The Beauty of: The Countryside, The People, the Love of Christ, etc.

I just returned of traveling 2 weeks in Ireland, England, Germany and Switzerland.

The most common response to one's first site of Ireland is "it's so beautiful!" which is stating the obvious that I thought everyone knew already.


Of course it's beautiful!

Besides seeing the beautiful Irish countryside, we hung out mostly with a neat team of American missionaries, or "Christ Followers seeking other Christ Followers" who took the time to explain to us their vision of the world and their mission on earth. Here are some quotes, which were almost-tear-jerkingly inspirational for our team. The subjects they covered mostly related to working on a mission team and how to resolve conflicts. Here are some quotable quotes:

"Our mission is to let Jesus live in us, and to let Christ shine in us."
"I was reading John 17 with a friend, where Jesus prays that those who follow him will have the same UNITY that he has with the father. The friend will see that in our community: we love each other like that!"
"We are here to help people on their faith journey."
"Our friends NEED to see our love for one another. How to we show that? We forgive, we compromise, we don’t hold grudges."
"Because we love each other and are important to each other, we WANT to resolve conflict."
“Everyone you meets needs a deeper relationship with Christ."
“I’m a Christ follower and I’m here to find other Christ followers and walk with them.”
"I need to love people more. God loved us BEFORE we loved him."

In Ireland, we sang two concerts: one in St. Anne's Church in downtown Dublin, and one in All Saint's Church in Raheny.


a view of St. Ann's Church

From Ireland, we flew to London and sang in Nottingham and Wembley. In our free time, we visited some castles and I got a tour around London.


Wollaton Hall, aka Wayne Manor in "The Dark Knight Rises."

Our concert in London was on a Friday, and our next concert was scheduled for next Friday in Geneva, so the Chorus dispersed for a week vacation and regrouped again in Geneva.

After we sang in Geneva, the majority of the CEMistes headed to a tiny gym outside of Zurich, where our brother and sister churches convene every year for a soccer tournament! There were 8 "Professional Teams": Bern, Geneva, Vicenza, Paris, Marseille, Antwerp, Brussels and Augsburg. On Saturday night and Sunday morning, we had a worship service (translated in English, French and German) and sang songs in 5 languages. It was a fairly small gathering (a sampling of church members in shape for a good game of soccer from around Europe). The diversity was encouraging and our team's show of sportsmanship was impressive: stopping until the guy you accidentally knocked down gets up again, saying you're sorry, not being too obnoxious after scoring a goal*. We finished 4th and returned to Marseille rather sore but satisfied.


We begin every game with a prayer led by a member of each team.


Other beautiful experiences:

-witnessing baptisms!
-a big Irish, English or German breakfast every morning!
-a tour of London by night and by day
-seeing family and friends again at various stops along my journey.
-having family and friends almost everywhere
-visiting ornate palaces and churches
-having the chance to go running by the riverside every morning, without fear of robbers.





*not counting our goal against the #1 team, Paris, in which our obnoxiously loud rejoicing was heart-felt and justified.

Our Choir - On Tour!

Chorale Harmonie started our Spring Concert Series last Sunday, with a performance at Les Accates Retirement Home.


A photo from our concert. Photo props to Morgana, a teen from the church who came to watch our concert.

I had the chance to talk with some of the women living in the home, and learned that the population there is about 40% former nuns! I always wondered where nuns go when they retire! I imagine that they never really retire according to the usual definition of the word: stopping doing what they're doing, because their job is praying, serving and praising the Lord (professionally), which a Christian should keep doing, right up until they kick the bucket.*

On Friday, we had our big annual Easter concert at our church, la Chapelle du Fuveau, which was quite a success. We got an encore. (Ironically, the French don't say "encore! encore!" though it is a French word that means "again." They say "bis! bis!")

We have another concert in Marseille tonight, and then Paris tomorrow! Here's the official tour schedule!

April 14 @ 7 PM, Paris, 4 rue Déodat de Séverac 75017 Paris 19h
April 16 @ 1:15 PM, Dublin: Saint Ann's Church
April 16 @ 8 PM, Dublin: All Saint's Church Raheny
April 18 @ 7 PM, Nottingham, England: Eaton's Road, The Roach Stapleford, Nottinghamshire NG9 7EB
April 19 @ 8 PM, London: 92 Barnhill Road Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 9BS
April 25 @ 7 PM, Geneva: Eglise du Christ de Geneve

After the choir concert in London, the choir will part ways for a few days of vacation. Then we will reassemble for the concert in Geneva and head to the Church of Christ Soccer Tournament for the weekend.

This past week was busier yet than usual, because we spent the weekend as part of the tail-end of an evangelism campaign in Pau**, and then had our CEM 2nd Trimester Exams Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. In the midst of our hyped up chorus rehearsals, Joelle and I had rehearsals for our "English Club Theater Show" at the local University, which we had Thursday night. We prepared a 1 minute sketch, and there were 8 other sketches performed by (real!) students. The show lasted a half hour and was hilarious! We covered Monty Python, Flight of the Concords, and some Shakespeare! All the students' worked really hard to learn lots of lines, in English, and to perfect their pronunciation. Here's a link to the sketch that Joelle and I interpreted anew:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqbO0P5IQc
I'm hoping to get a copy of the video of our performance.


This is the English Theater Club's version of Flight of the Concords "Business Time." If you don't know what I'm talking about already, please don't look it up.


