PROVENCE OUTREACH

by Mark Howe

Fifty team members, fourteen towns, five minibuses and forty degrees of heat: life was rarely dull during Europe Now and Operation Mobilisation's combined outreach in Provence.

Following on from Provence en Famille in 1994, we decided to organise a more ambitious outreach this year, involving five local churches and taking in a large portion of the Vaucluse, the county in which MEPA is based.

The day started early for the team, who ate breakfast at 7am before heading off for the morning's evangelism in markets. We often split into groups to work in four or five towns in parallel.

The larger markets in Cavaillon and Carpentras were easier than those in small villages, but nonetheless we had plenty of interesting conversations. Those we spoke to were invited to churches or to the soirée internationale in Carpentras.

Many of the towns and villages in which the team worked were too small to hold effective open-airs, and it was in these situations that the evangelistic questionnaires came into their own.

In all, 769 questionnaires were completed during the outreach. Over three hundred people asked to receive the results, and were sent a summary together with a sheet giving the Bible's answers to the questions.

Sixty-four people asked to follow a Bible correspondence course, and their addresses have been passed on to two missions specialising in this form of ministry. The eighty-nine people requesting to be visited received a booklet a few days after the end of the outreach: they will be contacted by local churches in the coming weeks.

The children's club proved more difficult than expected, not least due to unexpected problems with the local authorities. After some frantic letter-writing and discussions with the Cavaillon police chief about freedom of religion as defined in the French constitution, Susan Howe and her team were allowed to continue. Many of the the children were from moslem homes.

Throughout the outreach the team worked in Pernes les Fontaines, a small but diffuse village where the church in Carpentras hopes to begin regular meetings in the future. A literature distribution taking in most of the village was completed by car, bicycle and on foot.

In the evening the team ran open-airs in Cavaillon, Carpentras, where drawing a crowd proved to be a battle, as well as in Avignon where up to 150 people gathered for each presentation (see p4).

The soirée internationale was undoubtably one of the highlights of the outreach. Nine outsiders joined church members and the team to watch a programme of sketches, music, dances and testimonies. At least two of those who attended the evening have been in regular contact with the church since.

By the end of the outreach everyone was exhausted, but also excited to have seen the gospel taken to thousands of people for the first time. Please pray for the follow-up of those contacted, and for MEPA's regular witness in towns and villages throughout the Vaucluse.