September/October update

Happy Autumn!

As with churches in the US, much "restarts" in the ministry in Belgium in September. People return from vacation and get back into the routine. September was a very busy month of transition and we're just now starting to feel like we're in the swing of things.

The first weekend in September we were off and rolling with a spiritual retreat at the camp of Limauges. Havalyn led worship and sang during the retreat and we spent a lovely time with God and with our Christian brothers and sisters from many different churches and denominations.

Our second weekend in September saw our first youth club reunion of the new school year. The youth were very excited to be back together again - it was difficult to keep them quiet during the meditation! We now have between 10 and 20 youth at our Friday night meetings, with a mix of born-again youth from Christian families and their friends who they invite from school who are non-Christian, with no faith background at all. The majority of the non-Christians come because they have many questions about faith and God. We try to answer their questions while at the same time providing profound and practical meditations in order that everyone may be fed spiritually and grow in Christ together.

On Sunday the 21st of September we had our first Club Tournesol of the year, which went very well. Several of our mature Christian youth organized and ran the whole club! We are very happy to see them taking responsibilities in Christian service.

The 25th of September was our first meeting with the monthly Women's Bible study. We discussed with the women the possibility of eating together more regularly, since they seem to love cooking and sharing time together. The women were in agreement that it would be nice to have potlucks and meals more often and we agreed to try this year meeting together every three months for lunch on a Saturday afternoon. Our first lunch of this kind is now planned for mid-November and Rita and Lillibeth, two Filipino women in our congregation, agreed to cook some delicacies from their home country.

Every Wednesday of this month and the month of October we have been handling Bible study a little differently with a time of worship and prayer beforehand. Rather than making Wednesday night a "mini Sunday service," we are trying to see it as an oasis and a time that we can come together and be refreshed by God. Until this point, Sandrine and Havalyn have been leading the half-hour worship time, taking turns every other week. The meetings have been well received and well attended thus far.

October 5th was the pastoral consecration ceremony for Yves Duchenne, Jean-Louis's brother. It was held at the church of Charleroi-Marcinelles. The afternoon was very nice, with hymns and praises, testimonies from an elder in Yves's church, a leader in the denomination and the director of the Bible college in Brussels, as well as a special solo sung by Havalyn and a sermon given by Philip Hubinon. It was a blessing to see Yves continue on his journey in ministry, now in an even more official capacity through this important step.

Yves and Aurelie listened attentively to the testimonies.

Franz, one of Yves' elders, shared about Yves' ministry at Charleroi-nord.

Havalyn sang "Come to Jesus" by Chris Rice. A translation in French was projected on the screen.

Good times in April and May

 Interclub at Charleroi: American Soiree

The youth had a wonderful time at the interclub that we were invited to at the church in Charleroi. Besides our host youth club, another club from Soignies was also invited, making us three youth clubs. The theme of the evening was "American soiree" and everything was decorated with flags, red, white and blues and other creative decor. One of the games involved searching for the dollar bill printed with a picture of the local pastor among many "normal" dollars.

 

Women's Retreat: The ladies at the church in Auvelais were invited to join ladies from churches all over French-speaking Belgium for the annual women's retreat in Charleroi. I was privileged to be able to go along and although I spent a lot of the time in the nursery with Zacharie, I was still blessed by the moments spent among the other ladies, discussing "The faithfulness of God despite our unfaithfulness."

World Sumo Championship! 

We were blessed to have the opportunity to get sumo costumes for an evening with our youth club. The youth had a fantastic time battling each other in the heavy, poofy, clumsy costumes. At the end they even had a sumo break-dancing showdown!

Jean-Louis and Benjamin go head to head!

It's just as much fun to watch as it is to fight!

Sumo break-dancing?

March Update

Things are picking up speed as winter heads into spring! Here's just a quick update with prayer requests:

Jesus is our Savior, in every sense of the word!

•  We are coming to the end of our series on the character of Jesus in Youth Group. We plan to begin a new series on relationships and sexuality according to the Bible starting this week. Please be praying that the youth will be receptive to this new series

• Pastor and Elders are OK with the idea that one of our main mission emphasis over here will be an English Club. This idea has been a long time in the making but we want to make sure that we start off on the right foot, particularly in the community. We hope to present our project to one of the chairmen at the local commune so that they understand that we want everything to be on the up-and-up and also to explain that we wish to supplement, rather than compete with English-language-learning services already offered by the commune.

The "Apples to Apples" picture edition that Havalyn translated into French for the youth club. Hopefully this will be useful for the English Club one day too.

•  Club Tournesol (a monthly children's ministry and outreach run through the church) is on the 16th this month and Havalyn is planning the "Big Game" which has the theme, "The zoo." Please be praying that everything goes smoothly and that we are able to plant some gospel seeds. With the weather being so nice lately, hopefully we will be able to play outside (in the back yard of the church)

The sunset as seen from our apartment window - just another masterpiece from our God of glory.

• We're seeking God's will for our future as we debate whether or not we will be going full-time missionary couple this fall. (JL currently works full-time as a bricklayer, helping in the church whenever possible, while Havalyn is a full-time missionary). Please be praying for wisdom and faith as we pray this through.

