Together, with you! (Video and IMPORTANT Thanksgiving Prayer Needs!)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are thinking of you all stateside, stuffing your turkeys and traveling many miles to be with family and loved ones. We love this time of year because it really is a wonderful season to look and see what God has done, and be SO thankful!

We recently put together this little video which we would love for you to see (maybe over a little pumpkin pie or while you are waiting in a Black Friday queue…). We are so grateful to be on this adventure together with you!

Since making this video, another french person has joined our church and started following Jesus! That is three people this autumn! Our God is amazing!

Thanksgiving Prayer Points:

One of the amazing opportunities we have as Americans in France is to invite people into our cultural celebrations. It offers us a chance to be better known by our community and also strengthen new relationships in a uniquely American way that can transcend normal cultural barriers. We have two things coming up this week that we would appreciate prayer for as they are amazing open doors to our new community!

Joanna in Silas’ Class

On Thursday (Thanksgiving Day) I am going to be giving a small presentation on Thanksgiving to Silas’ class! This is a really cool opportunity to share culturally but also make a positive impact on the kids and families in our community. Please pray for the french to flow, for the right words to say when presenting the Thanksgiving story, and to shine the light of Jesus brightly as I do it! We will also be making pumpkin cookies and doing a thanksgiving craft!

Thanksgiving Meal

On Sunday, November 25th, we will be hosting a massive Thanksgiving feast with possibly 35-40 people coming for dinner! This will be the first time for our extended church family to come to our home and some are bringing non-christian friends and family members! We have invited some new friends of ours from the village as well and we are very eager to build our friendship with them! Again, this is a massive opportunity to impact our community and build relationships with non-christians. Please pray that God would clear the way for these people to come and that they would encounter the love of God when they are with us! Pray for the logistics of cooking and hosting such a large number in our home!

Partnership - Updates and Needs

Giving Tuesday, November 27th

We again want to express how grateful we are for you, our partners. Without your financial and prayer support we would not be here joining in the work God is doing in France. AND we would like to stay! There has been some drop in our monthly support due to life circumstances for some of our partners, and so we are looking for people to join our monthly support team or to commit to giving an annual donation. Giving Tuesday is a great opportunity to think about organizations to support this holiday season and we would love for you to consider investing in the work we are doing here in France! If you would like to partner with us financially, please visit our giving page here: PARTNER WITH THE APPELS

Update to Giving Portal through GEM USA

GEM USA has recently changed its online giving processing portal to Paperless Transactions. If you are currently partnering with us and giving through GEM USA, we wanted to give you a heads-up that we will be asking you to enter your details into this new processor in the next couple weeks. ;)

I love the word for thankfulness in French, it is “reconnaissant” which means literally, to “re-know”. It is such a good reminder to look back at what our faithful God has done, and to know his goodness again and be filled with gratitude. We pray that the Lord would bless you richly and we are sending our love to you from France.

Avec reconnaissance,

The Appels

Tom, Joanna, Reuben, Eli, Silas, and Elodie

Dieu est Bon~God is Good

Hello Dear Friends!

Can you believe it is mid-october already?!? Time is flying swiftly by as we settle into new rhythms, new schools and community! We’ve just been shooting a video update to send back to you (coming in November) and this process has reminded us of all that God is accomplishing here in France. To prepare to make this video, we looked back at a video update we sent out about a year ago. As we watched Tom and Joanna from last year talk about our big goals and dreams, it suddenly dawned on us that all of these goals have been completed, most of them being fully realized in the past couple of months! Thank you for praying with us; we are so encouraged by what God is doing!

What’s Been Going On:

New Schools

The boys have made a great start at our local school. At the end of each school day we ask them how their day has been. Silas nearly always responds: “It was great!”. Joanna was invited to come and read “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” in English to his class the other day. Being the “la famille américaine” has opened doors for us to meet people and have conversations with parents. It is great to have open doors and invitation at the boy’s school. Elodie is adjusting to her brother’s being gone, but she is enjoying the extra time with us to herself!

S.O.S Chai Donations Arrived!

We are also continuing to work with the large community of homeless refugees in Caen. A huge thank you to the Gate Church for gathering clothes, sleeping bags, and bikes for us to give to these lads. Our shipping container (which was supposed to take 8-12 weeks in transit) arrived in 4 weeks and we’ve been able to distribute a majority of the clothes and warm things very quickly. The boys we work with are so grateful to have something warm as the weather is beginning to turn. Thank you!

