That’s my effort at being poetic and a very real way of saying… ‘wow, has it really been 6 weeks since we blogged?’ 
So yes, January came and went. We enjoyed our first Christmas here in Loches and sharing it with many friends and new friends at the church. The Sunday before Christmas there was a light meal and there were quite a few people in and out of the building. 
January was a busy month for us. We continued working with our tutor twice a week and are now something like 8-10 weeks from prayerfully accomplishing our goal of finishing the B1 level. It’s become very clear to us that the longer one TRULY studies a language the richer it becomes. While I can’t say I totally understand how to say all the things I’ve learned it becomes more and more clear that languages are rich (and something we, as fluent speakers, take for granted). 
We also continued our internship through preaching (Greg), leading worship (Nikki) and working more on understanding personal evangelism and a clear and well defined discipleship model used here in Loches. This month ending with a ‘Learning Community’ for our network of churches in the Touraine region. Basically France Mission (our French organization) works with local churches but with a vision of sharing resources (both physical and spiritual) to grow existing churches and plant new churches. This was an INTENSE weekend of work and vision casting that helped our team tremendously. A clear vision will allow us to work smoothly and faithfully toward the mission of the Gospel. 
This all leads us to this week. Thursday is our team’s scheduled meeting with the mayor of Descartes. This seems a bit superfluous and almost bizarre but is crucial for our work. Small towns in France are basically hugely influenced by their local authorities. The French mindset for local government is truly to keep citizens safe and secure. This includes an innate desire to question any sort of religious or philosophical movement. Clear and good relationships with the mayor will allow us to be seen as partners with a desire to work towards the health of the community and not to be a smaller community within the community that seeks to divide.
One of the projects we did complete in January was a year end report that hopefully many of you received by email. If you have not seen this report I’ve included a link below which allows you to download the pdf report and a fundraising form for those of you who desire to partner with our ministry who have not already done so. 
Again we’d like to thank the many of you for your faithfulness. As you will see in the report, we have a team who is very much excited and ready for the future but it truly isn’t about US. It is about God and what he wants. The new campus in Descartes also won’t work if it is just crafty or done with our own desires but will work by the power of God (1 Corinthians 4.20 -God’s kingdom isn’t about words but about power -CEB-). 

Click here to download- Year 1 Report   (This is a download via dropbox)

We were very blessed to take part in a weekend with 24 others that concentrated on the vision of our churches for our area. Join us in prayer for not just Descartes, but the Touraine!