means to both be a disciple and to make disciples.

The weekend started out with a game where we divided up into four teams, each a team of four people. Each person on the team was given a handicap, and each team was charged with having to complete five simple tasks. The handicaps were simple, one person on each team was blind, one person couldn’t speak, one person had their hands bound and one their feet bound. The tasks were also simple: to be sure people knew each other, each team had to write their names on one wall (and you couldn’t write your own name!), each team had to successfully get each team member underneath an ad-hoc limbo setup, each team had to get each member successfully across a room following a narrow path (try doing that blind or with bound legs), each team had to correctly finish and identify the beginning of a bible verse, and each team had to get one member to successfully perform a handstand, and prove it by having Katie take a picture of them doing it. It was a lot of fun and helped us to see in a very real way what it looks like to function as the body of Christ – we need each other and because we bring different strengths (and weaknesses) to the table, it is important to work together to accomplish the tasks that are set before us as believers.

Day two of the retreat started with a session with worship and a speaker from Toulouse. We heard about the importance of being filled by God and allowing that overflow to reach out to others in the body of Christ and then also to the rest of the world. We followed the time with some personal time with the Lord, a picnic lunch and then free time in the afternoon. This was really super. We hit the town to see the sights, and we were not disappointed. There were two cathedrals we visited, one was Cathédrale St-Just St-Pasteur and the other was the Basilique St Paul-Serge. The first was a monstrous cathedral, attached to the Hôtel de Ville and right across the street from the place we were staying.

It was incredible, and probably one of the biggest cathedrals I’ve yet be in (at least that I can remember). Part of it was actually outside, which I think maybe was because part of it was ruins, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. Either way, it made the character of the place very very cool.

The second cathedral that we visited took a little while to get to, but one of our students, Josias, had done some research and especially wanted to see this cathedral. It is one of the oldest in Europe, and when we went inside, we could see that it was ancient. In fact, the cathedral was first build in the 3^rd century, and so our guide of the church (the caretaker we think) said that it was basically as old as Christianity, especially in that part of the world. The building as it stands we think dates from the 12^th century (still ancient), and was absolutely stunning.

We got a tour of the whole church, and it ended with a tour of the crypt, which was attached to the church, and was the crypt from the 3^rd century. In fact, inside the crypt there were remains of an old Roman mosaic that dated from the 2^nd century. All of these ancient artifacts were incredible to see, and we were amused and a little shocked as the guide giving us the tour nonchalantly pointed things out with a giant key that he was carrying, usually striking whatever sculpture, painting or artifact he was talking about with it. At one point he hit something in the 3^rd century crypt that started to wobble. Yikes. We freaked out.

After that amazing piece of history we also checked out the canal in town, saw the first lock-and-dam system to be ever built in France, and returned to the place where we were staying.

That night we had first a snack, then another session, dinner and time to pray for each campus/city. It was a wonderful time just to celebrate things that the Lord was doing in each of our ministries, and also time to pray for things that we are dreaming about for the future. Afterwards, as one must do because of being on retreat, we stayed up late playing games. We taught two of the students from Toulouse how to play Nertz with us. It was pretty wild. We already have an outstanding challenge for our Christmas Conference, Camp Nouvel An.

One of my favorite moments from the weekend came the last morning of the retreat. We had a time of looking at the Bible together, and then a time of worship. Our worship for the weekend was led by one of the Toulouse students, Bahri, and the first morning he was joined by another girl who had brought her violin. That morning at breakfast she had asked me if I wanted to play along using her violin. I said “of course” as long as it was ok with her. When we had a time of worship I joined Bahri (he was playing guitar), and it was one of those moments when things really clicked. It was fantastic! Afterwards, we had a time of getting together with one or two other people and sharing about what we learned over the weekend and praying together. Bahri and I paired up, which made me pretty nervous, since he really didn’t speak English. What followed was one of the coolest conversations I have had yet this fall. I suggested that we start by praying, and since Bahri really only spoke French, I even prayed in French for the first time! I prayed some in English too, but it was still a big moment for me. Bahri then shared about how he had really been challenged that weekend to set aside other things that were distracting him from focusing on God as being the most important in his life. Wow! I was able to encourage him as well (remember – this was all in French – yikes!) that I had appreciated not only that he led us in worship all weekend, but that I had really seen his heart as he played and led us in song. I learned that some of the songs we had sung and he had shared he had actually written himself, which was so cool. As musicians we connected over the subject of worship and how much we express our hearts through song and worship. It was beautiful to make that connection. Earlier in the weekend, I had thanked him for playing after the first session, and his response was similar to responses that I myself have given to so many people, which was expressing just that it is such a joy to lead and to play.

At the end of the weekend, we all were saying goodbye as people departed, and I received my first bise from a guy from Bahri (the French kiss on the cheek greeting or farewell). This doesn’t happen between guys unless it’s with someone who is a close friend (between most guys you just shake hands). It meant a lot to me. In fact, the whole weekend did. To see the body of Christ working, to encourage one another, pray together, have fun together: this is why ministry excites me. To bring more people into the life that we lead as Christians and to encourage and build into people who are already in the body of Christ, this brings me great excitement. In the spiritual darkness and hopelessness that we see every day as we talk with students, taking a weekend to minister within the body of Christ filled me with great hope and energy to keep going, to keep moving forward, to remind myself that the cause is worth the difficulty of doing missions overseas.

Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

(from Heb 12:1-2)

The whole group!

Our group from Montpellier!

That leads me to the last city,

Lyon

Just north of Montpellier about 2 hours, Lyon is the second largest city in France (depending sort of on how you count – people from Marsailles say that they live in the second largest city in France). I visited Lyon yesterday (Wednesday), completing my quad-city tour. I went up for a violin lesson with a violinist who plays in the Lyon Opéra, who is a colleague of a colleague of my teacher back in Minneapolis. It was awesome. It felt so good to have a lesson again, and our personalities blended quite well. He was pleased with my level of playing (his first comment was on my great intonation – yes!), and we were able to get a lot of work done on the music that I’m learning. He even invited me to play in a masterclass that he is doing in a few weeks. I’ll be excited to keep going back and continue to have a chance to not just maintain my level of playing, but grow from working with a new teacher.

I was also able to connect with some friends from the Agapé ministry in Lyon. I got to see their offices and spend a few hours with them and have lunch. It was super fun! After my lesson too, I had a little extra time before going back to the gare to catch my train, so I stopped for a little treat – just a little taste of America that you can’t get in Montpellier to make the rest of my team jealous.

A bientôt!

