I"m Dreaming of a White Thanksgiving?

Bonjour tout le monde,

I know it's not Thanksgiving anymore, but Happy Thanksgiving anyways. We actually will not even even celebrate until Saturday. We spent thursday in school all day, and it actually snowed a little in the morning and we were happy. Then we woke up friday and all was white! It continued to snow to the tune of around oh I don't know 18 inches. I know for you northerners its not that big of a deal but that is a lot of snow for us southerners. Anyways here a few pics of our first snow here in Albertville. It's supposed to snow for another 2 or 3 days. Too coooool....

By the way, our french is getting better. We have our days that are sometimes frustrating and we realize just how difficult it is to learn a new language within such a short period of time! Anyways, we won't be doing anything to exciting in the near future, except for maybe around Christmas, but you can check back and see how we are doing from time to time. Oh and yes to Holley with your comment. All the cool things we are getting to see and experience here does make the wait to Cameroon a little bit easier.

A tout à l'heure



I promise this is not rigged. I have never seen a sign so happy that it snowed. :-)


Sorry the pics are not in any order. This was taken about 3:00pm when the sun started breaking through the clouds. The Savoie region that we live in is such a beautiful place!

Kristen and other students warming up during our Friday morning worship time.

With a few ingredients and and little help from God with providing the snow, Kristen made some delicious snow cream. Yum Yum...

Joel and the Giant. Matt is a fellow student who hopefully will stay in France after his studies and work with youth. A really great guy, just not someone to stand next to when your trying to look tall.

This was right in front of our house at about 7:15am. We were really excited. I know we are silly.



It was still coming down at 10:30am. We spent our whole 15 minute break playing in the snow.

I guess it would just be easier to walk!!!

"J'aime Paris" ( I love Paris )

Ok, as promised here are a few photos of your two favorite missionaries "suffering in France". Ok, we are not exactly suffering and we really love living here and we love having the opportunity to experience a little bit of Europe while learning french. We are truly blessed! Paris is an amazing city and a wonderful place to spend our 5th wedding anniversary. Yes it has already been five years! We personally really loved Paris and there is so much to do here and so much to see and experience with the history and beauty of the city but so little time to squeeze it all in. Here are a few highlights of our anniversary trip!



Sacre Coeur was an interesting place. It was a bizarre experience in that it reminded me of the story where Jesus went throught the temple and turned over the money changers tables. I believe he said you have taken a house prayer and made it into a den of robbers. I guess that's kind of what it felt like with all the tourist shops and prayer candles for sale for 2 euros a piece that you could buy to pray to a saint. There are somethings about the place just didn't seem so sacred anymore.

The Eiffel Tour is a lot bigger than it looks on television and pictures!

I guess you can never go wrong with a little Van Gogh. This was in the Musée d'Orsay. We also saw the Mona Lisa and tons of statues at the Louvre. The Louvre is probably the best value for money, but I really liked the Musée the best.

What do you expect? We were celebrating our anniversary! :0)

The Arc d' Triumphe was actually more than just something to look at. You can actually go to the top and have a great view of Paris or check out artifacts from the Napoleon era.

"Riots"

As far as the riots go, everything has pretty much calmed down. It was a very bad situation and a lot of people were affected and some people even lost their lives. Thousands of cars were burned and many schools and business's were destroyed. I'm sure many of you have seen a lot of news on the subject, probably more in the states than here. We were not affected by the riots in any way, but it is kind of interesting that we had just left Paris the day the riots began. We were actually staying fairly close to the suburb were the two young boys were killed while running from the cops. The violence spread to many other cities and two of which were within two hours from where we live. Hopefully now, the government will begin to take a look at some issues, but more importantly that the church here in France begin to address the situations and the spiritual conditions of the nation.

Thanks to all of you who expressed your concern for our saftey during this time and prayed for us. Please continue to stand with us and ask God to do a miracle in this country. France is a very beautiful and wealthy country, yet very poor in Spirit. We really need God to move in France!

Also please continue to pray with us as we learn french and prepare for Cameroon. Pray that God will give us wisdom and direction as we make certain decisions for ministry in Cameroon. Thanks again to everyone and please feel free to write or comment anytime.

Love from,

Joel and Kristen

Long time no update... Désolé (Sorry)

Hello everyone and yes it has been nearly three weeks since we last updated. But I guess it's better late than never. It's been good to hear from everyone and read your comments. We hope that you will continue to check back in the future and leave more comments. We love hearing from everyone!