It makes sense that after being home several days now and being over a week removed from our active ministry in Toulouse, France, that I should have a thing or two to write about. Filling in those of you who I haven?t talked to or who are just reading this to keep in the loop of what is going on with my life. There is no other place better to start with than the ministry it?s self and then talk about how this trip affected me personally.

The numbers for the trip were great. Now some of you might be upset that we kept track of the number of people we talked to or how many spiritual conversations we had. When you go out and do anything you need to keep track of your work, where worked best, where people were more interested and to be a measure of the interest in the city from year to year. This is where it gets exciting. This year we had the following:
-Initiations = 534
-Spiritual Conversations = 203
-Gospel Presentations = 39
-Additional Meetings = 66
-Friends Handed off to STINT = 24
Now for some of you this means nothing (probably most of you) so let me expand upon it a bit. From two years ago there is one person involved, last year there are between four and six, and this year we handed off twenty-four people to the yearlong STINT team. The numbers are good because they show us the interest and desire in this city. The majority of the spiritual conversations (at least the ones I was in) were started by French students who asked questions like: ?How can you know God exists??, ?How can you have Faith all the time??, and ?What about other religions??.

As for how the project affected me? I?m not sure I?ll completely understand this until later on this year though I will write what I know for now. There were three main lessons I learned this summer (of which I won?t go into much depth on). They were the importance of and living a life of humility, being obedient to authority and the Lord, and how to pray with un-wavered power and affirmation that I have what I?ve prayed for. All three of those things were on my heart before the summer and I was able to truly learn about them in my studies and enhance my knowledge in them.

There is also the question of what I?m going to be doing with my life. For those of you who don?t know, every door that this world had opened to me I have now shut. I?ve resigned from skiing, I changed majors out of the art program, turned down my job offer in Vail with Highline sports and entertainment group. Now I do know what I?ll be doing and my heart is a flame with passion for it. Will this world know? Probably not. Would anyone believe me if I told them? Again, probably not. Does it matter? Not in the slightest. The day will come to accomplish what has been set before me, and when that day comes I will. Until that day arrives I must prepare myself and do what comes a long.

While this is my last entry under the header FR: there may still be entries every now and then about france and the people from that trip. They will always hold a spot in my heart, I only pray that they continue to live for and walk with the Father in His Spirit.

Take care and God bless,
~paul