If I’m being totally honest, Paris was never really a city I dreamed of going to. I mean, the only reason I took 2 years of French in high school was because one of my friends talked me into it. I didn’t really care about truly learning the language…or culture…of a place I thought I’d never visit.
Regrets.
So many regrets.
After the Camino, our squad was given the freedom to get to Serbia however the Lord led us. So, while in Madrid, my little team prayed and out of nowhere we get Paris and Hungary. Neither one of those places had been talked about in our team before, not even a little.
Once we did some research, long distance travel through Paris, to Budapest, and then to Belgrade, Serbia made sense. It was significantly cheaper than to just book a bus straight to Belgrade, plus we got to add a couple countries to our list! We didn’t know what the Lord had in store for us in those countries…but we had faith, so we acted on it.
After booking our bus, we looked for accommodation. Long story short – we were reaching out to anyone and everyone we knew that had some sort of connection to Paris to see if they were connected to anyone we could stay with. The morning our bus left, we got a response! A friend of one of our other Squad Leaders was willing to open her apartment to us!
In full transparency – I was so thankful, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised. If there’s anything I’ve learned on these past 5 months on the Race, it’s that the Lord provides everything when you follow His lead.
Sabrina Lee is one of the most generous people I have ever met. Not only did she open up her home to 4 girls she doesn’t know, but she made us breakfast and lunch every single day, paid for some of our metro tickets, and even took us on a personal bike tour through Paris! (Okay, the bike tour was definitely per my request…I may have casually mentioned that it‘s on my bucket list to bike through a European town). She has a 17 year old son, Gabriel, who graciously let us not only take over his room for two weeks, but also his kitchen, his bathroom, his dog, and some of his mom’s attention. He quickly turned into our little brother, and by the end of our time there, we were all getting ice cream, daring him to parkour over random things on the sidewalk, and creating our own little dance-off circles.
Paris was a time set aside for our team to receive. We did some homeless ministry, and we helped set up a cafe that’s opening in a few weeks – but most of our time was spent with other believers encouraging, uplifting, and pouring into us.
Sunday, we went to Hillsong Paris. The service was in English (the first English service I’ve been to since January!) and they even had a worship night that evening… we went to that, too 🙂
During the week, Sabrina took us to her connect group for bible study. Another night, she planned a little dinner party for us to meet more people and get connected as well. We went to a movie about the apostle Paul with the church, met the Hillsong Paris campus pastor & her husband.
Our time ended with getting the opportunity to attend ENCOUNTER, Hillsong’s 2 day youth conference (youth is ages 15-25 here).
I left Paris refreshed, full, and ready for the rest of Europe.
Next stop: Budapest, Hungary.
We stayed at the YWAM Budapest base for our few days in Hungary. Our time was spent mainly doing logistics during the day & sightseeing in the evening.
Wouldn’t you know it, but the one person sharing our floor at the base was from Serbia! More specifically – from Nis, the town we felt called to go to. Our team jokes about the Lord sending us to Paris and Hungary for the ‘one’ – but that’s literally what’s happened!
Marco told us everything we needed to know about Nis, gave us contact information for his church, and really got us excited to go there for ministry.
So, we’re making our way there. We made a pit stop in Novi Sad for a few days, and then we’ll be in Nis until we have to be in Montenegro. The way He is leading us is so great – I’m excited to see what happens in these next couple of weeks, & I’m even more excited to share the stories with all of you!
Toute de la fruit!
