Good Sunday, Sad News

It's 3:00 a.m. Monday morning, but I'm still awake. Hopefully not for too much longer.

It's been a very good Sunday. As we all had busy weeks and didn't have any responsibilities at church in the morning, we decided to attend the evening service and spend the day doing some family activities together. We went to the matinee showing of "Le Petit Nicolas," a family friendly French film that all our kids have been wanting to attend. We then had lunch at an Asian restaurant near our apartment. (A gift from our friend Trisha, whom we saw on Thursday, covered the cost of the movie & lunch). After lunch, I caught a nice nap.

We then drove to the evening service, which is called "Souffle du Soir" ("evening breath" or "breeze," although it's nicer in French). We amazingly found a close parking spot that someone was vacating right when we made our turn. The service, which is normally more "contemporary" (in the good sense), was even more creative due to the participation of some classical musicians from the Crescendo ministry. It had some diversified music, a sermon on worship, then different stations we could go to while there was some music being played in the background. Our 3 kids did very well, despite the lateness of the service. I was pleased to see how well attended the service was, as I helped publicize it.

The one sad point of the day was learning of the death of someone. While exiting the movie, we saw a family whose daughters have been in swim class with our kids. We've gotten to know them and their mother Emma this past year. Emma asked if we had heard that the grandma of Igor had died.

We had been in children's swim classes with the deceased woman for a number of years. Sadly, we don't even know her first name, even though we had many cordial conversations with her over the years at the pool. She was a classy looking woman in her 60s who was an active grandmother. She apparently caught some virus while on vacation in South America this summer. She died in Paris during the last couple of weeks.

I think one reason I'm still awake is that she and her family are on my mind. It's a good reminder that people need the Lord. I don't know anything about her relationship with God. We try to be careful here to not be pushy about our beliefs. We try to live our faith before people. However, there sometime needs to be some type of verbal expression. Hopefully some others might have already done this. But I don't know. But we have other friends here whom we may be the only Christ-followers whom they know.