France Trip: Day Three / Travel to Toulouse

On Tuesday, I got a break from the construction as I traveled down to Toulouse to see the progress of a recent church plant. Paul took me to the train station that morning and I had my first real train ride. I rode the BGV, called a bullet train, which traveled about 120 mph. The scenery was a blur. I sat next to a black fellow who was heading back to Toulouse to the university. The ride was much more enjoyable than flying in a plane. The trip still took about 4 hours. I spent much of the time reading and trying to sleep. I got off the train and Brad Reynolds met me. He is a phenomenal guy. He drove me around the city and we got acquainted. We went to the local mall and ate a place called Flunch. Great food. Fairly inexpensive.








We then drove around the city and he gave me a historical perspective. We traveled to the International church (English speaking) where his French speaking church holds afternoon services. We then went to see his church's new building. It is actually more of a large room in a large mini-mall type building. It is basically a shell.








There are external walls, a concrete floor, and an open truss roof. To use the building, they have to do the plumbing and electrical, finish the ceiling and floors, finish the existing walls, put in partitions for other smaller rooms. And they are renting this space. They hope to own but cannot afford to at this time.
I spent about four hours with Brad then it was back on the train for another 4 hour train ride. Actually, I had a quick break as I had to switch trains about halfway through. I had a 12 minute window, which became eight, to switch and I barely made it. My heart was pounding for a few minutes. The train ride gave me time to process what I had seen. I also slept some, read some, and even worked on an upcoming message. I got back to Poitiers about 7:30 pm. I ended up waiting a short while for my ride. Joby and Al Clason met at the train yard and we headed back to the church to check on the progress of the other guys. They were just wrapping up a long day as we arrived. We then headed back to Norbert's home, ate dinner, talked a bit, and then some of us went to bed. I ended up staying up until Midnight with Mike as he was working on putting together a PowerPoint presentation. Another good day.

France Trip: Day Two / Arriving at Poitiers

Like I said in the previous entry, we arrived in Paris on Sunday (September 21) about 6:30 am Paris time. We got through customs and security in about an hour. Paul Keidel was scheduled to meet us and pick us up. He had the wrong information so he was late and he also went to the wrong terminal. So we turned the tables on him. Instead of him greeting us with a sign, we made a sign and greeted him. I think he was somewhat amused when he arrived around 9:00 am. I had called his cell phone 3 times earlier and also got a hold of his wife so that made our eventual meeting possible.


We left the airport and headed to his home in a suburb of Paris. We saw some incredible buildings as he pointed out where the people of royalty used to live. We stopped for a couple of minutes to take some pictures.

We then went to his home, got cleaned up, had a wonderful lunch, and then drove about four hours to the city of Poitiers. I tried to stay awake but my attempt was in vain. I and the other guys slept most of the way there.

We arrived at the church about 30 minutes before 5 pm when their church service started. They had scheduled their service to be in the evening that week especially for us. We met the pastor, Norbert, his wife Lucy, their two kids, and some other folks who were getting ready for the service. We were able to scope out the work at hand.

The service was great. The other guys sat in the back while I sat with Paul in the front. He gave me the play by play so I could know what was going on. The music was good. The people sang with great energy. Some of the songs I even recognized.

I had the opportunity to share a message with the people. Paul translated. My message was about being on God's team and about teamwork. I didn't realize then how appropriate that message was going to be.



After church, we shared a meal with the folks. Their church is very diverse, people from many different backgrounds. Norbert is actually Swiss and Lucy is Peruvian. There was a woman from Columbia there. There were two female university students who were Dutch. One white Frenchman was married to a woman of African descent. Another guy, John Noel, with whom we developed a great friendship, was born in the Congo. There was also a Japanese woman and her daughter there. The diversity was beautiful to see. We had many unique foods there, some I had a hard time getting down, but I did not want to offend the people.

After dinner, we all went to Norbert's home, relaxed a bit, and then went to bed to get ready for our first day of work.

France Trip: Day One / Travel

From the latest blog entries, you will discover that myself and three other guys from our church went on a short-term mission trip to France. The following entries will chronicle that trip. Some of the info will be detailed and as such not very exciting. Some hopefully will be more interesting.

We (Jeff our chauffeur, myself, Joby, and Mike) left the church on Saturday (September 20) around 7 am and headed to meet Arturo in Story City. From there, we traveled nearly 4 hours to the Minneapolis airport. We arrived around 11:30 am. Jeff dropped us off and headed to his son Josh's football game at Crown College. Our flight was not scheduled to leave until 3 pm so we had plenty of time to get through customs and security. We got through all the checkpoints without nearly a hitch. Joby did get his carry on bag searched and was relieved of a few liquid items that were too large to be considered acceptable. Other than that, the waiting was fairly uneventful. We spent time watching football, getting some food, strolling the airport, and catching up on some reading. I mainly read and guarded the bags as the guys were doing the other things mentioned. I took my wonderful air sickness prevention medicine (Bonine) just before we boarded so I was good to go. We boarded about 40 minutes before the flight took off.

The flight was a mere 8 hours. I had hoped to sleep but to no avail. So I watched three movies and tried to endure the trip. We got into Paris at 11:30 pm our time and 6:30 am Paris time. As we arrive in Paris essentially on Sunday, I will continue my thoughts in the next entry.