New Year Newsletter


Cannes, September 2024, Newsletter no. 7

Dear family and friends,

If you are receiving this seventh Newsletter, it is because you are either part of our family, or one of our friends and acquaintances. This Newsletter has a complementary objective to our website, to which we will return later, to allow you to follow us better in our spiritual, professional and family journey. On the menu of this seventh edition: a look back at the past year to begin with, then a review of the activities and challenges for the coming year, and to finish, a more detailed presentation of our website, preceded by a list of prayer topics.

It's already been just over four years since we embarked on an adventure full of unknowns and uncertainties! As you know, we've spent the last four years living on the campus of the Faculté Libre de Théologie Evangélique in Vaux-sur-Seine, near Paris.

But we moved to Cannes on 20 July! The move went very well. It took four stages: (1) On 19 July at midday, we drove to Bobigny to pick up the two trucks (20m3 and 12m3) and then load up about 8m3 of stuff that we had stored in the cellar of the church where Marc's father was pastor; we were almost a dozen people! (2) In the late afternoon, we drove to Vaux-sur-Seine to first unload the things we had taken with us in Bobigny so that we, still with a dozen people, could load all our things, but organise and stow them as best we could! There was even a moment when I thought we'd never make it and I'd have to come back with another lorry! But eventually it all came in. (3) At around 9pm, Marc, Christian and Antony set off. Three drivers who shared the journey to Cannes, but made a stopover in Valence to pick up Clément. In the meantime, Maggie, Valériane and the children had left in the morning at around 9am to arrive in Aix-en-Provence at Marc's cousin Samuel's house at around 7pm. Then that same night, Rémi and Débora hit the road, arriving at the same time as the trucks, at around 8am on Saturday 20th! Maggie had also set off very early in the morning to be there, leaving Valériane and the children for 4 days in Aix-en-Provence. (4) At 8am, we arrived in Cannes, already in glorious sunshine! In this summer period, it wasn't so easy to find more people, but there were still seven people from the church, which meant that there were about fifteen of us to unload the 32m3 of stuff, of which perhaps 26 went into our appartment, which had to be climbed up 44 steps because it was situated above the temple. The remaining 6m3 went either to the basement in my office, or to our garage 80m from our house. By midday, we'd finished unloading! The next few days were very intense, as we had to reassemble all our furniture!

The following Wednesday, we went to pick up Valériane and our three children in Aix-en-Provence. The reunion and their discovery of their new environment were superb moments! The summer was otherwise magnificent! Intense, because it took a lot of work to get everything unpacked, tidied up, sorted, optimised, etc... The two of us were able to go back to Paris at the beginning of August, for a weekend, to go to a wedding on the Friday and for Marc to preach in Bobigny on the Sunday. We then returned to Cannes where Marc preached the following Sunday, again on John 6, making the link between the Olympic Games and Jesus as the bread of life. The month of August allowed us to start getting to know a few people from the church, as well as quite a few tourists ;). The beach, just 200 metres away, was also part of our daily routine!

Otherwise, Marc began his internship with a Church Council retreat on 31 August. September was a month of discovering the Church and its various activities. He was able to attend a service at the Protestant retirement home (supported by the Eglise Libre and the Reformed Church of Cannes), and preached on Sunday 22/09 on the servant Samuel who listens (1 Samuel 3). He also spoke once at a church weekend, again on the theme of listening. He also went to the Groupe de Jeunes, a youth group run jointly with the Reformed Church in Grasse. Last Monday, he went to Vaux-sur-Seine for the university's back-to-school day, and then went down to Marseille on Tuesday for a regional pastoral work for our Union of Churches. His daily life this year will be divided between his pastoral internship and his Master 2 research year in New Testament at the FLTE. He will have to go to Vaux-sur-Seine 4 times to follow some seminars, and will follow others remotely, at the Institut Supérieur d'Etudes Oecuméniques (ISEO, attached to the Institut Catholique de Paris) and at Sources Chrétiennes (a publishing house specialising in Patristics, attached to the Université Catholique de Lyon). In addition to this, he will have to submit a confession of faith (around twenty pages long) and, of course, continue his research and write his dissertation! So there's a lot to do! It's going to be a very intense year, but it's going to be a good one. Fortunately, he has found a leisure football club to take his mind off things once a week! And cinema's not far away when you're in Cannes either!