*As I now attend 2 English conversation groups at the local University as a token "native speaker" I shall try to use as native a language as possible! Here is an idiom that is possibly inappropriate given the context.
**Post about this coming relatively soon. I will probably not post again for the next two weeks to give you all a break.

Mauritius, March 12-19

In Mauritius, we met 3 missionary couples: Tony and Caroline, Chris and Isabelle, and Candan and Stephanie. The latter 2 are former students of the Chretiens en Mission. We also spent a lot of time with the Churches of Christ at Cascavelle and Richterre.


Our first day celebrating Mauritian Independence (from England) in the Indian Ocean.

Our first day in Mauritius was the 45th Independence Day of the country! Most everyone had a day-off, so we spent the day on the beach with the church of Cascavelle. We sang together on the beach, and the CEMistes got to hear Tony and Caroline’s story of how they became missionaries in Mauritius.

Our next day we sung 3 times around Mauritius: as a surprise for Chris’ coworkers at his office, at the SOS Children’s Village, and at the new Cascavelle Community Center. The Center is just a block away from the house where the church meets, so after the concert we were welcomed to their home to eat a delicious meal with our hands.


Our choir! (This picture is from Madagascar, but this is the stylin' garb that we sported throughout our South-East African Journey. No, we didn't get these outfits in Madagascar, we got them from Congo, via Bradley's mother in Paris.

We were available to do anything and everything! We spent a day helping Candan work on the house he had built for his family of 6 (they are currently living with his in-laws). Many hands make lighter work.



Candan took us to visit his parents. His mother prepared us a delicious meal and we learned about his father, a man of humble means but extreme generosity. Candan also gave us a tour of a Hindu Temple and explained some of the belief system to us.

We spent our last weekend in Mauritius on a retreat with the two churches. We got to go to the beach again, play many games with the teens and teach children’s classes.

Here is a picture of me and the Dodo bird, the unfortunately extinct unofficial mascot of Mauritius.

Apologetics: Doing Our Homework

Throughout the first and second trimesters, we have been working through an introduction to Apologetics (subtitled: Defend and Establish the Christian Faith!) We started out by going through a review of modern Western Philosophy in what facets these thought patterns subvertly oppose the Christian faith. Of course, no course on Apologetics would be complete without discussing Subjectivism, Objectivism, and if truth really exists (thus validating the existence of our class as well!) We reviewed some of the arguments for the existence of God: causality, the order of the universe, the historical argument, and Pascal's wager*.
After our introduction, we started a brief study of comparitive religion, where we compared Christianity to Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the newest major world faiths, Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Neo-Paganism. In these sessions we covered the very basics of each religion and related the religious system to our faith.

In France, we encounter Modernism, Post-Modernism, and Neo-Paganism. On our trip to Mauritius, we had the chance to learn more about Hinduism. Every time a CEM group comes to Mauritius, they visit a Hindu temple to learn more about the religion of 70% of the people in the country.


We walked around the temple with bare feet, which we found rather painful after the stones had been cooking all morning in the hot sun. I may be betraying my sinfulness in admitting my pain. Our guide says that during the ceremony where the faithful make a pilgramage to the temple and then walk across hot coals, being burned reveals that you are a sinner!
There were many mini-temples or shrines located outside of the main temple, housing "guardians" and demi-gods that you could pay respect to in order to get protection.
The temple was more terrifying to us than beautiful, with so many painted eyes leering down at us. We were glad for the experience but happy to go at the end of our tour.



On the first stage of our plane ride home (Mauritius to Antananarivo, Madagascar), I sat next to a Muslim woman from a nearby island. We started out by talking about the economic development of Madagascar vs. Mauritius vs. Comoros and the different attitudes and awareness within the countries of their problems.
I explained the purpose of my missionary voyage and what we'd accomplished on our trip. My new friend said that she admires how Christians are always serving: building orphanages, working as doctors, etc. From their, we launched a discussion of our faiths and I got to explain some of the fundamentals of Christianity. We discussed our different views of who Jesus was and the character of God.

On our next flight, the 12 hour leg from Madagascar to Paris, all the CEMistes were together, so I was disappointed that I would be having a more predictable conversation. We were all surprised to find ourselves seated in business class. We had been pampered more than expected at every stage of the trip, and now we were really spoiled! Can't complain.

What else did we do in Mauritius?

We spent alot of time at the beach!
Hmm, that does not sound like a very good missions-trip, you say.
If you happen to be called as a missionary to a country where everyone you should be evangelising happens to be hanging out on the beach, you should go hang out on the beach with them, too!**

We got to help a missionary couple finish building a house for their family of 6 to live. We performed our choral routine at the SOS Children's Village***, at the new Cascavelle Community Center, and at the home of a visitor to the church.
The 2 church families that we visited in Mauritius meet in homes.
We ate two delicious meals with our hands and 2 meals of Lo Mein during our stay, illustrating the mixture of cultures found in Mauritius.
We spent the last weekend of our missionary voyage on a retreat with the two church families.


Our group photo from the retreat in Mauritius, with the churches of Richeterre and Cascavelle.

Notes:

*In short, what do you have to lose if you believe in God and are wrong? (nothing) What do you have to lose by not believing in God and being wrong? (eternity)

**If this opportunity for serving the Lord sounds too good to be true, maybe you should try "Big Break." http://big-break.com/

***SOS Villages offer an alternative to the orphanage or the children's home. Find out more about the organization here: http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/Pages/default.aspx