A word from Peter

2008-11-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

08 Novembre, 2008

A Word from Peter

“Though you have not seen [Christ], you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

--1 Peter 1:8-9

I spent time this afternoon in 1 Peter 1, particularly in the first nine verses. It was encouraging to me as he outlines in verses 3-7 that we have been given such hope in the resurrection of Christ and that we have been given an inheritance in heaven that will never spoil or fade. He talks of the truth that we by faith are shielded by God until the “last times” and that because of this we can rejoice, even though for now (“a little while”) we endure grief in all kinds of trials. These trials are given to us to refine our faith, that it would be proved genuine and that in the end it would result in the praise, glory and honor of Jesus.

I can’t tell you how much this is encouraging to me today, as I reflect on the trials we have seen here. I would be not truthful if I did not say that we have indeed seen the Lord provide for us in many ways (see post about answers to prayer in October). I would also be painting a falsely perfect picture by leaving it at only those joys. Especially as the weather has gotten cooler here and we have settled into the rhythm and grind of ministry, our rose-tinted glasses have come off. It is easier to get discouraged when then trials of living overseas and doing ministry in a part of the world which is so spiritually cold have worn down on you for two months. Living in a small community, you start to realize what things about each of your team members wear on you. Struggling with a foreign language, you realize that even by the end of the year you will probably still have moments when you feel like there is no way to express some of the things that you want to. Pouring into ministry in a dry place, it seems as if it will be years and years before any real fruit is seen here.

And then Peter talks to us about faith. In verse 7 he states that our faith is “of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire.” Because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we love him, and this fills us with “inexpressible and glorious joy.” (vs. 8). When I read that phrase, I had to stop and ask myself, “are you filled with inexpressible and glorious joy?” The best response I could give myself was a resounding “um…” So I asked the question: “what prompts this kind of joy?” I found the answer at the beginning of the same verse: love. It seems as if love for Christ and faith in Christ are somehow linked and result in the joy of which Peter writes.

So how does one experience the “inexpressible and glorious joy” promised to us by these words? How does one endure trials with the same joy as great triumphs? How does one live like Paul, who states that “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish (literally: dung) that I may gain Christ and be found in him…” (from Philippians 3:7-10) How does one live a life “full of faith?”

We wait in hope for the Lord;

he is our help and our shield.

In him our hearts rejoice,

for we trust in his holy name.

May your unfailing love be with us, Lord,

even as we put our hope in you.

--Psalm 33:20-22

2008-11-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

01 Novembre, 2008

Lessons from the French

It has been supremely important for us to be here with the heart of a learner. Not surprisingly, the French people appreciate substantially when we show them that we are not here to hold condemnation over their heads, nor are we here to force our views and beliefs on them. We are here to learn and to understand the French and their culture. We are here to “do life” alongside them, sharing of ourselves and our lives as we do. As we live out ministry as our life then, we are learning a lot of what it means to be French, and how to live and serve here.

The French are very proud of who they are. We’ve joked with several students that in the mind of the French, things that are French are naturally more desirable than anything else from anywhere else. They counter that as Americans we are overzealous about our own country’s superiority far more than they are. It’s an interesting topic to debate.

Living in Western Europe has vastly enlarged my concept of the world and my familiarity especially with other Western European countries. It is also changing my thoughts on lifestyle and culture. For example, I was struck how much more healthily slow my pace of life here is. Don’t get me wrong, we are keeping plenty busy here. We’ve been able to move forward with several of our outreach plans and are really looking ahead to a busy November, with several things we’re very excited about. That said, life takes a different speed here than in the US. There is more time to have a conversation with the friend that you meet while both on your way to something else. Lunch religiously takes two hours. How could you possibly accomplish a meal with someone any more quickly?

We were in Paris a week ago for the National Agape France Staff Conference. It was a fantastic experience to meet the rest of the staff serving across the country in the different ministries of Agape (campus staff, staff in family ministry, sports ministry, business ministry, arts ministry, etc.). They were so gracious and welcoming, helping us when the French was difficult to understand and explaining some of the cultural norms that I was confused by when we were there (the first morning of the conference I was lost looking for the coffee mugs to have some coffee. I tried to express my confusion to another staff person, who knowingly pointed me to a pile of bowls. Of course, who wouldn’t have their morning coffee in a bowl!?). I particularly enjoyed getting to connect with the two French intern guys who are working with Agape this year. They both spoke English well, and would help me as I fumbled through my French as we talked. It was encouraging for me to hear how the Lord had been blessing the ministry of Agape in the different cities in France. It gave me great hope for Montpellier for the future.

I must take an aside for a few amusing observations about how difference my experience was at this conference in France then it would be were this a conference in the states. I think the biggest difference was in the importance given to food, and in taking ample breaks during the conference to enjoy coffee and food. The conference started and ended with lunch, which in the states would have been cut out to lessen the cost of the conference. Each meal was given the appropriate 2 hour allotment, and sometimes that was extended to 2.5 hours. Every morning there was a coffee break midway between breakfast and lunch, so that the first session would be 1-1.5 hours, then at least 30 minutes break for coffee and other treats, another 1 hour session and then lunch! It seemed to me that we were spending as much time at the table or behind a cup of café as we were doing anything business related. Let me tell you, I was not complaining. J

After the conference, Erin, Laura and I spent a day and a half in Paris doing a little sight-seeing. The first night was awesome: we went to the Musée du Louvre (for free!!!) on a mission to find a particular painting that Erin has a history with, and afterwards went out to dinner at this fantastic restaurant where we enjoyed dinner until almost midnight (and we didn’t close the place, that’s for sure).

The next day was dreary outside, putting all of us a little out of sorts, but we saw l’Opéra, Notre-Dame de Paris, Saint-Chapelle (which was INCREDIBLE – a must-see that is often not seen), and the sweetest Starbucks I have ever been to. Wow. Then I got sick, which was awful. Slightly exhausted, and me not feeling well, we returned home, thankful beyond belief that we would gain an hour of sleep for daylight savings that night.

Two greats

2008-10-18T05:31:00.000-07:00

Yeah, this really has nothing to do with ministry or France, but this is a phenomenal clip of two great singers singing one of my favorite jazz standards...

Prayer

2008-10-18T05:28:00.000-07:00

18 Octobre, 2008

Answers to prayer

One of the coolest things since arriving in Montpellier has been seeing how God has very specifically answered prayers. It has been both a powerful witness to confirming His calling for us to be here and to His continued faithfulness to provide for myself and my team.

