The end of the rainbow

Back in September I wrote about one of my first mornings at church here in France and what a breakthrough it was, which you can read here (it was called 'the rainbow after the rain', hence the title of this post) and so today, 8 months on, I thought I'd write a quick post about my last Sunday morning. I still have a couple of travelly blogs and some longer end of year posts to go up, so this will be a fairly short one.

As soon as I walked in I was struck by how far I'd come since that first visit, as people came and said hi and I went and sat by two women I have come to know well from life group and the weekend away and had a really lovely chat with them. Half way through the service the meeting leader invited people to come and pray for me, and it was such a big thing for me to hear the voices of people who have been so welcoming and such an important part of my YA thanking God for me, and praying for my future. It really made me appreciate how supportive they have been this year! Once the service was over, lots of people came over to say goodbye and wish me luck in the future which was so lovely, and again reminded me how close a family this church is and how freely they have welcomed me in to it! One of the children came up and grabbed my hand and told me to close my eyes because they had a surprise for me, and she led me out to their classroom and they gave me some drawings they had done and excitedly showed me their pictures and where they had written my name and theirs toute seule or moi-même (all by themselves!), and then they prayed for me. It was the cutest thing!! Then more goodbyes and chats with people which were so encouraging: it was so bizarre talking about getting to the end of the year and looking back at the beginning. It feels both like forever and no time at all!

Then a family from my life group had invited me and a few others over for lunch to mark me leaving: we chatted and ate together, laughing at their two little girls and talking about my year and how I had found it, what I would miss and what I was looking forward to going back to. It was so nice to talk about it all in retrospect knowing I had done it, and to talk about the cultural differences feeling like I actually knew what I was talking about! After lunch we continued to talk about the future and church and family and normal life things, and as per usual they kept asking me lots of questions to include me which gave me the confidence to really contribute to the conversation! It always takes me a few minutes to get in to chatting readily and stop caring that I make mistakes or that I will inevitably be slower than them, but they're so interested and encouraging that by the end I found myself happily chatting away and volunteering stories and comments. It just felt like such a chilled, normal conversation and made me realise how much my confidence has grown this year: I think in many ways that's been even more important than the actual improvement in my language level!

Church has been a total lifeline for me this year, both spiritually and in terms of giving me a real sense of community and belonging. They're the people who make a real effort to know what's going on in my life and have in turn included me in theirs, and their support and prayers have been invaluable. And of course, it's been so good for my French too. Even though I often feel frustrated that I can't express myself better or that I'm not completely fluent, I know that pushing myself by spending time with natives has increased my fluency so much, and I think I'll see the difference much more next year when I go back to Exeter. I'm sure I'll come back to Rennes to visit everyone at some point in the future, especially as a number of people offered me their homes to stay in! I really have found a new church family this year in them, and I'm convinced that this was one of the biggest reasons God brought me to the city of Rennes specifically as opposed to somewhere else. My mum always jokes that she thinks going to church should be a compulsory part of YA, and I have to say, after this morning, I'm inclined to agree.