(From L-R.)
Back: Matthew*, Esther*, Asher*, Dovi*, Jonty*, KADE*
Middle: CLAUDIA*, Miriam*, Hannah*, Sophie*, Avi*, Jonah*
Front: [me,] MIA*, Liat*, Nadia*
{To fast-track into my mission-week recaps., scroll down a bit.}
Yesterday flew away from Europe with much regret.
Arriving in HK today brought me much closer to home. To which I am not at all anxious to return, but for 3 reasons:
1. Family - blood/steps
2. Wednesday PM Bible study
3. Ballet
Understand that this does NOT mean I don't care about all the other people outside of these groups - especially any of my dear friends who have followed me & retraced my footsteps through Paris mission week. But only the 3 categories outlined above are grief-free for me; the rest causes me some degree of pain, though principally unwittingly.
Family
PLEASE take note!
Owing to a miscommunication, it was thought by some of you that my flight into HK arrived at 11 tonight, HK time. The real arrival time was 7 in the morning - 16 hours earlier than *somebody* told dad to pick me up. You can imagine I did not therefore have a sunny first few hours in this non-European city. HK Int'l airport had a horrid, stuffy & smoky smell (like Bangkok had, when my first flight in June stopped over there). I hated it.
My final flight, on, *dramatic pause* an A330 Airbus (Qantas), is scheduled to arrive in Sydney at 2025 hours, Th.16/7.
That's this coming Thursday, around eight-thirty in the evening on Thursday night, Sydney time. Try not to botch it up this time, please!! It's hard enough having left Europe so far behind me & not knowing whether I'll ever be able to return there.
Bee there or bee a Rectangular Thynge!!!!! (*Today's quote brought to you by Terry Pratchett.*)
________________
And now.. .. ..
More outreach-week recap.!
Behold, an example of a Bible-stand:
Bible-stand teams going to universities..(that I was allocated to) were as follows:
MO.29/6 ~ Cité Universitaire, with Kade* (GBR), Jonty* (AUS) & Sophie* (GUA)
For this session, I paired up with Sophie (whose family, incidentally, is from Guadeloupe) & in keeping with the more lenient policy at Cité U., we went walking about campus grounds, talking to people relaxing on the grass lawn areas. Sophie did most of the talking, as I felt initially quite rusty. Then we met a German girl who was willing to engage us in disussion, although for most of the converation I was a little lost because Sophie spoke quite fast. Rather like me in English. (Oh yes, go on, snigger, snigger..)
From Sophie's point of view it seemed like the German girl just wanted to keep on firing questions without listening too hard to the answers. But from what I heard/understood, it seemed like a good discussion.
TU.30/6 ~ La Sorbonne/Paris IV, with Mia* (KOR), Matthew* (POL),
also a student friend of Kade/GBU named Mikael
- he joined us for that day only, not part of team.
As with most universities, we couldn't go inside the gates at all. And people were hurrying back & forth, many not interested even in stopping long enough to receive a leaflet. Mia got into some great discussions with the nominally Muslim guards at the university gate - who had at first watched us set-up & begin our connection-attempts first with curiosity, then with increasing interest. They accepted Arabic New Testaments & talked for a long time with Mia.
As for the boys - Matthew, green but determined, bless him, posted himself diagonally opposite the guards' gate on a shop-corner with leaflets in hand & attempted to engage passers-by. Mikael walked back & forth in front of the main building - Greek-style pillars & all - & did the same with those walking up & down the road.
Meanwhile, I trotted across to the plaza in front of the university, flanked by shops on either side (incl. Matthew's corner), & approached those seated on the edge of the plaza fountains, or on benches placed nearby. Most of the people I tried to talk to were not native French speakers, in fact English or Spanish (including a girl from Argentina, studying in Italy but on holiday in Paris that day). Discourse with those I tried speaking to held:
a) a common thread about being Catholic; &
b) short-sentence, monosyllabic or non-committal answers to any questions I asked them about their personal faith.
A day of trusting that at the proper time a harvest might be reaped if we did not become weary in doing good this way.
