1/27/16

Prayer letter January 25, 2016

January 25,2016

Dear Friends and Supporters,
We pray that 2016 has started well with each of you. It is hard to believe that we are finishing up the month of January. Here in France, as you surely know, 2015 ended with that terrible terrorist attack in Paris. We are about 130 miles north of Paris, but that seems close when things like this happen.

We had Joe Logan from a church in Pharr, Texas with us for three months. He was a blessing and we enjoyed having him with us. While he was here, he started learning French. By the time he returned to the US, he was not far from the understanding stage. Please pray for him, as he is praying for what the Lord would have him do in his future. We would like to see him in France.

For our Christmas program, the children did a great job with a play about the birth of Christ and several in the church formed a choir. I also shared a gospel message. Counting everyone, we had about 80 people present with quite a number being visitors. Pray that the contact with them will continue.

On December 21st, we went down to Toulouse to spend Christmas with Rebecca and her family. We arrived on Monday evening and Rebecca went into labor on Tuesday and gave birth about a month early to a baby girl that they named Constance. They came home on Wednesday. Thursday, Christmas Eve, Lydia, their 8-year-old daughter was holding Constance and saw that she was turning blue. She was not breathing. Lydia called her mom and Rebecca was able to get the little one breathing again. Back to the hospital they went and Constance was there for about 10 days. She came home from the hospital and a few days later came down with bronchiolitis. She has since been in the hospital again. She still has spells of stopping breathing (there is a machine attached that warns when this happens) Please do pray for her and for the whole family.

I went to St Albain for a pastor's meeting for our fellowship of churches from January 11th to 13th. This was not far from Lyon. Rebecca called and asked if we could keep Celeste (6 years old) and Justin (3 years old) to help them out since Constance is still in the hospital. So I drove to the train station in Lyon and Rebecca brought them there on the train. So we have had two of our grand children with us and if all goes as planned, Judy will take them back to Toulouse this Wednesday.

I saw the surgeon on January 8th about my shoulder. The last time I saw him, he talked about operating to remove the plate that he put in my arm last March and doing it at the end of January, but now, he wants to wait until March 3rd. It seems to me that this plate is preventing me from being able to raise my arm as high as is normal. There will be quite a bit of physical therapy afterwards. Please pray for this.

We had the January session for the Bible Institute. There were only two of the students that were able to attend. Please pray that more of the students will participate next time for the next session. We are praying that churches will use the video classes that we offer to train pastors in their local churches. The students could study in the morning, for example and be involved with the church work in the afternoons and evenings. Pray that churches will get a vision for this and that there will be young men that will be called to serve as pastors. About a third of pastors in our type of churches in France will be at retiring age in the next 10 years, we must train those who will take up the torch.

Another project that we have been working on is writing my story. My mother had at heart to share my experience with dyslexia, which was hardly known in the early 1960s. Then I will be been telling the rest of the story. Pray that we can get this done and that it could be an encouragement to parents who see their children struggling in school and don't know what to do. God can help and give a future! “… His compassions fail not, They are new every morning...” Lam 3:22-23… We will call the book, “From Dyslexia to France by the hand of God”.

May the Lord bless each one of you and thank you for being a part of this ministry.

Yours in Christ,
Greg and Judy Sirmons

44 rue du faubourg de Bethune
59000 Lille, FRANCE

Voip phone : 913-871-4427

http://sirmons.info and http://bible.com.es





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