Church in Our Home

We are coming up on our second month of hosting church at our home. We are leading a family oriented service with La Famille Grison (in the picture above), and we meet here once a month at the moment. Our first meeting in September was a big encouragement. We had an amazing all age time of worship and prayer, followed by a prayer walk (in the pouring rain!) to Pegasus Bridge – the very first place liberated in France the night before D-Day. Then we shared a big meal of BBQ chicken around our table. Génial!

We are also hosting a weekly home group Bible study. We are loving the opportunity to invite people in to our home especially because it is one of the easiest places for us to be family on mission. Our kids are gifted worshippers and love being church all together.

Making Connections in the Community

We’ve also had a lot of opportunity to engage with our neighbors. We’ve joined several associations (clubs) which are great fun for the kids but also a fantastic chance for Tom and Joanna to meet and talk with French neighbors. Eli is doing a Karate class, Reuben is doing gym (which we call ‘ninja warroir club’), Silas is in a tennis class and Joanna is doing a new art class (see the sketch above done during a study of drawing hands!) We’ve even had our first French neighbor come for a visit with her kids. This might not sound like a big deal – but it is in France where relationships tend to develop at a slower pace. It feels like God has pushed down the accelerator for us our first couple of months in Bénouville.

What’s coming up:

Visiting the UK

This weekend is the beginning of a two-week school holiday here in France. We are heading to the UK on the ferry this Saturday for a visit to our church and friends. This will be the first time Tom and the kids have left continental Europe since moving to France!

We’ll be at Christ Church Chorleywood for all three services this coming Sunday October 21st. If you live nearby we would love to see you! There will also be a bring and share lunch at Christ Church following the 10:30 service.

With all the moving and settling and good things that are happening, we haven’t been able to plan our time in the UK as well as we would like. If you would like to connect while we are there, we would love to see you. Please email us and we can set up a time.

GEM Field Retreat

The second week of the school break we will be driving to Camp Des Cimes in the Alps, east of Grenoble, for the Annual GEM France Field Retreat. This is a great time for us to connect with other missionaries working all over France and especially good for our kiddos, to be with friends who are going through similar things adapting to life as an missionary kid. Please pray for safe travels as it is a long drive and pray for good times of rest for our family while we are there.

Thanksgiving Outreach

We are also planning a big Thanksgiving feast at our house next month where we are inviting the whole church and some new friends. This is a great opportunity to connect with people and introduce them to the community. Please be praying with us for our not yet believing neighbors who may come.

Prayer Points:

Pegasus Bridge

• In the midst of all these good things, we are, perhaps predictably, feeling a bit tired. Please pray for energy and wisdom in our scheduling.

• Please pray for us as we continue to settle into our house. Even though we have had many visitors, we still have many boxes to unpack.

• Please pray that God would grow His church here in Caen.

• We are also praying for open doors with the local Catholic church, we feel a particular burden to find a way to pray in the church that is very near our home, where there is not a regular congregation.

Merci

Thank you so much for being with us over here in France. What a joy to be here at the beginning of new church, new life, and new relationship. Thank you for walking with us along the way.

God Bless,

The Appels

Our first date night in Caen!

Appel(s) Arrive...

Hello Friends,

When Tom and I were engaged in college, I spent my junior year in Angers, France while he was back in Nashville. We used to have a phone call every night at midnight. This was before the time of internet ease and international texting, mind you. I used to wait in the lobby of my french dormitory by the pay phone and Tom would call using a calling card. I remember waiting with anticipation in the dark hallway for him to call, and then the phone would ring! The payphone receiver would read "APPEL ARRIVE..." (call arriving) and I always thought it was fitting, seeing as how it was a "Mr. Appel" who was calling me. And now, the significance is not lost on me, that the fullness of this call to France that we have been pursuing with so many for years is now becoming reality. We are getting established in our new community and starting the ministry that we set out to do! It really feels like the Appels have arrived!

New Home!

So yes, we have moved into our rental home (finally!) and we LOVE it! Things have been a bit crazy for sure as we have been unpacking and finding, purchasing, and assembling furniture, but things are slowly and surely coming together! We had an excellent first night celebration with a family from our church, who brought us dinner and champagne (and plastic cups!). We even had our first visitor, the amazing Doug Irwin, who came up from Paris for a day to help us move heavy objects and assemble flat-packed puzzles. We celebrated Silas' 5th birthday and are looking forward to Elodie's 2nd birthday this Sunday. We have met our neighbors on the street (and their big dogs!). We were able to make some good ol' American chocolate chip cookies and introduce ourselves. The house is lovely and is a great space for our family, and for visitors (start planning your trips!). We feel so blessed by this space and we are delighting in making it a home and a place of peace and worship.

