Francophone Conference

April 21-23, 2008

Tom Gardner & I travelled back to Virginia in April. We have a wonderful Foursquare Conference Centre there called CrossPointe in Christiansburg, VA.

When the Muslim stronghold went bankrupt (a few Foursquare ladies nearby were praying for that) the Foursquare Gospel Church purchased the 100+ acres and developed it into a conference and retreat centre.

The Francophone Conference was attended by Foursquare Pastors & leaders from many of the 44 Francophone nations. I've included here an excerpt from Tom's notes on the conference:

We saw a video from the ICFG Convention in Jerusalem that chronicled the tearing down of a minaret (Moslem prayer tower) that was a part of the Conference Center in Christiansburg. The property had originally been purchased and developed as a training center for Islam in the geographical center in the Eastern part of the US. The center had a mosque that had never been worshiped in but had spiritual implications. The leadership of the US Church felt that the tower and mosque needed to be torn down. So Pastor Jack explained the rationale and the impact and promise of “towers coming down.” We viewed a DVD chronicling the fall of the tower on the property and we felt as though we were there and we appropriated this promise of the towers of Islam falling around the world and specifically in the French speaking countries of Africa and France.

The morning of April 22, 2008 was significant in that Canadians were the main presenters:

Barry opened with a brief overview of Canada communicating on some of the national
characteristics of our people and culture.

Shannon shared next about the struggles of coming into Quebec and breaking into the culture. She showed a video that helped people understand various parts of Quebec life and the need for the Gospel. Very interesting was the reality that Aimee’s meetings spawned many churches in Quebec and yet we have only the work in Sherbrooke at present.

Then Dan Fontaine shared passionately about the struggle for identity in Quebec and showed some very powerful videos to educate people about the history of Quebec in Canada. Dan represented us well.

Every meal we ate was representative of another French Nations cuisine. I believe this conference will spur us on in our development of Quebec as a Foursquare Province. Other national leaders, including Dan & Martine Lucero, who oversees our International French-speaking nations was enthusiastic about working beside us.