Having been on my to-do list for some time now, writing our newsletter has now moved up to the 'really-must-do-before-going-on-holiday' slot. This spring saw the second anniversary of the upheaval that left us churchless and jobless. People often ask whether we feel better now. In some ways, yes: we have begun to appreciate some of the aspects of our new situation and feel less immediate pain. On the other hand, more than once I've compared the whole experience to an amputation. You can learn to be functional again, but it will never be the same as having all your limbs. And while a few more people have got back in touch and apologised for their part in things, the key players are still attempting to pretend that nothing ever happened, which is upsetting to say the least. Things can perhaps best be summarised by the news that around the anniversary date, I finally felt equal to actually going to have a look at our former church building for the first time, and confirm for my own eyes what I had heard, that it is up for rent: numbers of those meeting there have dwindled far beyond the point where they can pay the rent or make effective use of the premises. It's such a shame after everything we put in there together. Now for news of our current outfit, "Christ pour Tous". It's been a year since we got ourselves a permanent place to meet and so far we have managed to pay for it. Through the year numbers have held steady at up to 40 or so adults and children in attendance on Sunday mornings. This has included a surprising proportion of 18-25 year olds, and Rebecca's comment that the church seemed to be "coming along nicely" was music to my ears, coming as it did from a 19 year-old with every reason to be jaded with church. Somewhere over the last six months the church made a decision to recognise Naomi and I as its "pastoral couple" – which represents both recognition on the part of the membership and acceptance of this role on our part. The church is planning to confer some degree of spiritual responsibility to a few more people this autumn. In the mean time, I have been doing perhaps 90% of the preaching, which, added to my weekly preaching in prison chaplain role, means I have been preaching more often than at any time in my life, despite feeling far less qualified spiritually to do so. A wide variety of people have been involved in other ways and new talents have been revealed in people we've known for a long time. The ongoing challenge remains, however, for the church to find an identity other than simply 'those who survived the last church'. Prison work continues at least once a week, with chapel attendance sometimes threatening to overtake 'normal' church attendance. Three years into the job, I've come to accept the ebb and flow of spiritual interest and opportunities for more in-depth conversation. There is talk of an auxiliary pastor from the Gypsy church helping out, but this has yet to materialise. The future for our social action charity is more uncertain. Our fresh work commitments and the smaller size of our church means that we have not been able to provide the same type of care and follow-up for people in need as before, and without such a sustained level of input, we've seen a lot less of most of them. It looks as if we will not be able to finance a further renewal of the state-aided contract which gave one of our members a job with the charity. Naomi has decided to stand down as president because of her work commitments, and unless there is a dramatic reversal of circumstances, it looks as though the charity will have to be wound up.

On the professional front, we have been kept very busy. We took on quite a few hours teaching at the university during the closing academic year, and although some were lost (and probably not paid) due to the spring student unrest, we have had no shortage of work in the translation business. We're grateful for this (most days!), because we know others who have not managed to break into the same line of work. The nature of the business means that we rarely have guaranteed work from one week to another, but orders show no signs of slowing down at present. Most of the work is arcane technical and legal documentation, though one recent higher-profile job was for the Rennes Airport website (at the time of writing, our English version is not yet online). Changes at the university mean that while Naomi will have a similar number of hours to last year, it looks as though I will have a lot less, so we hope that there will be some more translation orders coming through to take up the slack. Financial donations we're receiving at present are being offset against expenses and time spent in 'ministry' not being spent in secular work, such as my prison work and counselling course, and regional women's leaders meetings for Naomi. It will be at least three years before we know whether our current operation is actually financially viable, because of the way the taxes and social contributions work, so in the mean time we are basically taking on everything that comes our way. Although we find running a business and translating satisfying in many ways, it will probably take us that long to determine if we would like to explore other options if we had the opportunity – right now, it's mostly a question of survival. After two years of post-high-school preparatory classes and doing well in written exams, Rebecca went to Paris in late June for two weeks' worth of competitive orals to enter top engineering schools. She returned briefly before leaving to work at Spring Harvest Holidays again for the summer, and it's occurred to us that if her exams go well, this could more or less be her leaving home. Joanna will be entering her final year at high school and facing career choices, while Thomas will be starting in the same bilingual section at the same school in the autumn. All of the children are now taller than at least one of their parents.and will soon outnumber them in the contest to have their hands on a vehicle. Finally, we are proud to report that Naomi and I have joined the children in being fullyfledged French nationals (in addition to still being British), and that we have the paperwork to prove it. Thank you for your continuing interest and support of all kinds.