My Saturday

I watched Sesame Street in French (hey! It was Saturday morning!) It’s called “5, rue Sesame”. Most of the characters seemed the same but Big Bird was changed into some weird furry yellow creature, named “Nac”. Where’s my Big Bird from childhood, the one with the big beak, googly eyes, and yellow feathers? I didn’t see my fave character…Oscar the Grouch. Wonder what he’s called in French? “Oscar le grouch”?

I called the French business Chronopost to figure out where the heck my plane tickets were. They were supposed to be delivered on Friday. Honestly I was pretty stressed and worried, thinking the worst—that I wouldn’t be able to get them before I leave on the 24th. The guy was nice (and thankfully patient with my French). It took a couple tries to communicate my file number to him. Him--“That’s “m” as in “Mary”? Me—“No, that’s ‘n’ as is “non”. They’ll be delivered to my office on Monday morning…here’s hoping!

I went to a jazz night at one of the downtown churches. There were 3 musicians, one played piano, accordion, and sang. The others played drums and bass cello. It was awesome! We started out in the basement with drinks and snacks, visiting and hanging out. Pretty soon the little room was full of people, warmth and energy. A Nora Jones CD was playing in the background.

Thankfully I found someone that was patient enough to have a conversation with me! It was so encouraging to be able to talk to someone in French, to have a real conversation and to be able to express myself. And it was good not to be able to fall back on English, because as of now, most of my friends are native English speakers, and even if we start out talking French, we usually revert back to English…because it’s easier. Another encouragement is that I met someone that has a friend that may be interested in spending some time helping me with my French conversation skills. Yay! I’ve found that I can study all that I want but what I really need to do is to get out there and talk to people.

Back to the jazz night, we went upstairs into the chapel for the music portion of the evening. The room was darkened, with a few lit candles, the hum of conversation died down and the band played a few songs to warm up. Then they played some French hymns that we sang along to. The pastor then talked about Jesus being the Light of the world as the Gospel of John (Chapter 1, verse 9) describes. We each had a tea light candle that we lit to symbolize that we carry with us the “Light of the world”, that God is with us. The pastor talked about the gift God has given us in knowing Jesus and encouraged us to make a decision to believe in Him as God, Lord and Saviour.

The church is planning on having a similar night in March. Their goal is to encourage the believers in Marseille and also to inform the community about Protestantism. There are a small number of Protestant churches in France, but mostly they are seen as “cults”. There’s a lot of misunderstanding, false assumptions and opposition to Protestantism. The churches hope that the more the community around them knows, the more open they will become to hearing the Gospel. See my August entry “French History 101” for more info on Protestantism in France.