Les Champs de la France – Feb 9 2015 – Visa process and Next Steps

Newsletter from The Saldis serving in France

February 2015

Issue 2

How are things? The short answer is that things are going well. We are learning at a good pace, have wonderful landlords and neighbors, and feel really great about the school we are at. The teachers are as fantastic and encouraging as they are tough, expecting everything that we cover in class to be understood and remembered by the next day. (No small feat there! Obviously we don’t always meet the expectations.)

We are waiting for our official notice from the French government to arrive telling us when to go to Grenoble to finish our health checkups so that our visa process will be complete for the year. We finally have a bank account and hopefully will have phone service in the next week or so.

We’re still getting acquainted with what is where in Albertville, but we’ve been taking advantage of nicer days and either walking or taking the local bus around town.

Serving with Kontaktmission and France Mission to make disciples and plant new churches in cities without an evangelical church.

saldiupdates@gmail.com

@saldifamily

saldis-in-france.weebly.com

As previously mentioned, we’ll move to Loches, France later this year to attend CFRI, a church-planting training school (this page is in French, so you might need to use a browser with a translator) and be part of a team that will be mentored by Raphael Anzenberger. Recently we met up with Raphael in Geneva to discuss what week we are moving to Loches and what we will be doing next. We were met with a few surprises but we have some exciting news to share with you!

We will only do a 9 month training program instead of 2 years. Then we will be moving to Descartes with the 7 others on our team to start a campus of the Loches church. After the first year, the rest of our team will be moving on, but we will remain at the Descartes campus and Greg will be a part of the Loches/Descartes leadership team.

The view from our window. Winter is in full swing!

While a shortened training time was a little initimidating at first, the more we have thought about what we’ll be doing, the more we are excited about how the Descartes campus will function. Our job ultimately will be in keeping the local church focused on discipleship and helping the leaders lead. We will be equipping others and serving in a support role, so that we are free to do the ministry work that we are specifically gifted in.

Our time at the Centre (language school) has already been incredible. We are still learning the stories behind why others are studying there and where they are headed. We are learning alongside medical personnel, engineers, pastors, teachers, mechanics, pilots, and others who have have committed to 2 years-10 years+ with various organizations to serve mostly in African countries. Some of them will need to learn a third or fourth language to do their work. The few of us staying in France are church planters bringing with us our Bible degrees and ministry experience and trying to relearn it in French and understand French culture so that we are effective communicators.

We have yet to cross that threshold of dreaming in French, but when it happens we will feel like we are really starting to grasp the language. Classes are challenging, but it is amazing how much we are learning.

Au revoir!
Greg & Nikki Saldi

Please feel free to print or email and share this newsletter with your church or friends! We’d love for others to know about what God has called us to and how He is working in France.
You can find our blog at http://saldis-in-france.weebly.com