Here are just a few of the ways that we have seen the Lord work:

That we are here, and that we arrived on time. Last year the team had to wait several weeks before coming because of needing to finish up on support, and so the very fact that we were able to leave on time and we didn’t have to change plane tickets or deal with the emotional stress of thinking that we would be leaving and then not being able to go right away was a huge blessing.

Housing. This was a huge prayer request once we arrived here. Over the summer I was blessed that the Skur family offered to let me stay at their place until I could find one for myself, which was fantastic that I didn’t have to spend all sorts of extra money paying for a hotel room for the first week and a half that we were here. Then, to have found a perfect apartment after being here for only 10 days was a huge blessing. The location and building I am living in now is such an envied place – we were very lucky to get it (well, not lucky…it was the place that the Lord had provided!).

Roommate. Once it became apparent last spring that there wasn’t going to be another guy STINTer here this year, we began praying furiously for someone for me to live with. My chief requests were that he be a believer and speak some English. Secondary were all sorts of other things like non-smoker, doesn’t hate the violin, etc. To be honest, by August I had basically given up on finding a roommate. The contacts that the girls from last year had looked into in their churches had fallen through, and all other avenues had seemed to dry up. Then Claire called me in the beginning of August (on my Dad’s birthday, actually) to let me know that someone had responded to a posting that she had put up for me on a French Christian housing website. It was the only response we had received all summer. And that’s how I got connected with Greg, my roommate who is a believer and wanted to live with someone who was a Christian and grow in his faith, who speaks English and really likes to, having studied English in London for 9 months this last year, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t really like to drink, is a student just moving to Montpellier and is just my age! It almost seemed too perfect to be true. It still does, though sometimes the cultural and living style differences are a little interesting…it’s working well though.

Man on the team. Since early this calendar year, so many people had been praying on my behalf that another man would be raised up to serve in Montpellier so that I wouldn’t be the only guy on the team. We went all spring and summer seeing no fruit in this area. It was hugely encouraging to me to have so many people praying for me in this specific area, but again, by the beginning of the summer I had basically resigned myself to being the only guy on the team. While it was at some point early in the summer that we found out that the Skurs would be joining us as an ICS family (long-term staff living and working abroad), it took until the middle of some staff meeting about two weeks into being here that I suddenly realized that I was totally not the only guy on the team, and that the Lord had brought another man on the team, it just wasn’t another STINTer. This revelation sort of bowled me over, and I was super excited that the Lord had definitely answered that prayer, it just took me a while to see it.

Our whole team here in Montpellier!

Community. One of my biggest fears before coming here was that once I got here I would feel very alone. With the rest of the STINT team living together and away from my normal social networks, I was very afraid that loneliness would quickly set in here. In Collobrières last weekend I really saw how completely untrue that was. It has been such a huge blessing that my team has bonded well together, and we are continuing to learn about each other and how to work well together. It has been a huge blessing that I haven’t felt lonely being away from home – not that I haven’t missed the people who I am not around right now, that’s totally natural, but the Lord has given me a great sense of feeling at home here with my team and in Montpellier.

Spiritual Climate. This past summer we had a group of 28 students and staff spend six weeks in Montpellier working with Agapé. They were here to meet students, develop relationships and share the gospel. Many of their friends they have put us in contact with so we would have some basis to start on in building relationships with people here. When they came back at the end of the summer, I was able to talk with several of them about their experience in Montpellier. One thing that many of them spoke of was the sense of depression that they felt here and the spiritual darkness that they saw in so many students. Historically people in France has been very unwilling to talk about God and typically when we would mention that we worked with a Christian organization and that we wanted to talk about spiritual things people would throw up very defensive walls. We, and many others, have been praying that God would start to change these things, and that people would be more and more willing to engage in dialogue about what they believe, and that we would be able to share more freely without people feeling like they need to be defensive. We really believe that we are just starting to see that happen. Since getting here in September, we haven’t felt as much this sense of depression in students and people here that we were expecting, and we’ve really seen more students willing to talk and share very freely about their beliefs and ours. We really hope that this is the beginning of a change in how people think about God here, and that we can continue to see more openness in this area!

Relationships with students. In France the most effective way to share the gospel is through established relationships. Also in France it is more difficult and often takes a lot more time to establish relationships. We have really been blessed with several relationships that have taken off very quickly, and even one group of students that have been intentional about inviting us to do things with them (which doesn’t happen very often – usually we to most of the initiating). This has definitely been a huge blessing to us as we continue to meet students and go out to share.

Agapé. Going into this year we had asked several students to be a part of a leadership team, hoping to develop students into being more invested in the ministry. At the end of the summer there were five students who had committed to being involved as a leader, but that quickly whittled down to just two as September got underway. We’ve been really praying for more leadership and involvement of students, so initially this was a little discouraging. However, as we’ve seen those two students really start to take ownership and be more integrally involved in helping to lead the ministry, we’ve been hugely encouraged. It’s our goal to work ourselves out of a job – to train the students here to be able to do everything and more than we can, that the ministry would be led by French students, not by Americans.

We’ve also been praying that the students who are involved with Agapé would be more aligned with the vision of Agapé nationally and that we would see a transformation from a “club” to a real movement this year. We presented our vision at our first meeting, and are taking the next three months to really unpack it practically, and so far we think that it is going well. We’re seeing students get more actively involved and we’re praying that that continues to grow!

Wow, well that’s just a few things that we’ve seen, but even that is a lot! Thanks for continuing to partner with me and my whole team in prayer!

Team Retreat

2008-10-14T06:26:00.001-07:00

14 Octobre, 2008

Collobrières

This past weekend marked the successful conclusion of our first six weeks in France. It’s rather amazing that the time has passed so quickly, and at the same time it seems that we’ve very much settled into life here in Montpellier. It’s a strange dichotomy: we’re still just beginning, and it seems as if we’ve been doing this for a long time.

To celebrate a successful first six weeks, we took a team retreat this weekend to a small village called Collobrières this weekend.

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There is a couple there who own a small “maisonette” which they make available to missionaries and other Christian workers in France to use expressly for this purpose. When I mention that the maisonette (literally translated ‘a small house’) was small, it would be difficult for me to exaggerate how little it really was. The house had two rooms, one serving as a bedroom, with just enough space for a double bed, a bunk-bed and an amoire. The other room served as kitchen and living room all rolled into one, with a stove and sink in one corner, a table taking up most of the rest of the room, a couch against one wall, refrigerator and hot water heater on the last wall. There was a lean-to bathroom off of the bedroom, which actually was relatively nice. Needless to say, our first challenge of the weekend, after figuring out how to get into the maisonette, was to make ourselves fit into the space. Being the only boy, I got the whole kitchen/living room to myself each night. 

