New folks on Sunday - and a potentially menacing development

Yesterday I was at Anglade (Blaye) in the morning then at Cenon for the English Service in the evening.

Anglade went well, though with a late start as there's lots of to-ing and fro-ing that people do, picking up folk from hither and yon. Still the service went well, the car behaved itself and we got home to find our friends Bryn and Betty Jones from UFM Council waiting outside the house.

Had they known that Gwilym was at home ill with la crève (a heavy cold induced by the sharing of bugs at start of term) then they could ahve waited for us in the house.

Anyway all went OK and the spaghettis went down well, followed by chocolate and vanilla ice-cream.

I retreated to the study to get my head together for the evening. While I was there I had a phone call from some folk from Widcombe church in Bath. They were booked onto a ferry from Santander but because of a strike by Brittany Ferries staff they were having to drive up to Calais - could they stay at our place overnight on Monday. I explained that 'our place' meant a warm welcome, sofas and a 6 am awakening, and then they mentioned that a student from Widcombe is with us.

"Really ? News to me."

So we scuttled off for the English Service. It was the first one with Andy Cheung present since June, so that made it very special, as well as having Bryn and Betty with us - and meeting the student from Widcombe who turned up for the first time that day.

As we approached the church I pointed out the sign to Bryn and Betty - hang on... the sign is broken...

Our plexiglass sign saying "Eglise Protestante Réformée Evangélique de la Gironde" had broken - possible broken by vandalism following the heated atmosphere over cartoons etc... ?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor...
Read more

Good news from my sermon buddy

Yesterday we went over my script from August 13. There really wasn't much she had taken exception to. Once or twice she wondered quite what I was getting at (they had the same problem at Deeside, I think...) and I do have difficulties with the word " de ", but then she said "Who doesn't?" So I felt very encouraged. I also took the opportunity to ask her about one or two things: 1) Direct preaching. Like I used to in Britain, I preach saying you - using "vous" when I am talking to the whole wide world and "tu" when I want it to feel as if I am addressing each person individually. French preachers tend to say rather "What will we do, what will one do". So I asked her if she felt my way was too direct, too brutal for the French ear. She said "I think you can get away with it with your English accent". In fact several people have commented on how much they appreciated being spoken to directly in preaching. 2) Liaisons Last...
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I...
Read more