Day 1 at St Maur Church with Pastor Nguyen - observation

Today I went to St Maur church strictly for observation. I arrived and there is a group of old people that meet to study Purpose Driven Life at 11 am. I like watching their interaction because people are speaking in french, cantonese, mandarin and cambodian and they're all joking around together.

We started off by singing two worship songs in mandarin. Then Pastor Nguyen did a lesson from PDL. Afterwards, the old people went to the sanctuary to do some exercise. Afterwards, we all proceeded to have lunch together, followed by a walk outside along the water. When they came back, it was time for tea and biscuits. Then we went back to the sanctuary to watch Showers of Blessings. We again returned for fruit snack and finally everyone went home. All in all, it lasted from 11 am until 3 pm. I love it. They interact like they are a family.

I asked the Pastor how all of this came about because I think it is a genius idea to target the seniors during the weekdays. It turns out that they have a goal to create a retirement home targeted at the chinese seniors. Unlike Toronto, there are no retirements homes strictly for the chinese community, despite the fact that there is a 500 000 chinese community in Paris. Another way that they are reaching out to the community is that they hold a chinese school on wednesdays where they teach mandarin (the kids don't have regular school on wednesdays).

For those of you who went to the conference, a few of the ladies left cambodia during the dark days and refuse to go back.

I spoke to Pastor Nguyen and he told me that the challenge that him and other Pastors face in Europe is that they experience "baptism by fire". That is, as soon as they finish seminary school, they thrown into the deep end without any internship. So basically, you finish your schooling, and then you are handed a church to pastor on your own, eventhough you have absolutely no experience in pastoring a church. It's quite daunting if your only background in working is restaurant or business.

Tomorrow, I think if I understood his French, we are going to be handing out pamphlets and literature at the university? I'm getting sick. Throat is sore, nose is runny............