I digress for a moment to relate some of the creative problem solving we had to do to properly open up our small home for the weekend. We had instructions, but being both a little ambiguous and in French, it was not necessarily obvious for us to figure out how to accomplish all of the tasks required to get the house up and running.

We arrived in Collobrières after several hours of driving (no one knew how long we were on the road, and it didn’t matter, this countryside is so incredible and we were entertained for good portions of the way by Laura and Erin dramatically singing along to various Disney movie tunes from their childhood – they know all of the words too!), and found ourselves in a super quaint village nestled in a small valley. It was gorgeous. We had a map to get from the city to the maisonette, but it wasn’t very specific, so to get there we drove out of town, me inventing decisions for which way to turn each time we came to a place with a fork in the road. I was the navigator for the trip, and so at this point I was used to making up directions to get places. Our route from Montpellier to Collobrières was completely invented, the directions we had printed off in advance serving only as loose guidelines as we changed our route based on confusing ronds-points, roads that were completely unlabeled, missed turns with no way to get back, and various cities that we encountered that were not even mentioned on the map we had. So as we made our way through Collobrières and I was asked if I knew for sure where we were headed and I said “no,” the team wasn’t too thrown off base. We eventually stopped and asked two people out walking their dog where the place was that we were looking for. It turns out that we had gotten pretty close, but had just gone too far and missed it.

And so we arrived at our home for the weekend. First priority was to figure out how to unlock the place. The instructions stated to find a key to a shed in an abandoned mailbox, unlock the shed, then inside would be the key to the maisonette. We found the shed key easily enough (the shed was actually called a “hanger” and we’re not really sure why), but found it impossible to unlock the shed. All five of us tried to no avail, and I also discovered it impossible to break into the maisonette without the key, the door and both windows being properly locked. Eventually it was discovered that there was a specific length into the key hole where the key would turn – not all the way in, nor just inside of the hole, but some unidentified distance partially into the hole. We got in, found the key in the dark (thanks to the small flashlight I always carry from Adam Go – I can’t tell you how many times it has come in handy in a tight spot), and got into our tiny home.

Fortunately the last visitors hadn’t figured out how to turn off the electricity or the water, so all that we had to do was plug in the fridge, turn on the gas under the stove and decipher how to run the hot water heater. At this point we had high hopes of being able to shower. We figured it all out, at least so we thought. The fridge worked, the stove worked, and the switch to turn on the hot water heater had been flipped. We left to go search out groceries.

That night we discovered our first real challenge when we started running out of running water. By the time it got time to brush our teeth the water was gone. There was no sign of hot water, so what water we had we heated on the stove to use to wash faces, etc. We read in the instructions that the maisonette runs on a very small supply of water, as the region always is running on a water shortage. The supply that the maisonette does have takes between 4 and 8 hours to refill.

The next day we seemed to have even less water. The hot water heater was still not working, and so it was decided that more desperate measures needed to be taken. Claire and I worked on the hot water heater for almost half of an hour, and finally figured out how to make it work after discovering the gas tanks behind the house that needed to be opened (just one, though!), the three valves that needed to be opened inside the maisonette, the other dial that needed to be turned that we couldn’t see behind the folded up picnic table umbrella, and how to properly set the dials on the water heater that were behind the removable panel that we couldn’t find the night before (which setting do you want: snowflake, sun, or +10?). We later discovered to our dismay that we turned on both the hot water heater and the radiators in the house because we set the hot water heater to “+10” instead of the sun icon. Dinner that night was a very warm and stuffy affair despite the chilly air outside.

Saturday morning and early afternoon was spent in the city. We visited a chestnut roasting stand. The guy there was roasting the chestnuts in a roaster shaped like a train engine. He had the prime location just off of the 12th century (very narrow!) bridge that leads into town. We were in search of lunch, and asked him where would be a good place, and so he pointed us to two (out of about 5 total) restaurants in town. They were both a little expensive, but there was a local pizza place up the street (literally, you had to go either up or down a hill in this town) that we
checked out.

It looked closed, but the owner had just opened the shutters, so we asked when they would open. They were closed for the day to prepare for the big festival the next day (we were told that so much had to be done! as they were relaxing in their restaurant, eating lunch and drinking some wine…such is life in southern France). We asked where we could find a good inexpensive restaurant in town. He exclaimed that he was the good inexpensive restaurant in town, and promptly opened his doors to us and invited us in. We were all shocked, because he was definitely closed, but told us that he would open his place up just for us to have lunch. It took him a while to get the kitchen fired up and dash out of the restaurant for some immediately important errand (leaving us in the restaurant with these two little old ladies who also worked there). However, once we were served, we had a fantastic meal! Pizza in southern France is very different than in the states, and it’s good! Tip is always included in the price of food at restaurants here, but we left him one anyway for opening his restaurant up specially for us.

Afterwards we went back down to the chestnut place, and I had my first fresh roasted chestnuts! They were pretty good – I wouldn’t fly all the way back to France for them in the future, but I really enjoyed them this weekend (Chestnuts roasted on an open fire…how can you resist?). We then visited a monastery close by, which was in this incredible setting up in the mountains. The road to get there was super narrow, and the locals were out picking chestnuts for the festival the next day. We got the scoop from two of them when we stopped at a particularly scenic outlook.

After the monastery, we returned to the city, remembering that we needed to by butter and water at the grocery in town. We left with one stick of butter and 16 liters of water. The water only lasted us one night and we went and got more the next day! We celebrated Katie’s birthday and enjoyed the evening together.

Sunday found us checking out the chestnut festival in town. The town had somehow exploded with people and artisans selling their wares (lots of chestnuts, and
everything else from hats to exotic olives, which Erin immediately sampled).

We had chestnut ice cream (glace marron), which was amazing, and were able to explore the ruins at the top of the city, which were super cool. It felt like we were in Narnia or Middle Earth. We had a great day and went back to the maisonette, armed with more water and had dinner and played Nerts all night (which is a new big favorite of mine). Katie snowed us all every game, but we had good fun anyway.

