There are around 30 of us in the United Church of God in France, Belgium and Switzerland. We live apart from one another and gather only for the Feast of Tabernacles.

Everyone has Sabbath services at home. We receive audiotapes and have the hymns on a CD made by one of the members who is a music teacher. So even though we're not together physically, we still can have regular services every Saturday, which is a great blessing because we know that's not possible for everyone around the world.

What is necessary to understand is that France, like many Western countries, is growing less and less religious. Since World War II many people have stopped believing in a God who created mankind and loves us. They believe that with all the suffering people endured in that war and others, such a God couldn't exist.

Religion is a difficult subject to tackle. People almost never talk about this with each other. There are three main religions in France: Catholicism (which is the mainstream belief), Judaism and Islam (we have a great number of people who immigrated from North Africa to France, either in the 1950s to help in the reconstruction of France after World War II or in the 60s when those countries gained their independence from France).

Other religious organizations are generally regarded as cults and are highly scrutinized by French authorities. When we created the French association of UCG, we had to pass before a Commission. It examined our beliefs to make sure we were not a cult before finally allowing us to legally create the association.

If you start talking about religion to anyone you don't really know, you are likely to be regarded as weird, and people may look at you differently because they don't know you enough to not be afraid.

When you talk to people, you rapidly sense that they tend to decide moral issues for themselves. Any law or command that would come from a God they have never seen is viewed as a limitation on their freedom.

When they look at European history (even back to the Middle Ages), they see how much damage, murder and suffering have been inflicted in the name of God, mainly by the Catholic Church. So they don't want God in their lives.

As a teenager, I never told any of my friends about my religious beliefs. They would not have understood. But I finally confided some of my beliefs in two school friends three years ago. They kept wanting me to come with them on Friday night and Saturday, and it was getting harder and harder to find explanations to refuse without lying. But I told them very few things, just that I believed in God and that I rest on Saturday and not Sunday as Catholics do (people understand more easily when you compare things to what they are familiar with). They didn't ask for more information and I didn't give them any.

However, six months ago I explained the whole thing to my best friend at work. It took me a year and a half before I could take that step! In our conversations, he already knew that I believed we were created by one God. I knew that he didn't share that belief, even though he wasn't absolutely ruling out the idea of some kind of a superpowerful being as the explanation for things we don't understand.

Because my beliefs have such an importance in my life, I had come to feel more and more that I wasn't being truthful to him, as if I wasn't really showing him who I was.

Moreover, we had reached a point where he knew me well enough that nothing I might tell him would change the way he saw me. So I made up my mind and found a way, last summer, to explain everything to him. We talked a lot about it. He was interested in knowing how important it was in my life and the influence it had on my daily conduct.

He still doesn't believe in God, but he respects my opinion and only sees me as I am. He told me that the most important thing, as far as he is concerned, is that this way of life makes me and others around me happy.

He was particularly impressed by the wonderful family relationships I have thanks to what we share. Indeed, I have 11 members of my close family in the Church and that's a great blessing and strength in my life.

I feel relieved that he now knows about it. We sometimes talk about some particular points, more as a philosophical exchange, knowing that neither one of us could convince the other.

My friend is not called. I can see that now. But I also know that the day will come when he'll know the truth and that he will accept it. And I want to believe that I will have played some role in that—that I will have made a difference in his life.

I have discovered that if we don't see any fruits of our work right now (as currently seems to be the case in France) we have to go on anyway and keep being a good example to the world. We never know when our example can touch someone and make a difference. When people are called, whether now or later, maybe they'll be more ready to accept God because they remember us and that little something we did for them or said that one day.

Whatever your age, know for sure that you can make a difference in people's lives by just living God's way! VT