My jubilant homecoming! Or, How to write a blog while extremely jet-lagged.

I'm in France! I arrived at the Marseille airport on Wednesday evening to loud cheers and waving signs from my entire team. I think all the onlookers in the airport were trying to figure out which celebrity had just arrived. They had planned an entire evening for me, which began with an apero at the Jones' beautiful new house, then an amazing dinner at Pasta Cosy, and finished with a digestif at the Pettyjohn's. It was such a fun night. The team welcomed me back into their family, and I feel so blessed to be a part of this wonderful community again.

It is so great to be back in Aix en Provence! And it's great to jump right back into ministry at ICCP. We've started planning an adventure camp (through True Life Adventures) for jr. high and high school students to happen this summer. I also helped Andi put together a fundraising party on Friday night to raise money for an 8-person team that ICCP is sending to Uganda in a few months. Hilary and Dominic did some great live music, we raised some good money and had a great time!

I've only been back in Aix for a few days, and already I've been able to see how God has carved a niche for my ministry here. The best part about coming back has been renewing old connections with people I knew before. When I was an exchange student in Aix in 2003, I purchased my cell phone from a French girl a few years older than me. It was one of those pay-as-you-go plans, so I had to keep going back and buying more minutes, so I got to know this girl pretty well. I'd run into her around town, and she was my "cell phone girl." Well on Friday night at the party, a French girl came in. Darrin (my team leader and our pastor) told me she had helped a lot of our staff members get cell phones last fall, and some of them had developed friendships with her, so she had been hanging out at a lot of our community gatherings. She looked so familiar, and after a while I realized she was my "cell phone girl" from 2003! I got to talk with her for a while, and we made plans to go have coffee sometime soon. I'm excited about developing this friendship with someone I met so many years ago.

On Friday night I also bumped into a kid that was involved in the youth group when I led it 2 years ago. Back then he was a squirrely 15 year old French kid who seemed mostly uninterested in the youth group. 2 years later, he has grown up, learned English, and become very involved in the ICCP community. I'm so excited to see his involvement in our community and see how his faith has matured.

Coming down from the "I'm-back-in-Aix euphoria" means adjusting to my new life. That includes not-so-fun things like trying to find a place to live and filling out the mountain of paperwork to make sure I'm "legal." But right now, I'm still in the honeymoon phase.