My family and I have walked past their tall, leafy-green hedges every day on the way to our kids’ school, but we had yet to meet our neighbors. I rarely saw them home, so I began to pray for an excuse to knock on their gate and meet them.

One morning I heard a knock at our door. It was the neighbor I wanted to meet!

“You have caterpillars in your evergreen tree,” she said.

When we moved in, someone had warned us about that possibility and given us strict instructions to remove the poisonous insects and burn the branches immediately so that they wouldn’t harm our kids or our pets. Our neighbor had come over to tell me the possibility was now reality.

“Thank you,” I said. I guess this was an answer to prayer?

We exchanged introductions, and before my neighbor left she invited us over for dinner that evening.

As we walked in the door of our neighbor’s house, my four-year-old daughter saw someone she recognized! She ran to give her friend a hug as she realized they were not only classmates but neighbors, too.

We enjoyed the evening with our neighbors, and even got to share about our reason for being in France — to share the hope of Jesus with the people we meet. It turns out that my new friend had spent a year as an exchange student in North Carolina when she was 15 years old. Her host family faithfully took her to church, and she admired the love and joy emanating from the people she met there.

“I assure you,” she said, “if I had stayed in America, there’s no doubt I would have converted.”

Some 20 years later, we are the first believers she has met in her country.