les Davey de France

We just spent two weeks, three weekends in the UK visiting our supporting churches, Alan attended the Bala Ministers' Conference, we both were there for our old church's 50th anniversary and some other festive occasions. Here's some reflections : The overnight ferry Portsmouth to Caen was great! We slept OK in our couchettes plus - a sort of dormitory of bunk beds - we were alone in a cellule of four beds and many of the cellules were empty. From Caen to Portsmouth we caught the early morning boat and stayed in a cheap hotel at Ouistreham. Checking in and out of the ferry ports was easy.  UK roads are really bad. The surfaces of town roads and streets are worn, pot-holed and very rough indeed. UK motorways are very crowded, but this means everyone drives slower. this resulted in us getting over 70 mpg in Ella, our Honda Jazz! French motorways are much smoother and less crowded but we pay tolls and you can get bullied by heavy lorries, as you can in the UK. It was wonderful ...

I'm so very thankful for all the wonderful things God has given me over the years, and now he's given me the opportunity to serve him in a different way. Twenty years ago there was a conversation where we shared to whom we were responsible. My list was very long. I was accountable to the church and the people I worked for and with. I was responsible to denominational structures in France. I was also accountable to my home church which had sent me to France. There was also the mission who were there to support and take care of us. Then to the many people who were contributing generously to our support. It's good to have accountability and I rarely found any of this to be a problem. From now on, however, we'll be paid increasingly exclusively from our own resources, to which we have contributed over the years. Voices that once were determinative will now become consultative. We'll appreciate people's advice and counsel, but we will have much more freedom in what w...

The annual prayer retreat of the international pastors was to be held in Brno. There are no direct flights from Bordeaux to Brno and the best way to get there is to fly to Vienna and take the short train ride to Brno. There are no direct flights from Bordeaux to Vienna at this time of year, and the best way to get there is to take the train from Bordeaux to Paris, then cross the city to CDG and fly on to Vienna. So the journeys were less straightforward than they could have been. For reasons I won't go into I ended up staying overnight in Vienna on the way to Brno. This gave me the opportunity to meet Froim's parents for a meal - they picked me up from the airport, reminding me of the book "Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part" by Anna Gavalda, which I have never read. I ate a pork Wiener schnitzel. The next day I had a few hours to run amok in Vienna and inspected the Stephansdome and the Peterskirche, where I met George from southern India who ha...

I got back Monday from one of our two-week three-weekend visits to the UK to report to churches on the work here in Bordeaux. I didn't hire a car, but I travelled everywhere by train and, once, by bus. My travels began with a flight to Bristol Airport, where our friends from Bath were waiting to meet me and take me to their home for the weekend. I flew on the Saturday - there was no direct flight that day - via Marseille.  Flying via Marseille was a pain in the neck. It meant a LONG journey, a LONG wait in Marseille AND getting the nice bottle of wine confiscated because I bought it in Bordeaux, to in Marseille. I could have had it sealed in a duty-free bag had I realised that at Marseille you have to pass through security again.  Oh well. Honestly, that was the worst snag I experienced. Otherwise trains were on time, acceptably clean, reasonably priced (£14 for Newtown Powys to Leicester) and comfortable. I do these visits alone. Pat used to accompany me but they got too grue...

Every two years, where possible, UFM aims to gather as many as possible of its European workers together for a brief conference somewhere in Europe. This happened in 2019, when we were able to go, in 2022 when some illness or other prevented us from going, and this year. The conference is held in a centre called Poggio Ubertini, in the Tuscan hills outside Florence. The centre was bequeathed to the elders of the local brethren assembly in the early part of the 20th century by a rich Christian woman of Scottish descent. The bequest included agricultural land as well as her hilltop home, and during times of persecution the centre was a lifeline for believers. Over the years generations of young people have come to faith there, and/or have found their life partners. One friend in Bordeaux went to camps there as a girl and sent her daughters there in their turn. The centre is breathtakingly beautiful, set amongst rolling vineyards and olive groves. The birds there sing long and loud. Some ...

Patricia and I are approaching our expiry date, and we plan to hand over our work here while we can. This involves our retirement. We hope it will happen in stages : 1) French pension I believe and trust that I have just requested my retirement from the French pension system. From request to retirement is forecast to take 6 months, so assuming all is well then we will start drawing our pension in October 2024. When this happens we will reduce our living allowance from UFM accordingly. This will reduce our support needs greatly - firstly because of the smaller living allowance we'll receive, but also because we will stop contributing to the pension and sickness scheme. 2) Computing pension From my decade in computing I have a stakeholder pension plan from which I will request my retirement once I have spoken to Pensionwise. I have a telephone appointment for the 2nd of May, so depending on what they say I could conceivably retire in June or July. When this happens we will reduce our...

