woke up at 3:30am as planned to find that no one actually left and the younger lot stayed up all night... I was saying goodbye to one of the guys, Joshua, and he said I was like a father to him, that was so weird but I guess it's cos I am like 10 years older than the majority of them!

We cleaned the rooms and brushed the floors hoping to leave no mess behind. Time to head back to Manchester! Camille said she bought is some french pastries, I thought she meant french bread, the breakfast type, we opened the box and saw that they were in fact mini cakes which looked amazing! Sweet foods in the morning dont go down to well with me...

Kitty met us in the morning, and waited with us till the taxi arrived, her testimony is so sad, she became a Christian at the age of 42 after her middle daughter accidentally electrocuted herself after showering. The joy she has now is definitely from God, only he could put a smile back on her face, she has been so kind and loving towards us all!

Arrived at the airport with over and hour and a half to spare, Shermaine's eyes lit up when the designer shops opened!!! She has been waiting a long time to shop!!!

Can't wait to get home!!! We touched down in Manchester, it feels so good to be home. After passing through immigration and picking up our luggages we headed to our awaiting family. It was so good to see Sam's family there and Andy's dad waiting at the arrivals. The rest of us went up to departures to meet our family. During the ride home we were told to swing by church, I knew some didn't want to go but we did... It was such a lovely sight when we got there, a welcome home breakfast was laid out on the table, a fitting way to end the Paris 2010 Mission Trip!

Till the next trip...

Au revoir

Jon Poon

woke up a little late, and I was probably one of the first to wake up. Grabbed a coffee and headed to church. These 9:30am services would definitely not go down well back in the UK. Matt joint lead with the French team for the French service, we sang Over The Mountains and Arms Of Love in French, maybe we could try these songs in our church? Maybe not...

The sermon is on Mat 24:1-14, Signs of The End Age... Scary! Problem is, I doubt any of our tram understands it.

After church a few of us went to buy food and presents for Kitty and Jeremy's family for being such excellent hosts towards us. After lunch it was the second service, it was based on, funnily enough, Mission. The pastor at the end said we were living testimonies which was a shock to me as no one has ever said anything like that to us.

Towards the end of the service we presented our video presentation, I think it made a good few of us fill up with emotion. Last days are always sad, it will be hard leaving here as we have made so many good friends, but all good things must come to an end, I hope this one doesn't!

We gathered together and shared on the past week, sharing about being encouraged about evangelising, wanting to do short-term mission trip, worship. Both set of groups have learnt a lot from each other. We have learnt about opening up the church, welcoming everyone and anyone 24/7.

The French group is pretty young, hopefully in a few years they will be able to send a team out to the UK or anywhere else. They have the passion but I feel that they lack a leader who stands out from the rest. It is very encouraging hear that they want to be able to do what we do. I believe in time they will be able to send a team out.

The one really amazing job which this church does is that it keeps it's doors open all day for anyone to pop in and chat, absolutely amazing!

Final dinner was at Jeremy's house, Jeremy is Camille, Elelian, and Elodin's father. We had Vietnamese beef noodles followed by ice-cream. The food was fab, chilli was so hot it made me sweat!!! Not good!!!

Need an early night tonight, have to be up early, 3:30am for the clean-up ad taxi ride to the airport.

Jonathan reporting from Paris.

Hey diary! Wassup!

So today was awesome! I wasn't teaching this morning, so I had to prepare a video to show for the night's meeting!

The English lessons went well, we used the time to prep for a presentation we moved from Friday to Sunday! We have recorded all the various presentations, and after our trip out to Paris tomorrow, I am going to prepare another video!

Am looking forward to getting out of Chinatown tomorrow think that me an the team are getting a little cabin fever, but if that is all I have to bear for the kingdom of God, I and the team gladly bear it!

Were getting later and later for our debriefs!!! It's cos were getting good opportunity to hang out and sow light and salt into people!

Please pray for the following! 

