Ingrid and Roger Hamlet
May 2024
Prayer Letter
Dear friends, a lot has changed since we wrote to you last! We finished our ten week cross-cultural missions training course at All Nations Christian College in mid-March and followed this with some BMS specific training, two church visits, a short family holiday and preparation time for our move to France on the 17th April. As the hospital that we will be joining in January 2025 in Chad, Guinebor II, runs in French, we need to become fluent in French to work there effectively. As such, we have started at a French Baptist run language school in Massy, called 'Les Cedres', which teaches French as a foreign language. We have now been in Massy (south Paris) for about 2 weeks and are gradually getting used to our new surroundings.
At the time of our last newsletter, we were in week eight of our All Nations En Route course. The end of the course was particularly busy preparing for our research projects as well as continuing lectures on integral mission. Roger's research presentation delved into the intricacies of the political history of Chad and the impact this has had on Chadian worldview. Ingrid's project looked into communicating transitions to young children, picking key aspects of the research to translate into a children's storybook, complete with illustrations particular to our own journey. The story went down well with her two biggest critics (Mark and Joel)!
We stayed on at All Nations for two weeks after the course had finished to allow Mark to finish the school term and continue our BMS specific training, including an in depth 'hostile environment awareness training' course. We finished this period with our commissioning at BMS headquarters in Didcot which was a great way end the 'British' part of our training.
On the 17th April we moved to Massy, in the south of Paris, with the family and as much as we could fit alongside us in an estate car! We were received at our new apartment by a couple members of the 'Les Cedres' language school administration team and were helped to settle into our new environment by other students and the Les Cedres team, as well as established BMS mission workers in Paris, Philip and Rosemary Halliday.
We started our French language training on the Monday after our arrival and are getting to grips with the unique teaching style, 'the Silent Way'. This model involves intensive aural sessions attempting to perfect the sound and flow of the language, facilitating students to correct their own mistakes in a non-judgemental way. It's quite an intense way to learn a language but we're hopeful it will be fruitful in the long term.
Joel has been attending the creche at Les Cedres while we are in class (he joins us for lunch) where there are ten other under 3s, and Mark has started at a local French school. Mark is one of about six children at the 'Maternelle' school whose parents attend Les Cedres, but he is the only one in his class. He will start at the bigger school in September where a few of the other children also go. Thankfully, he seems to like school so far despite not understanding much and has been managing well with the longer school day. He even made a new friend on his first day, although he still isn't sure of her name!
There are quite a few other families with young children studying French alongside us so we look forward to getting to know them better, especially as those not staying in France will likely end up in a similar part of the world as us. As at All Nations, we are two of only a few British students here, but rather than there being the Europeans that were on the En Route course, here there are mainly American, Australian and Korean students (along with a few other nationalities).
Praise God:
That our French visas came through in time despite initial complications with the children's visas.
That the journey to France went smoothly and the children appear to be adjusting well to the new people, language and environment.
Prayer requests:
That we will continue to transition well into this new phase and that Ingrid and Roger pick up French quickly.
For the upcoming presidential elections in Chad on the 6th May – pray that they would be peaceful.
Thank you again for your ongoing support, we are so grateful for all the encouragement we have received as we move into the next phase of our training.