Our New Address

7ter Rue du Bac du Port
14970
Bénouville
France

Church Planting

Our first 6 months in Normandie have been full of activity in the midst of transition. We love seeing all that God is doing here already, and the huge need for the good news of Jesus's love. There are hundreds of homeless refugees in our city who have mostly come from Sudan. All over Caen we encounter people searching for God and others who are living on the verge of despair. We were excited to engage with the local Catholic church just a stones throw from our home, only to find it is another beautiful empty building - there is no congregation, there are no prayers. 

With all this opportunity it is hard to know exactly what the year ahead will look like; what needs will rise to surface as we seek to join in what God is doing. To begin we will be hosting house church meetings at our home once a month, while we continue meeting for church at Keys and Co. It is such a blessing to be part of the amazing Bless team and we believe God will grow this team in the coming year. We are also helping to steer the sung worship for this missional network. SOS Chai does fantastic work with the refugees, serving meals and offering weekly places of friendship and community where these boys can encounter the love of God. Yet, even in our first week in Caen we have been struck by how many more refugees we encounter who we don't know. Please join us in this work by praying with us. 

Rentrée

Monday, September 3rd, school starts! I must admit that all of us couldn't be more excited! The boys have been on summer break since March and even they are feeling that it is time to go to school! Reuben and Eli will be starting CP, which is equivalent to First Grade or Year 1 and Silas will be in the Grande Séction of maternelle, which is like Kindergarten. They go four days a week, 8:45am to 4:30pm, so the days are long for these guys and totally in French! Please pray for them as we navigate new schools, new schedules and meeting new people in our village.

Donations for SOS Chai

In the midst of our summer craziness, we managed to organize sending our belongings from the US on a trip across the ocean in a small shipping container. It turned out that we were only going to fill about a third of it with our stuff, so we contacted the Gate Community Church in Nashville to see if they would like to collect donations of items for the refugees that we work with here in Caen through SOS Chai. They responded with an amazing 11 boxes worth of clothing and supplies, plus 9 bikes that we can give to the guys! We had an amazing team who collected, itemized, packed and delivered these items to the loading site. I have to mention, Kim who stored our belongings for free in her basement for the past year and a half, Tom's parents, who managed the packing of the container, and Aaron and Kelsey from the Gate, who helped organize and load everything up! We want to say thank you to everyone who donated and was a part of this process! What a huge blessing you are!

Annual Conference

Earlier this month we traveled to Slovenia for Greater Europe Mission's Annual Conference, where all GEM missionaries across Europe within our organization came together for equipping, collaboration, and community. This was our second annual conference as a family and it was nice to feel like we are getting to know more missionaries and families. The kids had a great program for them as well learning how to grow up, rooted in Jesus.

Gratitude

As we wrap up this update and this season of crazy transition and limbo for our family, we are so aware of all our partners who continue to faithfully support us financially and through prayer. We would not be here without you, we appreciate your ongoing love and support through what has been such a bumpy road to get us to this point. THANK YOU! We are praying for you and are sending you love and bisous!

Love,

The Appels

We are all dressed up in a few of these pics because went to our first French wedding! Joanna was invited to lead a song of worship in French during the service - such a privilage! 

Springtime on the Farm, Summer on the Road

Bonjour Nos Amis! We hope you are having a good start to the summer! It is hard to believe that we’ve been living at Béthanie for three months now! In some ways the time has flown by, as we’ve started to serve on the church planting team in Caen, at the same time, we can’t wait to move into the rental house God has provided in Bénouville on the outskirts of the city. We’ve been reflecting on the fact that this move will mark the first time in the past 3 years that we will be moving into a home without the set expectation that we will be moving again before a year is up. What an incredible way to learn about God’s faithfulness and watch the way He cares for us in community. We have been overwhelmed again and again at the support we’ve had in this journey, Thank you for being with us along the way and what a joy to be seeing God at work in France!

Falaise Chateau

Medieval Fair at St. Pierre sur Dives

Juno Beach

Caen

Preparing for Caen

Over the past few months, we have been getting to know Normandy better. House hunting helped the process! We have visited nearby towns, explored the beaches and stormed William the Conqueror’s castles. We are starting to familiarize ourselves with where we will be living come August 16th(!!!!!), our little village Bénouville! We are beyond excited to get into our rental home where we plan to stay put for a little while. We are even preparing to ship our belongings overseas after a year and a half in storage! Is it possible to breathe a sigh of relief and jump up and down with excitement?

