"Merci d'être venu(e)s"

Never have I said this phrase so many times, and meant it so much, in one night as tonight.
It means "Thanks for coming".

I just got back from the soirée focus that I may or may not have mentioned here on my blog, and I will post this as soon as possible. I thought that if I waited to write it though, I would lose all my joy and excitement and encouragement that I am so FULL of right now. So please sit back, relax, and let me tell you all about it.

I even have photos! :D (Stay tuned...)

So the GBU every now and then puts on a soirée Focus, they vary in theme and structure, sometimes, like tonight, aimed more at students, but other times general topics like "science and faith" lots of 'amis' (friends/supporters) of the GBU come aswell.

Lucy had the idea several months ago of doing a Focus evening on 'être témoins', (being witnesses). We made a rough outline, showed Erwin (the general secretary of the GBU) the idea, and he agreed. And here we are, 25th April 2010 just having done it.

It was one of the most nerve wracking experiences of my life, but I think my teaching practice helped me a lot with *hopefully* looking and sounding more confident than I felt, and not giggling too much!!

The vague outline was this:

• Témoins de quoi? (Witnesses of what?)
• Pourquoi être témoins? (Why be witnesses?)
• Comment être témoins? (How to be witnesses?)

Lucy did most of the proper talking and explaining things, I did things like... ask people to read out verses, and read things off the powerpoint. That was where I was *marginally* more comfortable :) My main part was doing the 'Comment être témoins?' part. During our IFES team meeting last week we made some videos of fake testimonies. I have emboldened the word fake because they are distinctly dodgy testimonies, distinctly lacking in.. I don't know... the Gospel maybe? lol. I had to clarify after playing them, as I wasn't entirely sure that everyone had understood that they weren't real. Which would have been worrying seeing as it was me and Lucy leading this whole seminar on being witnesses! Anyhoo, they have been signed away and promised never to be posted online so you will have to come and see me in person if you want to watch them lol.

The scariest part for me of actually doing it, was asking questions after these videos about what was wrong with the testimony, what was missing, how could they have included more of the Gospel in it etc etc. And then actually having to understand the replies. I hadn't really thought about that until it was happening and in my head I was just like "ahh concentrate, concentrate, concentrate".

Anyhow, basically it was SUPER ENCOURAGEANT. We had no idea how many people would turn up, but there were about 30 of us altogether which is pas mal de tout! (not bad at all!) Lots of people said lovely encouraging things afterwards about it being having been useful and fun and interesting and biblical. :) Me and Lucy both had problems really being able to listen to, understand and respond to people responding from the 'congregation' and were saying on the way home how that was encouraging then, to remember that it was not us that made it happen and said good things and all stuff like that, but it was all grâce à Dieu. (thanks to God). (Sorry these phrases come to me first in French now!)

In the end, often in Belgium it seems like we're having no impact, that there's no point in us being here and we're not really doing anything super useful and things like that. And even tonight it could be a temptation to think, "well it went ok, but what's it going to achieve in the long run?" and I guess the answer is that we don't know! But God could use this in any number of ways, and if one person hears the Gospel, because one person who was there tonight, at some point in the future, shares it with them...  how amazing would that be?! And in the end, everything that happens is going to be for the ultimate glory of God and of Jesus. Our prayer for tonight was that it would glorify God, and I hope that it did.

Some photos:

lucy parling bien...

alex (responsable of the GBU central) fairing his annonce...

milling...

A loit of the people who came, I think were more willing to come than usual maybe, because they knew me and Lucy were leading it and they wanted to support us. I think. I genuinely love these people here and they are really becoming real friends now who I love and am really going to miss going back to England next year! I never thought at the start of the year that I would ever be feeling like this getting towards the end of it, I thought I'd be chomping at the bit to get back. So yeah... gloire à Dieu for these friends, pray that I'd make the most of the rest of the time I have here with them, and pray for us all that we'd be encouraged by tonight to be faithful and courageous in sharing the Gospel that the world needs to hear, and that we'd just be becoming more like Jesus. :)

ps. highlight: making an unscripted joke in french that people laughed at: pardon, j'ai pas entendu... ah non, (t'as raison ) j'ai pas compris.
(when I hadn't heard someone's response and they started to reformulate what they'd said: me: "sorry? I just didn't hear what you said." him: *repeats*. me: "oh no.. you're right I didn't understand.")