News & Stories

By Brad Reynolds, serving at Eglise Protestante Internationale (EPI) in France. Planted in 2009, EPI is the first new church in the Toulouse suburb of Léguevin since the 12th century.

Recently, our friends from Long Beach Alliance Church, Scott and Dawn Trickett, joined me and my wife, Tina, along with two other women from EPI, for a weeklong distribution of postcards that introduce the church throughout Léguevin’s multicultural neighborhoods. The attractive card identifies the church on the front; a short paragraph on the back encourages people to send us a prayer request. Our desire is to be a house of prayer for all nations, because the spread of this gospel will depend on prayer.

Each day before walking the neighborhood, we asked the Lord to guide us, to help us have our eyes and hearts open to the Holy Spirit. As we put the cards in mailboxes, we prayed, “Lift up your heads, you gates; be lifted up, you ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in” (Psalm 24:7). Upon our return, we talked about our impressions, the people we had seen, and the things that God had put on our hearts. Then we prayed again for the areas we had covered.

“My Pleasure”

On the second day, the team made a significant discovery: a large cluster of apartments not on our map. Interestingly, the name of the complex is Monplaisir, which means “My Pleasure.” Could this be a message from the Lord? Scott had the impression that this just might be a place where God was going to draw people to Himself. After all of the cards had been distributed in the complex, we sat on a nearby bench and prayed.

The following Saturday afternoon, after returning to the “prayer bench” and praying for the people in the apartment complex, we stopped by the church building to pick up the mail. You can imagine our excitement when we found two postcards with requests for prayer. Wow! We were excited and thankful.

A House of Prayer

On Wednesday evening, we joined with other EPI members, and we gratefull added these requests to our prayers. Our culturally diverse body, which represents nine ethnicities, prays for and cares for each other’s needs. Our desire is to be a praying church—one that is completely dependent on God and His leading—developing our relationship with God and with one another.

With all of the postcards having been placed in mailboxes, we wanted to ask the Holy Spirit’s continued work in the areas we had visited. Dividing into two groups, holding the maps of the different neighborhoods of our city, we prayed specifically for each area. How exciting to think what God will do!