Sunday night, just when we thought we had made it with the challenges in the maisonette, suddenly the stove stopped working mid heating up water for evening cleaning rituals. It was quickly discovered that we had run the stove gas tank out of gas. Fortunately there was an extra gas tank next to the stove, but it was impossible to change the two without tools. We found none in the maisonette, although we discovered several other things we had been searching for all weekend. We decided we had to go out to the shed/”hanger” to try to find some. Claire came with me, which was good, because it was totally dark outside but for the moon which was fortunately out. As funny as it is after the fact, going outside to a creepy shed that doesn’t belong to you in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country to search for tools which you’re not sure exist in the dark and without any lights in the shed was needless to say, unnerving. It felt a little bit like I was in an episode of Scooby Doo and was about to stumble upon a creepy monster. I succeeded in getting the shed open in the dark, and then was able to find proper tools, once again thanks to the flashlight I always keep on my keychain. Once this was accomplished, it was a simple task to change the gas, and we were back in business.

Our last night was spent relaxing, and we got up early the next morning to take off again for Montpellier. Miraculously we got everything back into the car (was was much too small for ourselves and our luggage), and got back to Montpellier successfully. We had to stop for gas once on the way, and when we were stopped calculated that our little diesel car that hardly could power up the steep hills we were driving on was averaging almost 50 miles to the gallon. We felt much better about our little car after that.

We’re back in Montpellier now, well rested and ready to go for the rest of the week!

A little humor

2008-10-14T06:22:00.000-07:00

13 Octobre, 2008

A little amusement

I haven’t eaten weasel yet, but some of the meat that they have here is rather different than in the states…

First Agape!

2008-10-08T02:11:00.000-07:00

07 Octobre, 2008

Le premier Agape

Tonight we hosted our first weekly meeting of Agape – the event we’ve been looking forward to basically since getting here. Language classes done, planning with the student leaders begun, and my apartment all cleaned (J’ai nettoyé beaucoup!), we hosted the first meeting at my apartment. Including the six of us “official” Agape folks, there were 16 of us there, which filled basically every chair available. We were thrilled with the turnout!

The evening began with (in typical French fashion) the sharing of a meal. It was potluck style, which was a pleasant reminder of good-old Minnesota get-togethers. Everyone brought something, and the table was filled, with all filling their plates. The meal was blessed, and we all dove in, conversation filling the room, in both English and French. After everyone had eaten, the meeting officially commenced. Our purpose tonight was to present the vision of Agape nationally, share our vision for the campus, and talk about how that can be lived out practically in students’ lives. The national vision of Agape is the same of that in the states, which is “win, build, send” or “gagner, construire, envoyer.” We talked about as a campus that “on est la pour encourager chaque étudiant à prendre le prochain pas vers Jésus et à le suivre où il l’envoie.” This means that we are here to encourage every student to take the next steps towards Jesus and serve him wherever one is sent. Fitting into our vision of “win, build, send,” this means that we are motivated to reach out to students who are non-Christians to encourage them towards Christ as well as build into students who are believers to help them grow more Christ-like and develop them in their walk with the Lord. “And serve him wherever one is sent” speaks to our desire to send students out to all nations and occupations committed to serving Christ and being a witness wherever the Lord leads them in life.

We had a time of worship, which I led with a guitar (it went pretty well, but let me tell you, I’m no Matt Damico…). We sang one awesome French song that I had never heard before yesterday called “Jusqu’au bout,” which means “Until the end.” (I’m pretty sure…) It talks about being sent out into the world clothed in the light of Christ (but in French). It’s a pretty sweet song. I enjoyed being able to play it, and was sad when the girls who’s guitar I borrowed took it back.

Afterwards we had announcements, and then dessert! It was Katie’s birthday today, so we surprised her with a sweet fondue cake thing with trick candles and sang “Happy Birthday” in French! (“Bon anniversaire à toi!”) People hung around for a little while, enjoyed dessert and more conversation in French/English, and then took off for the night, until the meeting next week.

Overall, my impression was that it was a successful meeting, it was certainly fun to meet some of the other Agape students finally. After putting my apartment back together, I celebrated with a glass of peach-mango iced tea and some Bach violin sonatas. Mmm… (some things never change, right?)

Some more pictures...

2008-10-06T02:26:00.001-07:00

Here are some more pictures from the last couple of weeks:

Most of them are from our day trip to Anduze:

View Larger Map

We rented a car which Claire drove. It was quite an adventure, involving getting locked out, remote service (like OnStar, except in French), filling up at a gas station for the first time in Europe, not being able to start the car because we didn't know we had to re-activate it...maybe I'll write more about this later...

Here is a picture from Anduze - it was a quaint little town on the river.

Anduze is home to a "Bambouserie," which is the largest bamboo forest in Europe.

"The Valley of the Dragon" - feels like we're in Asia, right?

And the next day we had the Skur children for the day, the highlight of which was a half an hour of running in the Poseiden fountain close to my apartment. We let the kids run, and we just took pictures (along with several other very curious French bystanders).

More later...

End of September Update

2008-10-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

You can find my end of September Update here!

Enjoy!

To be welcomed in...

2008-10-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

03 Octobre, 2008

To be welcomed in

One aspect of French culture that I find both very interesting and very different than American culture is the reality of social networks here. In the United States, many people have as many friends as they can find, with perhaps a small circle of them that are close friends. Social networks are made up of people from acquaintances to family, and value is given to those who have many friends (for a good example of this, see any facebook profile page).

Here in France, things are very different. Social networks are often very small and very close. A group of friends may consist of four to six people, and those are the people who you interact with almost anytime you do anything social. The tightness of these social groups means that sometimes it can be difficult to really become friends with someone (and building a relationship takes a lot of time here), but once you do, you’re in.

Here, we have been blessed to have been invited in by for sure one group of friends already. It was a connection made through Katie (see team picture below) when she was here a year ago on summer project. After meeting Arnaud once, and being introduced briefly to his friends, they invited us to join them for lunch the next week. We did, and there decided that we needed to go out together later that week again, and we were invited to join them for lunch any time (they eat at the same time each day). Now, for French people to be purposeful about inviting us to do things with them was fantastic and slightly surprising, as we were anticipating to be the ones initiating the social gatherings to get to know people. Let me say that it was a very welcome surprise. Pray for these guys, you can read about them in my monthly update too!

Correction

In my update, I managed two moments of dyslexia, one while writing my address, and one my phone number! Yikes. Here is the correct info:

Erik Rohde

Esplanade de l’Europe

Batiment 19 Appart. 20

Port Juvenal 2

34000 Montpellier, France

06.82.11.11.47 (cell)

(it’s fixed on the update linked above)

Some pictures

2008-09-30T11:25:00.001-07:00

This is the top of the aqueduct in Montpellier, something I walked past every day when I lived with the Skurs.

Here it is lit up at night...

