Almost Forgot...

So officially I have missed my deadline for the blog considering it is 1:28 here in France, however, I figure that most of you who read this blog are in America, so is still Monday for you! :-) So here goes...

I did promise to tell you about the childrens english class. Myself and 2 other ladies on our team get the great opportunity to go to an elementary school in the area every tuesday night to teach an English class for 3-5 year old kids!! The class is an hour long after school from 4:30-5:30.

A little background info...School in France starts at the age of 3 for kids! And school doesn't end until approximately 4! I'm not sure what time it starts!

So we get these kids after a full day of school and right at snack time (French: goute).

During our class we do several activities, read books, color pictures, watch short films, play games, and sing songs...all in English. The kids are very quick and understand several things we say....now wether or not they choose to follow what they hear is another story :-D! One of their favorite songs is Head and Shoulders, Knees, and Toes! They really are very cute, however, think about these things we are up against...end of the day...energy to burn....listening to some lady speak English when they don't understand...that makes for a lot of reasons these kids should get distracted! Some days are very hard, while other days are relatively calm....Relatively! :-) Last week in our class we had Spiderman, a Three Muskateer, 5 princesses, a fairy, and few other unknowns!, they came to us after a festival at school where they all wore costumes! They were pretty cute!!

Pray that God would give my teammembers who are doing this with
me a chance to talk to some of the other moms. They are moms themselves and
this is a GREAT way to build relationships with some of the other moms.
For me, it just gives me a chance to hang with some kids for an hour and love them in jesus name! :-P

Pray that God would help us to be patient with these children, and that
even at such a young age, they would see the difference in us and then ask their
parents or us what that is!

Well times up! Next time I think try a little more of a spiritual update as far as our team and myself are concerned! Thanks for your faithfulness to pray.

And now for ... the Rest of the story!

...So I did this blog once...and then my computer erased it...so here I go again,

....and we talked about American TV shows and movies we have all seen. They told me that they wanted to come to America for a few months just so they could live in the life that they see in these shows. I had to explain to them that life isn't EXACTLY as Hollywood portrays it! Anyway, it is great talking with them. Our conversations are often slow as they have to correct me quite a bit. They definatly correct me A LOT more than I correct them. They are so patient with me and help form correct phrases or questions and then sit patiently while I repeat them 4 or 5 times! :-P

Language, man...its tough! We are still having class 4 days a week for 4 hours a day. 9-12:45....so its nice to get it over in the mornings and have the afternoons to get out in the community. There has not been a lack of confusion, frustration, or challenge in the learning of French. Its very difficult to learn a new language and a very humbling experience. However, we have fought through the rough days, and God has given us the ability to continue with the course. Monique is our wonderful tutor and has been very patient with us as we go through our rough days and laughed with us on the good days! She has been very nice to reapeat instructions or even single words 3-4 times to help us understand. We have 2 months of class left and then we will be finishing the language school part of our time with a 3 week intensive immerrsion program in Paris where we will be expected to speak ONLY French for those 3 weeks!

Please pray that God would give as a renewed vision for why we are here in
France. It is alot easier to stay positive about learning the language when you
remember the all important reason we are here...to tell people about his love
and salvation.

Please pray that God will give us patience as we fight
off the temptation to give up in times of frustration. Pray that God will give
us a drive to work and a good recollection of what we learn in our classtimes!

To come in 2 days: Spring time in Paris, the kids English class...and much much more!

The First of Several Posts!

First of all I want to thank you all for your encouraging comments and for your faithfulness to read and respond to my blog. Second, I want to apologize for allowing a month to pass before writing again!! I really don't have much of an excuse! I was talking to my mom the other day and I told her that now I just feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of information I would like to share with you guys...so she had GREAT suggestion. So make up for the last month of slacking...I am going to write every other day for 2 weeks. I'm gonna set the timer for 10 minutes and write about something...as soon as that time is up, I will stop and then continue two days later. So I encourage you to be checking my blog over the next 2 weeks as there will be many new posts!

So...here we go! Starting the timer....and GO!

Let me tell you, the past month has been very well..interesting here in marseille. As most of you know, our team in Marseille is a new one and so everything we do is an experiment of sorts. Sometimes we do things and they succeed, and other times we do things and find that there is no response. Two weeks ago we met to organize our information to start English clubs with the students in the area. Right now is a great time to start these conversational English classes as students are preparing for their oral english exams at the end of the term. We set up times for the meetings, someone made flyers, and set a date to go to the university. We went last wednesday to the campus and stood right outside the front gate near a bus stop with fliers and an information table. During our 4 hours of standing behind this table..we had one person stop by and take a flyer...the only person that signed up was this girl named Courtney Hail who had a peculiarly familiar email address! :-) Anyway, we ended up ending the day by placing some of our fliers around campus so that people might see them and sign up on our website.. I believe since that time we have had 1 or 2 people sign up for classes! Praise Jesus!!

Prayer: Please pray that we would be sensitive to Gods guidance as we try to
figure out how to use English clubs to reach out to the students here in
Marseille.

I have had the awesome opportunity to meet for the last few weeks with a girl "N" who has agreed to be my language partner! It is great to have conversation with someone who knows the culture some much better. Her family is not originally from France, but she has lived most of her life here. We usually meet for coffee or a coke at a cafe around the corner and just talk. We are only really supposed to meet for about an hour, but our last 2 talks have been 3 and 4 hours! Praise God! She speaks in English and I correct any mistakes I hear and I speak in French with her correcting my french. Last week her sister actually joined us and....


TIMES UP!!! more to come in 2 days! Love you all!