Don't forget! If you haven't seen it yet, our Prayer Guide to help you as you pray for the exhibition and for the preparations already under way is now available on our website. It can be read as a web page at: Prayer Guide. Alternatively, you can also view the Prayer Guide as a pdf file and then print out the page as a single A4 sheet so that it is always to hand when you want to pray for this project.

We have several people coming to help with the Expo. Some are coming from across The English Channel - or la Manche as they prefer to call it on this side! - and some volunteering to help more locally. We have not yet had any responses to the information about the Expo that we sent to other French Evangelical Churches in the Normandy region. It would have been good to have had more involvement from other churches - but it is the holiday season...

In terms of the many practical tasks that are involved in getting this Expo up and running, here is a quick list showing where we are at:

The Expo Panels: it was a great relief when they were finally delivered. We had a lot of hassle with the delivery company - but that's a long story for another day... They have come from the French organisation "France Pour Christ", and it was thanks to their patience and kindness that we finally got the delivery sorted.

The Expo Panel supports: all present thanks to Argos UK! (That saved a considerable amount of money for us).

Tie-wraps: To fix the panels to the support frames. We had them shipped from the UK - that saved £40 or more, about 80% of the potential cost, compared with buying them in the local equivalent of B&Q, even taking postage into account!

English-language Gospels: We have a large number of NIV Mark's Gospel to give away to any visitors that speak English rather than French.

French-language Gospels: We have some of these, Mark and Luke, in various translations. We have not been able to get hold of the quantities we wanted. A lot more have been ordered from the French Bible Society a while ago. We have not heard yet whether they can supply them or not, and being August, most of France is on holiday. Please pray about this as we want to be able to give a copy of a Gospel to every visitor who comes to the Expo.

CLC Bookstall: We have received the delivery of French Bibles and Christian Books from CLC for our bookstall. These are on a sale or return basis. We are hoping several visitors will want to buy a Bible for themselves, or a book that will help them understand the Bible and the Gospel more, or give them help on how to read it for themselves.

Christian Tracts:We have ordered a considerable number of these, mostly in French, some in English, from the Scripture Gift Mission. They are en route to us, and we hope they will arrive in good time. These will be useful for other opportunities besides at the Expo.

Advertising Banner: This was printed for us (3m x 1m) by a local firm. Their first attempt was not successful due to some technical problem they had and due to information not getting from the right hand to the left among their staff. However, a banner has two sides, so they reprinted it on the other side - thankfully for free, and Voila! we have a big banner to hang outside the church - it may even be hanging by the time you read this, depending on the weather!

Feedback and Further Information Forms: These are almost ready for running off on the printer, bilingual, so that we can get feedback from visitors, and also give them the opportunity to ask for more information about the Bible, about what it means to be a Christian etc.

English Translation of Panels: This has been a major task - photographing all the panels (38 of them), getting the pictures processed on the computer, generating a document framework for the pictures and the translated text, typing in all the text in French from off the panels, translating it all into English, checking it, printing it, binding it... We are currently at the "checking it" stage, but hope to have it all done in the next day or so.

Gifts: We have received many generous gifts towards the cost of putting on the Exhibition from individuals and churches, for which we are very, very thankful. One very successful fund-raising event was organised by one of our Trustees, Vivien Bounds, who with the generosity of her friend who owns a Thai Restaurant, held a fund-raising meal which raised several hundred pounds towards the Expo. Thank you Vivien! And thank you to all who shared in the meal and gave so generously.

Cooking!: In order to keep all the "troops" fed during the Exhibition, and especially those coming over from the UK, Simone has been busy planning and preparing meals. One family in the church at Houlgate have kindly lent us a freezer to have at the church so that meals can be prepared in advance. They also very generously have not left it empty!

Other News...

Condé-sur-Noireau: We have received approval from the Reformed Church at Condé to hold two services a month there, starting from September. We are thinking about holding a Harvest Festival service in October, and to hold a Carol Service again in December. Hopefully these two special services will enable us to invite it people from the local communities, both French- and English-speakers.

Houlgate Weekly Services: After a "disastrous" first week, where we had zero visitors - I still preached! - numbers have been a lot higher - well they couldn't get any lower, could they! - with well over 20 on July 27th. So far, as in other years, visitors in July and at the beginning of August have been predominantly Dutch.

Philip and Simone Loose