These are pictures of my apartment:

First, and most stunningly, the sunrise I get to watch every morning from my dining room table:

The main room of our apartment:

Another view:

My little bedroom corner:

My front lawn:

and my roommate Greg, sporting a small piece of American culture which he picked up in London:

Luthiers à Montpellier

2008-09-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

So apparently Montpellier is a city with one of the highest concentration of violin makers (luthiers) per capita in the world! (who knew?)

Yesterday Erin and I took a free tour of the Luthiers à Montpellier. We got to see a shop, and talk to one of the violinmakers, getting all the dirt on the violinmaking scene in Montpellier (including the best shops to go to if I need work done on my fiddle, and where I can buy a Baroque bow...).

Don't worry - I won't get any work like this done on my violin. I just thought these picture were cool (taken from one of the luthier's websites).

I'm hoping to connect with an orchestra in town, one that meets through the University - there may be scheduling issues with my work schedule, so pray that the Lord would work it out that I would be able to be involved somehow and that it wouldn't take up too much extra time that I would have to try to move around a lot in my schedule.

And a few shoutouts:

Thanks for posting comments, Asha and Josh! I love to hear from anyone who is reading!

Josh, this is for you:

And Hi Kelsi! You should come to France!

:-D C'est tout! (that's all!)

Three weeks in...

2008-09-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

13 Septembre, 2008

French vignettes

As I had anticipated before coming, living in France has provided me with ample opportunity for cross-cultural frustrations and amusement. Today I share a few of those with you:

Bilingual conversation: I have found that group conversations in two languages can be quite amusing, especially when several of the people involved don’t fully know both languages. For example, this past Wednesday we had lunch with a few French guys who Claire and Laura had known from the previous year. One of them, Eli, spoke very good English, but the rest not as much. Katie and I were the two who spoke French the least, so following the French was very frustrating at first, until the conversation switched more to English than French. As we tried to communicate with each other, it suddenly dawned on me how much funnier things were when there was a language barrier. The conversation took longer as things were explained in each language, and as we tried to say things in the language we were unfamiliar with, several amusing results came out. We also had a very funny conversation spawned by Eli asking what the proper definition of a “geek” was. Apparently they once had heard someone use the phrase “faire le geek” and so they picked it up, not really knowing what it meant. Literally that would me “to do/to play the geek.” They used it in reference to when they would stay up until 3am playing video games. They also turned it into a French verb so they could say “je geeke.”

The grocery store: Yesterday I went to the grocery store to start stocking my kitchen. As I went through, I starting compiling a mental list of “you know you are in France when.” Here are a few of the better entries that I can remember:

- the first visit to the grocery store you buy 2 liters of water and drink half of it before you leave because you are so dehydrated, and the second visit you pass right by the water and go buy some wine for the same price

- you realize that not only can you not understand the label on a cut of meat, but you’re not sure what it is by looking at it either

- you’ve never been so excited to see Caesar dressing, after being told that it didn’t exist in France

- you’re able to justify congratulating yourself on a successful visit to the grocery store by buying yourself a chocolate chip cookie afterwards (which also are impossible to find in France, since they don’t have chocolate chips here – these were totally gone the next day)

- you find it hilarious to be humming along to Earth, Wind and Fire singing “September” as you stand in the checkout line

- the cheese aisle is two aisles long

The tram: The city of Montpellier boasts two tramlines (sorry Minneapolis, they’re ahead of us here), which we use to get just about everywhere in the city. Riding it is very often an experience all in and of itself. In busy hours, the tram is often very full, and so everyone just crams on. Usually the little old ladies command the seats, at least those that are not taken up by punk high school kids (it’s always amusing to watch the high schoolers and the old ladies try to sit together – they try so desperately to ignore each other). The aisles and open spaces are then crammed with people. It is a trick to try to hang on to the tram poles while also trying to not put yourself in a position to be awkwardly pressed against some unidentified body part belonging to your neighbor. It’s important to hang on, because some of the tram drivers don’t slow down enough while going around corners. It also seems that often you get right behind someone on the tram or in line somewhere and you are bluntly reminded that French people do not hold the same cultural value on showering often as Americans do.

You often get to experience mixed cultures on the tram and so far we have seen everything from groups of Brits to one big group of Argentinean tourists who I got to watch get apprehended by the tram patrol for not all swiping their tram passes. You also get to see people take all sorts of exciting things with them on the tram. Lots of people jump on the tram with their bikes or strollers laden with children, and then have to usually push through people to get off, since everyone crowds the doors trying to get on quickly when the tram stops. We have been responsible for hauling a bed frame onto the tram, and just two days ago rode from IKEA with a giant box with a loveseat convertible in it, along with two plants, a desk, and three giant (full) IKEA bags. A loveseat convertible is a couch that folds out into a little twin bed. Like I said, it’s always an adventure…especially because we ran off with (aka borrowed without permission) an IKEA cart to get the convertible to the tram stop…

18 Septembre, 2008

Dominos and the Association Fair

It amuses me to no end how our wonderful country is slowly but surely infecting so many corners of the world. In Montpellier there are at least two McDonald’s (MacDo), at least two Subways, a KFC and two Dominos pizza. Welcome to taste of America night. We broke down and ordered Dominos for our team family night last night. It was super fun – I hosted the Skurs and the ladies at my place. It was my first of hopefully many parties. J It was fun to have everyone over. I was sufficiently trounced at Settlers by Colson Skur, the rest of us tying for second place (“the rest of us” included Gabe, who is 6! Who knows how to play Settlers as a 6-year old?!?). This was ok, since I resoundingly beat all the Skur gentlemen the week previous at Settlers. After the delightful clamor that is the Skur children died down, the five of us STINTers played a few rounds of our favorite new game, Blokus. It’s quite fun, and comes highly recommended. It is best played with competitive people. ;-)

Our family night last night came after a fantastic day on campus yesterday. We were able to connect with one of Katie’s friends from last summer, who introduced to four of his other friends. We also ran into two guys and later another girl who Laura and Claire knew from last year. These kinds of meetings are important for us early on as we seek beginning to build relationships while we are here in order to be able to more naturally share the gospel throughout the year. We also were able to meet two students in the cafette on campus, and had a fantastic conversation with them over a spiritual interest survey called Soularium. It is a fairly open-ended survey involving using pictures to describe your life and your views of God and religion. It is very well received by the French, who in general have a more keen taste for the classical arts than Americans do. We are praying that we’ll be able to meet up again with them both and continue to be able to share with them.

