What's With France?

No, I’m not going to talk about France’s attitude towards the Iraqi war (that’s old news anyway) and I’m not going to say anything about the recent riots, employment situation or their thing for raw meat (which I actually appreciate). It’s not that all those topics aren’t interesting but that I want to speak more specifically about France, God and the Martin-Webers.

As I write this, the 5 of us are on a plane headed back to Houston from Colorado Springs where the girls got to spend a week with Jeremy’s mom and Jeremy and I got to attend long sessions every day on being missionaries in Europe. God led us to this point filled with questions but on Thursday we were officially appointed and commissioned to be long-term missionaries to France with Greater Europe Mission. God allowed us to attended this past week’s Candidate Orientation even while we were unsure that this would be a good fit. We had our doubts that we would be interested in serving with GEM and they us but as we spent time in prayer and shared specifically our vision for a community arts center in France with a reproducible model that could be contextualized through out all of Europe God began to reveal to us that this vision from Him was to be enabled through GEM. God’s call on our lives to start a community arts center as a form of outreach evangelism by using the arts to encourage dialogue about faith started several years ago and up until now we had no specific area we felt led to. The Spirit led us to consider the European mission field as the place for this ministry vision and so we began the dialogue last fall. God didn’t provide any thunder clap or lightening bolt letting us know what mission to explore going with and we weren’t sure that Greater Europe Mission would be interested in the vision for ministry we have from God. Honestly, I felt pretty “safe” that what we felt called to was something GEM wouldn’t be interested in, some day I’ll learn to stop telling God how things won’t work in His plan. In His infinite wisdom, God has been preparing not only us but the leadership in GEM for this very thing and used them to speak to us about really going and serving in Europe in this capacity. Because of the overwhelming response to the vision God gave us we are “officially appointed” as long-term missionaries to France but our placement will be decided only after we have made a trip that includes France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Ireland (and would include Germany but Jeremy and I felt it needed to be in either English or French speaking Europe for us to lead well) to meet with the teams and field directors there as we seek God’s guidance on where to begin. Here we thought that we wouldn’t fit at all with GEM and God showed us that there are more places interested in the vision He has given us than we could actually serve!

Today we are still blown away with the idea that God has appointed us as ministers in over-seas missions in Europe. Tomorrow, we begin to pray in earnest for God’s guidance and provision for our prayer and financial support as we prepare to go to Europe. Through out this coming week we will be posting more information on why missions in Europe and more details on the when and how we will begin serving there. Let us know what questions and thoughts you have! We look forward to sharing our newest journey with you.