Sunday in Paris

Kathy may be sixty, but after walking all over yesterday, I feel just plain-old ancient. Everything aches. Sleeping in helped thought. Unlike Costa Mesa, we don't have to leave by 7:30 am to make it to church. While the Calvary Chapel Paris French-language service takes place in the morning, the English service doesn't start until 3:00 pm.

When we got up around 9:00, I cooked omelets, and ate breakfast out on the balcony to the music from the church across the street.

A scouting group set up a table for a bake sale between services.

After lounging around in the morning, we set off for Calvary Chapel around noon, walking along the Seine. The Paris Respire (Paris Breathes) program closes off several sections of the city for biking, walking and roller blading each Sunday, including the usually busy express lanes that follow the Seine.

At Pont Marie we crossed over the tip of Ile Saint-Louis and looked at the back side of Notre Dame from the bridge. Then we walked the length of Ile Saint-Louis, picking up a melon-pistatio cone at the Berthillon take-away window. (The main store had a line a half-block long.)

After a few false starts we found the church (which meets in the weekday offices of Jews for Jesus) a little after 2:00. (We didn't know how long the walk would take, so we budgeted a lot of extra time.)

We had some nice visting before the service started. While the pastor Michael Dente and his worship group practiced for the service, his wife Becky and their two daughters helped Kathy try to make sense of the mobile phone the Broderson's lent us. (The SIM card was all in French).

There were about 20 people at the English-language service; Michael taught on Matthew 17:1-6; Jesus' transfiguration. It was a really good message.

Afterward, we stood around talking until about 5:00. The worship leader was a young man named Chris Holifield who works as the IT director for a Texas oil company drilling just outside of Paris. Who knew that France had oil? He and his wife Jeanette have been married just a few months. I also talked with a gentleman from Mauritius, the ex-French island off the east coast of Africa, right above Madagascar.

We were pretty hungry after church, so we stopped at a pizza place and split a large pizza, then headed home by subway to turn in early.