This week in language class we got several very interesting insights into the French culture. Last Sunday there was an Association Fair held right outside my apartment building and all through Antigone (the part of Montpellier where I live). Several thousand people attended to walk through the 1200 stands that were set up to advertise for everything from martial arts and sports teams to clubs dedicated to specific countries, from social causes to dance, art and music. It was basically a fair to get people involved in the various clubs available in Montpellier. Our whole team went, as did many of the people in my language class. As we were talking to our professor about it the next day, she was explaining that all over France every year these huge Association Fairs take place to get people involved and help them connect socially. In France associations are very huge and are subsidized by the government to encourage people to participate. Our professor explained that associations have become so popular because the church has become so much less important in France than it once was, and people don’t have the church anymore as a place to gather socially, nor do they have a place to unite over a common interest or cause. See, in 1905 the church was officially separated from the state, as a reaction against the power struggles that have marred the history of the church in this part of the world. Since then, the church and the state are strictly separated. This past week the Pope visited France, and people were very upset that some government officials even went to the mass held at Lourdes. Politics and religion must be strictly distinct and not mix. In the last year there was a significant debate over not allowing Muslim girls to wear the headdresses required by their religion because it is too much of a public display of religion. Likewise Jewish boys are not to wear their proper caps in public. There is a size limit on any cross worn as a form of jewelry here. This is also why we cannot advertise on campus, since the University is a state-run school and we are a religious organization.

Our professor explained that the French hold this concept called laicité. It is a concept that religious beliefs are to be kept extremely private. Publically one should be neutral, and not display one’s religious beliefs. Because they are very personal, that boundary should be respected. According to our professor, the French are not against beliefs, they simply hold them at arm’s length or farther publically. This mindset has not only contributed to the palette of beliefs (or lack thereof) in France, it causes our work here to be very much outside of the normal French mindset. People have usually been surprised when we ask them what they believe about God. It simply isn’t something that is discussed here.

If that doesn’t point significantly to the need for prayer here, I’m not sure what more will…

Team!

2008-09-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

Here is the one-year STINT portion of my team, at our training in Colorado in August (the rest of our team is the Skur family, who was already here in Montpellier at the time). Left to right is Katie Smith, Claire McKelvey, Erin Rippl, me, and Laura Hennings.

Un apartement, c'est incroyable!

2008-09-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

09 Septembre, 2008

Living the dream

Last Sunday, Greg and I walked through a part of town called Antigone, which is a part of Montpellier close to la Comedie and the center of the city. It’s very new and clean (something of note in this city), very close to the river and full of restaurants, shopping and open spaces (another commodity to note in a European city). Greg had called to look at an apartment there and we were supposed to look at it this Thursday (two days from now), but he was pretty nervous about getting it. Since it would be a popular apartment, trying to rent it to two college-age guys, one of whom is un americain may be not as likely as some of the other people who we knew would be looking.

Fortunately, the Lord had other plans in motion. Greg got a call today from the landlord, saying that someone had cancelled for tonight and if we were free, we could come see the apartment instead. We jumped at the opportunity, and met this extraordinarily well-dressed pair of women outside the apartment building. The building itself was beautiful, a huge semi-circle front facing the river, and when we stepped into the apartment, we were even more impressed. It was completely furnished, and furnished very nicely at that. Both Greg and I were sold instantly on the place. Greg let them know, and a flurry of French later we were sitting down and talking through the paperwork. Before I knew it, we had set up a time to meet tomorrow to sign all the papers and we’d receive the keys.

Let me pause to explain how significant this is. This was an apartment that Greg found without an agency, which is a rental place that literally you can find in almost every single neighborhood in the city. Agencies will help you find just the right flat or apartment, but will charge you upwards of 800 € (these days equivalent to almost $1200) for the convenience. As you can imagine, this is something we were very interested in avoiding. Also, the French have a certain system in place to insure that renters always pay their rent, requiring every renter to have what is called a guarant. This is someone who must be a French citizen and have a regular monthly income equivalent to two or three times the rent of the apartment. Usually this is accomplished with a parent or close relative. Not having any relatives who are French citizens, nor knowing anyone in France other than the other Americans in Montpellier, this presented a considerable issue for me.

The landlord for this apartment asked about my guarant and I told Greg that I didn’t know who was going to be my guarant yet. He asked me if I could know today or tomorrow. I said that I would try, but I didn’t know. It’s sort of a big issue, because if something were to happen that I would not be able to pay my rent, my guarant would be legally bound to pay my rent for me in that situation. The landlord asked Greg how much money I make monthly, and we discovered that since (before benefits, taxes, insurance and other things) I make enough money each month, I can be my own guarant. This was news to us, and very good news to me! I would be required simply to bring documentation of my monthly income (which I have from applying for my visa anyway) and my French bank account information and voila! I will be in business.

We left the apartment rather exuberant, and to celebrate went out to eat at a pizzeria in town. It was very good, and afterwards suddenly the 20 minute walk to the Skurs’ place didn’t seem quite so long and sketchy. Praise the Lord for his provision of a place to live! I also got my first package from the US today – all of my books, music and a surprise package of chocolate chips! (thanks, mom!)

Ce soir, tout est beau.

Parlez-vous français?

2008-09-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

08 Septembre, 2008

First day of language school, first day on campus

Today was our first day of language school, and also marked the first day we spent initiating on campus. It is incredible (c’est incroyable) that only seven days ago we were sitting in the Paris airport, still just on our way here. It has been a full and busy week with several visits to apartments for Greg and myself, lots of sitting on la Comedie, lots of time spent in staff meetings talking through team norms and covenant, mapping out the year, praying and dreaming together of what we are hoping to ask the Lord for this year and beyond. We’ve had a surprisingly successful visit to the Prefecture to apply for our carte de sejours (our long-stay residency cards), an unsuccessful but informative visit to try to get cell phones, a lengthy appointment at the bank to get bank accounts, our first experience at church in France (and a highly enjoyable one at that, though the French was hard to follow), and two visits to IKEA/a little taste of America-Sweden.

This morning we went to the Alliance Francaise, which is the language school we are attending for the next four weeks. We were greeted by an over-exuberant French woman who initially shuffled me into a room full of complete strangers, all trying to suffer through a placement exam designed to determine exactly how little French we all knew. After some time Erin was able to explain to her that I was with them and was a friend of Laura’s (our teammate who took the language class last year). Once this was sorted out I was whisked from the dour-looking test takers and placed in the woman’s office with Erin and Katie for proper interrogation. After discovering that my hair was “très jolie!” and finding my Black Hills gold ring to be perhaps the most interessant jewelry she had ever seen, she promptly confiscated the unfortunate attempt I had made on my placement test with grand exclamations of “Oh! Très bien!” She later returned to tell me that while I was not a beginner, I was very close to it. Katie and I were placed in the “almost beginners” class, and Erin was in the intermediate.