WE.1/7 ~ Cité Universitaire, with Mia*, Matthew*
All I can remember of that Wednesday Bible-stand session was that tremendous opportunity I had to talk with the atheist girl for more than an hour. Scroll down to relevant previous post, containing French version of word "atheist", for more details!
TH.2/7 ~ Jussieu, with Claudia*, Esther* (SWI) & Avi*
[*NEW*]
Here's how we looked before heading out to the Jussieu campus:
L-R: Claudia, Avi, Esther & (of course) me.This day felt a lot like Tuesday, in that we had to stay outside the university gates. It was the only time I ever saw Avi in solemn mode - at all other times he seemed so cheerful, lively & cheeky - but he & Claudia (him on our RH side, Claudia on the LH side) plugged relentlessly away at the task of walking up to students sitting/standing in the areas outside the gates & trying to engage them in converation. Esther & myself, on the other hand, had worsening headaches - I think this made the going doubly tough for us.
Yet in this 24-hour period God showed me the simple power of simple leafletting. During the opening of our scheduled night event for Thursday, a young Chinese student (ie. had only started university last September, a new arrival in France from China) arrived at our venue & made a beeline straight for me. Turns out I'd handed this child a leaflet on this very day & so, mere hours later, there he was at our evangelistic evening.
Moreover, at the end of the evening, having not understood some of the concepts of the Bible talk given, he was keen to find out more in a small group setting. Therefore he signed up to join the GBU's Bible-study meeting of Jussieu campus students (ie. for every university campus, GBU aims to have a Bible-study group composed of Christian or other interested students who attend that campus, although they can't meet on campus property.. .. ..am I confusing anybody??!?).
The point of this little episode? Somewhere, somehow, God can & will choose to work through your weak, seemingly insignificant actions of simply handing out leaflets. You just never know whether you'll see it happen or not.
In my case, one leaflet meant one unsaved student attending the evening activity, then wanting to join the GBU groups!
Hence that passage from Galatians, already inferred above, comes to mind:
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
GALATIANS 6:9
FR.3/7 ~ Port-Royal with Claudia*, Nadia* (MAD) & Dovi*
[*NEW*]
Buoyed by what God had shown me the previous day, I continued handing out more leaflets. We gave Bibles away to interested students & older faculty members too. Claudia (again) & Dovi took more active roles, walking & talking with students sitting outside the university entrance doors. Nadia (of Madagascar, where French is a principal language) alternated between what Dovi & Claudia did, or what I was doing.
Unfortunately for me, I didn't manage to find out how things had gone for them, since later that day (during our pre-dinner discussion & prayer about Bible-stand time) Dovi spoke really, really fast as he told all the team what conversations he & Claudia had been involved in. So fast, in fact, that I couldn't catch one word he said!
So I have little idea of how the other members of my morning Bible-stand team really went that day!
Dovi got a taste of his own medicine after dinner, though.. .. ..Our final evening activity was volleyball & frisbee, interspersed with personal testimonies of a couple of our équipiers (including Asher*) at the Cité Universitaire lawns.
Was with Claudia, Sophie, Mia & Dovi at the start of the evening, running one last Bible-stand outside the Cité U. gate, from where we invited people to join the volleyball & frisbee happening inside the grounds (the Cité U. authorities had kindly permitted us to use their beautiful lawns for our games - provided that no fresh invitations were made to those on campus property).
Thus we were outside, as usual (the other 11 team members were already inside playing volleyball & frisbee). More conversations & more Bibles given away; out of one of those conversations, the speakers were English, so of course they needed me to handle it. As I chatted to the English-speakers, I turned to Dovi (who'd made the initial contact before handing over to me) & tried to explain to him what we had just said..
Dovi (in English):
"You're talking too fast for me!"
L/T.:
"Now you understand how WE feel!!"
Dovi was very subdued after that (*hehe*).
That final evening was the night Liat* (GBR) was crying for joy, the night Jonah* (NED) supplied great help by taking over-interested Asian students away from me, the night team-leader Kade* shouted us all ice-cream, & the night that Asher just had to try & find a beer!
(I know that last bit sounds dubious, but if you'd read a few posts ago where I recounted this incident, you'd understand it wasn't, really!)
Thus concludes the summary of our Bible-stands (with a few random anecdotes thrown in!).
L/T.
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