Category: France Page 1 of 2

Some Things We’ve Learned While in France

By josh

On July 3, 2014

In Culture, France

A few things we’ve learned in France –

Don’t judge the cheese by the way it smells. Josh has tried many French cheeses, and while many smelled awful, once the molded rind is cut off, the cheese tastes nothing like it smells.
How to be sick “well” – we have had numerous stomach viruses, colds, fevers, etc. and see it as great preparation for Africa. How to be joyful and keep a servant’s heart when you are dog sick is not easy, but has been a huge lesson for us this year!
Enjoy the French bakeries while you have them. Chocolate bread. Fresh, warm baguettes. Fruit tarts. Éclairs. We can’t even pretend we are suffering here!

Always watch where you are stepping – most people don’t clean up the sidewalks after their dog leaves “gifts.” In fact, Paris spends millions of dollars each year on “motocrottes” – motorcycles that suck up the doggy gifts at the end of each day. You can’t make this stuff up!
Go ahead and get used to the weird business hours. Doctors take walk-ins from 8:30am till around noon. Then they break for a long afternoon rest and don’t open back up for appointments until 5:30pm. Grocery stores open around 8:30 and some will close for a few hours in the afternoon. The bigger ones are opened all day. A few are open on Sunday, but only in the morning. As you can see, we had a lot to memorize when we first moved here!
Central heat isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We enjoyed our first winter of no central heat. We have radiators that are heated by warm water and do a great job of keeping the apartment warm. We realized just how stuffy central heat in the States can feel and how much it dries out our sinuses. It feels a little old fashioned to use radiators, but we truly prefer it!
Don’t say “bonjour” or even smile to people on the street. Being from the South, we have a hard time with this “rule.” It is ok to look or stare at people when you are passing them, but if you say “bonjour” they mostly just look at you unless they have lived away from France for a while. Even smiling at them seems awkward, because they rarely smile back. We truly cannot imagine how difficult ministry must be here. Going to Africa seems like a piece of cake – everyone greets you and wants to know why you are there. It is an open door to share about Jesus! Here, things are much different!
Always be dressed as if you will be receiving visitors. We live in community here on campus and many times a day people are knocking on our door asking to borrow milk or sugar or asking Josh if he wants to play soccer, or if our kids can come play with some other kids. This, too, is great preparation for life in Africa – people will be knocking on our door day and night asking for help or just to visit. We might as well get used to it.
Living in community is wonderful, but not Utopian! We enjoy the almost constant fellowship with other like-minded friends/classmates here. Our children have built-in entertainment at the sandbox every day. Everyone is willing to serve and help when a need arises. We are encouraged and challenged by Jesus-followers who are striving to please God with their lives. But, we also hear kids screaming all hours of the day and night, have to navigate play times outside with different styles of parenting, and we share a washer and dryer with the other families and hope that everyone follows the schedule. We are with the same people every single day – in class, after class, at church, on the weekends. That is just our reality. We will certainly miss our community when we leave!
Enjoy the flowers! French towns have a grading scale depending on how many flowers they display in their town. We enjoy the different colors that change with the seasons and have never seen so many flowers in one place! Everywhere we go feels like the Botanical Gardens!

Isaac and Judah’s Nursery Class

By josh

On July 2, 2014

In Family, France

10 Ways Life is Different in France than in America

By kimberly

On March 10, 2014

In Culture, France

No car – no stocking up on bulk items and no once -a week grocery shopping trips. Josh does the grocery shopping 2-3 times a week, by foot or on his bicycle.
Lots of French bread – we eat it with almost every meal.
We haven’t participated in corporate worship in our heart language (English) in 6 months. It motivates us to learn French so we can understand and worship from our hearts! The French Evangelical church is exceptionally small, but a positive thing is that practically everyone who attends church regularly is a committed follower of Jesus, as opposed to many of our churches in the States who would be classified as “cultural Christians.”
No greeting people when we walk by. Unlike in the Southern part of the United States, where, at the very least, most people smile at strangers, French culture does not require greetings or smiles to strangers. If you see someone you know, you are expected to greet with “Bonjour,” but if you see the same person later in the day, you aren’t supposed to say anything!
Going out to eat usually means McDonalds, which we never did in the States! Most restaurants do not open until 7pm, which is when we are starting bedtime routine with the boys. For the first 6 months we never made it out for dinner – it’s good for the waste-line and the pocketbook!
Laundry. We do our laundry on scheduled days each week, taking turns with other families who live on campus. The school has three washers, one dryer. One load of laundry = $5. So, yes, we re-wear our clothes. A lot.
Our evenings no longer consist of curling up with a good book or watching a movie. Instead, we eat dinner, play with the kids, put them to bed, and…..STUDY!!! French verb conjugations, grammar, vocabulary, listening exercises, etc. It’s really exciting, I promise.
Living in community. We live in the building with the same people we go to class with, attend church with, and share a common area outside with. Our children play together every day all day at nursery, go to church together, and play outside together after school. When we hear a child cry, we all guess who it might be, and Isaac will confirm if it is the correct child.
Surrounded by BIG, beautiful mountains. When language learning gets difficult, the Alps have a way of reminding us who has the power to move the mountains!
Josh helps wash dishes by hand! We don’t have a dishwasher, and since Josh and Kimberly are both in language school full time, the household duties have become more shared these days.