Our class began with virtually no introduction, just strict rules that we were not to speak in English or Spanish (the two common languages of the students who were in the class), only in French (which, of course, we were all there to learn, making initial communication quite rudimentary). We ended up with a very young and stiff teacher who fully employed what is apparently a very French way of teaching, that which is best exemplified by what we would call a “weeding out” class. No practicing or “repeat after the teacher” was suggested, we just started speaking French. By the end of the class we knew basically where everyone was from, what year they were born, and what their profession was. We also discovered that there is not really a word in French for missionary, so we settled for aumonier protestant, or protestant chaplain. Close enough, right?

From there, after praying as a team for a while, we headed to campus for the first time, ready to begin what we really came here to do – share with students. We found the students pleasantly easy to engage with, and the two pairs of guys that Darrin and I talked to were quite conversational. They were all freshman, so they were starting their very first day of school as well. They were quick to share the realities that we had expected, that very few French students would say they are religious whatsoever. They have passed the church by, not seeing any need for it anymore. They said that most French people do not ever talk about God or religion, so it’s sort of a strange topic to bring up to people, one they do not often think about. We are praying for hearts more ready to hear…

Tonight, we mark one week of ministry in Montpellier. May the Lord continue to work abundantly!

La Comedie

2008-09-09T07:55:00.001-07:00

Here is a sweet picture of la Comedie. I didn't take it, but it's a sweet picture anyway. :-)

The initial post

2008-09-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

04 Septembre, 2008

La Comedie et l’orage

My evenings in Montpellier thus far have been marked by long conversations on la Comedie. La Comedie is a central square in Montpellier, and is an open place with restaurants, a grocery store, a mall on one corner and an opera house on the other. The square is adorned with a fountain boasting les trois Graces, or the three Graces. My first night in Montpellier (not counting the night that we arrived) I met my roommate-to-be, Greg at la Comedie. We went out for crepes and I enjoyed my first real tastes of France while people watching and enjoying getting to know Greg, who will be a fantastic, though rather unpunctual roommate (characteristically French, bien sûr). The next two days we spent searching for apartments and tonight found us once again sitting on la Comedie, this time enjoying the view for several hours out in front of McDonalds, which, in Greg’s opinion, is the only place to get a “real hamburger” in Montpellier. I assured him that McDonalds does not serve a real hamburger, which he could not believe, and that when he comes to the United States I will take him out for a real burger.

Tonight we talked for several hours, covering everything from the Roman Catholic Church to the English words for lightning, thunder, and thunderstorm. It was a relatively sobering conversation as we talked about the barriers that many French students have towards Christianity. There are significant hurdles to our work in sharing the gospel with French students, and some things that Greg pointed out were things that we hadn’t yet really thought of. The first night we met he said to me, “I am so sad…your job is very hard here…but I know Jesus can do it.”

Tonight we had been talking for a while, and our conversation comfortably died down as we watched a man breathing fire throughout la Comedie, listened to the gypsy musicians (two accordion players and a very good violinist) play down the place and watched a few groups of people greet each other and biscous on the cheeks (the appropriate French greeting with a kiss). After a few minutes of silence Greg turned to me and said, “Now, now you are being French.” I asked him what he meant, and he explained that just sitting, not necessarily talking, just sitting and enjoying and watching was making me more French. Inwardly I was amused at the stark dichotomy it was from the life I normally live in the States.

Ministry thus far has been great. Our second full day in Montpellier found us on the Arts and Letters campus of the University of Montpellier, where we had lunch, and then spent time praying in anticipation of students arriving within the next few weeks. Erin and Claire got to talk with some students as well, and Laura met a friend of the team from last year, which was a wonderful connection to make. We will step into more full swing ministry next week as we also start language classes on Monday.

In the meantime, life is enjoyable here in Montpellier. I’m getting used to the time zone change and the very different climate (though I am sweating a lot). I’ve successfully ordered food in French now over half a dozen times and have only had to spend 1 euro to go to the bathroom thus far. Tonight I experienced my first thunderstorm (l’orage) in Montpellier, and much to my dismay discovered that the streets are not really meant to handle intense downpour, and the small rain that I was enjoying at the beginning of my walk home to the Skur’s quickly turned into just that. C’est la vie, non?

Bon soir, mes amis.

06 Septembre, 2008

Further adventures on La Comedie

The adventure to find an apartment with Greg continues. Yesterday I was waiting for him at La Comedie on the way to look at an apartment just south of town and I got to witness what appeared to be an initiation ceremony for two freshman med students. When I arrived at la Comedie, a few groups of students were also arriving, several sporting white lab coats. After a few minutes they gathered around the two men getting initiated and started to adorn them with makeup. There was lipstick, rouge, whatever that eye stuff is that colors above your eyes and some other touch up work that I couldn’t see because of the crowd around them. After they were beautified, they crowded around them and I couldn’t see for a few moments. By the time the crowd split, the two men had taken off all of their clothes except their (black) underwear and their hips were being wrapped in several layers of seran wrap in the style of a really tight miniskirt. Once sufficiently wrapped, one of the girls stepped in front of the two guys, announced something significant in French, counted down, and the two men frantically raced around the giant fountain in the middle of la Comedie. This race was quite interesting, since both men were forced to frantically try to waddle in their miniskirts while not slipping on the stones upon which they were running, one in bare feet and the other in his ankle socks.

Once they completed two rounds around the fountain, they returned to their female partners, to be quickly dressed in very ugly and skimpy dresses, headbands and given purses to match. They then had to run around the fountain again twice and return and tag their female partners, who then had to run around the fountain twice themselves. Unfortunately, the fast man was paired with the slow woman, and so the slow man ended up winning on the last lap of his partner.

Once congratulations were given to the winning team, both men had the outside of their left ankle covered in shaving cream and a portion of a few inches (or several centimeters since I am in Europe) was shaved off. Once the shaving was done, the two men washed off their ankles in the fountain, and the crowd dispersed, the initiation complete.

Then Greg met me, and we left to go look at an apartment, which we really liked. He said that med student initiation is really normal, and didn’t seem fazed whatsoever by my epic description of the event… oh well. He asked me if such things happen in the United States. I tried to explain the Greek system to him, to questionable success.