Retirement age in France is 62 for people of my vintage. Up until I retire we pay something in the order of 700€ per month for retirement and health care. If I retire in four months' time (it takes four months to do) then I would be paid about 450€ per month. That means our support budget would be reduced by over 1000€ a month. Makes sense, huh? I also have a UK pension from computing that will pay something in the order of 400€ per month. Our UK state pensions can be claimed from April and from November 2025. One of the ICC pastors is currently going through the process, so he sent me the forms you have to fill in. The form mentioned the possibility of doing it all online, and I got as far as the final page which told me to upload my "Livret de famille". I know what this is, but not being of French nationality I don't have one. Banjaxed. I am waiting for the retirement people to phone me back within 48 hours.  

We spent the last two weeks in the UK, first at the first week of the Keswick Convention, then at our mission's own conference, the UFM Summer Conference. We flew on the Friday to Manchester and stayed overnight at a friend's house before travelling to Keswick by train and then by bus. The train was on time, comfortable and our reserved seats were vacant and we had a pleasant journey chatting with fellow-travellers who lived near Rawtenstall.  From Penrith to Keswick you travel for £2 on a double-decker bus (un bus impérial) through the winding lanes overhung with solid tree branches. It was pretty wonderful. The Keswick Convention gives a grant to encourage and enable overseas mission workers to come, and we had found a room in the town not much over our budget. The room had a toaster, kettle and microwave oven, and we were alarmed at the price of the cafés and restaurants in the town. Is a jacket potato really £7 everywhere? Cheese at extra charge? Anyway, salvation was found...

We noticed this morning that all the barriers have been taken away from the children’s play areas in the gardens below. Such fun!

 One feature of life as an international pastor is the need and opportunity to go to international conferences. The ICC Prayer Retreat this February is being held in Budapest. We flew in on an early flight on Saturday and are taking the opportunity to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary a little early with a few days exploring the city. We arrived not knowing any Hungarian at all. Not even hallo and goodbye. Thankfully people are used to that. Hungary is a small nation of about 10 million people and enjoys a unique language distantly related to Finnish. It is nt a major world language. In addition, the country has been ruled by successive empires, none of which were Hungarian speakers. We come in ignorance, but at least we come in peaceful ignorance. Anyway we have a small list of must do and must see, including a proper goulash and chicken paprika. And cake. Hungary has good cake. We were accosted by a restaurateur as we tried to look at the menu of their restaurant. We ha...

 Last week we travelled to Teisendorf in Bavaria, near the Austrian border, for the Annual Retreat of the International Pastors of the International Christian Communities of Eurasia at a hotel/conference centre just a short walk from the railway station. In the past we have flown from Bordeaux to Paris, then Paris to Munich, then train to Teisendorf. Once we took the TGV to Paris, then flew to Munich, then took the train to Teisendorf. This year prices were such that we decided to go all the way by train. Our outward journey went : Bordeaux to Paris, Paris to Stuttgart, Stuttgart to Munich, Munich to Teisendorf. We had two small problems. One was that we decided to walk from Montparnasse to the Gare de l'Est. Big mistake. Don't do it. Take the Metro and spend an hour in a café instead. Then at Stuttgart we scuttled off to the correct platform to be told that we could not board our train, and that it had been cancelled. Five minutes later it pulled in at the adjoining platform, ...

 For the new ‘welcome centre’, a UK charity offered to buy us our coffee machine. We had had long discussions about possible coffee machines and had come to the conclusion that one of the one touch automatic bean-to-cup models was what we needed. So armed with this information I did some research with a local-is supplier, based about an hour away towards the sea at La Teste de Buch.  We went out there, hoping to see something in action, but though they have a very impressive showroom devoted to every gadget you can imagine for the production of coffee, and though they have a cafe with fine cakes, biscuits and cereal bars, and delectable coffees on offer, all we could really do was order the machine. It will be ready by Thursday, we were told. It arrived on Thursday and I booked a car to go and get it - the only available time was the following Tuesday. Then the forest around L aTeste caught fire. The shop was advised to close on that Tuesday. We waited. The fire was slowly mas...

 So last week was the International Christian Communities of Eurasia annual prayer retreat, and it was held in Bordeaux. It kept us going from early morning to late evening, so we spent a lot of the weekend asleep.  One of the important little moments of the retreat is a meal out in a restaurant. Sometimes host churches have members who own posh eateries. We ate somewhere very impressive in Prague some years back. Others are in awesomely cheap cities. I was more than a little concerned here in Bordeaux. We don't eat out in the evening. Hardly ever. I mean, we're generally busy in the evening. Not only that but most restaurants in Bordeaux are more expensive in the evening than at lunchtime. And I didn't want to use one of the chains, but we needed something affordable and ... Anyway, you get my drift. So Pat and I were very happy to chance upon somewhere up near Place Gambetta, not too far from the church premises, where they catered for groups. They could handle a group of...

