Work and Youth Group

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My day of work on Friday involved helping the class of 3eme translate their projects on Persecuted Christians - the information for which, they'd taken from Google and Wikipedia so translating the language wasn't exactly easy. I mean, how am I supposed to be able to translate the population density per km2 of China from French into English? And Northen Korea's mineral rocks? Me and Daniele spent the lesson pouring over her giant-sized dictionary and searching on the internet to help us with the translation, all the time puffing and groaning and rolling our eyes at the task before us. A total of 6-7 projects all to be translated by next week. Not fun.

Then there's the sponsored race being held next Thursday in aid of Open Doors. On monitoring duty with Lydie and Daniele at breaktime, they asked me if I was going to take part. I exhaled sharply in an expression of 'I don't think so!' It's bad enough on a Friday afternoon training with the little kids in La Maternelle and I usually place myself at the back to drag along the slower ones, that's if they need dragging.

And plus the temperature here has already reached 20C and likely to get warmer - back home we'd call this summer.

After a rather successful lesson with the 4eme, I was working in La Maternelle. It was one of those afternoons when there was plenty of cake and biscuits on offer so I was kept happy. And rather than sitting in the class the whole afternoon, we got to go out in order to load up a van with all the children's pre-prepared packages ready to go to Romania.

Whilst waiting to load up the van, Patricia, the teacher needed to go and collect something so she left me in charge of all 8-10 children. I was a bit nervous with so many fidgety, excited and hyper children to control. And just as she left we got called to go and place our boxes in the van - I got myself into military mode and made the children all line up one after the other in a 'little train'. And then we took off. Lydie, English teacher and photographer found this little spectacle rather hilarious and much to my horror, took a couple of photos. (To follow later). Showing me the pictures afterwards with me marching in front of a long line of children (like something out of the 'The Sound of Music', she laughed and told me it was prophetic. I think not.

That evening I had youth group. It was a good night of laughs and fun and I feel more and more at ease in the group. The main activity of the evening was putting ourselves into photo snap shots (a bit like freeze frames) based on certain themes. I worked with Olivia and Pauline, two lovely girls and we had a great laugh together.

The spiritual time we had afterwards was to do with entering into God's peace - a message which I thought corresponded well with what I'm learning and have been learning since being in France. Peace is something which comes from knowing God, knowing how He feels about you and being able to trust in Him completely. Listening to a Bill.J podcast earlier in the week on this exact topic, a particular point stuck out to me - peace is the atmosphere of heaven and we're expected to release that same peace wherever we go by releasing the presence and Word of God.

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