Missions Together with Unique…

Engaging Youth on Mission in their Community and Beyond!

Unique is an international youth group made up of various churches in the Strasbourg area.  In November we sent off balloons with a note of thanksgiving with a website where the people who receive them can respond with their own note of thanksgiving.  We also began preparing gift bags for prisoners.  Our co-workers in Paris will give out over one thousand Christmas gift bags to prisoners this year.  Unique prepared one hundred bags to send to prisoners in the Paris area.  The Unique teenagers also prepared Christmas gift bags to give to ladies-in-waiting through the ministry here in Strasbourg.  The ladies-in-waiting ministry outreach team visited ladies on the street and gave them the gift bags along with the Christmas story in their own language.  We love watching God do missions together through Unique, Ladies-in-waiting, and the prison ministry!

Christmas bag prep

for Ladies-in-Waiting

Attaching messages

of Thanksgiving to the balloons

Youth putting together the prisoner’s Christmas bags.

Here is a YouTube link to a video created by one of the youth from our very first UNIQUE youth group meeting.  https://youtu.be/bP3oJnJJ4Gc

Ladies-in-Waiting Ministry

Jillian’s* story

On our last blog we mentioned our new lady-in-waiting friend, Jillian.  When we first met Jillian she told us she “didn’t have a friend.”  We were very touched by this and began looking for her each time we went out so that we could build a friendship with her, but for several weeks we did not see her at her regular spot.  Then one night we met another lady and she said, “Jillian is around the corner and she wants to see you, Tiffne.”  So we quickly went to see her.  We were so excited to have found her again.  She told us that night that she would like to find other work and stop working on the streets.  So we have begun working with her and another lady to work through this process together.  One day when we met together I asked her how she arrived in Europe and she told us her story of leaving her country in Africa and walking across the Sahara desert for about month, until she reached Morocco.  In Morocco she finally got on a boat and headed to Spain.  After the approximate 3 day perilous journey across the ocean in a small boat with many people in which she said they had no food or water, they were rescued and landed in Algeciras, Spain.  Jillian lived in Spain several years before traveling to France to try to find work when there was no more work in Spain.

We hear many stories similar to Jillian’s story.  Thank you for praying for us as we reach out to immigrants in France.  

Please pray for the ladies-in-waiting ministry.  
Please pray for several ladies who want to find different work.  
Please pray for the ministry teams as we seek to work with these ladies to find solutions that will lead to a new life.                                   *Not her real name

Beloved Community among the Global Church

We have had the privilege to serve with Christians in France and Spain; working with Baptist associations and other churches and Christians in both countries.  Recently, when we were in Spain for meetings we found out that one of our favorite pastor’s sons, who is now serving as a pastor with the Spanish Baptist union as well, and his wife had just had a baby.  What a great joy it was for us to have the opportunity to travel to Cuenca, an amazing small town in Spain, to visit our friends and their new baby.  When we attended their wedding years ago, I would never have thought that we would get to see their first child only days after she was born. 

City of Cuenca, Spain

Holding a 1 month old baby at our 

French Baptist church

Over the past few months we have had the privilege to serve and worship with many congregations where we have sought to be an encouragement while being renewed ourselves.

Worship together after a Thanksgiving celebration

 with French partners

Trinity International Church Retreat

 Missions Together with Cade and Dylan…

August 20, 2016 – International Geo Caching day…What started as a fun family adventure turned into something more.  Here is Cade and Dylan sharing how finding ministry opportunities in your community is as simple as…Geocaching!

(Interview)

Tiffne: What is geocaching?

Cade:  Geocaching is basically the world’s largest treasure hunt.  How it works is: you get an app on your phone that works like a compass and leads you straight to the treasure.

Tiffne: How did geocaching lead to doing missions together?    

Dylan:  On International Geocaching Day, we were looking for one underneath a bridge, and when we went there we found a squatters village.  So we stopped looking and started talking to them.  In the past few months, we started giving them food; for example soup and Christmas cookies and in return they gave us flowers for our Mother.