Thanksgiving in France

By josh

On December 9, 2013

In Family, France

Since we had exams on Thanksgiving day, all the students agreed to celebrate Thanksgiving the following Saturday. We woke up to a beautiful snow falling, and Isaac helped make a snowman with his friends!

Since we couldn’t get our hands on any Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup for green bean casserole (my favorite Thanksgiving dish), I decided to take on the challenge of making a green bean casserole from scratch using The Pioneer Woman’s recipe. It got lots of complements and was much tastier than the traditional mushroom soup recipe!

Judah got in on the celebrations with his turkey attire 🙂

At our Thanksgiving feast that evening, we had about 60 people to feast and give thanks with, and about 6-7 different nationalities were represented.

Isaac playing with his friend, A, before the meal.

Our Thanksgiving spread (notice Isaac in the bottom right corner checking out the food!)

Our Thanksgiving in France was perfect for making special memories, spending time with our family, and remembering all we have to be thankful for!

Joy in Thanksgiving

By josh

On December 3, 2013

In Family, France, Ministry

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Our family’s holiday season looks different this year. Because we are overseas and in transition, we won’t decorate a Christmas tree, we won’t wrap lots of gifts, and we won’t visit all of our family. Is your holiday season promising to be as magical as the TV commercials suggest, or is the reality of life for one reason or another creeping in and taking away the “wonder” of the holidays? May we encourage you this Advent season with what God has been teaching us lately? No matter how big or small your tree is, no matter how many family and friends surround you this December, and no matter how many gifts you receive or are able to give this year, our sovereign God, in good times and bad, is at His very core, a Giving God. This is what Christmas (and each day) is all about as a follower of Jesus! God gives us good gifts in Jesus, and He gives us grace in each moment of each day. Even the difficulties are full of abundant blessings because God is using those things to make us into the image of His Son. Sometimes, it is all too easy to have a mouth overflowing with complaints, isn’t it? Ann Voskamp, in her book One Thousand Gifts, says “Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father’s heart.” Our family is learning to keep a thankful heart, believing that God has sovereignly ordained our every minute. We look for God’s blessings in the ordinary things by keeping a thankful journal to recount God’s grace in our lives. This Christmas season, will you join us in practicing His presence? Give thanks to Him in everything and receive much joy in return! Is there any better gift exchange could we ask for this Christmas?

Language Partner

By josh

On November 1, 2013

In France

One of the most helpful tools in language learning, other than the willingness to make a complete fool out of yourself (actually a requirement), is having someone to meet with regularly to speak. In a situation like ours, it is possible, even easy, to get through the day without actually speaking much French. We live in our own little community, and we can accomplish much of what we need to on a daily basis without leaving the campus. The challenge, especially for a natural introvert (both Kimberly and I), is to get out and speak. It may seem obvious (OK, it is obvious) but there are people who spend months or a year learning a language and still can’t communicate because they don’t get out of their comfort zone and practice. If left to my own desires, I would rather flip through notecards than go into the community and babble like an idiot, but we must babble like idiots in order to improve! This is a humbling (and humiliating) experience!

So, one way to get more practice is to get a language helper. This is someone who agrees to meet once or twice a week to just talk. It’s very painful at first, especially if the person speaks little or no English. But something happens, so we’ve been told, as you struggle more and more to speak. PROGRESS. Little by little, after hearing that verb 27 times, you remember what it means or how it’s conjugated for third person singular.

After being in survival mode for about the first month, Kimberly and I started talking about trying to get a language partner for each of us. We asked for help from the school staff, and they found one for Kimberly. They met for the first time last week and Kimberly was amazed that she was able to speak French for 45 minutes. Sylvia, her language partner, is very pleasant and helpful (and speaks SLOWLY for Kimberly’s benefit). As of last Friday, I didn’t have anyone to meet with.

I had just finished putting the car seats in our rental car when an older gentleman walked into the parking lot of the school and started speaking to me in French. I caught bits and pieces of what he was saying, but couldn’t really communicate so I brought him in to the school administrator and let her talk with him. I stayed around and listened, and it turns out the gentleman is a 93 year-old retired Catholic priest who spent 22 years in the Congo (formerly Zaire). He had been communicating with a former student and had come by to say that he received a letter from her. He lives in the retirement home, on a floor just for priests, about 300 meters from our school. Upon finding out that I am an American, he said he speaks some English but doesn’t have a chance to practice. Seeing this as an obvious answer to my prayer for a language partner, I asked him if we could meet together and talk – he can practice his English and I can practice French. He was delighted and gave me his email address. I emailed him that afternoon and we decided to meet the next morning.

Thank you Lord for answering prayer!

I will write about our meetings in separate posts. We’ve already had two meetings and they were great! Hopefully I can write about them soon.

