Ashamedly, some of my friends that I knew outside of a church context are surprised to find that my faith is an important enough aspect of my life for me to do something like CEM. (I was hoping it was obvious, but I guess my Actions weren't speaking loud enough to make up for an absence of Words.)
That would be a good topic for this post, for those of you who haven't been reading my updates since the very beginning.
The short answer is that I am attending a Bible study/Missionary apprenticeship program run by a small church in the south of France, called "Christians on Mission."
The day to day life begins with a devotional, including the reading of a Psalm and singing, and then 3 hours of classes, taught by the 3 preachers at the church here. Then we have a two hour lunch break, because this is France, and then we do about 3 hours of service in the afternoon. Afternoon projects include: visiting a nursing home to play games with the residents, painting with the residents at the nursing home, working at a program for autistic children, helping with Club Cool (a children's catechism class), offering homework help or english class, etc.
One night a week we have choir practice, another night prayer, and one night we have a Bible study at the local university.
To get us familiar with the church in Europe, we travel frequently: going on retreats and short term mission trips. We also have a short term mission/service trip in the developing world (This year, Madagascar and Mauritious). The idea is to get us to try all kinds of new things and to learn to serve.
There are currently 10 students in the program, which is a big group for this kind of program. 2 come from Marseille, 3 from Paris, 2 from Switzerland, and 3 from America. We are all 18-24; either about to go into college or finished with our education and going to look for a job.
CEM runs from September to the end of July, when I will return to the states and most likely be looking for a job!
I was thrilled to be able to gChat with a big group of college friends in November (the occasion was all the America-dwellers being locked inside for the hurricane and having nothing to do). I had a hard time explaining what I was up to: my friends were in the process of starting their PhD programs, or just getting out of training for their new full time jobs. They were learning about new business systems, taking challenging classes and getting their own apartments. They were gaining in technical knowledge and furthering their careers. That week, my big accomplishment was learning how to get along with my fellow students a little bit better than I did the week before. This is not a very big deal in comparison and was hard to explain. My work is to let God do His work in me while I am in France and everyday for the rest of my life. Maybe someday that work will be training me for a new degree or a cool job, but for the moment it is learning some character and learning how to throw a fancy French dinner party.
One of our afternoon activities is volunteering with the "Blouses Roses" or "Pink Blouses." Decked out in our pretty pink blouses, we do a new painting project every week at the local nursing home.
