I’d like to send some special birthday shout-outs to my junior
high/high school classmates Pratibha and Priyanka
as well as to my cousin Jesse! I pray that the year ahead will be
an exciting and successful one for each of you.
I’m actually taking a break from my lesson planning to write
this since I have to go back to being a teaching assistant tomorrow morning
after 2 weeks of vacation in observance of All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1), so I’m
gonna get right to it and hopefully let the photos do most of the talking. In
fact, I’ll probably just copy straight from my journal entries from these
couple of days to speed things along. So you’ll get to see exactly what I felt
like “in the moment” without my two-and-a-half-weeks-later-self interfering to
edit and elaborate as much as I normally do ;)
Peace and love, Morgann
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| View from the porch of the retreat center where we stayed |
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| Lobby of retreat center |
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| Houses next door to retreat center |
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| Retreat center where we slept/ate meals together |
Saturday, October 27 – Teaching as Spiritual Gift + WWII
Museum in Caen + FREEZING
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| Starting our walk to the church on Sat. morning |
·
Really enjoyed a day of
spiritual enrichment & simply being “in retreat” away from what has become
my “normal” life in Paris
o
Began each of 3 retreat sessions
in song/Scripture/prayer
o
Fellowship has also been
key
o
Starting to feel like home
even with different style of music than I’m used to [think acoustic guitar
vs. old-school Baptist hymns or even modern Black gospel music]
o
Pastor Glen spoke truth
& his assessment confirmed that my spiritual gift is teaching, which, as he
explained today, could help to account for the fact that my family often gets
annoyed with me when I insist on details/particularities [ :) from my
two-and-a-half-weeks-later self ]
·
Adventure of the afternoon
involved going to the WWII museum in Caen, which required taking a bus, tram,
then another bus for a 1-hr visit
o
Saw a lot of material in a
short amount of time [lots of multimedia and well-constructed displays with
words in French/English/German, which was perfect for the members of our group;
I read in French until time started getting away from me which made English the
better choice]
o
How could people be so
cruel to one another?
o
Hail storm was out of
control [thankfully we were inside the train/bus station waiting to go back
to Houlgate from Caen, but 2 guys in our group who had been arguing about
nutrition for an hour or so finally stopped talking for a moment because the
hail was so loud and we were all wondering what it was; by the way, they
continued this…discussion for several more hours…that’s guys for ya]
·
Meals have been pretty good
o
Cereal for breakfast
o
Pasta for lunch
o
Fish for dinner
o
Tried to get my €’s
worth
·
Walked into town briefly
while sun was out before Caen. Souvenir. No one around.
·
Late night movie: Avengers.
Teens & Young Adults
Okay, so besides the stuff I’ve already inserted in
brackets, I will add to this brief overview from my handwritten nightly journal
that IT WAS FREEZING and the wind was SUPER STRONG, so we could barely walk
down the street along the beach from the retreat facility where we slept/ate
breakfast to the church for our study session that morning.
And also, I didn’t go into town alone, because that’s how it
sounds here; there were 2 other girls from the young adults group with me. There
just weren’t any residents of Houlgate out and about, probably because they
knew better than to be out in the cold weather. Similarly, it was a group of 7
or 8 young adults that decided to make the trek out to Caen for the WWII
museum during our free time in the afternoon while many of the families in our
group rested at the retreat facility. (The retreat attendees ranged from
infants to adults in their 60’s or so. There were probably 75 or us in all?) We
figured that we couldn’t go to Normandie (or Normandy in English) without seeing
something related to D-Day because Houlgate was a tiny town without any
memorials or anything. We were a little late for dinner, and we definitely got
to spend some quality time on practically all of the public transportation
options offered by the « département » (kind of like a state/region
in France) of Basse-Normandie, but it was a worthwhile excursion.
And Mom, you’ll appreciate the fact that my
souvenir was a magnet, so maybe I’ll start a collection like yours with the cities
that I visit in France :)
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| I had to show you my new friends trying to battle the cold wind - heads down, bundled up - with the church just ahead |
Sunday, October 28 – Devotion from Nehemiah +Serious
Relationships + Translation at Church
*I wrote this journal entry in reverse chronological
order, which I often do because that’s how the day comes back to my memory. “BT”
means “Before that,” not “Blessed Trinity,” our arch rival from the AA division
during my high school years at Westminster ;)
·
I thank God for a word from
Nehemiah just now [I’ll go ahead and share the verses/my notes in the
margins of my Bible with you below]
o
“And Ezra the priest
brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all
that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month”
(Nehemiah 8:2, King James Version).
a) key is level of education of audience, not their genders
o
“And Ezra blessed the Lord,
the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up
their hands: and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the Lord with their
faces to the ground” (Nehemiah 8:6, King James Version).
b) sounds like my French Baptist friends…missed them today
o
“Then he said unto them, Go
your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for
whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye
sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10, King
James Version).
c) context [for last clause of this verse, which is what I sought to
read in the first place]: God’s Word shouldn’t make us sorrowful; live life
more abundantly [reference to Jesus’ words in John 10:10 – “The thief cometh
not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might
have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”]
·
BT, unpacked a little from
my trip & re-vamped my budget with an apple break in between that allowed
me to “be seen” in the kitchen [especially important after being gone for a
couple of days]
·
BT, long journey home from
cold Houlgate to cold Paris
o [Edited: On the bus ride, listened to a new friend talk about
her serious relationship; similar conversation earlier with another new friend
from the young adults group. Sidenote: funny that this is such a common topic among
young women my age…we actually joked about this in my group during the gender
roles discussion at Young Adults Pizza Night on 10/23, where a guy shared that
they apparently have these kind of heart-to-hearts about needing to get on the
fast track to marriage too, but Hollywood doesn’t seem to make movies like 27
Dresses from their perspective ;) ]
o Read and slept too [It took us about 2.5-3 hours on the bus
including 1 stop]
·
BT, out to beach one last
time where I sort of met the Youth/Young Adults Pastor officially in-depth as
one of the other young adults that I’d met this weekend told him I should be a
youth group leader
·
BT, chicken for lunch w/
roomies
·
BT, church service w/
Frenchies behind me w/ translation = nice. [Explanation: We had a joint service
with the French-speaking congregation that normally meets at this church, and a
bilingual member of the American Church translated every sentence for them
right behind our pew, which was aggravating for some people but actually kind
of cool to hear.]
o Sermon about breaking down barriers w/in our faith
o Gathered around table in groups for communion
·
BT, went back to take bags
downstairs cuz 2 of us had gone into town during regular breakfast after eating
early. [Glad we “happened” to go back by the retreat facility cuz we def
missed the announcement about needing to get our bags out of our room! ]
o Good pics of houses, casino, beach, church
o Community
So I’ll just elaborate on the “cold” element – I wore a hat
and gloves for the first time since coming to France while I was in Houlgate,
and when I got back to Paris I needed to keep them on! It was as if we’d
brought the cold weather back with us! That was somewhat alarming. But not as
alarming as getting back on the busy métro after having spent a weekend in a
peaceful town on the northern coast where the pace of life was a little…bit… … …
slower :)
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