Yesterday was a holiday here in France. I spent the afternoon mowing the lawn down at the church… it wasn’t for the faint of heart.

Between busy schedules and a ridiculous uptick in rainy days during September and October … it was a jungle! Any free days were rainy, and sunny days were heavily scheduled – What a conundrum!

It’s going to take a couple more autumn mows to tame the beast, but it feels good to have gotten the first kick at the can!

Traveling South

Last week, we had to make a trip to Toulouse – about a 5h drive south – to renew Timo’s Italian passport at the consulate.

We left the house at around midnight on Sunday, arrived around 5am, and had a nap in the car before our 9am appointment. We figured it’d be easier to do that than to fight morning traffic through Bordeaux and Toulouse.

We planned that, however, before we’d gotten sick, so it was a bit of a stretch health-wise, but the day was 24˚C and sunny. It did us the world of good to bask in the warmth a bit – it’d been a while.

We had a quick lunch before hitting the road home and were back in Châtellerault by about 7:30pm: so about 1,000km in 20 hours. We slept well that night.

The 2024 Honey Harvest

Some of you will have seen the top picture on my Instagram, but if you didn’t… this was one of the few #FallFoliage moments that made me go “Wow!” this year.

The colours here aren’t anything like back home, so we take what we can get and enjoy it. This photo was taken at one of the schools where I teach and I saw the leaves in the light as I was leaving campus one night… beautiful! I’m thankful for those little nods of the head that the Lord gives us from time to time.

Another fall treat was harvesting a bit of honey last week. We only got about 11kg this year (down from about 20kg last year – poor late Spring weather and Fall weather made it tough for the bees), but we’re thankful for what we’ve got and the focus will now be on building strong colonies for next Spring.

Traveling North

Today, as many of you read this, we will already have arrived in Melun for this year’s Youth Convention.

We drove up this morning and will have services this afternoon, this evening and tomorrow morning, before heading back home tomorrow night.

Dominic & Melanie are on the youth committee, and so will be helping out here and there, Sophie will be singing with the mass choir and Timo will help out with photography. It’s fun to see involvement begin to pass to the next generation. We’re proud of our young people and will no doubt give you a run-down after the fact.

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Thank you for your prayers and financial support.
Let what you read inform your prayers for us and for France.
specifically:
Please pray for the youth and young couples of our church.
There are several needs there.

God bless you and yours!