Pray for a wonderful excursion tomorrow which would refresh us and bless us by being able to see His wonderful creation!

Pray for a good couple of last days and that we would still be focused on completing a good race!

Pray that the Lord would continue to work in our hearts and those who we serve in Paris!

Finally thank God for his miracles and wonders and for showing he's a god for the world!

Matt Coulson

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This is Charlotte. So it's day 7 of our paris mission trip!! We're are all knackered but its great! So today our English classes were good. The beginners class learnt about School, and had a more challenging lesson writing a short piece about their school. They coped well with the challenge, and I think pushing their ability is good for them. The eldest class did some work with nouns, adjectives and verbs. There were three new students in the class. They did a listening exercise together, and some dialogue and interview work. They have begun preparing for their presentations we will show in church on sunday. The intermediate class also had a newcomer, and so were a bit restless. The class was good, the students are being more respectful towards the teachers.

Afterwards we went for a prayer walk with the youth. This was the first time they'd ever done one before, so it was good. We split into two groups. One group was quite effective, the youth looked around the community at things they'd never noticed before and prayed togetehr in a park. The other group was a bit more distracted, and so may not have worked so well, although we met a few different people like a homeless man and the elderly. We then got pizza for everyone before having Matt's talk on parent/child relationships. The talk was well attended to, by youth and a few parents. It was well receieved, and people seemed to enjoy it. EVAngelinA did a good job of translating into Mandarin, although she doesn't think so! The adults even willingly participated in the role plays!

We spent the rest of the eveving chilling with the youths, and are currently having our team talk!!

Prayer Points:

• Good rest and energy for each day

• Student fellowship goes well tomorrow night (we're leading the session)

• Pray for last teaching day tomorrow

• Continue good relationship building

• Continuity going forward provided by the church

• Pray for Matt doing video preparation for something we want to show to the students

Bonjour!

 It's Mimmy reporting from Paris.

 Day 6 of our trip. Not long till we leave now. Time has surely flew by quickly. It has been an exciting and challenging trip, with busy schedules everyday. Today we had our third day of the english classes runnning. So far, we have met students with different level of English, ranging from understanding no English at all to having some background knowledge. 

 For the English classes today, we faced some challenges in the beginner's class because the children were quite hyper. But it was good to see all the children have a close relationship with one another. The youth alpha this afternoon, Matt and some of the others decided to take the youth out and do some outreach in the basketball court area. The outreach didn't go too well as planned, but it was nice to spend time and get to know the youth more. 

 Apart from the english classes and youth alpha, we are fed well everyday by the aunties in the church. It is a blessing to see how they kindly used their free time to cook for our lunch and dinner. Like today, we had soy sauce chicken, which was very yummy. In addition to this, we had a tasty lunch cooked by our own team members today, Jonathan and Angelene! They made Sasuage fried rice with nicely decorated tomato and cucumber at the top.

 Prayer items of the day:
Tomorrow we will be going out to have dinner with the youth and Matt will be presenting a talk on "how children and parents can communicate better with each other". Please pray that God will help us to prevent any communication barrier with the youths. 
Pray that the people who attend the talk will be able to understand the message and that they are able to to apply the talk in their daily lives.
Please do also pray that God will provide us with strength and feel renewed everyday.

 God bless!
Mimmy
 

Dear diary,
Hello, this is Andy! Today is August the 24th, 11:47pm. We just had a day of teaching, playing and getting to know the french youth even more. I want to thank God for today because we were able to share with each other our own testimonies and i felt us getting a lot closer to each and everyone of them. Over the past couple of days we have had youth stay over till 11pm or so before leaving to take the metro by themselves home! even now whilst i am typing with have a friend who came in at around 1.30pm and sticked with us, each day has really been a real blessing.

