Heart For France

 

 Name: Kyla Campbell
Comments: Hi, my name is Kyla Campbell. I am studying to be a missionary in a Christian university in Florida, USA. I’m doing a mission research paper for a missions class, and I wanted to ask you some questions for my paper. We are to contact full time missionaries to find out their stategies and what they do in their field.
1. Why did you decide to minister in La Rochelle?
2. What way is the best that you have found so far for reaching people in your area of France? How did you find that way?
3. What ways have you found that are not good for reaching the lost in your area and why aren’t they effective?
4. Do you disciple converts, and if so,  for how long do you disciple them?
5. Which age group do you find to be most responsive to the gospel, and why do you think this is?
6. What types of obstacles to ministry have you encountered in La Rochelle?
7. Can you tell me any experiences where you have witnessed to someone with the way you have found best and the way you have found is not good? What were the outcomes of those situations?

Would you please respond to me as soon as you can? I greatly appreciate it. God Bless You Both!
-Kyla Campbell
 

Jim Vernon’s response here:

 

 

 

 

We will be hosting Bob Brunz’s daughter, Naomi, for a month. Bob is a Pastor in Sioux Falls, SD. His daughter is now a senior in high school and has a heart for France. She will be staying with us and a French family here. She will be going to a French Christian camp for 2 weeks with some of the French young people from the Church here. This way she will improve her French and get to know the French young people in a relaxed setting. She will learn more about France in these 2 weeks then months on the streets handing out tracks. Please pray for her safe travel. It is her first time out of the USA and changing flights and getting to the train station is not always without unforeseen events, especially when traveling overseas. Pray for God’s protective and guiding hand to be on her. Pray for us to be a blessing to her while she is with us and may her life be impacted for a bright future.
The ALPHA Course evening on healing was kind of uneventful but we were able to share our testimonies of God healing. It seemed that the evening headed in another direction. Most of the discussion was about husband and wife relationships. There was a real honesty among the couples who shared their weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
This week Annie shared that her and Eric are praying together and Eric also started praying himself. Something’s going on with this couple. Please continue to pray for their salvation and the healing of Annie’s Mom from the cancer in her back. Annie did tell us that her Mom has had no pain and is sleeping like a baby as she approaches her surgery and chemo/radiation. Something’s going on with her too.
Thank you for taking the time to include this family in your prayers!

Blessings from us here in La Rochelle, France.

Would You Partner With Us to Reach France?

Jim and Michelle Vernon
Missionaries Serving in La Rochelle, France

Dear Church Family and Friends:

A Lost Nation
We need you to partner with us this year to reach the lost nation of France.
We say lost nation because less than 1% of the French people are evangelical
Christians. France has a population around 60 million.

God’s Call to France
As many of you know we serve in the port city of La Rochelle, France. We
have been there for almost 5 years now. Our call to this city was a process
which took almost 6 years., beginning in 1996. During these years the Lord
confirmed this call through our local church and the help of many wonderful
brothers and sisters from several Churches. The Lord put in our hearts his
love for the people of this nation.

Our Present Ministry Projects
We are presently involved in The Book Without Equal Outreach which
presents the Bible as a remarkable book that everybody would want
to read, without mentioning God or Jesus until they had been convinced
of its uniqueness and value.
Next we offer the opportunity to make a relational connection with a Christian
by being part of an ALPHA Course/Bible Discovery group, where they can
ask any questions they want. This outreach is done house to house.

The ALPHA Course is an integral part of The Book Without Equal Outreach
kit. Our course is in French and all the evening presentations are on DVD
and have been put together in a way relevant to the French culture. In
this small group the French are able to ask any type of question and find
out first hand what the real Christian faith is all about.

Friendship Evangelism is one of our most effective means
of reaching the French people. Wherever we have lived we have intentionally
reached out to people who God gives us contact with. We have become their
friends and worked at the relationship to gain their trust, so that we would
be able to share our faith more effectively and with greater impact. We have
found that this is a “good strategy” and that statistically most people have
come to Jesus through a close relationship.

