mission trip to paris.....

ok, so today, over lunch, i chanced to glance at the weekly hometown newspaper printed that comes out on thursdays and is read thoroughly by those that work in my thursday clinic setting......this news piece caught my attention........______to go on mission trip to paris......not paris kentucky...paris, france.........the group that is going plan a prayer walk around the city before working on landscaping chores around the host baptist church............you got that right.....a prayer walk around paris.......sounds like a vacation trip to me with a few marigolds thrown in...my guess is that her local church took up a love offering to send her to help the needy people of paris....oh yeah..and the 'missionaries' involved will be singing at the english and the french services.....the downside i suppose is that they will be sleeping at the church.....no details about whether this means on a pew....or on the floor.....in my experience with french churches...they use stacking chairs that are cleared away between...so i hope she is bringing a sleeping bag.....i am not surprised that the baptists are behind this venture...they have certainly come to see france as a country that is supposed to be catholic, but yet a country where few actually attend church regularly......i am sorry to seem so jaded about this 'mission' trip........but with places like indonesia devastated by the tsunami....and even places in this group's home county where folks live in shotgun shacks with no plumbing...one could imagine a truly useful prayer walk around the hometown neighborhoods before some truly useful home repair work and trashcleanup.........just a thought.............OR...i could become totally false and declare that my next trip to paris is actually a mission trip.......