Christmas Vacation!

I am writing this from my hostel in Salzburg, Austria. This Christmas break, both of my sisters were able to come visit me for two weeks! Their first week here, I was still working, but on the weekend, we went into Paris and hit all the main spots!

The Louvre,

Notre Dame,

Champs Elysees,

Arc de Triumphe

and the Eiffel tower!

Gracie celebrated her 21st birthday here - so I threw a little party for her! The girls on my STINT team came as well as 4 of my French friends. We had a lot of fun playing card games and celebrating Gracie.

At the end of the week, it was time to start our vacation of backpacking through Europe. Thursday night, the 23rd, we made our way into Paris with all our gear in hopes to catch our night train to our first stop: Venice, Italy. I say in hopes, because we assumed with our EuRail passes, we did not have to reserve seating - which was not true. Fortunately, there was room on the 8:30 pm train and we were on our way to Italy! The conductor liked us and made sure we were safe by showing us how to lock the door properly and hiding our money just in case. It was great! We had our own 6 person triple bunk bed to ourselves.

We arrive on Venice [it is an island] around 11:30 am the next day. It was beautiful, but rainy. Almost EVERYONE was wearing rubber boots! Restaurants on the main canal were flooded!

We enjoyed all the fun things to do in Venice, including a gondola ride!

On the 26th, we took another night train to Vienna, Austria and stayed there for one night. Gracie and I went on a tour of the catacombs in one of the cathedrals. There were a ton of HUMAN BONES! It was pretty interesting...

December 28th, we took a day train for 2.5 hours to Salzburg, Austria. I think this has been my favorite place so far... We have seen a couple of the places they filmed the classic film 'The Sound of Music' which I have watched growing up. It was so cool!!! The castles, mountains and little shops are really cool too.

More to come!

Thanksgiving

It is hard to believe our Thanksgiving feast was almost 2 weeks ago! It was a great success, so thank you all for praying.

We have 25 people come to our apartment for the feast, which was a great turnout! We had spend the days prior cooking and baking all home-made goodies for the event: apple sauce, stuffing, potatoes and gravy, pumpkin pie... It was sooo good.

We had lots of neighbors come, including Grandma! She said she had a wonderful time and was thankful for kind neighbors. I think this feast helped our neighbors get to know each other as well!

One of the activities we had them do was the classic "trace you hand, because it looks like a Turkey [???] and write what your are thankful for". It was so fun to watch all our French friends participate in this childhood activity. We then cut them out and taped them to the wall. The funny part is, while instructing the activity, my roommate forgot to explain how the hand looks like a Turkey... so I just wonder what they thought..

Thank you all for praying! I apologize for not blogging more often. I promise I will be better about it!

Tea with "Grandma"

Thank you everyone for praying! Tea with "Grandma" went well. She is a sweet old lady who was very happy to get together with us!

She arrived bringing a gift of a special kind of French candies-- Calissons.

To be quite, honest, I didn't really like them -- I am a choco-holic. But I was very appreciative of her gift!

Anyways, as we drank our tea, Madame Peigne also brought with her pictures of her family, a map of France and Europe and a pad of paper to "play" pictionary as needed [which is a great form of communication!]. As she told us about her family, we learned she is a great-grandma to Lucy, a cute little 1 year old. Unfortunately, both her son and daughter and grandchildren live far away in the south of France as well as in Germany. When she told us her husband passed away, it almost looked like she was going to cry. She called him "the love of her life."

Beth, Chelsea and I all want to have her over more often to show her some love. Then, she was interested to see pictures of our families, which we shared with her as well. It was great because we just happened to learn 'family' vocabulary in French class recently!

Once we had exhausted the topic of family members, I pulled out our French books and we went through some exercise together. I think she enjoyed helping us learn her native language, as she was very patient and helped us pronounce words.

Somehow, we transitioned into showing her our Knowing God Personally booklet in French. We had not be able to read through exactly what the French version says, so we asked her to read it through for us. Kinda strategic, eh? :)

As she read to us the gospel presentation, she communicated to us that she was a Christian and asked if we were too. It was really cool to meet a French-believer! Now a days, it is hard to find because the people of my generation don't have an opinion of faith, God or Christianity.

Thank you all again for praying before, during or even now, for Madame Peigne. As our French improves, it would be great to verbally encourage her in her walk with Christ!

