Month: July 2011

I’ve asked William Brown, the team leader if he could ask some of the team members to write about their experience during this fortnight mission. Hannah is a team member from Northern Ireland. Here is what she writes:

Hi, I’m Hannah and I’m part of a summer team spending two weeks witnessing to the people in Brittany. Here, I’m going to summarise our experience so far, starting with the long journey there!

My day started at 4:15 a.m. and included a five-hour wait in Southampton airport. We were all glad to arrive at Brest, where we came into contact with our “multivan” for the first time! This vehicle has provided us with endless entertainment with the amount of buttons to push and levers to pull. With a lot of hard work and determination, we have created a limousine.

On arriving at our gite, we met Emmanuel Durand and Emmanuel Hartiel and their families and were treated to our first meal, which was made by Maria.

Then the next day, after the Sunday church service, we had a meal to meet the rest of the church in Guingamp. Everyone was so welcoming and we are all so grateful for the amazing meals that have been provided for us – the hard work is appreciated!

We got stuck into our work on Monday – we distributed literature to the houses of Chatelaudren and Guingamp. Today (Tuesday), we spent the day in Rostrenen and the surrounding villages to give out tracts and invitations to the meeting we’ll have on Friday night.

But all this time, our team has not yet been complete – we only met the three remaining members of our team tonight – it’s great to have Alice, Angela and Wyn with us and we know God has brought us all together so we can do the work he has for us to do. We’re looking forward to the work tomorrow – preparing for the children’s club and the public meeting on Thursday.

Also, I’m excited for the Tour de France, which is passing through Guingamp tomorrow afternoon. I’ve really enjoyed myself so far and have so much to be thankful for – the team is getting on so well and we’re having so much fun together, it’s so encouraging to spend time with the church here and it’s a privilege to do God’s work and help bring people to Christ. It’s been an amazing experience so far and I’m having a brilliant time – please continue to pray for us and the people we’ve reached!

 

The first Tuesday of the mission is tradtionnaly Rostrenen day. Rostrenen is about 45 min drives from Guingamp, in central Brittany. There are not churches in or around the town. The closest would be about 30 km away.

Tuesday is market day. Two of us went to the market while the others went distributing flyers in the letter boxes of the town. For my part, I went around the shops trying to ask them if I could put posters up. The town was quiet because the Tour de France was passing in the area.

The weather turned wet and we had lunch slightly earlier that planned in order to shelter from the rain. In the afternoon, we finished distributing flyers in Rostrenen and split up to cover other villages. In spite of the rain, we managed to distribute all our flyers.

3 more people joined us today which means that the team is now complete. Tomorrow will be different. We’ll have a short meeting in the morning and have a break from 11 until 16:30. The reason being that the Tour de France is going to go through the middle of Guingamp and roads will be cut off for several hours. We’ll meet up again later in the afternoon, after the roads have reopened.

After a relaxing Sunday, the real work started today. We hadn’t received the literature we want to distribute in the area, so it proved a bit difficult. We found some tracts and headed off to Chatelaudren. It was market day, and some of us stayed on the market to do some surveys and hand out some tracts, while some went distributing  in the streets. But I must confess that I always find this a daunting experience. The fact that the market was small and that it was obvious that everybody knew each other. We survived and headed back to Guingamp for Lunch.

We were supposed to start distributing in Guingamp in the afternoon, but we sere still waiting for the delivery of the literature. So we changed plans and decided we would meet later in the afternoon, after the flyers had arrived. It was a good move because it was a very hot afternoon , and it was a bit easier after 5 pm.

We finished after 7pm. Tomorrow, we are going to Rostrenen and the area to distribute literature on the market and on letter boxes on the market and in the area.