Newsletter January
This month is set out to be full! Thankfully, we’ve dedicated this month to prayer for Calvary Chapel Paris. We are so excited! Every day, there is a new subject that we pray for as a church; there will be meetings after Sunday’s service, and there will be an inter-church prayer group for the Northwest section of Paris. This last meeting is exciting because it will be a first, not only for our church but also for other churches in our community. This can solidify over the next few years into something like we knew on the West side. Please join us in praying.
Another more sensitive subject concerns our Calvary Chapel France organization. We are making important decisions concerning its role in the CNEF (evangelical alliance) and future Calvary Chapel church plants. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees on how to proceed, and strong convictions and a deadline to make decisions add to the stress of the moment. All this to say, we need prayer.
This month will be an important one for our administration team as well. We are trying to change banks. I know this sounds like a small thing for our US supporters, but getting a bank for a church in France has become quite an ordeal these days. It has been much more complicated than we first imagined, but our current bank has not allowed us to do all we need to keep current with the new laws. Yikes. So far, it has taken four weeks to get all the paperwork together to open the new account. But once we get everything in order, we hope to receive direct wire transfers from donors with bank accounts outside of France again. Much prayer is needed!
Thank you so much for praying for our Christmas outreach! It was truly successful in so many ways. It’s been such a whirlwind of a month that it’s hard to imagine that it was only two weeks away. People from CCP leaned in and stood up. We even had people from other churches join in at the last minute, and it was wild! We were all in black with red scarves and Santa hats, so we were all recognized as part of the same group. The choir sang well and for hours. We had so many evangelists we could cover many blocks around the choir! We had “Christmas Gifts” for every age. We wrapped up hundreds of gospels in wrapping paper; everyone had little baskets of chocolate with stuff for kids that they would offer to the parents so that the parents could accept or decline and had tracts made by our very own in-house artist! It was truly awesome!
The next day, we were at church and had a different type of outreach planned for those who would attend for the first time. But no one came… we were so sad and honestly baffled because we had been so well received the day before. Then, after church, I walked into the entry room and saw that someone had ripped our sign off the door. We have to put our sign on the outside to cover another sign. Our efforts clearly upset the enemy of our souls, but we also know that those who seek the Lord will find Him.
This month was also special because Mike turned a negative into a positive: our church empties from mid-December to mid-January every year. Everyone goes home to visit their families and goes on vacation. Paris is great for tourists at Christmas but is heavy for those who live here. After much deliberation, Mike decided that the best thing to do was to prepare our people all month to share the gospel through the birth of Christ story. The Gospel in the Nativity Series truly prepared them to go back home, be with their families, and be ready not just to see Christ in a manger but to give the greatest answers of who Christ is and why he came. The ones who always leave on vacation are the ones who miss the Christmas sermon every year and are the ones who need to hear it the most!
So, besides the regular meetings, school, hospital visits, housing people, and church schedules that we all keep, and things in our lives that are more or less than pleasant: I think these were our highlights for the last month and ways we genuinely need your prayers for the month to come. One last very urgent prayer request is for our finances. We were hit with some end-of-the-year bills, and there is NO WAY we can meet them without divine intervention. We aren’t even reaching the end of the month most months. Please keep this in your prayers. Becky is almost done with her studies, and we are praying about coming back to the Seattle area in April when she graduates to visit some of our supporters in the Seattle area.
We are exceedingly thankful to you; you have been the best support team we could imagine. We would not be here without you. We thank you for your prayers, encouragement, support, and love.
May the Lord bless you in this new year,
Mike and Becky Dente