We also had the opportunity to visit the local school in Bénouville and we had a wonderful experience with the head teacher. She spent an hour with us and all the kids, taking us on a thorough visit of the both the elementary school and preschool. We were very impressed and had a real peace about the kids attending school there. So much so that we have decided to send Silas there as well instead of the Montessori school in Caen. We do believe that he will do well in this new environment, with his brothers close by and walking distance from home! We are excited to get involved in our little community and start our weekly rhythms together in the fall.

Contributing to the Bless Team

It has been great to have this extra time at Béthanie to get to know the Bless Team and understand our role better. We are leading worship weekly at the church plant that meets in Caen and at Béthanie, and we are exploring ways on how to do this as a family. We have helped a bit with SOS Chai and serving the Refugee Boys, with the kids along with us. They love to play games with them, I literally had to drag Reuben away the other week! We are helping with groups and visitors who come to Béthanie with worship leading, building relationships, prayer, and prepping the site, cooking and cleaning. We love working with this small but dedicated group of people, we feel truly blessed to be a part of it all!

Though being at Béthanie has it’s obvious peaceful benefits (cows for neighbors, glowing sunsets, green grass and wildflowers), it has been a busy season of ministry, not to mention hanging out with the kiddos 24/7 and contributing to the upkeep and improvement of Béthanie. Since our arrival, we have helped to: refurbish the community kitchen, put a window in the prayer room, hang a gallery wall in the gathering space, repurpose a ruined building on the property into a patio/BBQ, water flowers, plant an herb garden, launder the linens from guests who come to visit, and do lots of weeding, cleaning and runs to the local déchetterie (trash dump). It is great to be able to a part of this community and be able to be on-site to help make a mark on this very special place in the Normandy country side.

Full Summer

July and August will be busy months for us as starting July 6th, we are traveling to the Black Forest in Germany for GEM’s First-termer’s Retreat. We will be there with other first-time missionaries who have recently (the past year or two) arrived to the field. We are looking forward to seeing friends from GEM who are in the same boat as us and also we are excited to have our children be with other MK’s and benefit from some child care!

We have friends The Halls (from The Gate Community Church in Nashville) here for a visit and they are leading worship for a Bless event called ‘Bootcamp'. When we return from Germany on the July 15th, we will spend a few days at Béthanie with them and then all of us are going down to Villedômer to the L’Orangerie de Beauregard campsite (part of the Bless Network) to meet up with the students from the Bootcamp. We are going to put on a little concert at the campsite for the locals and the guests with the Ryan and Karen Hall and lead worship together at church the next day.

We will be back at Béthanie for one week, then we fly to GEM’s Annual Conference in Slovenia from July 30th to August 5th. This is a gathering of all the missionaries and staff of GEM for training, sharing vision, and family fellowship. We are so excited to be going back to the same place last year and see friends from all over Europe and North America in the same place!

After having such a crazy summer last year with very little rest built in before school started, we made family holiday plans early this year and booked a week away in Brittany, from August 8th to the 15th. When we return from this time of needed rest, we will pick up a moving truck and move into our new rental home on August 16th!!! We will then have two weeks to unpack and sort out some furniture before school starts for the boys and then we are off to the races!

Pray for Us

• Pray for stamina and safety as we travel all over Europe this summer.
• Pray for the ministry opportunities that we have through Bless and GEM, particularly the church plants in Villedômer, Béthanie, and Caen.
• Pray for Reuben, Eli, Silas, and Elodie as we spend the summer on the road, and prepare for the Rentrée (start of classes) after the long summer.

Bon Courage!

Thank you friends and family for being with us as we get settled and minister in France. We love you and so appreciate your support and prayers for our family. We pray that you all have peaceful, restful, fun and fantastic summer. 

Love,

The Appels

Normandie Appels

Hello Friends!

Our first month or so here in Normandie has been an incredible blessing! We are working with a small team to plant a church and serving a large population of refugees who are living homeless in the city. It has been amazing already to see what God is doing here and we are having a blast experiencing ministry as a family. Thank your for praying with us especially about our transition. In our last emails, we asked for prayer especially because renting a house was seeming nigh on impossible but...

We found a home!

After a couple months of disappointment in our house search, we have found a beautiful home to rent starting mid-August! The house is in a small village called Bénouville, between Caen and Ouistreham. It is about 15 minutes to Keys & Co, and 10 minutes to the beach on the English Channel or La Manche as it is called here! The village is famous for Pegasus Bridge, any World War II buffs will know the significance, but it is the first place to be liberated in France, just before the D-Day invasion. The house is amazing and perfect for our family (and guests!). We move in August 16th, so that means three more months out at Béthanie, but that also means we get to be a part of all the summer groups that are coming (more on that later!).

