BUT, we kicked the jetlag, the weather broke, & we got the kids some scooters and more recently, an e-bike! We moved into a 30-day Airbnb to give us time to sort out a permanent home.  Many thanks to our pastor John Hugh Tate for coming by to help us move!  That weekend, we were honored to be able to host the pastor and his wife Linda and their family for dinner.  We had of course been in regular contact with the Tates via facetime and email over the past year, and so it was very special for us to finally be able to share a meal together in person on the ground here in France!

We then got to work on finding a place to live. Making the task more difficult was that August is the Holiday period here. Restaurants, shops, and businesses of all types close for the entire month, and realtors that operate on “French time” even on their best day take a week to respond to emails during Les Grandes Vacances. This did not deter Britt, whose motherly nesting instincts were in full overdrive. She somehow arranged us a tour of an off-market apartment in an ideal area that we had seen and loved online months ago, which was now in the midst of a full renovation. During the tour, she convinced the landlord not to renovate the bathrooms so that we could take the place now rather than in November, and we signed a lease and moved in last week!

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which God’s fingerprints are all over this home. For starters, we’ve been told time and again that we had no business finding an apartment that quickly, especially during the August holiday. We’re happy to have found a location that is central to our church, EIC Rive Gauche (as well as the little boys’ school), which will give us the opportunity to host church events and meetings of all kinds. We love that the building only has 5 units, one being our landlord’s, which gives a sense of family among our neighbors - something we were told we wouldn’t find here in Paris. Further, we saw listings for apartments of similar size in this area that were asking more than double the rent that we’ll be paying! We truly feel that this place is a blessing.

The only issue with the apartment was that due to the renovation, it was no longer a furnished listing, and figuring out furniture in France was not in our plans nor in our budget. We prayed over this and asked God to provide a pathway, because we just could not shake the conviction that this was the home that He had ordained for us here. And guess what - a few days later, our landlord called Britt out of the blue, and in his best English said that he and his wife wanted to have us to their home for dinner to get to know us better and to talk about how he could help us furnish our apartment, as he had just been made aware that we had zero furniture of our own here in France.

In-home invitations are extremely rare in Parisian culture, to the extent that many relationships take years to get to the point where the parties are comfortable extending them. This, in conjunction with the offer to help us with furnishings, was such a clear validation that God was providing us with resources and relationships!

So we went to the home of Monsieur de Maigret, which spans the entirety of the bottom floor of the building in which we now live. There, he, his wife, and 40-year old son greeted us with aperitifs. As it turns out, De Maigret owns our whole building, is a descendant of French nobility, a member of the French Legion of Honour, has a library with a ladder, and sleeps in his tie, probably. The Kennedys think this guy is too aristocratic.

We were soon summoned by his butler, who served us supper in a 20-foot high, candle-lit dining room covered in oil-painted portraits of his ancestors. Amid trying our best to maintain the language-hindered conversation, we regularly looked across the table at each other in disbelief at our current circumstances. With Mr. de Maigret’s son translating, we brokered a deal for Britt to source furniture, and de Maigret to pay for & retain it when we leave. A win - win! And a HUGE answer to prayer.

Schools here don’t start until after Labor Day (which they don’t celebrate - they just don’t work whenever they want), and after 3 weeks with no childcare and an endless to-do list, Mom & Dad had never been more excited to get back in the carpool line (also not a thing here). We had been praying, along with so many of you, that Harris would integrate well into the Montessori program, that Bruce would adjust to going to school for the first time, and that Carter would feel even half the sense of belonging that he did at Heritage, and would quickly make new friends. We’re so grateful to report that, at least through three weeks, these prayers are being answered!

Carter has just returned from his school’s “reconnect” trip to a town in the French Alps, where he hiked and kayaked and rock-climbed, and of course, learned to make cheese(?). He’s got a crew of buddies that he’s extremely excited about and What’sApping every day. Harris, it turns out, is just the kind of special that thrives in the Montessori program, and loves his teacher and going to school. Bruce, while a slow starter, was deemed mature enough (after two weeks) to stay for a full school day, which was a massive victory for the family logistically.

We attended a church-hosted college football kickoff party at a Canadian pub, where Brad explained the benefits of a nickel defense vs a 3-4 scheme to a Chinese-Canadian expat couple watching their first American football game.

As fate would have it, since we’ve been here John Hugh has been taking our church through a sermon series on John 10:16, which John Piper has dubbed “the great missionary text in the gospel of John”, and has preached about how we are all here in Paris - whether for a weekend or a lifetime - to fulfill a unique calling relative to God’s plan for our lives.

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know some of the people who call EIC Rive Gauche their church home... A huge thank you to Nikki Lewis - for babysitting, for taking Britt under her wing and showing her around our new neighborhood, and for helping us get set up with things like bank accounts and phone numbers!

As we alluded to above, these past few weeks have been wrought with the kind of hurdles that cause a new missionary to deeply consider whether they are the target of spiritual warfare. Not 15 minutes into Brad’s first scheduled strategy meeting with our pastor, Britt got a call from Harris’ school saying that he’d fallen from the top of a bench and landed on his face, and his screaming was audible in the background. Brad, being closest at the time, left to pick him up on the bike, and they embarked on what turned out to be an hour-long ride around the city in search of a hospital that would admit our little acrobat. Harris had to have a front tooth extracted, but he was extremely brave, and for his valiance received a bowl of ice cream and a visit from the French “Toothy Mouse”, who left a €2 piece under his pillow that evening. The next day, the poor guy was vomiting and very sleepy, and had to go back to the hospital for a CT scan. Fortunately, it revealed no signs of brain abnormalities outside of sharing his father’s DNA. Designation: concussion protocol - two weeks no contact.

Not to be outdone, the following week Bruce fell down the stairs at school, and was unable to put any pressure on his right foot for 6-7 days. After another bout with the French healthcare system, an Xray showed no fracture, so we think we’re looking at a high ankle sprain, day-to-day designation here. Making matters significantly tougher, his school refused to take him back until he was no longer disabled, which ChatGPT tells us is a “grey area” legally. This not only meant that we’d have to carry little Bruce around the house like Bran from Game of Thrones all week, but also that we’d have to do so during our move into the new apartment!

But, the move has been made nonetheless, and we are finally in our long-term home here in Paris. We rented a car for a couple days to facilitate the transfer, found a Costco(!), and have been steadily in the process of unpacking and working through IKEA assembly manuals. We’ve celebrated two Birthdays in the past week, and are now so old we have a son who can drive a car (lawfully, at least).

We enjoyed a visit from Christ Covenant pastors Billy Bean and Barrett Fisher, along with several others from our sending church who were in town to assist with the launching of Phillip Moore’s new French-speaking church plant here in the city!

We are extremely grateful to finally be on the ground here in Paris after so many months of planning and prayer. These first six weeks have been among the most challenging and rewarding of our lives. We are encouraged by what we’ve experienced so far with our new church home, and excited to see how God can use us here.

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you all who have supported our ministry through your giving, your prayer, and your guidance. This mission would quite literally not be possible without you. And a very special thanks to the entire Lunati family for putting our family up in the days before our flight out, and to Marsh for spending six (6!) hours at Delta Cargo in Atlanta with Brad getting our bags shipped over!

Lastly, we want to see you! If you’re receiving this letter, we’d love to host you in Paris (we mean it!). We’d be honored to show you our church and the important work that we’re doing here. Our homesickness is also a reality, and seeing your faces would do us some good. We’ve got a space for guests and an open-door policy, so don’t be shy!

With Joy & Gratitude,

Brad & Britt