monthly focus ~ looking for God in France

LOOKING FOR GOD IN FRANCE

Joel and Jenny Rinderknecht work in southern France in church development.  One of the ways they reach out to the community is establishing a booth at community "fairs."  Recently their city had a "Forum of Associations" which had a variety of booths for fair-goers to visit.  God used the Rinderknechts and the work they did to develop a good booth to reach many French with the Gospel. Read Joel's first-hand report:

We had a great “Forum of Associations” last week-end.  We prayed for many contacts but it frankly exceeded anything I could have imagined.  Among all the 150 associations, God saw fit that we had possibly the best spot.  We were right in the center where everybody arrived, most visible.  The town inaugurated the forum in front of our stand.  When they gave out free tee-shirts, it was in front of our stand.  So we were very obvious.  There were always at least 3 of us at the stand and each one was pretty busy all throughout the day speaking with various people.  (I think over 100 contacts.)  We gave out 35 Bibles, several new testaments, several books defending the Bible, possibly 100 brochures on who we are and gospel tracts. 

Remember that we are in France and the last time I distributed 4000 tracts in town offering a free Bible, I had zero takers.  This time I was stunned on how easy the contacts were.  I had never seen this.

For example, I was 10 yards from our stand with a cup of tea.  A man from the “red cross” association saw me and ask “where can I get some of that coffee.” “Oh, I’ll take you to the place” and I took him to our stand and served him coffee.  He looked at the free gospels and NT we were giving.  “Yes we are also giving free Bibles on the other side” and he looked at me totally amazed: “Really….is it the same Bible as the Catholics?”  So we got talking a while, I explained who we are, why we are giving out the Word of God and we talked for 5-10 minutes.  He left with a Bible, gospel literature and a brochure of who we are.  We had many opportunities to present the gospel.

I should also tell you that a number of people were amazed that the town allowed us to have a stand because we are a “religious” organization.  One or 2 of them were even irate.  I will go to meeting organized by the town for feedback on this forum to answer any possible attacks on our presence there…and by God’s grace the town will continue to let us have a presence next year.  Thanks for your valuable prayers!

Pray for France.