Thank you so much for your prayers for us to find a home. We really felt that after we asked for prayer on our last email and on facebook, that the doors were flung open to us! Your prayers are powerful! After three years of living in transition, a home for our family will be such a blessing and we couldn't have made it without you! We will post plenty of pictures when we move in a few months, so stay tuned and start planning your visits!

 

Wellness

We just want to praise the Lord that our kids have not been sick, but once, since we have moved to Normandie. This is a significant change for us and we could not be more grateful to have kids that are thriving! It could be the countryside, it could be the fact that the kids aren't in school, perhaps a combination of the two, but it has been a relief for us as a family. So thank you again for your prayers for our family's health!

Worship

Our move to Normandie has meant that we are starting to engage in our new church environment and that means we are leading worship regularly in French and English! It has been wonderful for us to worship together as a family and with the Bless Network. The kids are learning to participate during the sung worship times, sometimes singing, playing drums, taking pictures (like the one above!) or dancing. 

Along with our church gatherings on Sundays, we have recently led worship for Blesstival, which was a four-day, international gathering at the brand new campsite L'Orangerie de Beauregard near Tours, France. We were so blessed to be able to participate in the grand opening of this campsite that has been three years in the making! Over 120 French neighbors, including the Mayor and a regional representative were at the opening ceremony. This endeavor is a part of creating spaces where people can encounter God and meet devoted believers, who are working to bless the community around them. Check out the campsite here: www.orangeriedebeauregard.com

Some of you may remember the story we told about singing in churches in the Loire Valley on a holiday 10 years ago, before we knew what God was really doing to bring us to France as missionaries. And now, to lead worship at a gathering in the Loire Valley after a decade of praying, working, traveling, and growing, was really quite special for us. We are so grateful for what God is doing and how he has brought us to this point where we are doing the very thing he put in our hearts all those years ago.

This Summer

We are keeping busy this summer with several groups coming through Bethanie, (including some of our friends from the Gate Community Church in Nashville!). We will be leading worship and helping host these groups while we live out in Livarot. We are also traveling to Germany in July for a first-term missionary retreat with GEM and to Slovenia in August for GEM's Annual Conference. We will continue to lead worship at the weekly church gatherings in Caen and at Béthanie, and help out with SOS Chai when we can!

The kids have not been in school since we left Massy. We are seeing these months as an opportunity to spend good time with them before the twins start first grade in the autumn. Silas will be attending a bi-lingual Montessori kindergarten next year, which we are hoping will help him enjoy school and speaking french (which would be a contrast to when we were in Massy where he dreaded school). It means our days are full, looking after all four of our littles and trying to get a few things done as we go along. 

PRAYER

Please join us in prayer for the church plant in Caen, for the refugee ministry, and for our families travel and settling this summer. Here are a couple of specific points for prayer: 

- Please pray for wisdom as we plan and pray over the summer for church growth, we are currently meeting 2x a month at a wonderful coffeeshop called Keys and Co. We'd like to expand to meeting weekly and we may soon need an additional or larger venue. 

- The numbers fluctuate but there are between 40 and 120 refugees who are served a hot meal by SOS Chai 2x a week. Even more importantly the team is demonstrating God's love and setting up a loving community space in a rather dire environment.  A specific prayer for this area is for wisdom to know where to begin in ministering to a large number of women who are trafficked right by where we serve the refugees. 

-  Please pray in advance for our new neighborhood in Bénouville, we know that God prepares work to join Him in, in advance. We would love to begin having a group including not yet believers meeting in our home in the coming year. 

Merci Beaucoup! We are so grateful for you continued prayers and support! We are full of praise and thanksgiving to our God who is good and gracious beyond measure!

Sending love from Normandie,

The Appels

Between Massy and Caen

Dear Family and Friends,

Greetings from sometimes-sunny Normandie. It is startlingly beautiful here. Apple trees are in blossom and everything is so green, quite a contrast from life on the outskirts of Paris. We are currently living at Béthanie the missions base of Bless network/retreat and training center that also has an amazing prayer room and is home to Gerard and Chrissie Kelly, our gracious hosts.  Béthanie used to be a cider farm and still has some prodigious apple trees. The nearest town is Livarot, which is famous for a somewhat pungent and rather tasty cheese. It is about a 40 min drive to Caen from here. The Bless team here at Béthanie and in Caen have welcomed us warmly, which is just as well since finding a house to rent near Caen is proving quite the task. More on that in a moment.