Today we had a similar routine to yesterday after we re-organised some parts to our teaching methods and our alpha course to suit them better, here i really want pray that we really keep as fluid as God wants, as changes can happen very quickly. Back to what i was saying before, today was quite similar to yesterday, we helped the morning class, to the best of our abilities, in the english language and tried our best to communicate with them without using any other language apart from english, to be honest i found this increasingly difficult, because as we speak regardless of how slow we are speaking or how active our hand gestures were they just could not understand the instructions sometimes, but they do have a real thirst to increase their own knowledge but are blocked by the frustration of a language barrier. i ask that you can pray for our patience and ability to communicate with them whilst sticking to our teaching methods which will help them in the long run.

Afterwards we had our alpha course which consisted of an explanation led by Sam and Charlotte of growing in faith and moving forward to taking that next step such as telling others about their faith. From were i was sitting it did seem to have clicked with them but we have still yet to know as we are going to the basketball courts tomorrow for the alpha course to 'chill' with the french youth but also start conversations hopefully with their non christian friends and maybe introduce and create a chance for the youth to share their own testimonies. After the alpha course we spent the rest of the day with them in fellowship with food, games (new french games and other games introduced by our team) and just general chit-chat. We then moved on to the talk led by Matt which seemed short but quite impactive, he talked about how the bible is essential in a christians daily life and also a little pep talk on evangelising, which then went on to us splitting into groups sharing. From what i saw every group seemed to be in deep conversation and from my group everyone was very honest about their answers and this is only after meeting for at most 4 days. I am amazed at how deep our conversations got regardless of language difficulties.

I ask for pray for items mentioned above but also:
- For the session out at the basketball court, i pray that we are able to speak to their friends, and  also see them take the step to introduce and make a difference in their own friends lives.
- Sufficient rest as we have been prepping till late night and waking up relatively early.
- Growth and getting closer to one another spiritually.
- Any problems, to be handled by God and that we fully rely on God to persevere through them.

Thank you for all your support and pray.
Reporting from sunny France, Andy.

So today wasn't as hot as the past 2 days but I think we're all appreciating the break from sweaty meetings of planning and prayer. Today was the first day of our teaching and although we were faced with many troubles and difficulties, it was a success in many ways. This morning 11 friends came to learn English with us and I'm very glad that they were happy to be here and that it wasn't hugely awkward. God graced us with a very swift beginning in assessing initially which of the 3 classes we should place the students in, and by the end of the lessons, I believe each student was placed in the best possible setting available.

Youth Alpha was also a very interesting time because the only people who arrived were all Christians, mainly from the local churches. We realised the talk and discussion points weren't very suitable for these people, but with a little improvisation and inspiration from God, we ended up discussing about how we came to know Jesus and each shared our testimonies. So all is good as God is constantly watching over us, and even though it seems like we are changing all our planning on a daily basis, we get to see every single day, just how capable our Lord God is.

For support through prayer, we would like to ask that our lessons continue to go smoothly and our constant switching of roles does not impinge on the learning of the students. It would be good too if the students feel more comfortable around us as we get to know and form relationships with them, so that teaching becomes easier and so that they will enjoy the time spent with us. Also, we are planning changes to the structure of our afternoon programme so we pray that these changes are in line with God's plans. Finally we would like God to provide us with sufficient rest whenever we get it, because everyone is beginning to feel extremely tired and the schedule for the week ahead seems to be filling up non-stop.

Thank you guys for your love and support.

Sam

Day 3: woke up early as we are attending 4 church services, first one was at 9:30am, a small turn out, with worship lead by a couple with one guitar. Good thing is that the songs they sang in French, we knew in English! The sketch which we prepared went down well, still not loud enough but I think most people got the message.

Matt lead Open The Eyes Of My Heart in French which was really good, everyone knew it and sang along.

Preaching was in French, only understood about 0.00001% of it and that was when he said 'amen'. Preaching was at most 20 mins, good short service, 50mins in total!

After the service the speaker came over and asked for two contacts for when he comes over, its nice when people do that, hopefully he does decide to visit us one day.

Second service in Chinese... This was a testing time for the team as not all of us fully understand Cantonese or mandarin.