We are also involved with the Local French Church here
in La Rochelle to encourage the Pastor and his people.

Please visit our website: http://www.heartforfrance.org
to get more details about our ministry.

Financial Need
As you know France is one of the most expensive countries in Europe. In
August 2002, we arrived in La Rochelle with the minimum financial budget
to live here. When we arrived the dollar was equal to the euro. Since 2002
the dollar has dropped in value more and more each year. Presently, the
dollar is worth 36% less than the euro. That is to say that $100 is now
only worth $64 in Europe.
Therefore our minimum financial income from our USA supporters has also
dropped 36%+.
We would like to ask you to consider helping us this year with a regular
monthly gift. Would you pledge monthly $20 or more to our financial support
to serve here in La Rochelle, France? Your giving is what enables us to be
here.

If you are able to support this ministry, pledges may be sent to:
DOVE Mission International
France - La Rochelle Acct.
11 Toll Gate Road
Lititz, PA 17543

If you would like to make a contribution by credit card
access our website at: http://www.heartforfrance.org
and click on Make a Donation.

Thank you for considering this monthly pledge,

Jim and Michelle Vernon

My name is Jim Vernon and I grew up in Miami, Florida and was raised there
for most of my life. My family were middle class people. My Dad worked in a
parking garage and my Mom sometimes worked as a nurse in the evenings.

Sometime when I was 4 or 5 years old, my Mom had an experience with God
that changed her life. She started going to church and always took me with
her. Through my relationship with her and what I must have received from
the churches she took me to. I had something put in my heart. I’m not really
sure how it got there.

I remember at the age of 7, I was in the front yard shooting my bow and
arrows. I would shoot them from some distance and the arrows would go
under the grass in the front lawn and you couldn’t find them. Since I was a
very methodical person I would get down on my knees and search one small
square at a time so that I would be sure to find it. I searched for a long time
and just had to give up. In my desperation I stopped, stood up with my back
to the spot where I knew the arrow was and prayed: ” Jesus, I can’t find this
arrow will you help me? “. I then turned around and there was the arrow, my
eyes went right to it. So you can see when I was very young, Jesus was
working in my heart. I knew he heard me.

After years of going to church, when I was 12 years old, I was in a meeting
where we all had our heads bowed and our eyes were closed. The pastor was
asking if anybody would want to ask Jesus to forgive them for the things that
they had done in their life that didn’t please God and receive Jesus as the
leader of their life. While I was sitting there I heard a voice say to me, ” You
know you’ve never asked Jesus to forgive you and come into your life? “. I said
to myself, ” Yes, you’re right.” So that night I asked Jesus to forgive me and
come into my life. I had the same experience that my Mom had years earlier.

For the years following and into the teen years, I always went to church. I
wanted to please God but also wanted to drink with my friends and chase the
girls. You probably know the trouble that can get you into.

At the age of 18, I went into the Air Force and went to Biloxi, Mississippi for
technical training. While I was there I did go to church, but not frequently.
I continued to go drinking and of course chase the girls like most young men
do, especially airmen in the Air Force. This was the beginning of a dark time
in my life where I really drifted away from God.

When training was completed, I was sent overseas to the Philippines and
started my training into new levels of drinking and chasing the girls. I had
pretty much become “one of the guys” and my relationship with Jesus was
at an all time low. This was during the Vietnam War about 1967.

After my term in the Philippines was over, I was sent to Vietnam for about
a year and then back to the Philippines. This time in the Philippines, since
I knew the ropes, I lived off base and took my life style to new extremes.
We would go out all night bar hopping and would sometimes drink a case
of beer each - and I really didn’t like the taste of beer. We also were now
starting to smoke marijuana. My life was pretty much out of control. To
make things even more exciting we all had motorcycles and spent most of
our time racing from place to place at speeds exceeding 90 miles an hour.
Everything was coming to a climax.