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Visa Renewal

We arrived in Normandy the Thursday before Easter. Good Friday morning, Joanna and I left Béthanie well before sunrise to wait in line at the prefecture in Caen to submit our dossier for our visa renewal. This was not something we were looking forward to as we’d heard horror stories from friends about long delays and hours of waiting in line only to be told to come back for an appointment in 3 months. Amazingly we were able to get in on that day and get our visa dossier submitted! Thank you for praying with us about this!

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday we had the privilege of leading worship as a family at Bless Church Caen, which meets in a wonderful coffee shop called Keys and Co. All of our sons helped us lead worship either by playing drums, dancing and singing or helping with the words on the screen and Elodie was happy to be held and get to know several of our new church friends.

Finding a Home

Back to house hunting – we’ve had a few disappointments here in Normandy as we’ve tried to find a house to rent. The major challenge is that we are foreigners. We’ve had a couple of landlords reject our applications because we are foreign. Another challenge is that there are not a lot of houses for rent that are big enough to fit our family. Please pray with us as we continue to look for the right spot. We have one application in process and one other house to see this week. We know that God has gone before us and know exactly where we will be, please pray for our patience as we continue to search and wait! 

Ministry with the Bless Network

As we've been out with the team at Béthanie, our role with Bless has become clearer and we'd like to let you know a little more! We’ve come to Caen to join in the work that God is doing through the Bless Network and others, with the prayer that we might see individuals, neighborhoods, and the city transformed by God’s love. The work that Bless Network is engaged in at the moment in Caen happens in roughly three ways:

Keys and Co.

The vision for this coffee shop was developed in the prayer room. Mylene, Thierry, and their daughter Stephanie launched Keys and Co 2 years ago after pushing through some major obstacles. They want this café to be a place of peace and space where people encounter God. They also run the place with excellence and have been recognized as one of the top cafés in the region.

Refugee Connections and Hot Meals with SOS Chai

Now on its second retro-fitted ambulance, SOS Chai began as a team of people from Bless taking tea and kindness to the massive number of refugees in the camp known as “The Jungle” near Calais. Now the team goes twice a week to bless groups of refugees who live on the streets or in abandoned warehouses in the Presqu’il neighborhood of Caen.  They bring a hot meal and set up tables with games like Jenga and often have groups of more than 100 young refugees.

Bless Church in Caen

Currently this church plant meets twice a month at Keys and Co. on Sunday evenings. It is already clear that there is a desire in Caen for a community, as even at this early stage we’ve had people coming to visit who have never been to any sort of Christian church before. Also we are already bursting at the seams at Keys and Co. The church is praying about purchasing one of the warehouses on the Presqu’il to serve as a church building, center for serving refugees, and a music and arts venue.

Gratitude!

We feel so blessed and privileged to be involved in all of this amazing work! At the moment, we are easing into things as we find our feet and focus on continued learning. We are tired but are feeling God's grace as we are able to rest during this chaotic time. Thank you so much for your prayer support during this transition time. Please continue to pray that we find a home before the busy summer begins!

Sending all our love from Livarot,

The Appels

Tom, Joanna, Reuben, Eli, Silas and Elodie

PS - The internet is a bit hit and miss out here so it has been more difficult to stay connected. Thanks for your patience with us!

Into a New Season

Bonjour Nos Amis! Spring is working hard to break through the grey, cold winter here in France. Small buds on the trees and bushes around us give us anticipation for the season to come and for us, that means we are moving to a new city! In just two months, we will be leaving Massy where we have been studying the French language and moving to Caen in Normandy. We are so excited and we want to let you know all about it!

Bless Network

For a few years now we have been talking about the Bless Network. We first met Gerard and Chrissy Kelly in Denver when we were beginning to explore our call to mission work in France. We visited Bethanie, the ministry base for Bless, on our vision trip two and a half years ago. We felt deeply connected with their vision and mission to live for others in France. Their prayerful approach, focus on worship, and the creative ways they were working to come alongside people resonated with us and makes us very excited to work with them in this next season.

What does the Bless Network do?

Bethanie Centre for Transformation

Keys & Co, Caen City Centre

L'Orangerie de Beauregard, Villedômer

S.O.S. Chai

Let us give you a little snapshot of what the Bless Network is engaged within the northern region of France.