Some prayer requests:

- Continued relationship development with Madame Peigne

- That God would use our time tonight to deepen His relationship with Madame Peigne

- For our French learning capabilities: that it would improve tremendously so we can have deeper conversations with Madame Peigne and other French people we meet

Love,

Hanah

Renata

At the office, there is a local girl who is interning for her school. Her name is Renata. She is so sweet and helpful! One day she wrote me a note [language barrier] to ask me this:

"Demain tu pourra me dire comment t'as connus Dieu?"

I wasn't sure what it meant, so I Google translated it:

"Tomorrow you can tell me how you got God known?"

Please pray for Renata, who is also a Christian, that she would continue to be bold her her faith and reach her peers!

Campus time!

My STINT team and myself went to “de-code” the local college campus a couple weeks ago. What's "de-coding" you ask? As a team, we observe the campus, students, hot spots, passing hours, fashion, and things like that to help familiarize us with the campus. At lunch, we met some students, which was a bit interesting, as most of them did not speak English! Fortunately, one of my team members, Nalani, speaks French pretty fluently and was able to be the bridge of communication. [Hopefully soon, the rest of us will have the basic conversational skills to communicate for ourselves!] One of the girls we met, Celia, wants to hang out and also practice her English!

Last week, we went into Paris to team up with the Paris Metro STINT team - they are campus staff as opposed to office staff, like me! The campus was similar to the campus we went to the week before. I was paired up with Jen, one of the team leaders of the Paris Metro team. We ventured out into the cafeteria, around lunch time to meet some students. (French colleges tend to have class 9-12, lunch from 12-2 and then class 2-6.) We ended up sitting with two different groups of girls who spoke some english. We casually started the conversation, asking what they do for fun on the weekends, what they are studying etc. As the conversation continued, we explained that we are working for a non-profit organization, asking students their point of view of spiritual topics. Sadly, neither of the girls from the first group had an opinion. As our conversation continued with them, I found it hard to take things to a deeper level.

The second group of girls sat down next to us mid-conversation with the first group. I started talking to them, asking similar questions to break the ice. I learned that each of them were Muslim and also did not really have an opinion of Jesus. They seemed to "bob and weave" the more thought-provoking questions I asked about spirituality.

Later, when I was debriefing with Jen, she explained that is the typical atmosphere on any college campus in France.

If you think about it, it make sense. Logically, if you don't grown up attending some sort of religious organization, you tend to not have a care, opinion or value about spiritual things - why? - because you don't know any better! Europe has been spiritually dead for a long time and it is evident in the responses given by college students.

Fortunately, God is faithful and Sovereign and can do anything even with the brief spiritual conversations we had with those girls.

Please pray for Europe. Yes, that's big, but God is bigger.
Please pray for the 5 girls Jen and I were able to connect with - that God can use anything for His greater good!
Please pray for encouragement, faithfulness and fruit for the Paris Metro team - this is what they face everyday. They have started an "English club" for French students to practice English - great relationship building opportunities!

Campus ministry tomorrow!

Hey Everyone!

Most of my team is headed into Paris tomorrow to work with the Paris Metro STINT team to do campus ministry! Please pray for open hearts, boldness, limited language barriers, and for us to depend on the Spirit! I'll post later this weekend how it goes!

Also, be looking for my prayer letter soon. I just finished "October 2010 Update". I apologize for my tardiness :) If you would like to be added to my email list, contact me with your information and I will make it happen!

We have fun on STINT!

Learning the change

This week alone has been nuts! I can't believe once month ago I left my family, my friends, my culture, my LIFE for Operations STINT in France... well, ultimately Jesus.

In the last 4 weeks, I have learned a lot about myself - both strengths and weaknesses. God is continuing to teach and refine me through many things - big and little.

...Starting language school, loosing my passport, adjusting to my position in the office, daily accepting the fact that "I am not a tourist, I LIVE IN FRANCE" [it can be hard to do because it almost seems surreal], squaring away finances for start-up costs, personality tests [which are actually fun and help our team get to know each other] meetings, making friends with the local business people, seeing weird looking cars...

So many new things all at once definitely brings, if not forces, growth.

My roommate, Beth, just made a comment while Skyping with her friend, "I do not know what I will look like at the end of this year."

How true is that? Not that I am expecting, at the end of this STINT year, that each of us to be total opposites of who we are today or even when we started a month ago. But there are plenty of scenarios, situations and experiences which cause room for growth - mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I expect and hope for a change; a change for the good. I have already learned a lot - I just need to remember to take time to sort through it all.

I can't eat french fries with my left hand...

