One of our aims this year is to spend quality time with friends and family, and after lots of visits to other people, it has been great the last couple of weeks to have visitors here. After a weekend with a French/Beninese family staying we had my parents for a week, and had lovely times with them. We had wonderful weather for the first few days, and then a trip to the "Cité du Train" in Alsace to celebrate my dad's 70th birthday.
In the park with our friends:
Mum and me in Place Stanislas, Nancy:
Three generations on a bench:
At the Cité du Train. Eve driving a TGV:
Trying out the seats:
Wow, this one's big!
And this one's very small (a little train we could ride on around the museum):
An amazingly imaginative - and extensive - model railway to give my dad lots of ideas for his:
Last week our kids were still on school holidays, but we actually had a whole week at home. So we decided to do a few special things. On the Monday, the kids and I spent the morning preparing a picnic. We went down to our local supermarket to buy what we needed, and then came home to make the sandwiches ... and tried not to worry about the grey skies.
Our prayers were answered, as the skies cleared just before midday, and when we got to the park we had glorious sunshine! There was a football match before the picnic, and we almost felt it was our own private garden, as there were only a few dog-walkers or joggers around occasionally!
We are really blessed this year in having such a beautiful and well-kept park just 5 minutes walk from our flat.
One of the things I love about Home Assignment is visiting our supporting churches. There has been quite a variety to what we've been asked to do, from 5-minute interviews to entire evening meetings presenting our work. Last Sunday in Marc's sister Anne's church in Ris-Orangis they asked us to give a presentation about our work during the service, and asked Marc to preach (one hour in all), and then to stay on for the youth group meeting in the afternoon to talk about "call to mission".
As usual, we enjoyed meeting people who were interested in our work and in mission in general and who had lots of questions. It seems to me that in every meeting someone comes up with an original question we've never heard before!
During the presentation:
Marc preaching:
At the youth group:
Because of a mystery virus Benjy may or may not have had last week (he had an impressive rash for 24 hours) the doctor said he couldn't be in contact with small children until Monday. So Marc and I left all three kids with their French grandparents while we drove to the other side of Paris for church. To be honest, it was a refreshing change to be able to concentrate on what we were doing without having to think about crowd control all day (as it were!). And it gave us a chance to get to know our niece and nephews better - I had 3 year old Jean on my lap for the whole sermon, which might not have been allowed if Eve had been around!
