Reflection on Blessings

Greetings,

It is now March, the sun is deciding to shine a little more, and despite the brief encounter with snow a few days ago, the weather seems to be getting nicer! As I rode by bike yesterday to tutor and have dinner chez a friend of my host mom, I realized how exciting and beautiful Strasbourg will be in the spring!

These past two weeks have been interesting for me. One one hand, it has been strange thinking of the time I have left in France. When I sit at my desk on a Friday and have not much to do, I miss my family and friends and feel like two and a half more months is the perfect amount of time to spend here, but when I am laughing and chatting with my host sister Jeanne in preparation for her English exam, I find myself dreading the day I will have to leave, feeling like I could stay forever. Speaking of my host family, I have really been reflecting on how much they mean to me and what an impact they have had on me. This past weekend was full of involvement with the Scouts and my french family, events like my first McDonalds in France (somehow made me homesick?) with my host brothers and attending a talk  with my host mom that was given by an ex-terrorist whose heart was converted by Jesus. I was sort of exhausted at the end of the weekend, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with them. And this week hasn’t ceased to be busy! I have been incredibly lucky to be involved and fully immersed in the culture and society here, as I had events at the campus ministry center, my weekly faith formation group, and dinner with my host mom’s friend lined up for the week!

The Gospel Singers from South Africa that accompanied the speaker, Steven Lungu (turns out I forgot to take a picture of the actual speaker!)

This week, or rather the middle of last week, also gave me an opportunity to be honest with myself and share some of my experience with someone here. Feeling very stuck with God, I went to St. Jean’s church where there is an American priest my friend introduced me to a few weeks ago. He was super nice and really seemed to understand what I was feeling, and I ended up telling him a lot more about life here in France than just my spiritual struggle. I realized that talking to the right person is often an exercise in reflection, and I really appreciated talking about life with Fr. Bradford. With his help, I realized that God’s plans and answers to our prayers are often not what we expect, and I began to reason that though I have been feeling a little lost as an international student who lives far from all the other students, I have been very immersed in this city and made my own friends who, though aren’t English speaking, are varied nationalities and are very awesome. It has been a gift to get to know each one of them, and I realized that God gave me exactly what I needed, though it was different than I expected. Speaking with Father Bradford also helped me to realize how much of a blessing my host family is, though I did know that, it was good to remind myself. He also gave me an amazing opportunity to spend Easter with the Community of Jerusalem, which is honestly a dream, and I’ll be with one of my closest friends here!!

This experience is seriously the best I’ve ever had in terms of being hard but rewarding and challenging but so much fun. Thanks for coming along for the ride:)

Love and Peace,

Jessica

This entry was posted on Friday, March 11th, 2016 at 11:54 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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