les Davey de France

Well, not really. I mean the house is now on the market. What do you think? Three bedrooms, detached, corner plot. Big rooms (16'x12' lounge and main bedroom, all bedrooms 12' long) Downstairs toilet, downstairs study (converted garage), additional garage. £170,000 Just below the national average house price (which is about £180,000, I think) We were pretty sad putting it on the market. It's a nice house and we've been really happy here. But please still pray for a good quick sale!

Airbus A380 taking off for its maiden flight

What has this to do with us going to France? Well the wings are made at our new enormous factory here in Broughton, Deeside, North Wales, and they are shipped on the "Ville de Bordeaux" to Bordeaux's port at Paulliac for further transport by road to Toulouse where the whole plane is assembled, and where it flew today! Excited? I should say! (By the way, it has crossed my mind that they might have room for a couple of sofas on the "Ville de Bordeaux" en route from Deeside to Bordeaux...)

It is not easy for us today to grasp the sheer scale of what was achieved in such a short time in the 1550s and 60s. Here is another article that records God's breathtaking blessing on the brave, visionary and sacrificial Geneva mission to France.   http://www.boisestate.edu/courses/reformation/france/16thc.shtml    

You can read the whole thing at: http://reformed-theology.org/html/issue04/calvin.htm   Missionaries sent into France It is widely believed that the Reformers of the sixteenth century were not involved in missionary activity. That is simply not the case. John Calvin was involved in the work of sending missionaries to Brazil. Doors into Brazil did not open at that time and those involved in the attempt lost their lives. However the mission field is not only lands far off. Indeed France constituted a mission field. Unlike present day France, which is almost entirely secular in outlook, the France of the 16th century was religious but dominated by the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. Persecution by the priests against evangelicals was fierce. It could cost your life to actively propagate the evangelical faith. However within the Roman Church a very considerable Bible movement had taken place through the secret reading of books by Luther as well as through the teaching of

In the 16th century, largely through the missionary vision of John Calvin more churches were established in France in a very few years than exist today. This in a much smaller population and with none of the benefits of modern communications and travel. Here is an extract from an article speaking about this. .. In 1555 the first Huguenot congregation to have a permanent minister was established in Paris. By 1558, this congregation was worshipping in the open guarded by armed sympathisers. In 1559, the first synod (national council) was held in Paris. 72 local congregations were represented by the elders from each congregation. In some regions of France travelling ministers had to be used but this was never a major problem as the organisation of the church was so tight. Many Huguenot communities were near each other so communication was never really a problem. Educated merchants were drawn to Calvinism. This occurred probably as a result of the impact of the Renaissance and as a reactio

I hope that this week I will have an opportunity to talk about UFM, France & Bordeaux at a conference for pastors. Maybe this will open up further appointments to present the needs and opportunities to churches. Please pray for this. The work in France needs lots of workers - fellow-workers in France and fellow-workers in prayer and in finance here, too.

We've gone and bought a car! Well, put a deposit on it anyway. A Citroen Berlingo. Similar to what we have now, but newer, better engine and (this is the important bit) left hand drive. Now comes our first tussle with French bureaucracy. Will we be able to register it and insure it in Bordeaux ready to collect (from Basingstoke.....) next Friday? This is the car, by the way. http://www.lhdplace.com/Scripts/8755.htm I must be mad!

This time concerning the church here! Last night we held a Special Church Meeting to decide whether to invite Martin Downes (currently UCCFW team leader) to become our pastor from this September. We voted to do this. And Martin accepted. So bit by bit things are being put in place... Of course Martin will be our pastor, too, and we are looking forward to having him visit us in Bordeaux! But we have to get there first.

Easter Monday The day started at 4h00 to get to Manchester for the 6h45 flight. We arrived at Bordeaux ten minutes early somehow, think the pilot must have put his foot down. Carol was there to meet me, and took me to her house for a reviving cuppa and breakfast, then she whisked me off on a tour of Bordeaux. My head was spinning, but it was good to get a sort of general idea of the scope of the city. The whole of it including the suburbs is spread over quite a large area, but the centre itself is not too bad. After lunch we went to look at some estate agents to get a rough idea of what was available, although we have been looking on the internet too. It varies just like here really, it depends where you want to live as to how much you can afford. Then we had an early night because believe it or not, we had to get up at 5h30 (which of course was 3h30 in old British money) Easter Tuesday We were off to meet Carol Foucachon, the minister's wife, who tried to arrange for me to meet th

Last week was the FIEC conference at Pweli/Perfeli/Pwllheli (depending on who was speaking at the time!) We Daveys went along and shared manning the UFM stand with Bernard and Linda Lewis (Papua New Guinea), Paul and Rachel Donovan (PNG, new appointees) and Andrew and Jenny Love (Brazil). I ought to have taken a picture of the stand - we had two UFM panels, one France panel and one PNG panel, and pretty splendid everything looked, too. We had a brief moment of panic when Paul and I realised that to me "we have a power point" meant we would have an electric socket in the corner, and to him it meant we would have a laptop showing a PowerPoint presentation. (I blame Bill Gates myself...) Bernard saved the day by putting his laptop on the stand. Judging by people's responses, there is a lot of interest in mission in France and in PNG. It was good to talk with the people from Belgian Evangelical mission, from European Missionary Fellowship and from the Christian Institute (all

It's available at this address: http://home.btconnect.com/harpeople/Daveys2France/Daveys2FranceApril2005.pdf