Out and About

Today ends officially the "academic" portion of CEM. This trimester, we had less time for classes (the trimester being shorter, and the traveling being more frequent) and only 3 courses:

Church History
Spiritual Leadership
The Old Testament in the New Testament: Acts and Revelation

Along with our church history course came 2 field trips. Our first field trip covered the earliest history of the church. We started with a visit to a Roman bridge and Glanum, a Roman village buried in sediments and recently discovered.
Our second field trip was to the Pope's Palace in Avignon and to a Cistercian Monastery built in the Roman style.

It was great to take advantage of our being in Europe to see real landmarks of church history.

A Roman bridge that puts modern bridges to shame. If only they had made it wide enough for trucks to pass!

Glanum: all is not lost!

The pope's palace in Avignon. A rather depressing part of church history, where the Papacy was claimed simultaneously by Popes in Avignon, Pisa and Rome.

The Cistercian Monestary, built over a period of 150 years. Built in the Roman style but newer parts begin to show Gothic influences as architectural technology develops.

And CEM itself is not over until the end of July! Coming up we have:
A tiny break
A work week at the Bonnefoi Center with a team from the Pitman Church of Christ
CEM Intense Sampler Week
2 weeks as a counselor at Camp Harmony

Stay posted until I see you all again in August!

We're Certainly Not Wasting Away

Within the past month, the CEMistes have hosted two excellent meals at our church in Marseille.

Island Night, May 17
On May 17, Joelle expressed her passion for food, evangelism, and her tropical family roots in hosting the "Soiree des Iles," or "Island Night." By signing up church members to make a variety of dishes and making about half of them herself, Joelle offered a free island-themed, seafood meal to over 50 people, packing our tiny fellowship hall. "At risk of becoming a food blog," there was ice cream, fresh fruits, beautiful salads, and many varieties of chicken, rice and seafood. My contributions were a pepper/carrot/sweet potato soup and banana pudding It was a great opportunity for church people to bring their friends and family. Our friends from Lets Start Talking came and we also invited a local church that has a large Malagasy (from Madagascar) population.


Joelle arranging our formidable selection of food. The Soirees Des Iles was a chance for all the CEMistes to work together cooking, serving and chopping vegetables.

We began the evening enjoying an island exhibition in the chapel which included fake palm trees, island posters, and the slideshow from our mission trip to Madagascar.

Church Breakfast, June 9
Exactly 6 calendar months after our last Church Breakfast (Dec. 9) the CEMistes hosted another Breakfast to ensure that everyone was well fed and coffeed up for Bible class at 10 AM. Breakfast featured Crepes (with sugar, nutella, or jam), baguettes, cinnamon rolls, sugar cookies, corn flakes, hot milk, coffee, baked oatmeal and a Lebanese breakfast specialty brought by a friend from the University.



To make the breakfast, I had some help from Foi en Folie! Foi en Folie is the church's group of 7-12 year-olds, who get together every 2 weeks on a Saturday night to eat, play games, and to grow in their faith. One of the important and practical aspects of faith-growing at a ripe young age is learning to be a servant, so I enlisted the service of Foi en Folie to help get Breakfast ready for the next morning!
The kids helped me set 40 place settings for the meal the next day, and then, sharing one rolling pin and a bag of flour between them, each rolled out and cut their own sugar cookies. Next, they kneaded, rolled out, sugared and raisined their own 1/7th of a double batch of cinnamon bun batter. Baking with 7 children is almost less frustrating than baking with 2 or 3 because I didn't have time to notice who was sneaking dough into their mouths and possibly breaking other laws of sanitation. What we don't know will hopefully be cooked off at 200 degrees C.


I was very glad that I stayed for Foi en Folie, not just because I benefitted from the free labor, but because I learn alot from observing the dynamics of such a diverse age-range and the way that the Bible is made fun, yet not sanitized or dumbed-down, for the kids in Foi en Folie.


After making baking, eating, and playing a board game about the Romans, we built a scale model of the temple and talked about the function of each temple element. We finished our lesson by talking about Jesus' sacrifice and the access that every Christian has to God!

Tall, Fat and Blonde

During CEM orientation, my Parisian roommate informed me that I was not a real American because I was neither tall, nor fat, nor blonde. In sharing an apartment with a Parisian, I learned that the French do indeed shave and bathe regularly.

I attend an English Conversation Hour at the local University twice a week. In English conversation hour this past Tuesday, we discussed stereotypes. The group was about half French and half Americans, and we split up into national teams to write down as many stereotypes of the other country that we could think of. Then the Americans wrote stereotypes that we think the French have of us, and the French team did the opposite. We compared what we cited at the end, and the results were surprising! Or maybe the French team was just trying to be nice.

American stereotypes held by our French team:
Americans...don't know how to cook, chew gum all the time, are always concerned about time because time is money, speak loudly.
Our reactions:
Americans: "We were surprised you guys didn't say, 'fat' or 'tall'!"
French: "We were going to write 'fat', but we took it off the list because all of you are normal sized!"

French stereotypes held by our American team:
The French... are very proud, only speak French, eat bread, wine and cheese constantly (true), smoke all the time (false), wear berets and tights (false), are fashionable, are skinny, and sit in cafes all day.
The French team thought that Americans would think of them as... grumpy, know-it-alls, going on strikes, good cooks, loungers on the French riviera, well-educated, and connoiseurs of good wines.


I think most people stereotype the south of France and assume that I live next to a beautiful beach like this.


Rather, I live here.