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Monday, May 26, 2003 Je suis à Paris Greetings from Paris! Wow. I have so much I want to write but I'm having the hardest time navigating this French keyboard--half of the letters and symbols are in different spots, which makes typing difficult (and if Elise is reading this: I asked if they had an American keyboard, but apparently this place doesn't have them so I'm stuck with hunt and peck). For example, if I type this sentence normally it would look like this: for exq,ple; If I type this sentence nor,qlly it zould look like this. Just enough letters are in different places and all of the symbols are in other places. Anyway, it's incredible being here (we're six hours ahead of EST). I've met everyone on my project so far and many of them don't speak French, so I've done everything from teaching others how to count to giving a crash course in prounciation to ordering crepes for someone as we explored town yesterday. Apparently it's entirely possible to get around Paris without knowing the language, but it definitely helps. And my accent is already getting better; I'm keeping my fingers crossed for being able to sound halfway decent by the time I come home. God has definitely been answering prayers, sometimes in crazy ways. The staff from Campus Crusade here had been praying for more people to come to Paris for the summer and work with them; a few weeks ago they only had three students signed up to come. Then SARS hit and two groups that were supposed to go to China had to cancel their plans; this city has students from all over the world, including 30,000 from China, so they regrouped and ended up here. Now there are around 55 of us rather than just the orignal three. I only had two weeks to raise support for my trip; I left the US having raised only a fifth of what I need to be here and essentially emptied my bank account for the rest. I figure it's God's trip so the money is his problem, and I've never seen him fail to provide somehow. I was talking about this yesterday as we were eating dinner and a guy named Jesse just pulled a check out of his pocket and handed it to me saying that he'd brought it along in case anyone hadn't been able to finish their fundraising. I was in shock. Just before I left I was telling my friend Shen, whom I've actually only met once since he lives in Australia and had just started emailing again a couple of days before, about my trip and out of the blue he told me that he wanted to help pay for my trip and sent me money through Paypal. It's seeing stuff like this that brings home the fact that God is faithful and that he does work through his people. I've felt his presence so clearly here, realizing that I'm totally relying on him for everything--finances especially since I quite literally had to pay for rent through my credit card because I just don't have the cash--but also I feel like this month is the culmination of years of preparation in language and heart for working with Europeans and more recent lessons, like everything I understood for the first time at Chapter Camp two weeks ago. God is alive and busy. ^ Top | 7:01 AM | | | 
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