Newsletter from The Saldis serving in France
 
November 2014
Issue 1
It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since we had our first Skype meeting with our Kontaktmission USA director, Rob Harris. Two years since we stopped wondering and started doing. Two years that have been full of expected trials and unexpected blessings.

Thank you to everyone who has prayed for us, donated time and resources, offered an encouraging word or smile, or looked after our daughter while we had to be somewhere else. God has ultimately been the one at work here but much of His work has been done through you.  We thank God for bringing you into our lives!

We are currently making sure we have all of our paperwork for our visa appointment, getting quotes for plane tickets and moving services, and planning out when we’re celebrating Christmas with whom. We’ll be flying out shortly after Christmas, so you can be certain that this year the holidays will be a little tough. We’re excited to go but leaving isn’t always easy.
Serving with Kontaktmission and France Mission to make disciples and plant new churches in cities without an evangelical church.
saldiupdates@gmail.com
@saldifamily
leschampsdefrance.weebly.com
We’re registered for school at CCEF-AFEB in Albertville, France which is a language school for missionaries and will be attending from January through July. Ophelia will be attending their nursery school while we are in classes and she is very excited! We’ll be living in a furnished apartment rented from the school which is in walking distance of the school and some local shops. Seven months of French classes in a French town will help prepare us for our next step!
After completing our studies at the school, we’ll be moving to Loches, France 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 a requirement for serving under France Mission. The school operates as an extension of the L’eglise Evangelique de Loches and is led by Raphaël Anzenberger who planted the church. It is a two year program where we will learn church planting theory as well as practical knowledge, serving the church and local community in conjunction with classroom discussion and reading. We plan on enrolling Ophelia in public preschool where she can learn and play while adjusting to a new way of living.

Albertville hosted the 1992 Winter Olympics. We’ll there for school from January to July learning French.
So what comes next? We’ll have lived in France about 2.5 years and been equipped linguistically, culturally, practically and theologically. Presently we cannot predict the next step aside from knowing that we will be sent out to join a team in a city without a church and watch God change the lives of people within that city as we introduce its people to Him. Part of our task will be to raise up leaders from within that new local church so that when we move on, the church will continue to grow and thrive, sending out new workers themselves to another unreached city.
We’re excited to be allowed to be a part of God’s work in France. There are already many new churches across the country but there are still many more towns and villages without a thriving local church. Estimates are still around 1 evangelical church (of any type) for every 32,000 French people. This means that thousands (millions!) of French people have never had the opportunity to learn who God truly is – that He is more than past history, that He is alive and active – and children are continuing to grow up without anyone introducing them to Jesus. Evangelical Christians make up less than 1 percent of population, compared to 10 percent now claiming Islam. The religious climate in France is still largely atheistic, but with the increased religiousness around them, many are starting to ask questions. We’re blessed to have been given the opportunity to be a part of the answer.

We’re currently raising the rest of our support. While we have enough saved for language school and plane tickets, we still need to increase our support by another $1140 per month. We feel that this is a reachable goal, but we need your help to get there.

We are all workers facing a field that is ready to be harvested. Your support is what has made this ministry what it is today and will continue to make it flourish in the future. Our two year training in Loches at CFRI will cost $9,600. We ask today that you would pray and give as God moves you to help offset these future costs.

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://leschampsdefrance.weebly.com