New Formula Brings Success
Running a restaurant is like running any other business when it comes to marketing. This meant for us a better understanding of our customers needs and wishes. People are changing and we could no longer keep going on the same way. So last fall we have changed our restaurant concept from an "All you care to eat" system to a cafeteria. The success was immediate.People can come now and spend the amount they want, take a pizza or just a drink. We had a real boom in the number of customers (almost double) and after time a good increase in our income.
Thanks to that change, we have also a much younger customer base.
Olympic Ski Champion Joins the Team as an Evangelist
To meet this new clientèle, their need and expectation, the Lord has blessed us with a unique talent. We now have with us a young man, Youri, working as an evangelist half time in the restaurant.
A few years ago this young man was competing with the national French ski team in the Olympics. A young man at his top. He then became an Adventist and decided to quit skiing because of the Sabbath. National papers and TV gave to that decision a large influence.
He is in charge of our communication. He meets customers and invites them to our lectures and programs. We are thankful to have him with us. This brings confidence about our health message to our customers.
Evangelism, Our Priority
We have developed our evangelism with new programs in Marseille. All together we will have 42 evening lectures in health and bible for the following 6 months.
Our greatest challenge is to have the public aware of our programs. But thanks to newspaper reports people are coming and the numbers are growing.
Country Life Marseille will also send a team to go with OCI to the Ukraine multi-site evangelism.
Baptism at Country Life
We have already harvested some fruit as a young lady working in the store has been baptized. From the restaurant team, two other workers have shown a strong interest and will soon visit our church. And in our team on the Outpost, two Muslim builders will also come with us to church. Pray for those interests.
Outpost
We have purchased a property in southern France, 1 hour away from Marseille and very nice. It is our vision to use this beautiful property to invite city center contacts. The beautiful scenery, the guest house, the hydro center, and the farm will attract city dwellers for a nice brake in the country.
This property offers many possibilities.
- An Outpost for Country Life Marseille, with a guest house, reconditioning center, housing for workers and a farm.
- An industry of its own, with a developing program
Selling Houses
Even though our property is located in a very restricted building area, we have 4 acres of building land. On that land we are actively working to start a building program, with 3 large houses that we will build. This will bring solid income for the project.
A lot of time has been spent to negotiate all the official approvals we needed, and the architect has placed a deposit for the building permits. In february we will start construction. Several buyers have already manifested an interest. This is indeed a new challenge, but our building team is good.
Outpost Work
We have many things meanwhile to do, remodeling the access road, building a sewage system, clearing the land.
We have been blessed with a treasure. In Provence (southern France) water is like gold and we have a big spring. We just need to renovate it for full capacity.
With the winter coming, we plan to work on the farm and prepare it for spring time. It is our vision to develop garden products for our store and restaurant and also to sale on site.
