Conference 2012

We had a wonderful time at our conference this past week.  We went to a part of France that we had never been to before.  It is in the Massif Central.  This is the area where the volcanos erupted a long time ago.  While we were driving we were able to see some of the mountains with their craters.  To get to where our conference center was we had to go up and down this sort of mountain.  It was very interesting and very different from what we've ever seen before here in France.

Since it was about an 8 hour drive with the stops we gave ourselves.  We left right from church.  We were already an hour closer on Sunday.  We got a hotel about halfway.  It was so nice to be able to rest that evening.

We were the first of our co-workers to arrive with the Visser's gettting there not too long after us.  All of the BMM missionaries were their except for the wife in one couple.  She was sick and couldn't make it.  With our speaker and his wife (Jeff and Linda Brown, BMM missionaries to Germany), a children's worker, a single missionary lady with BMM doing language study to go to Chad, and an older teen that came with one of the families, we were 31 at conference all together. 

For those that know conference, things went just about like usual.  We ate, had Bible meetings, business meetings, and time to sightsee in the afternoon.

Tuesday morning Anna and David played for special music

Their papa (Jean-Jacques) led the singing that morning

Tuesday evening the Teachout family sang a special

Wednesday morning was Emily's turn to sing.

Business meetings

Another angle--same meeting

Emily and Benji stayed busy

Wednesday evening

Thursday morning--A mens choir.  They practiced on the first verse and sang the rest as their "special number".  Beautifull!!

Emily sharing her hymnbook with David

Rich and Karyn were asked to sing a "special", the second verse of the song we were all singing.  Beautiful!!

The little children present.  There were also 4 teenagers!!

Carissa, the children's worker

Thank you Jeff and Linda Brown, BMM missionaries to Germany

Thank you gift of lace from Le Puy en Velay

Breakfast (coffee in a bowl and bread with butter and jelly)  Wonderful!!

Goûter time (snack time)

The weather didn't co-operate very well.  But that was all right with us as I was busy getting ready for the ladies' retreat.  So we didn't really do any sightseeing.  We did drive into town to get gas.  The city of Le Puy en Velay is a very interesting town.  There is a church built on the top of a peek of lava.  Unfortunately I forgot my camera the day we went in town.

The wind was really strong while we were there.  The trip home was with the wind too.  Over the weekend in that region they had even worse wind and are without electricity right now.  Fortunately that didn't happen while we were there.

We arrived home on Thursday evening around 6:30.  A long day but we were glad to be home.  I'll talk about the weekend in the next blog.