The Second Week and God's Family

Before leaving for France, I got the contact info for a new church plant (started just over a year ago) that's connected to Salt & Light (i.e. the family of churches that my church in Vancouver is a part of).  The church is about an hour's bus ride from Nice in a place called Sophia Antipolis.  I joined them for their Bible study/worship evenings the last two Thursdays.  They are a pretty small group that meets in their pastor's living room.  When I walked in for the first time last week, I was immediately greeted with a kiss on each cheek (the French greeting) by everyone in the room and some of them were kind enough to engage in conversation with me - speaking slowly, explaining new words, and listening to me stumble through phrases.  What a blessing it is to find like-minded Christians on the other side of the globe and to feel like you are one of them because we are all of God's family!  The Bible study part of the evening is hard for me to follow but I love that anyone can join together in worship, irregardless of language.  Their style of worship is a little different than what I'm used to: instead of singing songs they have "free worship" - two guys play guitar and a bonga drum and everyone just speaks in tongues or sings whatever or prays all at the same time.  We also had times of praying aloud for various situations and times of being silent in God's presence.  It's been a great place to meet with God.

And now I'm already at the end of my second week in Nice.  I've gotten over the honeymoon phase: some of the things that were new and exciting last week are now kind of annoying (like eating white bread all the time).  Initially, I was excited to be able to communicate in French; now I'm just finding that it's hard work.  French verbs.... aaah!  There is so much to learn.  And it's been really hot this week - usually around 35 degrees - so some days I have no energy or desire to be out and about exploring Nice or the region.  The Mediterranean Sea, however, has been great for cooling off.  You can only sit or lie at the beach for a short time before swimming becomes a must.  And the water is the perfect temperature for cooling off without it being super cold like in BC.  It's also super salty which means it doesn't tasted so good when it gets into your mouth but it makes it really easy to float!