Visiting the Doctor in France

By josh

On October 25, 2013

In Culture, Family, France

Yesterday, I took Judah to get his 6 month immunizations. The process for getting shots or visiting the doctor is pretty different in France than it is in the U.S. First, I took Judah last week to have a consultation with the doctor. Thankfully, his office is within walking distance, and he speaks excellent English. He checked Judah’s weight (8 kilos – 16 lbs) and height (27 inches) and wrote me a script for the immunizations he would need. A couple days later, I took the prescription to a pharmacy to purchase the immunizations and then keep them in my fridge all week until the next appointment. The doctor does house calls during the day (minus his lengthy pause in the middle of the day) and doesn’t start seeing patients in his office until 5:30 pm. We had an appointment at 6 pm (typically, that is Judah’s bed time these days, but he did great yesterday at the appointment!). We sat in a tiny waiting room and finally the doctor called us in. He answers the phone in his office, makes his own appointment schedule, takes the payments for the visits, and makes change out of his personal wallet. It is quite a different experience from a Doctor’s visit in the States! Not wrong, just different.

Learning French…by Faith

By josh

On October 25, 2013

In France

It is a huge temptation for me to take this whole language learning experience into my own prideful hands and try to do it in my own strength. I can study as much as is possible (with two young children!) and do my best on tests and in the classroom, but not be doing it in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord in my own heart and attitudes. We have learned close to 1,000 vocabulary words, over 100 verbs, and 4 verb tenses in the past six weeks. That is a LOT! I was convicted recently that I have been doing precisely this: studying, attending class, taking the tests, and either being disappointed in my failures or prideful in my (small) achievements with the language, but never considering the role God has in my studies. Yes, I know He has shown His gracious hand in our family and children as we have adjusted to life here. He has reminded me that He is the one who has a great plan for the people of Chad. But I forgot that He is God even over this little detail of us learning French. Please pray for both of us that as we strive to learn French well, we will humbly remember that it is God who gives us the mind and understanding for learning. We want to remember during our studies to ask God to help us and give us His strength to persevere. We want His blessing as we give our best efforts to learn. Without His grace, we would not be where we are today in our French studies.

Tips for Living in France: Never Smell the Cheese Before Eating It

By josh

On October 2, 2013

In Culture, France

France has some magnificent cheeses, and we’re just getting started tasting a few of the hundreds of varieties. If you smell the cheese before tasting it, you may never get to the tasting. Some of the cheeses have a wax/mold crust that will wake up the dead. Sometimes you just have to fight back the tears and press on to the goodness. The best things in life don’t come easily…

A Typical Week

By josh

On September 29, 2013

In Culture, Family, France

Every day, we open our curtains to LOTS of sunlight and beautiful scenery. There are mountains completely surrounding us here in Albertville, and the mountains look different all throughout the day. M/T and Th/F we have classes we start the day by walking Isaac to nursery, which is on the first floor of our apartment building. He plays with his friends, sometimes does artwork or goes outside, sings songs and hears a little French from his teachers. Isaac takes better naps at his school than he did when we were letting him come up to our apartment for naps. After we drop him off, we walk over to our school which just has a small parking lot in between our school and the apartment building/nursery. We have a devotional and/or worship time with the other students every morning for about 15 minutes before classes begin. From 9:15 – 11:45, we are in class (we have one 15 minute break at 10:30). Kimberly is in and out some with the baby, but since he is a decent sleeper (he naps in the nursery), she is able to attend most if not all of the lessons each day.

At 11:45, we break for lunch. We walk back to our apartment to eat, study, and/or rest. In France, all the local stores, bakeries, and government buildings are closed from noon till around 3pm. There are a couple large grocery stores that Josh sometimes bikes to during lunch if we need some grocery items. It takes him about 15 minutes to bike to these stores. The roads here are all very pedestrian and bicycle-friendly. They have a pedestrian lane and a bicycle lane painted on all the roads, so it is easy to get by without a car.

At 1:50 pm, class begins again. We stay in class until 4:30 (with one 15 minute break at 3). After school, we pick Isaac up and let him play outside with all his little friends in the sandbox. There are tricycles, scooters, basketballs, and a little playhouse that the children love to play with. He is in kid heaven here with almost constant playmates! Kimberly makes dinner and we just do regular bedtime activities. After the kids are in bed, we usually have 1 ½ to 2 hours of studying to do each night just to keep up with the intensive material we cover each day.

Wednesdays, we have no classes, but we both take turns studying or sometimes hire one of the nursery workers to play outside with Isaac for a couple hours so we can get some studying in during the morning. Then, we try to focus on making the rest of the day a fun family day. Sometimes, we take the bus into town and get groceries and eat pizza. Sometimes, we go to a park or just play outside with the other kids. Sometimes, we stroll downtown (a five minute walk) and visit a bakery for a fun treat. Saturdays are similar. We have an evaluation that we both have to complete. So we take turns doing that and then spend the rest of the day having fun.

Sundays, we go to l’Eglise Protestant Evangelique– the one church option we have in Albertville. We are enjoying the church more each week as we are able to understand a little more each week of what is being said in the services! The people are very friendly and we are hoping soon to be more regularly involved in a sort of home group (Kimberly) and a bible study (Josh) that both alternate meetings every other week.

So, there you have it! A typical week in our lives here in France!

kimberly