A few pictures from this week

Cooking Day 5: ratatouille, gratin dauphinois and roast chicken

Outreach day at the Salvation Army:
Praise songs in French (and one in Farsi!)

An Algerian woman shared part of her testimony and beautiful praise songs in Arabic

During the longer part of the afternoon (a testimony by the son of an imam), I watched the kids in a room nearby. Most of them knew me already, either from Marhaban or Saturday kids' club. We had a great time singing, drawing and playing games, all while trying to keep our noise level to a dull roar since the walls were far from sound proof...

Don't you love their smiles? :-)

On hospitality

Practice hospitality.

--Romans 12:13

Thank you to those praying for the conference this week! Today I had a lot more energy to work, plus another set of hands during part of my prep time, which made the day a lot less stressful than yesterday.

With all my meal-making this week, I've been thinking of Mary and Martha again--especially since my tendency is to focus more on tasks, like Martha, rather than people. In contrast to Martha, though, I don't like asking for help. :P Particularly this week, when it meant taking someone away from conference meetings. Part of the problem is also my reluctance to acknowledge my limits, in this case where I'm attempting complicated meals for a large group of people. :) Thankfully, my wonderful office manager saw past my attempts to handle everything on my own and volunteered to help this morning. The companionship while cooking was wonderful--she gave me all sorts of tips on cooking for groups and estimating how much to buy for large quantities of food. She also properly chided me for attempting complicated dishes for the first time at a conference like this... I couldn't help it--all the recipes in Nancy Painter's famous Gourmet cookbook looked so good! :-) The best result of the time was the ability to sit down and have lunch with everyone else and enjoy conversation with our guests. (I had even been able to make myself soup on the side as I'm still recovering from my cold.)

As important as making guests comfortable and seeing that they are well fed may be, conversation and plain old building-of-relationships are also vital parts of hospitality. I'm reminded of this thanks to the family I tutor for--the dad is Italian and a chef at a restaurant here and the mom makes wonderful desserts from her native Dominican Republic. Both of them talk with me all during their preparations and give advice and suggestions as they go: where to find the best coconut in Marseille (the African market), how to properly cook risotto (add the bouillon a little at at time, stir in waves), the best way to eat mozzarella (warm, not cold--you get more of the flavor). Each time I come to help Sarah with her homework, Ana has some new sweet or savory for me to try, and every other week or so Matteo makes it back from the restaurant before I leave and invites me to stay for dinner. In between attempting to read Italian children's books to Beatrice, their youngest, I hear the details of preparation for each dish, along with where to get the best ingredients. This family has a sort of reckless hospitality that I want to emulate--without reckoning, a generous giving without expecting anything in return. Isn't that the example Christ set for us?

A few prayer requests

• --For strength: The past week was incredibly busy, and this current week is just as much so, if not more. Please pray for strength to make it through the rest of this week, which includes a big conference in which I am cooking for 15+ people each day.
• --For health: It may be allergies or just a cold, but I've been fighting something since last Friday that makes life especially difficult when there is a lot to do. Pray that I get enough rest to heal in the midst of this busyness.

And a praise:

• --I have a ticket home for Christmas! :-D Lord willing, I'll be back December 21st to January 3rd.

A Pilgrim's Homecoming

As my alma mater celebrated homecoming this weekend, I attended a very different such celebration in Marseille.

The funeral was for a young man I'd never met, but his story was a testimony of God's grace, touching all those who knew him or his family. Last Saturday, after a ten year battle with cancer, he went home to heaven at the age of 17. He had been in home hospital care since March, waiting for the end of the sickness that had plagued his body since the age of 7. In those last few months, his visitors were struck by the peace with which he and his family faced their situation. I am told that his French teacher, an atheist, visited every week, drawn by the incredible sense of peace he felt there and nowhere else.

It was a privilege to commemorate his life today alongside the rest of his community. Nearly 400 people attended the memorial service and burial, hearing the words of truth and hope that he professed. Church family, friends from scouts, from school, from English camp, parents of other children at the hospital where he was treated--all came together to celebrate his arrival home.

Requiescet in pace, David

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it.

[1 Corinthians]

Pictures from the Cévennes

Highlights from the ICCM retreat

--watching the stars over the mountains after living in the city for a month
--discovering a stash of magazines from the 1890s and 1900s, including articles on the Russian royal family and British MPs I remember studying in history
--Dan's croissants and pain au chocolat for breakfast
--my very patient audience going through the Musée du Désert
--lunch at La Rocaille under a gorgeous blue sky
--hiking up to the cave in record time, with a new youngest climber ever, Miss Furaha M., age 3!
--wading in the Gardon river after the hike
--a chocolate run at the Anduze Super-U
--stories from Craig and Leeanne about growing up in Zimbabwe
--praise songs in Chinese sung by Liu and Cynthia
--needing 5 laptops to play a single DVD
--watching Traitor and being able to identify where the Marseille scenes were filmed (a good counterterrorism film if you haven't seen it yet)
--a new hike up to Sainte Croix and the overlook
--signs of fall--leaves and chesnuts scattered all over the forest
--group pictures with the tradional 15 cameras
--a wonderful Sunday evening service and farewell party for Courtney
--surprise birthday party for Nicodemus.

All's well that ends well--I returned from the retreat probably more tired than when I left, but it was worth every minute. :) Pictures to come, probably on ICCM's FB account or the website (marseillechurch.info)

Notes on a musical evening

No pun intended. :-)

Tonight I visited a neighborhood choir as part of my attempt to become more connected with the local community. Pro Musica has been around since 1981 and happens to meet within walking distance of where I live, so I decided to give it a try. While the director was away this evening (which means that I will return next week to witness a more usual rehearsal), I was struck by the sheer lopsidedness of the choir: 15 altos, 9 sopranos, 3 tenors, and 2 basses. Ouch. I'm told that usually there are a few more men present, but it's still pretty bad odds.

On the plus side, tonight re-introduced me to all the French terms in music, especially random words we use in choir practice like "off" or "pick up to..." It's all words I know already, just not in the musical context, in the same way that a non-singer would get used to musical lingo after joining a chorale. The terms for notes are quite intuitive: black notes, white notes, round notes and pointed notes. You do lose the advantage of labeling each note with its relative value (quarter, half, etc.), but it's easy to learn quickly. And to think I went through this process backwards 12 years ago! I particularly remember wondering why "do" wasn't called "A" instead of "C," since that was the "first" note. Now I almost have to translate from "mi" to "E" and back again.

Overall, I enjoyed getting to sing Mendelssohn again tonight, but we'll see if they really need another soprano or not in the coming weeks...