SpencerNews_2006

In the meantime we continue to serve our Lord and saviour, our heavenly Father in any way we can. Whilst the worship leading is the most visible form of our "work", we find ourselves spending time with many people… spiritually speaking we could say "counselling, encouraging, helping, strengthening, teaching…" but all we do is open our lives to them, serve them and help where we can. So many people these days just need a friend, someone who will accept and love them just as they are – and isn’t that what God did for us?

So, finally, here is our new newsletter. Having agonised over what to write for nearly two months here it is… We didn’t want to write just basic facts or to write a super-spiritualised overview of what we’ve been doing.
The missionary life is not all it’s cracked up to be sometimes. It’s not always easy to see God working in situations, especially difficult ones. To live by faith is not just to drift through life from one triumph to another, it is not having no financial worries, it is not seeing everything happen the way you want it to. And yet we can say, and we say more and more often GOD IS FAITHFUL. We’re not always faithful - reliable or full of faith - yet God is.

We’ve also written a summary of what we’ve been doing for the past three years. This, we hope, will be interesting for you, as it was for us - seeing what God has been doing, how he has used us to touch so many lives in so many little and different ways. It is really an honour serving our God, unfortunately, in the grind of everyday life we often lose sight of this in saying "What are we really doing here, what are we achieving?"

The answer "We are doing what God has called us to do, and the results are his domain" can feel very empty, we want to see results but that is very human. The Bible gives numerous examples of people who acted in faith but who never saw the fruit of their actions. I guess what I’m trying to say is we feel very human a lot of the time.
So what’s been going on for us since our last news? I had to look up our last letter on the internet to find out the last time we wrote a newsletter….hmmm December 2005.

As I’m writing this in June our thoughts are largely with our boys at the moment. Both are doing major exams this year. Luke is taking his "Bac" in French and History, Jonathan is doing his "Brevet" (GCSE level but it covers a selection of subjects). This is Jonathan’s last year of college, next year he will be at Lycée (6^th form). Given his passion for rugby he has chosen a sport option (rugby) for his next year. This is not offered by the local lycée, so he will be going to Chambéry. This is 35km away so he will be boarding there during the week and coming home at weekends. For us this has meant an inordinate amount of paperwork for the lycée, with more to come - recommendations from his rugby club… and physical tests which took place last week (the sprained thumb and bruised head that he received at the game on Sunday did not prove to be too great a hindrance!)

Talking about school, Mike only has another two weeks before the end of his teaching contract. It will be "interesting" to see how the Lord will provide for us this time (slight ‘human’ feelings coming through here!). He has had a good year and has had a good rapport with the children and teachers. However, as this took place in a town 20km away he doesn’t tend to meet them outside the classroom environment which is a shame. Although this is an "assistant"

We’ve just received all the paperwork (18 pages) to fill in for Luke’s next (and final) year at lycée. How the French love their bureaucracy.
Both boys have got very encouraging school reports, we just pray that their results in the exams will reflect this as both struggled in their mocks.

post, Mike has had to prepare and teach all his lessons, and prepare all his material. This has taken a huge amount of time. We are asking ourselves whether he should pursue this type of employment in the next school year, given the time commitment - your prayers for guidance in this area would be appreciated.

We decided at Easter to finally withdraw from the language centre. Our role, which we saw as training up people (missionaries) to lead worship in French had no further place there. The times of worship that we lead were really appreciated but people were reticent to take on any role of leading the music/worship for themselves. It became rather stressful for us, and given our other commitments we considered it right to end our input there. We still maintain contacts there with staff and students.

Easter saw us finish the Masterlife discipleship course with the few faithful that stayed the course through to the end. It was hard work but also a great privilege for us to see people grow in the Lord, to become convinced of what they believe to the point of sharing testimony with their friends and work colleagues.
In fact those on the course wondered what the next step would be - "could we continue doing a Bible study?". This same comment came up at the annual "association" meeting and it was agreed to run a Bible study once a month on a Sunday morning. Several people now feel able to lead this study which is a great step forward for our church. The first meeting fell, by default, to Mike and we touched on the subject of grace. Everybody participated and it was a very encouraging start.

Still at church we continue to lead the worship every Sunday, something that we have done continuously now for nearly 2 years, since our last trip to England in 2004 (save one week). We are actively looking for someone else to help move into this role, to do ourselves out of this job, but as yet no one has shown any interest! This can be a bit of a problem when we are not there, and this will occur a few times over the summer… and who knows about the future. We cannot say that this is much of a problem for us because we now have an assembly that loves to worship, and the worship time regularly lasts for up to an hour, sometimes longer. It is a pleasure to be part of that.

So talking of England, we have just booked our next visit. We will arrive on 6^th July and stay until 18^th July. It will be our first trip through the tunnel, so we’re looking forward to it. We don’t know how many of you we will be able to see during our brief visit, but we hope it will be lots!! Call us!!

On returning to France we will then prepare to go to Switzerland where we are booked to lead worship in a YWAM camp/conference for a week. It is to be a bilingual camp - English/French and the speaker, Dean Sherman, will be speaking on spiritual warfare. We are looking forward to this time and a different setting especially as we shall be renewing acquaintance with the speaker who spoke on our initial YWAM training school. For more information about this camp details are on the Internet
@
www.intouchcamps.com/intouch/

Last and not least, we believe that the Lord may be calling us to move on. Not too far away from where we are now so we would still maintain our links here. Over the last few months we have become convinced that we should move to the adjoining valley - The Maurienne - near the town of St Jean de Maurienne. The whole valley with a population of around 43000 people has only one, small, protestant church with a handful of members in another small town. Previously when we have felt a call to move, we always felt it was to take place immediately. In fact that was rarely the case. Have we learned from this? No! We found ourselves considering an instant move again - Well at least we’re ready to go! And there’s more….

We have no money but we believe we should buy…. but that this might take the form of others investing in a property and ministry here, in which we would be involved. We would see this as the first "house of refuge" that we have had on our minds for years now.

Our future is therefore unclear which is exciting, or from the human perspective, unsettling and maybe a bit worrying. Your prayers for our next major steps please and if you’d like to be involved in this please talk to us.
We hope to be writing more of our "vision" in the near future… we will TRY to keep you up to date.

General Information
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For more information about our work in France email to: mike.donna@e-shofar.com

To view preceding newsletter click here

Financial Support
Mike and Donna are members of Orchard Baptist Church Colchester. They work as independent missionaries having to raise their own support. Gifts and donations can be made direct to Mike and Donna, can be routed via Orchard Baptist church. Alternatively, for tax payers in UK financial support can be given through "Stewardship" , charity No.234714 which enables us to reclaim some tax increasing your giving to us by 25% at no extra cost to yourselves. Please ask for details or see the website www.stewardship.org.uk

Finally donations can be made via PAYPAL to Shofar. Refer to link on our web page
www.e-shofar.com/

© Copyright 2005, Mike and Donna Spencer. All Rights Reserved.