Watching the people set up the equipment here brought back memories, they used a OHP which I haven't seen in years! They also had a women's choir practicing a 'traditional' old chinese Christian song... Memories of Sunday School came flooding back! This congregation filled out the church hall, majority of people were the elderly, with a few younger folk.

We were asked to lead one song which Meme, Angelene and Sam lead really well! No one knew the song 'How Great Is Our God' but towards the end they got the hang of it.

Sermon was very long, bilingual, mandarin and Cantonese.

After lunch we attended a French Bible study with Pastor Henry, it was based on Mark's account of Jesus' miracle of healing the blind man. Though our French friends tried to be as bilingual as possible it seemed like we were hindering them with their progression of their Bible study.

Church service 3 was in French and mandarin, it was pretty cool because the rooms are so small that they have their services in several rooms with video cameras display the projector and worship leaders. We were introduced as a team and Matt lead worship, we sang Open The Eyes Of My Heart in fresh which went pretty well. We also did the Say It With Flowers which also went well apart from Angelene's mic not working all the way through. After the presentation we moved to the young person's service where pastor Henry spoke on the Church.

After church we played a French version of Mafia which was very different and confusing! Dinner was at McDonalds which because we wanted to save money and eat with the French youths.

Day three as we speak is ending with us prepping like crazy because yesterday morning we only had 6 kids signed up for English lessons with numbers increasing every hour, now we have 18, and at least 6 of them are 18-21!!!

Jon reporting from Paris.

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It's day 2 and yes, we have conquered it by God's grace!

The girls had a good rest at Kitty's place yesterday and the boys slept on air mattresses in church itself. After much discussion among the group members, we came to conclusion that it is better for the whole team to live together in the church, as it is more convenient for us to plan for the events day after. Thus, all girls are living in the church from tonight onwards. We have shifted some mattresses from Kitty's house for us to sleep on tonight.

The day started off with typical French breakfast. Kitty brought the girls to the nearby supermarket and got us some nice freshly baked croissants and baguette. We had hard boiled eggs as well. 

We then had a meeting with Kitty and Jeremie for the upcoming daily events for the whole week. So far we have 7 students registered for the English class. 4 of them are 6-11 years old who speaks no English, and 3 of them are 11-15 years old with different level of English. We are also expecting 4-5 adults who are 30+ years old. With that, we have to be flexible in teaching them. Please keep us in prayer for that because that will be a challenge for us.

Besides, God is really good because He has also blessed us with a few aunties from church who have volunteered to cook lunch and dinner for us. We need not cook ourselves anymore or eat bread all the time!For your information, they cook really yummy home cooked Chinese food! We even have soup every meal! *I have attached you a picture of our dinner*

As for lunch today, Kitty brought us to this famous Vietnamese restaurant for their special  Beef noodle!  We enjoyed it very much:D nyum nyum!

Our first task of the day was distributing flyers, bookmarks and newspapers in the heart of Chinatown! You could see so many Chinese people in PARIS. Though we had to work under the scorching sun, we were really thankful for such beautiful weather because we are all able to do God's work, hoping that more people will read the flyers about the English class we're about to conduct. All is worth while:)

Thank God there is a huge supermarket just behind our church! We managed to do some grocery shopping there for our breakfast and snacks. Then we headed back to church for dinner:)

As for tonight, we stayed in to do some preps as we have to do a few presentations in the different congregations tomorrow!

Prayer items:
* Pray that the sketch we're performing tomorrow will bring across the message efficiently.
*Pray that our team members who are worship leading will be led by the Holy spirit.
*Pray that God will sustain us throughout the whole day tomorrow  as we're attending 4 different church services.
*Pray that we will be able to communicate efficiently with the organizers and church members despite the language barrier.
*Pray for God's protection to be upon us as well.

Thank you for your prayers:) Hope Manchester is good!
Blessed Sunday!

Angie reporting from Paris!!