Our holiday time in July was reasonably R & R, but our first week saw us sending off No.1 son to Australia for a year's study. (He's settling in nicely and not far from his grandparents.)

The rest of the time we supported No.2 son who has spent 6 weeks picking cherries and pears, although there was a lot of rain which spoiled crops. And with No.3, our daughter, we did odd-jobs around the house, outings, just hung out and read.

Back at work since first week of August; and our main preoccupation - what should our priorities be given that we think we are going to have to change churches at the end of this new school year. Too many ideas of what we'd like to do and see happen, and not enough clarity in what God sees as priority. It's not easy to cope with. It's not helped by a real lack of ideas/initiative/even expressed desires from our main congregation whose numbers have dropped to 25 regulars.

So my first priority is to pray with as many of these people as possible and to be part of a specific group which prays as a ministry in spiritual combat for our area. There are many people to reach here with the Gospel, many relationships that could be encouraged.

Example: one of the local café owners is very open to discussions. Pascal and I decided to have a coffee there once a week over summer to have time for ourselves and the owner kept coming to our table to chat.

Example: I know several women (through our children) who could be invited to a Bible discovery type coffee morning, but I wanted another woman at least from our church to be involved .... hard to pin down.

Example: our former chapel and manse were sold to a local artist/journalist who has stated publicly that he and his partner feel negative energies in the manse! There is a real opportunity to go and investigate this with him and to bring the Holy Spirit into the affair! But the reaction of our church members was very passive: they don't believe these things and were more inclined to ignore the opportunity because they didn't agree, rather than confront the issue and work through it. Where is our Christian testimony ? Where is our difference ?

Before

After!

Pray for France - a lot of searching for spiritual truths, but not enough Christians taking on the challenge of being a viable alternative (so to speak!)

Last Sunday we held a special service for our young people. They are leaving the area to pursue studies and work options and we will no longer be able to coordinate regular activities for them. We hope to take them along to different youth gatherings and there are 3 weekends in perspective.

Our message for them: we did what we could to transmit our faith to them; we didn't always do it well, but we love them, are proud of them and of all that they have contributed over the last 7 years and we have prayed for them: which we will continue to do. Have we sown enough ? Only God knows what will develop. We also encouraged them to continue to explore the Christian faith and to be open to expressing their faith in different ways to us. Also to let God surprise and amaze them. He can't be stuck in a box!

It was a special time: not something that our church members are used to doing and certainly not standing around holding hands! so we were pleased to see them being able to do things differently.

May God take care of them.

On a personal note, our eldest son is returning to Australia for a year's study to get his Bachelor of Business Studies. His Bachelor will be recognised in France and in Australia. We are very grateful for this chance. Pray that God will use this wonderful experience to help him grow in his faith.