Well THOSE two days have been very different!

Yesterday was the RéseauFEF (Fédération Evangélique de France) pastorale in Toulouse. I belong to RéseauFEF by virtue of our mission, UFM/MPEF, but it took about 8 years and questions from the hierarchy (not that we have a hierarchy, but those who raised questions are those who would be in the hierarchy if we had one) before I ever went to a RéseauFEF event.

There's perhaps seven of us in RéseauFEF in the Bordeaux area but they include some of my most splendid friends and colleagues, so the prospect of spending five hours bouncing down the motorway in a minibus accompanied by these worthies was compelling.

On the way Sebti navigated to the church where the pastorale was to be held and graciously showed us all Toulouse' most interesting sights on the way. Either that city is much bigger than I thought, or perhaps we arrived at the church by spiralling in on it through the city in ever-decreasing circles. Anyway we got there just over 1/2 an hour late and missed the official time of coffee and snacks, but there was still some left so as our speaker began his discourse we helped ourselves to delicious goodies.

The theme of the day was "Christian Schools" and it was generally very well presented. There were one or two little areas that I would have liked refined, but hey. Two excellent folk came in afterwards, the headmistress of Toulouse' christian primary school and the chairman of the governors.

We shared matter for prayer and I learnt that our closest friends in Toulouse, Vincent and Sam, are having problems with the change of use order on a building they bought. Between buying and modifying the building the zone in which it is situated has been reclassified causing complicated issues and threatening the use of the building. Aïe !

My good friend and excellent colleague, Marc from Villenave and I shared in the bus on the way and generally it was a very helpful and refreshing day, in the context of the hard plod and frequent knocks that is mission in France today.

Today reserved a different kind of treat. Moving furniture.

Gwilym is in England, looking for good books on Genesis (I don't have ones he needs) and Catrin's room is the least nice room in the house for reasons I won't go into, so we are moving her into Gwilym's room, which involved moving furniture round in my study (how ever did I get all those books on that shelf before?), switching tables round, and heaving bunk beds and wardrobes round the room, preferably without bending your back.

At one point I realised that I was trapped between the bunk bed and the wall and didn't have enough room to bend my knees to put the bunk bed down. It was a nasty moment and I had to think my way out of it. 

Ha! both neurones still firing, as said the great Houdini!

Now it's three o'clock and we're both absolutely wrecked.

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