• Church Planting — three churches meeting in Caen, Livarot and Villedômer (near Tours).
• Serving Sudanese refugees living in and around Caen — with SOS Chai which began as a converted tea truck and is now a warm meal provided weekly for sometimes over 100 lads living rough in the city. (to learn more and support this individual project, click here:)
• Keys & Co Cafe — a hip cafe started by a mother-daughter team driven by a dream from the Lord, now one of the most successful cafes in Normandy!
• Bethanie Centre for Transformation — an old cider farm converted into a ministry centre where there are prayer weekends, schools of ministry, missions training and more. This is the base of the Bless Network near Livarot.
• L’Orangerie de Beauregard in Villedômer, an old chateau converted into a modern campsite/meeting centre and an opportunity for bi-lingual training for all ages in French and English.

Our Role

Our visit to Keys and Co last summer

Our role is to be based in the city of Caen, working based in Keys & Co. to help with the church plant and facilitate worship for Bless Network events. Also, to simply do what we have felt led to do here in France, neighborhood-based outreach through the arts and music. We are considering this—as the French would say— “une stage” or a continued time of training (perhaps the next 3-5 years), where we are growing in our knowledge of the French culture, language, and getting to minister with a team and alongside others who have been here much longer than we have! We are excited about all that God is doing and all that he will do in the future!

Caen City Centre

The Move

We are going next week (Feb 28 to March 5) to Caen to search for a house or an apartment for our family. We believe that God has gone before us and knows the perfect place for our family to settle. We would appreciate your prayers as renting as a foreigner is not particularly easy and with our large family, finding the right place in the city may also be difficult. If you have any words, pictures or dreams that you would like share with us, we would love to hear from you! Thanks!

We plan to do a Facebook Live from Caen so you can join us and start to get to know our new city with us!

 

What About Angers?

Angers, as we have said in the past, is the city that God has put in our hearts to be. We are holding that up to the Lord for His timing. We believe that God is building a team to go with us to Angers, but we do not yet have them in place! We believe that this time in Caen will bring that team together and we hope to move there after our stage is complete.

Winter Sunset from our apartment in Massy, France

Thank You for Your Prayers and Support

We have hit a low point over the past few months and we greatly appreciate all you have done to support us and pray for us during this difficult time for our family. We could not have made it through without such a wonderful team (YOU!!!) praying for us and offering what help you can from a distance. We are so grateful and feel truly blessed to have you all with us here in France! As with the new signs spring, we know His mercies are new every morning and we have great hope for the days ahead!

The Boys enjoying the snow!

We love you all and miss seeing your faces! Please let us know how you are doing and how we can pray for you!

Much Love,

The Appels

Merry Christmas from the Appels!

Joyeux Noel!

Ho Ho Hellooo! We are feeling very Christ'Massy' around here and wanted to send you a little note for you to read over your eggnog and cookies! This season is often very busy for all of us so we are going to kick off with a short and to-the-point update!

Christmas Update Punch List:

• Tom and Joanna have completed end of year language exams and are progressing well in learning French.
• Reuben has a serious girlfriend who has learned how to say “kiss me” in English. Oh La La!
• Silas has excelled in his tennis class and has won trophies the last few weeks giving him a major boost in his confidence.
• Eli’s scooter was stolen recently, but thanks to generous partners we were able to replace it. (Our boys are notorious in our building “Les Garcons des Trottinettes")
• Elodie is starting to speak! She says Mama, Dada, Bubba, All Done, Je t’aime, bye bye, Hi, Au Revoir and a whole lot of babble.
• Joanna finished her second painting, Mont Saint Michel, with her art association.
• Tom has made some friends through his volleyball club and with some dads at Silas’ tennis class
• We are looking forward to finishing our time in Massy early next year and moving to Caen in Normandy to work with the Bless Network. (More to come on this in January!).
• We have enjoyed celebrating advent together this year and the boys have memorized some verses in French! (Jean 3 v16 et Esaie 9 v1)

Prayer Needs:

Rest:

This past season has been, in all honesty, too much for us. We are more than worn out and are needing some serious time to decompress. We will be making some much needed changes to our schedules next term. Please pray for wisdom and peace and we seek to rest in Him!

Health:

We are constantly battling sickness in this environment. We feel like a broken record asking for prayer for our health but there it is! Please pray that we can stay somewhat healthy in this next season.

Protection from Spiritual Attack:

We know that this battle is not against flesh and blood, and it is evident here to us that the enemy is not happy with our presence in this place. France is  dark country (and not just because we have less than 8 hours of daylight right now!) We pray on the armor everyday and do what we can to fight the daily battle. Please pray for protection and endurance for us and our children.

