Paris

Paris was the last of 23 capital city missions in 2005.  We had a small 'dry run' on the Friday night with a tiny team - but the main event was Saturday night in the Place de la Republique.  We had originally scheduled the Paris mission for May, but the churches we were working with were quite unable to get permission from the authorities, in spite of trying in all sorts of different locations (and different authorities).  Then it was postponed to September - same problem.  Finally, the Lord spoke to our team of eight on the way to Delhi in late September to say that we should pray for Paris every day for that week, which we did with great fervour and faith.  But there was no sign of 'new life'.

Then Jaime, our friend and local co-ordinator from Madrid, who came with us to South America in October, asked us what was happening in Paris - and on hearing the lack of anything much, said he had contacts!  He ended up phoning and finally visiting them on our behalf to set things up.  The mission was to be in this premier square in Paris - with 100 team members.  But there was, by last Friday, still no permission!

On Saturday morning, our team of eight had a wonderful time of prayer in one of our hotel rooms.  Gina felt led - as a 'prophetic act' - to give me a set of keys (my car keys!) to represent the Lord giving me the keys to Paris.  As she explained this and handed them to me, about five seconds later (literally!) the phone rang.  It was the secretary of the church to say that had received permission from the authorities!  And the permission (extraordinarily for Paris) was essentially to do evangelism - for 100 people to operate in groups of four around the busy square, entering into discussion with people who were interested about the meaning of Christmas - and giving them tracts! 

So on Saturday night we had a couple of worship groups (we really needed more), and lots of tables offering coffee and hot chocolate and Christmas cake to passers by, with discussion, prayer for people's needs and a sense of the presence of God!   The locals were thrilled by the evangelism - and particularly by the fact that there were eight new people in church the next morning, who identified themselves as having been contacted the previous evening - and at least three other conversions (we haven't had a full count of these yet).

An OTM organisation for France was formed in 2003, following a mission in Lyon, France’s second city.  An earlier ‘pathfinder’ mission took place in Lille in 2001.  OTM France (known as ‘On y Va’) does several missions a year.

M.G. December 05