In this edition of our “News Update” you will be able to read about some of the activities with which we are involved with at the moment. The two key items outlined below are:

1. the Carol Service at Condé coming up on Sunday, December 16th at 5pm;
2. the changes to our English Services starting in January 2008.

Please use this information to help with your prayers for Normandy.

Thank you for your on-going support and prayers.

Philip and Simone Loose

Carol Service at Condé-sur-Noireau

Our Carol Service at Condé-sur-Noireau will be on Sunday, December 16th, starting at 5pm. It will be in le Temple Protestant, home of the Église Réformée de France (French Reformed Church). Condé-sur-Noireau is a small town on the borders of Calvados and Orne, about 40 miles to the south of where Philip and Simone live in Dives-sur-Mer.

Advertising has been distributed around the area, and a notice has been printed in The Rendezvous, which is the English-language monthly journal in ths part of Normandy. We are hoping that the local weekly newspaper, the Orne Combattante, will also publish details of the service, and maybe print a report afterwards.

The carol service will be predominantly in English, but with a French translation also. There will be traditional English carols, a French carol, Bible readings of the nativity story, a choir - which includes French people too - which will help lead the congregational singing and which will also sing two pieces, The Sussex Carol and Infant Lowly, and a small group of musicians to accompany the singing.

We have no idea how many people will come along! It could be 20, or it could be 200, which makes catering for the refreshments a little bit complicated. We hope that many who come to this Carol Service will also want to come along regularly to our services in the new year. But most of all we hope that the service, and the presentation of the gospel in it and through it, will touch the lives of many for whom perhaps Christmas is just a nice story, but who have never yet met the Saviour for themselves.

English Worship Services

Starting from January 2008, the monthly pattern will be:

• First Sunday: le Temple Protestant, Houlgate at 3 pm
• Third Sunday: le Temple Protestant, Condé-sur-Noireau at 3 pm

We are planning to introduce Communion regularly into the services at Condé, starting with the first service of the new year, January 20th 2008.

From the start of the new year we expect as far as possible to hold most of our services in church buildings. Holding services regularly in homes, especially as numbers increase, has proved increasingly complicated to organise practically. There are many other benefits to holding them in a church building, not least being the need to avoid being seen as a strange sect or cult, whether in the eyes of English or French people, and certainly in the eyes of French authorities.

We are hoping that as a consequence of the Carol Service, many more people will want to come along to the services at Condé. We would like to be able to hold services more frequently, even weekly, in the area of Normandy around Condé. It seems that what we really could do with are our own premises somewhere in that region - maybe a converted barn or something like that!

We would also like to see more English-speaking people coming along to our services at Houlgate.

English Bibles

We have been able to purchase 20 New International Version Bibles for use in our English-language services thanks to kind and generous gifts by friends in both Normandy and the UK. These will be a great blessing in our English services, particularly during the summer months when there are many visitors whose first language is not English. We have been printing out the readings in English each week in the summer. Having the Bibles available will save having to do that each week in the future.

Prayer

Please pray for the following items:

1. The Carol Service at Condé on December 16^th, that ...

• all the many practical matters that have to be sorted out would be done successfully and on time;
  
  
• many people would come along, both French- and English-speaking, and that the different parts of the service, whether readings, singing, or the talk, would convey something of the gospel message to each one present, and that many would respond positively to the gospel;
  
  
• English-speaking families with children and teenagers would come along, as well as older, retired people, and having come along to the Carol Service, would also want to come along to our meetings in the new year.
  
  

2. The English-language services, that ...

• the changes in the practical arrangements for the services in the Flers/Condé area would work well;
  
  
• a way would be found to enable us to hold services more frequently in church buildings in the area around Flers/Condé;
  
  
• the relationship between the English-speaking congregation and the host French congegration at le Temple at Condé would develop in the right way;
  
  
• more English-speakers would come along to the services at Houlgate.