Euro Bible School
Session 2 - "Marriage and Parenting Counselling"
Nice, Oct 2005
Superb surroundings, breath-taking sunsets, vibrant fellowship, distinguished french cuisine, and a flair of catholic seminary. These all describe the 3 wonderful days we spent together in Nice, as the second session of the European Bible School took place in Oct 2005. Over 80 disciples from more than 20 European cities took the trip to Nice, France, late in the fall, only to be surprised by cloudless 24°C and the possibility to take a swim during class breaks.
As we enjoyed the late warm sun of the Cote d'Azur (our Estonian brothers had snow the day they left), we could enjoy even more the outstanding lessons on Marriage and Parenting, given by the McAnulties and the Shaws. Every day we had about 7 hours of teaching, discussion and exercises, based on the Bible and taught in a clear, yet very humble and many times humourous way. We learned about God's purposes for marriage, basic attitudes in marriage counselling, we discussed our visions for our marriages, learned about the importance of really understanding your spouse, about communication, about conflict resolution, basic acceptance, forgiveness and reconciliation. In the Parenting class we learned about the importance of understanding our covenant with God, ways to help develop a Christ-like character in our children, about our responsibility and the one of the child, about traps, prayer and progress. The class was crowned with a moving 20-minute presentation of the growing up and the wedding of one of the Shaws children.
As we finished our time in worship on Sunday, learning about the destructiveness of a judgemental spirit and the desire of God to help all his children get "vaccinated" against the plague of sin, we could not help but raise our voices together and wholeheartedly sing "Our God is an awesome God!". He truly is, and we all are grateful for the lessons and the memories of the EBS session 2 in Nice, France.