One evening after a fight with a girl friend, I was coming home after having
quite a few drinks and was very upset. I was heading down a two lane
highway at about 95 miles an hour and was shouting to God: ” God kill me,
just kill me! “. Then all of the sudden my lights showed a horse drawn wagon
in front of me and I only had a split second to lean hard left. My right knee
hit the hub of the wagon wheel. I went sliding down the highway with sparks
flying. We came to a stop on the left side of the road in the gravel. It turns
out my right knee was shattered and had an open wound. I was in pretty
bad shape.

After a long time, an ambulance finally came and took me to the base hospital.
There wasn’t any pulse in my right foot. This turned out to be a blessing
because the broken bone had wrapped around the artery and cut off the
blood supply to my right knee. This had kept me from bleeding to death at the
accident scene.

After a month, I was transported by air to Tampa, Florida near where my
parents live in Miami. I was now in a spica cast which goes from your chest
to the bottom of your foot and I looked like a mummy.

One day they took me down to physical therapy to teach me how to walk on
crutches. While I was there I saw an older patient sitting on a table and I
said hi, but it was only a short conversation. He would turn out to be a very
special person later in this story.

After getting me up on crutches, I was sent home to my parents for a thirty
day leave. It was great to see my family but the joy was short lived. After 2
days a dark stain appeared on the side of the cast by my knee. My Dad took
me back to Tampa the next morning and the doctor found the knee to be
infected, a serious infection. That night my Dad went back to Miami and I
was put into an isolation room by myself. All during the evening the nurses
kept coming in taking blood. They looked at me as if I were a dead man,
something was seriously wrong.

In the middle of the night, I was lying in bed and I heard the same kind of
voice that I had heard when I was 12 and it said: ” You’re going to die!”.
That scared me. For the first time I cried out to Jesus, ” Have mercy on me,
Lord, have mercy! “. The next day I had an operation on the knee and
the day after was flown to Wilford Hall Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas.
I found out a year later while reading my medical records that at Tampa
they had found a life threatening disease in my blood, but when I arrived at
Wilford Hall the doctors couldn’t find any trace of it. I believe Jesus had
heard my cry for mercy and had removed it.

When I arrived at Wilford Hall, I was put in an isolation room with two other
men who also had infections, but there was something special about these
men in that they were studying the Bible and praying together. Jesus was
definitely drawing me back to him. The two men finally left my room and I
was alone. I drifted from the Lord again and began a long period in the
hospital that would last almost 2 years. The doctors main goal was to get
rid of the infection that was in my knee. I had four more operations on my
knee and no matter what they did they couldn’t get rid of it. Once they
thought they should amputate.

I was up on my crutches off and on between operations. One day I was
cruising down one of the halls, when I saw another patient that looked
very familiar. Guess who it was? The guy I had said hello too at the Tampa
hospital, in physical therapy. We became good friends and spent a lot of
time together. It turns out that he was a follower of Jesus too. He was a
fighter pilot and God had helped him bail out when his fighter was in a high
speed dive and the canopy wouldn’t open. Through this experience God
made himself real to him and he received Jesus into his heart. We talked a
lot about Jesus and prayed together.

One day he gave me a cassette tape that I listened to that afternoon. It
was a tape that a pastor from a church talked about the love of God for
me. Because of this love, I should give Him my life.

I don’t know exactly what he said that touched my heart but my heart broke.
I started really weeping. Something turned around in my heart and I believe
for the first time I gave Jesus the leadership of my life.

Before this day I had a constant draining of infection from the right side of
my knee for about a year and a half. That day, it dried up.

It is wonderful that Jesus would move heaven and earth for me. He finds lost
arrows, cuts off arteries, hears cries for mercy, puts disciples of Jesus in my
room, moves fighter pilots from place to place and sends me at the right time
a special cassette tape.

Click on Read Full Post and then click on link below:
http://www.heartforfrance.org/pdf/Godplan_PDF_Letter.pdf