{"id":4456,"date":"2026-02-23T15:02:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T14:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/?p=4456"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:02:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T14:02:27","slug":"pres-de-40-ans-plus-tard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/pres-de-40-ans-plus-tard\/","title":{"rendered":"NEARLY 40 YEARS LATER"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Weekly Update<\/strong>&nbsp;\u2013 February 23, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some conversations are extremely captivating. That was the case yesterday over lunch at a restaurant in Vichy. We are with a couple I met in the mid-1980s. Laurent, a teenager at the same middle school in Clermont-Ferrand, discovered the Gospel through our family. At the time, he would take his Bible to school to read on a bench at breaktime. This young man had a powerful encounter with God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The woman who would one day become his wife found Christ thanks to an elderly Christian neighbour who invited her mother and siblings to the church in Clermont.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had lost sight of Laurent and Myriam. I had no idea what had become of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But a miracle happened a few weeks ago: Yukki and I were sitting on the balcony of a concert hall in Vichy. A few rows in front of us were Laurent and Myriam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Laurent recounts:&nbsp;<em>&#8220;The Holy Spirit said to me, Turn around, Timoth\u00e9e Paton is behind you!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When he called out to me, I didn&#8217;t recognize him. I didn&#8217;t even know that the woman next to him was his wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday, we finally took the time to sit down over a good meal and catch up on close to 40 years!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>This testimony reminded us of two truths:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1- The seed of the Gospel is never sown in vain. If only we knew all those to whom we have ever spoken&nbsp;\u200bof&nbsp;our faith who are now (without us even knowing it!) disciples of Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;2- Let us always be attentive and obedient to the voice of the Holy Spirit. (He can even help us find childhood friends again!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Timoth\u00e9e &amp; Yukki <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-non-classe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4459,"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4456\/revisions\/4459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timotheepaton.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}