Oh France. Everything here is just... different. One thing I can't wait for is internet at our own apartment. I am currently eating and using the free Wifi at the one and the only McDonalds.

Last weekend, we were doing some Craigslisting and we found a stove top and a washing machine. [You see, in Europe, most houses and apartments come with bare bones. No lights, no oven, stove, washing machine, sink, counter, fridge, etc.]. First, we bought our stove top - I bartered the price thanks to my Negotiation class at Grand Valley. When we left the first stop, I took this picture of my roommate Beth:

The second stop to buy the washing machine was met with a crazy Californian lady who lives in France. Seriously, she was crazy! She wanted us to come pick her up because she didn't live where the washing machine? We couldn't because our car was full. Anyways, she ended up making us wait 1.5 hours to meet us, then decided, before we even went inside to actually see the machine, that she did not want to sell it to us. Waste of time! So, if you think about it, please pray that we find a washing machine, oven and freezer.

During the week, it was our first week at the office doing our own thing. I was helping out in the communication center. It is so crazy all they do there! We were responding to emails from people who have questions about faith, editing reports and addressing envelopes for a mailing to some North African countries. It was really cool to be on this side of the communication - office verse field work.

Later this week, we had doctor appointments so we can be cleared to live in France. Only as simple as that sounds, it was more difficult than it had to be. For this specific type of appointment, we had to buy 340 Euros worth of STAMPS. Stamps. Why would they need stamps? And these stamps you can't just buy anywhere...

... you would think that you could buy them at the post office, the grocery store or even a convent store? The latter is true, but everything in France closes from 12-2 for lunch, which made it impossible to find and buy them. Fortunately God is bigger than all of that and we made it to our appointment on time, all got cleared by the doctors, and got our French licenses -- we even got to keep our x-rays!

I do look forward to this coming week. I will be starting more into my role in the office and start projects of my own to help the staff on the field. One thing I have already done is designing a logo for the National Directors conference in November. Here is the final product:

I took the original picture on Spring Break 2010 in Jacksonville, Florida [shout out to Kaitlyn Farley, Drew Schafer, Ryan King and Brian Early!] The theme of this year comes from Psalm 66:5 which says "Come and see what God has done, how awesome His works in man's behalf!"

More to come very soon!

Let it shine...

A week-ish in...

You would think that after a week we would be settled in to our new lives. Fact is, everything in France takes twice as long! After 6 days, Beth, Chelsea and I have officially moved into our apartment, but we have not had time to unpack. Living out of a suite case is annoying, and I am very ready to unpack and finish setting up the apartment!

I have had time to get some groceries, each purchase including some chocolate!

It is my addiction. Dark is best.

We also spent a lot of time spent a lot of time at IKEA - like 7 hours. What the moses? We did get a lot done, but I was wiped outtt....

This past Sunday, we finally made it to Paris! We hit up all the major tourist sites:

As a team, we are currently in Belgium for vision casting, team bonding and strategizing the next year. I am excited for all that we get to be apart of in the operations aspect! We have office orientation next week, which includes meeting national directors, national day of prayer for CCC staff, and job placement [which I am most excited for because I will finally know what I am doing!]

This coming Saturday, we are going back to Paris for a bike auction! Not sure what to expect about this specific event, but I love to negotiate! I am very excited about buying a bike for various reasons: because everyone, EVERYONE, rides bikes, its a great means for transportation, and I personally have not owned a bike since about 10th grade - long story short: it fell off our car on a trip, and I haven't bought another since.

Some prayer request:

- Continued team bonding - they are all great! [and I don't have to say that because they follow this blog :) ]

- Time in the word

- Maintaining an eternal perspective while here on STINT

Love you all!

Hannah

p.s. If you'd like to be added to my email list, just leave a comment with your info!

p.s.s. All photos are taken by me :)

Welcome to France

Phew... it has been a crazy 2 days....

Because I am still very tired and still plagued with jetleg, I will list off the various events that have taken place since arriving to France:

Arrival, luggage, waiting 2 hours to be picked up, lots of driving around, seeing our new apartment!, my first croissant and crepe, sleeping 13 hours and still tired, car accident [other guys fault, we and our car are alright, he was hurt and his car is pry totaled], dealing with the French police - who are very friendly and helpful!

[side story: Beth, Chelsea and I were sitting in our car while Eric and Nalani talked with some of the police [there were about 9 present!] when one of them came up to our car to see if we were okay. He said something in French, to which we replied "Je...uhhh..um... je no....." He understood and responded "No boo-boo?" Fortunately, we were all okay and replied "Non" with thumbs up. Haha!! It was so funny!]