Pardonez-nous!

As we said above, things have been full on and we are a bit behind in preparing our Christmas cards, so whenever you receive them, please consider our correspondence: Happy New Year cards, Happy Valentine’s Day greetings, or simply know that we value you and love the idea that something we have made and written on is in your hands!

With all our love and affection, and warmest wishes from our family to all of you and yours!

Merry Happy Joyeux Noel!

Love,

The Appels

We've come so far, & we are Grateful to be here!

Dear Friends and Family,

At the end of October we traveled down to the Camp Des Cimes (Camp of the Peaks) for the annual gathering of all the missionaries who serve with Greater Europe Mission in France. You may remember seeing some pictures of Joanna and I at this beautiful camp 2 years ago. That’s right, it has been two years since we came to France on our vision trip! We had come then to meet potential teammates and to seek clarity and confirmation about our sense of call to join in what God is doing in France. We returned to the USA with ours hearts burning for this place, for these people. We began to share the vision that God is on the move in Europe, “rebuilding ancient ruins, and restoring places long devastated”, and that our family is called to join in. We invited partnership in prayer and support because we knew this is too big for us, and not something we are called to alone. Returning to retreat has filled us with gratitude for all that God has worked since our vision trip.

Many of you received our first official “Appels to France” email about two years ago and many more have joined us along the way. If you’ve read and prayed along with us you know it has been quite a couple of years, certainly not without challenge and opposition. However, the difficulties are far outweighed by the amazing provision and faithfulness of God. Not only that, but being here–seeing the need of our neighbors to experience the transforming love of Jesus and the opportunities we have to be ministers of reconciliation–some already coming even as we are learning the language and culture, and many more seeming to line up ahead of us, we are more certain than ever of our calling to France.

Last year at this time, we had set a timetable for our departure to France but we were taking each step in faith because we didn’t have all the funds we needed to go. We invited you to help us get there by joining in the Bisous Fund - a capital campaign with the audacious goal of raising $20K in just one month. By the grace of God (and perhaps this adorable video didn’t hurt) we saw this goal met - you are truly a generous bunch! I’m happy to report that our ongoing financial support is still strong! However, we have had a few financial partners need to stop giving due to life circumstances and looking into the coming year, we may begin to have a monthly deficit. Would you please pray about whether God might be calling you to begin partnering with us financially?

I hope we say it often, but thank you for being here with us. Thank you for praying, for giving, for sending us. Thank you for emailing us, sending us encouraging notes and cards, and helping us feel loved. We are, together, called to France and together we are seeing the promise of God’s work in this land.

Enjoy your week of Thanksgiving, which we hope and pray is full of time with friends and family, yummy food and gratitude.

Much love and thankfulness,

The Appels

Tom, Joanna, Reuben, Eli, Silas, and Elodie

PS: We plan on sending out a more update-y, prayer point-y email next week. So watch your inboxes! But for this week, we wanted to rest in gratitude and rejoice in what God has done to bring us to France!

Because of You, We are Here!

The weather has shifted here in Massy to the autumn, with its cooler breezes and falling leaves. We are excited to be celebrating 6 Months in France (Woohoo!) and we are so grateful for all of you who, through your prayers, giving and support have gotten us to this place and helped us live and thrive here. We have made a short video with the whole family to show our thanks, give you a taste of our town, and talk about what is next for us. Please watch and share!

Points for Prayer:

Refugees in Caen:

Over the summer we visited Caen with our Bless Network friends and we spent some time with some south sudanese refugees who they have been serving. There were about 80 young men living in an abandoned warehouse which was burned down last week. This has displaced many of these men and made it difficult for our friends to find them and help them. Please pray for the refugees to find shelter, food and water. And for the Bless network as they work to help these guys who have lost the very little they were able to bring with them.

Language Acquisition:

We are all in school and things are going well! Our classes are keeping us busy and we are definitely improving in our French! The schedule is quite rigorous though, pray for strength and rest as we continue our season of learning.

Health:

We continue to struggle with health, too many days we find ourselves wondering whether someone is well enough to go to school. The trouble is when one kid is sick, Tom or Joanna have to stay home and miss school. I know many families struggle with wellness when their kids are in school, but we are asking for prayer all the same! Especially Eli seems to be sick a lot and since our experience in the hospital, we are reluctant to push him too hard when he is unwell. Prayers would be so appreciated!

We love and miss you all! Please be sure to watch our video! We are grateful for you!

Love,

The Appels

Tom, Joanna, Reuben, Eli, Silas, and Elodie