 We've spent two years adapting to confinement, déconfinement, limits on numbers, spacing out, end of spring out, zoom, post-zoom...  It's not over yet. At least not for us.  We're missionaries. That means that although we live and work in France and we are immediately responsible to the church council here in France, we are also responsible to : our sending church in North Wales who sent us here our mission, UFM, who helped the church to get us here individual supporters and supporting churches all over the UK who give to keep us here. (that sounds a bit odd, but you know what I mean) So we need to report back regularly. Our Sending Church we send a weekly prayer update for their regular prayer meeting they send out an elder for a pastoral visit once a year. Or at least they did until covid stopped travel!  we also visit from time to time - generally about once a year I did a weekly short Bible message on Saturdays during confinement we do zoom calls amongst the eld...

 UFM are hosting a webinar for church leaders on the above subject. Find out about it here : https://www.ufm.org.uk/about/events/church-leaders-webinar/

 The weekend was a good example of the possibilities that coronavirus has alerted us to. We could have done this anyway, but we didn't, and now we do. So Saturday began with a 8:45 15minute talk from Romans 3 for our church in North Wales. This happens on Facebook live and I found that Google Chrome works for that on my laptop. I can also prop it up on my nice new adjustable stand which I bought to replace the bent coat-hanger I had been using since March 2020! Sunday morning I was in one of our supporting churches in Bath, giving a brief update, doing the Bible reading and leading in prayer. The church posts its services on Youtube, so I needed to video myself doing the three things in advance, standing and filmed basically waist-up. So I stood Catrin's old tripod on our bed and stood in front of the wardrobes. This gave the right distance, good lighting and a neutral background. Sunday evening was Bordeaux Church's meeting where our video projector refused to connect to a...

It's been a tough week. For one thing I've had LOTS of meetings by zoom or varying kinds. Some have been very helpful. Others have been demanding. All have been important. These have included : 1) A doctrine day on the incarnation run by the Pastors' Academy. First time for me to attend an event of this kind and it was very stimulating. 2) A conference run by a new group of presbyterians in the UK called Gospel Reformation UK. It involved three addresses, by Kevin deYoung, by Garry Williams and by Jonty Rhodes. Again, this was stimulating and helpful 3) The CNEF33 pastorale designed to share issues relating to confinement and more urgently to deconfinement. We adapted quickly and well to confinement. Preparing for deconfinement and adapting to its demands is like to be far more difficult. The national CNEF group is proving to be very helpful, producing succinct advice for churches like, "holding house groups during this period is strongly discouraged". ...

Honestly, with all the video work we're doing, before long they'll be calling us the Sir Anthony Hopkins and Dame Judy Dench of Bordeaux.

The weekend's cyberpreaching began with a train wreck when livecasting to North Wales. I'd carefully set up my rig by balancing my phone on top of my computer screen, checking I can broadcast via Facebook live in portrait format and so on, as taught by numerous YouTube experts. All was good. Notes were on screen. All ready. Saturday morning comes. I switch on, find the button - and I'm sideways... So I sign off quickly and race off to get my laptop and send the video from that. It's OK, except that the phone was at a good angle, right by my notes, and now I'm gazing down at the slightly rubbish webcam on my laptop. Oh well... For Sunday we use Zoom, and each week we've taken another baby step forward. This week we were planning to sing together, as well as time of prayer, readings, message. I set up a Powerpoint file and learned how to share my screen. On Saturday, in response to criticism over security, Zoom imposed passwords, so I put that on the F...

This last week we have been away from home in a little Bavarian village called Teisendorf for a conference of pastors in international churches.  We mused with some other British people there. When British people run conferences you sleep in bunk beds, you eat beans on toast and it's cheap. When Americans run conferences you eat good food, you sleep in hotel rooms, you have unlimited snacks and lots of coffee, but you do pay perhaps a little more. We had an afternoon off where we visited Salzburg. We wandered round the little shops before hitting the Mozartplatz and the more tourist-focused parts of the city. Two years ago we visited the castle on the hill and took the funicular railway so this year we gave that a miss and enjoyed some peace and calm instead. I made an attempt at learning some German using Duolingo.  Big mistake. I didn't learn anything of use whatsoever.  If we go to Germany again I'll find a phrasebook or something.