Love in Service

The St. Valentines Day "Repas"

"Chef" Fred mixes things up...

What a pleasure it was to serve the couples of the church with the youth club on Feb. 15th for the "Repas de St. Valentine." The excellent, restaurant quality food was planned and prepared by Fred Albertini (with the help of his folks!) 

The day of the dinner the youth started to arrive around 12:30 to help cut veggies, set up tables, decorate the main room and set the tables. 

Setting up the main room was tricky - too many tables.

Despite a few complications with timing, everything was ready by 6pm, when the couples began to arrive. 
 

We tried to give each couple their own little table, but we didn't have enough little tables!

A couple of couples pose with their favors - heart-shaped frames that served to mark their place as well as a place to put their portrait that we took for each couple.

Dressed to the hilt, the married couples were escorted to their tables by our professionally clad youth who were only too happy to serve.

Entertainment during the evening included some ad-lib comedy led by some of our young people, as well as some songs to set the ambiance sung and played by Havalyn.

Overall the couples were very pleased with the evening and many hope that we will do it again next year. We shall see...

Rachel goofs off with the couple's photo session.

While Papa does dishes, and Mom takes pics, baby hangs out with Joanna. Merci Joanna!

Home from the Holidays

We've been back since the 4th from Wisconsin, although the jetlag took at least a week for us to recover, and immediately after the jetlag Havalyn came down with an almost three-week-long flu. So needless to say, we haven't exactly hit the ground running this month. 

We had a lovely time in the States on our trip that was paid for by Havalyn's parents and the kind contributions of family and friends. The greatest blessing, of course, was that Havalyn's family could finally meet Zacharie!

Now that we're back, life is back to its normal pace. Belgium is having a very mild winter this year, (we're in the mid-40's almost every day) which means that JL is working much more than he normally does in January/February. This is a huge financial blessing, since often winter can be somewhat stressful for those who work in construction. No matter how the winters go, God takes care of His loved ones, doesn't He?

We're looking forward to next week when we will be hosting with the youth club a romantic dinner for the couples in the church. It will be the youth who will prepare the food, decorate and serve the food. The goal is to provide a fun evening for the couples, and to encourage the youth to serve, starting in their local church. Please be praying that this evening is a blessing for all who are involved.

 

Happy Christmastime!

Christmas Show:

We've been working harder than ever to get everything done that needs doing before Christmas. December is always a busy time in ministry and this December is particularly busy because we are working on the Christmas show with the youth club. The show is going to be Sunday, the 22nd, so we want to get them as ready as possible before we leave for the US. Thankfully Ben and Sandrine will be present on the day of the show to direct and keep things rolling. Honestly, we couldn't do any of this without them.

Club Tournesol:

Our Club theme this time was colors - here the kids play Twister.

Club Tournesol went pretty well last month, but we weren't expecting to have 25 children (regular attendance recently has been between ten and fifteen kids). At least ten of those twenty-five were from unchurched families, which is encouraging since Club Tournesol is primarily intended to be a ministry of evangelization.   

Maryline made a huge gameboard that was a little like chutes and ladders for the color day.

Prayer Request: Please be praying for Club Tournesol this month (the 15th) because we've invited a special group of professionals to do the program, and their ministry is a clown ministry with a whole afternoon centered around evangelization. Please pray that God touches hearts and that our invitations reach many children.

Back in the Saddle Again

These past few months with a new baby have just flown by. We feel so blessed to share our lives with this amazing little person, and the blessing of Havalyn being a missionary is twofold: Havalyn can take Zacharie along wherever she needs to be to work and she can slowly work her way back to her ministry responsibilities.

Our little buddy is getting so expressive!

This past week we had Youth Group on Friday night as usual and we started practicing and planning for the Christmas pageant. The script that we will be using was originally in English, so Havalyn and our church worship leader Sandrine (who is also quite proficient in English) worked for many hours translating everything, from stage directions to the jokes, into French. Both of us agree that we won't be translating any books any time soon - translating is hard work! But it was fun to work together and the script appears to be a winner with the youth (At the read-through they couldn't stop laughing at the jokes.)

Another big responsibility that we are keeping up with is the monthly women's Bible study and prayer meeting.  Havalyn often spends the whole month envisioning and planning her message for the women. The meeting is always the last Thursday of the month and the topic this year is "Living a faith that is fresh." This topic was born from the first message that Havalyn presented in September, where she spoke about how we would never serve leftovers to our friends or our boss, so why would we offer the King of Kings our leftover faith? She shared about the life of Lot, who was a man who didn't walk with God himself, but who walked with a man who walked with God (Abraham). Reheated or secondhand faith didn't work for Lot, and it won't work for us too if our desire is to walk with God.

Our youth like to have our prayer time on the stage.

Please be praying specifically for the youth group, which was reorganized this year to incorporate youth from 13 to 25 (So quite the mix!) So far things are going well - the youth have a lot of good questions and seem motivated to follow God. Please pray that their hearts would be able to receive and practice the Biblical truths that we are teaching them, and please pray for our youth leaders that we would be communicating what God's wants them to hear.