Cemistes, Coffee, and Cats

Before I get too much further in the blog, I should explain that they have a program at the church called Christians in Mission (CEM) for college age students to live in Marseille for a year. This program is service-oriented and encourages the students to be active in the community here and take Bible classes at the church. The CEM students host a variety of programs in the neighborhood for kids, adults, teens, and the elderly, which include soccer, singing, homework help, devotionals, and English lessons. The cemistes, as they're called, are really great people, and you can tell that they truly care about the people they're working with.

So today began at 8:30 at the church where CEM has a devo every morning. I am not fully a part of the CEM program, but while I'm here, I'm participating in all of the various activities they do. One of those activities includes the Bible class in the mornings. Monday through Friday they have classes from 9-12 taught by various people in the church (mostly the three missionary men). This morning we looked at the early church as described in Acts, and then we talked about boldness and not being afraid to use our gifts even if we think we might fail. Esther translated again for me, but I hope that I will soon be conversational enough with French to be more active in the class discussions.

Later this afternoon, I went to the mailbox to mail a birthday card for a certain sister of mine who will be turning 20 soon (I hope it gets there in time!). And it turns out that the mailbox is right next to my boulongerie, so I went in and bought another baguette as well as a pain au chocolat (delicious!!). Although I'm able to go with people sometimes, I now feel comfortable running errands in the afternoon by myself if everyone is out. However, our neighborhood is not the safest, and we aren't allowed to go out anywhere by ourselves at night, but if you know me at all, I'm not brave enough to go anywhere alone at night anyway, so this isn't a burdensome rule for me to follow. If we are ever out late, we always have a guy walk or drive us home to be safe. But in the daytime, it's very much okay to go out alone because the streets are always bustling with people.

Quite soon after arriving back to the apartment, Florian, one of the CEM students, came by to see if I wanted to get a coffee. He is trying to learn English, and I am obviously trying to learn English, so it works out well for us to practice with each other. He is from the border of France and Switzerland near the city of Geneva, and he is great to learn with because he speaks slowly and clearly enough for me to keep up with. We drove to a nice outdoor cafe and talked for nearly two hours over our coffee. I'm starting to feel more confident with speaking because he pretends not to understand me sometimes when I talk in English, which forces me to speak in French so much more.

My great teacher

The beautiful spot where we talked

After coffee, he dropped me off at the missionaries house for the youth devo. But I soon learned that a youth devo here is not like it is back home. I was surprised by the heaviness and less applicable-ness of the topic that we talked about. Craig, the teacher, started talking about marriage and why people commit adultery. He was saying that when a couple gets married, neither has the intention of being unfaithful with another person, but at some point, one of the parties starts to believe the lies of this world and accepts sin. I don't think I've ever talked about that topic in detail in a youth group setting, so it was interesting to hear. He also connected being faithful to a spouse with being faithful to Christ, and that is something even the unmarried people in the room could relate to.

Best part of the night though, the missionaries have cats! And since I'm such a cat person, it was awesome to get a kitty fix and pet a cat during the devo.