Status Update

Weather: Cold, windy, and often quite rainy

Week Nine: Finished

Feeling: Homesick

New Favorite Pastime: Playing soccer with my JEM people

Christmas Plans: Staying with Abi and her family in Manchester, England along with Sam, Shea, and Peter!

Leaving for Senegal: January 2

Returning from Senegal: March 11

God's Grace: Amazing

This Picture: Just because

A Saint-Just Treasure

I just posted a shortened version of this on Facebook, but I just had to post it here too (especially for my non-Facebook people)!

We just got back from a day in Saint-Just. We were helping our friend, Isabelle, who will be translating for us next week. We did some yard work for her in the morning and enjoyed lunch and a tour of her home afterwards.

Isabelle and her mom live on a beautiful estate that's been in their family for years. The yard was lovely and extremely large. I would pretty much equate it to "The Secret Garden." During WWII the Germans would camp out there because of its prime location. I love doing yard work, so I was in heaven as we raked, broke down fallen branches, and picked up fallen Sharon fruit (Persimmons, I think?) and laid them out to ripen.

And the house, oh the house! It was a mansion (literally a maze of a place) and wonderfully old. Vines with red leaves crawled up the walls of the beautiful, blue shuttered home. The main part of the house was built in 1780, and some of the basement/wine cellar areas date back to the 1300-1400s! Uh, I just loved it! I'm only sorry I don't have any pictures to share. Just use your imagination, okay?

Castle, Confusion, and Clarity

I know I haven't been very "blog post happy" lately. They've been keeping us busy around here...

Two weekends ago we visited Le Chateau de Suze-la-Rousse, which is just a 10 minute drive from JEM St. Paul. It was beautiful!

Can you see the faint outline of a mountain range on the horizon in the picture below? Not the first mountain range, but the one you can just barely see with a layer of fog covering it? That's Mont Ventoux; one of the most challenging peaks in the Tour de France. Cool, huh?!

Then, last weekend we (the students) hosted a dinner party for the JEM staff members and their families. We planned everything: the menu, the decorations, and the entertainment. It was a great success! Everyone dressed up like a Bible character; I chose to be Zipporah. Here I am pictured with my new little friend, Abigail (I'm not exactly sure which Bible character she was). 

Alright, enough about weekend adventures and festivities, let's move on to the meaty stuff: lectures. This week's lecture topic was "The Holy Spirit." To be perfectly honest, I don't usually think about the Holy Spirit on a day to day basis, so I had a difficult time wrapping my mind around the topic. Our teacher really loves God and had some truly valuable things to share, however, a few of his points—as far as I could tell—were not based on the Bible. I've tried not to be overly critical when listening to the lectures, but between the novelty and subjectivity of some of the teaching, my head was spinning this week. I didn't know what to believe about anything! I was anxious, emotional, and confused.

Thanks be to God, I am doing MUCH better now. After several, long phone conversations with my mom, one long phone conversation with my parents' pastor, and praying and Bible reading on my own, I was able to sort through some things. God helped me realize that while it's true I shouldn't be overly critical, I should use discernment. I'm learning not to take everything at face value, but instead to listen to the teaching, then study the Bible on my own, while asking God to help me develop convictions that are from him. A wonderful outcome of this week is that I am really excited to read my Bible more. And that, my friends, is the work of the Holy Spirit!