2.5 hours setting up back accounts, hauling a couch through Evry France via Life Agape [CCC] van, and finally painting my nails while watching the season opener of Glee.

Now for sleep. Much needed sleep.

This is my team! From right to left: Chelsea, Me, Beth, Nalani and Eric. They are a great bunch!

A Piece of Peace

Tonight, I sit outside at one of my favorite childhood memories... camp Maranatha. There are a lot of things on my mind...

First, the fact that I leave in 20 some days for France for a year!
Second, how awesome this weather is... 72, light winds, chirping crickets, and to top it off, a beautiful sunset.
Third, how long but full this summer has been with all of life events...
Fourth, that BOTH of my little brothers are no longer "little".
And fifth, the true peace that can only come from One source.

It is all too easy to get your panties in a bunch when something goes wrong, stresses you out, or irritates you. I think having peace is a choice. Choosing to trust, to relax and to make the most of the situation.

Many times, usually when I am lacking sleep, tired of thinking through the situations of life, I actually find my mind wandering. Seemingly an oxymoron, I know. I can't seem to shut my brain off. There are plenty of tasks to accomplish: people to call, emails to send, chores to do - I literally have to write a list down before I go to bed, just to ease my mind.

Recently, I have noticed times where I felt this sense of peace - trust. How to get there? SURRENDER. Surrender the situation, the emotion, the effects, the people. This summer, among other things, my mind has been busy thinking of support raising tasks, wondering how and where the support will come from, who to call, what to say,, and now I only have 24 days to raise the rest of my support (25%)!

Yet, I have this peace knowing my Provider will prevail. Hearts will be moved to the reality of the eternal impact of what I get to be apart of this upcoming year. Lives will be impacted for eternity.

So my friends, I encourage you to make the choice for peace, trusting He will guide, direct, and give of His abundant wisdom.

4th of July

This 4th of July I spend with friends camping! It was nice to get away from the busyness of life and just relax . Since we did not bring fireworks and could not find anyone who was shooting them off, we just played with sparklers. If you can tell in the picture, I actually drew out my name with the sparkler -- the camera was on a long shutter speed so it captured every way I moved my sparkler! So cool!

Needless to say the trip was a ton of fun and truely enjoyable. As we sat around the campfire, roasting marshmellows, we all started talking about the unfathonable greatness and largness of God. [These are 3 of my favorite things to do ever!] He is everywhere at every moment in time! Our minds were going a little crazy because we couldn't fit that into our brians.

It is like trying to put God in a box. You can't.

It is sort of a humbling to remember that our minds can't contain His wholeness. It is also comforting knowing He is EVERYWHERE. Keeping this in mind, I know God will be keeping me safe as I travel this upcoming year. I know cause He's already there with me. Bah! God is bigger, and I can't even try to imagine just how big. Plain and simple.

So why is it so hard for me to trust Him sometimes? He will always pull through for exactly what is best for me. I think it will be a continual lesson of laying my pride aside and being patient for whatever He has instore for my life. That is a prayer request for sure.

Prayer Pit

This past weekend, I drove up to Grand Rapids for various reasons; a bachelorette party, wedding, meeting with people to share my STINT presentation and to be prayed over by my church at school. It was such a cool experience!

They asked me, as they do other missionaries, to come to the stage, share briefly how I was called to this specific ministry then, as a congregation, they prayed over me. They call this the Prayer Pit. So many people spoke truth and encouragement through their prayers, it brought a tear to my eye as I realized how caring and supportive this body of believers truly was toward me and this ministry.

"I pray for France, Lord, it is a dark and dry place. May she not only a light, but a flood light to Your power..."

"Give them intimacy with You as they prepare for this time of ministry..."

"Jesus grant them safety in travels..."

"Supply each of their needs so they may do Your work..."

Man, it was sweet! I am truly thankful for not only the experience and encouragement, but also the support of this group of Christ followers.

This week in Grand Rapids, I have been able to meet with 3 families and God had truly shown up once again in both prayer and financial support! I love the conversations that spring forth from presenting to people -- it seems to be a time of refocus for all on what is truly important in life, the ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE! How cool that all parties involved help in furthering God's Kingdom!!

Prayer Request:
- Diligence in my personal quiet times
- More opportunities to meet and present with people
- Prayer for the staff in the NAMESTAN office in Paris, France