Welcome to the latest installment of Harris in Paris! The past six weeks have been full and fulfilling. We’ve moved into fall weather, settled into our home, made new friends and received old ones. We’ve begun French lessons, hosted church events, and even done some traveling. We’re excited to share it all with you, so let’s jump in!

A major theme of the past 6 weeks has been the blessing of friendly faces from home. Since we last wrote you, we have enjoyed visits from our friends Wendi & Brody, Matthew & Julia, Emily & Wes (who ingested a dozen snails before so much as unzipping a suitcase), and the entire Hill family. We spent time with the senior class from Heritage Preparatory School in town on their class trip, and we also received our first houseguests, Mark & Amy, who schlepped a Costco pack of highly-coveted peanut butter across the pond for us! A huge thank you to Mark, who helped Brad move a large antique chest up the four narrow flights of stairs into our apartment. The task had proven too daunting for the French delivery drivers (or perhaps better-said, the drivers had proven too French for the task), but the guys made it happen, and only knocked down a couple oil paintings and a fire extinguisher in the process. From now on, we promise not to enlist any of you who come to stay with us!

If you’ll recall, at the end of our last newsletter, we had at long last moved into our permanent home and were beginning our lives in our new neighborhood. We would largely spend the next couple weeks finding sofas, silverware, & everything in between, and finally getting unpacked after two months of living from our suitcases. Britt found the local flea markets and put her sourcing skills to work, and Brad went to rent a van to allow us to shuttle large cargo. At the rental desk, though, the associate told him, “Ce n’est pas automatique. This is OK?”

The last lesson Brad had received in how to drive a stick shift was on the dirt roads of south Georgia as a 13 year-old, but given the logistical wrench in the spokes we’d have been facing without the van, he had no choice but to reply, “Parfait!”. So with Youtube as his copilot, Brad learned to drive a manual transmission at rush hour in the middle of Paris. He may have stalled out a few [dozen] times, and probably didn’t make any converts to the faith on the road, but he got the job done!

With house-hunting and furniture shopping (mostly) behind us, we’ve been able to develop some work routines and family rhythms here in Paris. From grocery stores to barber shops to pharmacies, we are steadily finding replacements for those life staples we had back in Atlanta (though a substitute for Jalisco remains elusive). One of the most important decisions of moving to any Parisian neighborhood is determining with whom your Boulangerie loyalty lies, and to that end, we have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know our friends at Gosselin, who are so graciously kind to our little ones and never let them leave with out a baked treat “gratuitement”.

In France, schools break for 14 days every two months, because what child could be expected to endure more than six consecutive weeks of grueling academic rigor without a vacation? This of course leaves Mom & Dad with the task of filling a giant void in the schedule, and so during the first week of our first “vacance”, we spent a few days in the Normandie region, where we stayed in a remote farmhouse attached to a horse stable in the French countryside. There, we leaned hard into fall - we built fires, picked apples, went to a petting zoo, and hiked around the farm. We visited the coastal town of Étretat, where Monet crafted Britt’s favorite painting of the artist’s portfolio.

It bears putting in writing that Brad was walking around a Normandie town called Deauville, some 200km away from Paris, when the Louvre heist occurred. Further, the fact that our wedding anniversary was coming up a week later is pure coincidence. Thank you to all who asked.

Our ministry here has moved into full swing, and it has been the thrill of a lifetime to see some of the things we’ve planned and talked & prayed about for the past year and a half come to fruition. Britt has been busy, hosting women’s fellowship brunches and church-wide taco nights, as well as the aforementioned Class of 2026. Brad has gotten involved with Sunday services at EIC Rive Gauche, and he & our pastor John Hugh have been touring commercial real estate listings in the early stages of a search for a permanent home for the church. In late October, the pair were back in Atlanta together and hosted a dinner at Christ Covenant with missions pastor Billy Bean, where they discussed missions in global cities, the landscape of the gospel in Paris specifically, and the work that God has done and continues to do through John Hugh and EIC Rive Gauche. It was a great evening and we’re grateful to all who attended. Many thanks to the Holby family for hosting our pastor while he was in town!

As we alluded to above, ever-present in our thoughts is just how truly special it is to be living out the plans that we’ve developed over the past 18 months. God has answered so many prayers - prayers of ours and yours - to put us in this position (in addition to closing many tangential doors), and we regularly find ourselves in situations that prompt us to look at each other and say with just a tinge of disbelief, “we’re doing exactly what we came here to do”. We’re old enough to know that doesn’t happen every day, and both the marvel and the weight of it are not lost on us.

The boys have settled in to their lives in our new neighborhood as well. They are still enjoying their schools; Carter is playing on the basketball team and working on nailing down an internship at an English-speaking embassy for the spring semester as a part of a work-study project.

We wish we could tell you that we’d made it through an entire newsletter without a trip to the emergency room, BUT, that proved too tall an order for little Bruce, who cracked open a bottle of Mom & Dad’s Zzz-Quil gummies leftover from the flight here, and had himself a party.

After some evaluation, Bruce got an exciting ride through Paris in an ambulance. At the hospital, as the lady at the check-in desk began to input Britt’s information into her computer, she looked up from her screen and said, “you again? I thought you were tourists!” What a place to be regulars.

Bruce was monitored for several hours, and luckily avoided having his stomach pumped. He was released, having never even dozed off, leaving Mom & Dad wondering what in God’s creation it takes to get this kid to go to sleep!

On the bright side, since our last newsletter we have trimmed our ER visits by 50%! Progress….

As always, we are extremely grateful for your prayers, your check-ins and your encouragement. And to those of you who have given in support of our ministry, please know that we have found a vibrant, flourishing church and organization here that is doing a great work in planting a flag for the gospel in a place of spiritual darkness. We are so thankful for your support, and want you to know that the cause is worthy and impactful.

And if you haven’t made plans to come visit, what are you waiting for? We’d love the opportunity to show you the work we’re doing here firsthand. You might even make the newsletter!

With Joy & Gratitude,

Brad & Britt