Maggie is continuing her psychology studies, still at distance, with Arden University (England). She's in the middle of her second year and is still working hard to keep up the pace of her assignments. The magnificent Croix des Gardes park quickly won her over as a place to go running, and the same goes for the sea, of course!

The children are adapting very well to their new life, although it has to be said that the move has not been neutral for them, and the first few months are still likely to be a little difficult. It's never easy to leave your best friends (special mention to Jules, Aude, Léo, Matisse, Lily, Gaël, Adaline, Valentina and all the others!!!).

Talitha started her first year of primary school at a lovely school 300m from our house. She's continuing with judo and hopes to get her yellow and white chequered belt this year! Unfortunately, there were no places at the conservatoire for piano lessons, and there aren't many music schools here. But luckily there was still a place on the violin, and she's already so excited to be starting this week.

Noëlie started her new school year in the second preschool year, in the same school as Talitha, but not in the same schoolyard. She's just started judo and loves it! She's also continuing with music, but is now taking cello, using a Japanese method that allows her to start just as early. Her teacher told us that she's very talented and just needs to be able to sit still for more than 5 minutes :D. As we said in our previous letter, she went through something very difficult last year which changed her radically and completely. Since May, we've started to rediscover our little Nono from before, but there's still a long way to go, even today!

Nolan started his new school year at the kindergarten 500m from our house. He goes there 4 days a week, at the same times as the girls at school. He's growing very well and loves swimming alone (still wearing his armbands, don't worry) in the sea!

So that brings us to the financial side of things. Because it is thanks to you, our donors, that we are able to survive on a day-to-day basis and enable Marc to train. We'd like to say a special thank you to our donors. There are, or have been, 19 regular and monthly donors, not forgetting the 14 one-off donors. To date, we still need €550/month (until August 2025). With this in mind, we are looking for partners who would be prepared to support us on a monthly basis throughout the year. We've already set aside our last four years so that Marc can train for pastoral ministry, so he only has one more year of full-time work left. A huge thank you to you! It is you who are enabling Marc to devote 150% of his time and energy to his training.

In short, here are some prayer topics, in no particular order:

• Financial support for the coming year. To date, we need €550/month.

• The academic year in theology for Marc, which again promises to be very intense, with 6 seminars (and therefore papers for each of them), 3 of them in Vaux/Seine and 3 by distance learning, and of course his research work for his final thesis.

• Marc's pastoral training course here at the Eglise Libre de Cannes. May this time be blessed, formative and encouraging, for the present and the future.

• The second academic year in psychology continues for Maggie! An exciting challenge, but one that also demands a lot of time and organisation.

• For the children: that their year here in Cannes goes well and that they can also find new friends and feel at home in their new environment.

Many people already regularly visit our website to follow our adventures, but there are also many who from time to time 'discover' what we've been up to when they could have been reading about it! So don't hesitate! On the home page, you'll find the latest blog posts. Then on the menu, at the top, you'll first see a presentation of our little family, followed by a page on our project and how to support us; then comes the blog, followed by Documents where you'll find Marc's theological works, and finally, a contact page. A new page will then be added containing links to interesting sites. The mobile version of our site will also be improved. On the "Our project / Support us" page, you'll find all the information you need about this ministry project for the Church, as well as graphs showing whether our monthly (or rather annual) needs are being met or not. You'll also find all our bank details (RIB and Paypal) as well as a form you can fill in if you want to support us regularly.

Thank you for your careful reading. But above all, thank you for your support, be it spiritual, material or financial; it is so precious to know that we are carried in this way!

"Grace and peace be yours in abundance." (The Bible, 1 Peter 1.2)