Canada Eh?!: English Conversations

For the last several months, since November, I have been organizing events that we call English Conversations. Once a week, we have been offering a free, relaxing evening where Francophones can practice their English. It is a time of making conversations in English and, if necessary, help correct them with their grammar or words.
At first I had not idea what to do. I didn't know what to expect, or how I was even going to get people to come. I was able to receive lots of help from the pastor here, and also from a member of the church who teaches English. She has done events like this before and was able to really help me understand how it had worked in the past. Since then, it has become much easier for me to organize and prepare for, but I know I wouldn't have been able to get this started without their help. They both come to the groups when they can, but I can still come to them for help if I run out of ideas or questions to ask people. Every week I am so thankful for their help.
Our schedules for the evenings are pretty simple: we start with social conversations, people mingling when they come in, we will most often have a game of some sort, and then we split into smaller groups to discuss the subject for the evening. Subjects have ranged from talking about the upcoming holidays, to local new reports to general topics such as family, culture, technology, music, and comedy. We never know who exactly will show up for the evening, but we have seemed to always have a decent amount of people. Some people come for a few weeks, but slowly don't come back. Some come for one week and don't come back, with or without an excuse. Some people contact us ahead of time to get more information, and sometimes they show up that week or they don't. Some people are disappointed when they realize it is not an actual English class, and others don't come when they find out we meet in a church. But we still have those people who keep coming back. We can't get rid of them! :)
The size of our groups vary every week, but God has been faithful to us and we usually have between 6 to 10 people every week. We are thankful for all who come, not matter if they are new or a "regular" person.
This week was our last session for a while. We decided to take a long break for the summer in preparation for the long week of kid's camps this summer. I was very encouraged by the fact that a lot of the people who have been coming, still want to try and get together a few times this summer. They love practising their English and want to see more of each other as well. Hopefully I will be seeing some of them this summer.
I am very thankful to God for our success in this, and I pray that we will be able to reach even more people next year.

Here are a few pictures from our last session.

The people