Commissioning

The France Team was commissioned on Sunday, October 21st, during the morning service at First Baptist Church. Here's a photo from the balcony:

Team Photo

Pictured: Mark Benson, Mandy Benson, Jim Olsen, Sandy Olsen, Mitzu Shindo, Frank Shindo, Jay Larson, Carol Wilson, Harriet LaBorde, Ingrid Olson, Erika Clausen, Glenn LaBorde, Mary Dieter, Matt Clausen, Teresa Muelstad, Laura Gangl, Dave Wilson, and Becky Madison.

Not pictured: Jim Hoar, Gretchen Hoar, Troy Madison, and Kathy Gruelich.

Flight Information

Here is the flight information for our trip:

11/02/07, NW 758, Leave MSP 5:10 PM, Arrive DTW 8:04 PM
11/02/07, NW 50, Leave DTW 9:20 PM, Arrive CDG 10:20 AM

11/11/07, NW 49, Leave CDG 1:55 PM, Arrive DTW 5:05 PM
11/11/07, NW 761, Leave DTW 7:04 PM, Arrive MSP 8:04 PM

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Team Meeting Summary

Last Saturday, we had a team meeting at First Baptist Church. During the meeting, we discussed some important items about our trip, a few of which I'll summarize here.

Flexibility and Vision

As with any missions trip, especially to places with unfamiliar cultures, we need to be flexible with our expectations and rely on God to work out His purposes through us instead of making selfish plans and simply asking God to bless them. This has become recently acutely apparent as we've learned that:

1. The potential chapel purchase may not go through for the Keuhls, and almost certainly won't be ready by the time we arrive. This means that we will not be able to provide our physical labor towards working on the chapel, but will instead focus on learning about and ministering to the spiritual and emotional needs of the French people and the ministry that the Keuhls have devoted their lives to.
2. Some of the activities that we'll be participating in while in Senlis have been roughly identified, but the details are still being worked out. Our leaders have urged us to remain flexible. Some of the activities may be:literature handouts, prayer walking, physical projects on missionary homes, and making meals.

Spiritual Darkness

Our French missionaries have told us that we will be facing a spiritually oppressed and emotional depressed people unlike we have seen before. We should remember to be in prayer for the people of France, our missionary families, and for our hearts to be prepared for doing God's will while we are there, especially in light of this spiritual darkness.

The France Mission has a collection of religious statistics, one of which seems appropriate to quote here and illustrates the spiritual void our missionaries face daily:

[...] one quarter [of French people put] their faith in clairvoyants or astrology. An estimated 10 million people pay around £20 billion for occult consultations, three times the amount paid to their family doctors.

Schedule and Photos

Our team leaders have been working to solidify our plans: what we'll do each day, when we'll arrive and depart, etc. Because we are hoping to be flexible and observant of how God may move while we are there, I haven't reproduced the entire detail of the schedule here on this blog. Instead, I've listed (in the right-hand column) a summary of where we'll be each day of the trip. Hopefully this will be helpful not only to our team members, but also to our supporters as they follow along with us on our journey.

Regarding photography, there will be a number of people that have cameras with and will be taking pictures. Also, the group agreed that it would be good to have one person be the "official photographer" so that the photos can be collected and published efficiently. Currently, I'm planning to fill this role, will be bringing a few cameras with on the trip, and will be coordinating the process of getting pictures updated on our blog while we are in France.

The extent to which we are able to update our blog while we are in France will depend heavily on the availability and quality of an internet connection. Our hope is that we will be able to update this blog at least a few times during the trip with both stories and photos.

When we do upload photos, the most recent ones will be displayed at the top of this page in thumbnail form. At any time, you may click the link titled "Slideshow of all photos" to view the entire collection of photos.

Chapel Update

For those who have been following the Kuehl's potential chapel purchase, I want to relay some updated information about the situation.

Our team leader, Matt, was able to talk with Dan Kuehl recently and learned that although there is still hope that their church-planting ministry will be able to get the chapel, it is highly unlikely that they will get the chapel before our team arrives.

The developer who owns the chapel has plans to turn it in to condominiums. In fact, some of the condominiums have already been sold. This is a significant complication.

Dan, however, still has hope. Evidently Senlis, because of it's narrow streets and limited parking, has a city ordinance that new housing be built along with new parking. Since there are not obvious areas for parking around the chapel as-is, the builder may have to dig underneath the church, which in turn, may bring along costly archaeological fees due to the age of the structure.

I'll relay more as I receive it.