When Mandy and I left France in late 2019 with our one-year-old son Caleb, our dog, and five suitcases, we could never have imagined what lay ahead. Though we had contemplated and prepared for our trip for a few years, had we known all that we were to face, we would never have had the courage to take on the challenge.

When I was younger, I traveled a lot between Norway (my mother’s home country), France, and Switzerland (my father’s home country) because I had missionary parents. Finally, our family settled down in Montpellier in the South of France. Mandy, on the other hand, spent her whole life in the same little village, South West, an hour north of Bordeaux, France.

When we got married, I moved to her region where we attended her family church, a Pentecostal church from the French Assemblies of God. In France, I would say the Christian landscape is divided in three different groups. The Catholic Church is the main religious movement, as it used to be the state church until the early 20th Century. Catholicism in France is mainly a religion of tradition, and a very large number of French people have been baptized as infants even though their parents were not believers. Then there are the Protestants, but there are very few churches still believing the Scriptures are the inspired words of God. Finally, the fastest-growing Christian movement in France is the evangelicals. They are composed essentially of churches of the Assemblies of God. Most of them do not consider themselves Protestant anymore because of secularism and disbelief among traditional Protestant churches in France.

Even though I grew up among those evangelicals, I had a different view on the Christian family and baptism. I had been baptized as an infant, but since evangelicals consider adult baptism as the only true baptism, I was forbidden to serve my church as I didn’t want to get rebaptized.

Then Caleb came along in 2018. That’s when we decided to take a trip to North America for a spiritual journey. The idea was to spend a year abroad for our son to hear English, to spend some time together as a family, and to find God’s call for our life. Our hopes were also to find churches where we could finally share the same biblical vision of the family and children, and where maybe we could have our son baptized. Through theological courses I started online in 2017 with the Reformed faculty of Farel in Montreal, I was already in contact with a Reformed church in Canada.

So last September we left everything behind us—family, church, friends, job, and house—in order to take this spiritual journey with our son. We knew God was calling us for something different from all our expectations but didn’t have a precise vision, only that we had to put the wheels in motion and trust Him. We also had a crazy dream to write a book about faith, parenthood, and secularism in the church. I say a crazy dream because we had never written a book before. We’re still working on it, writing a lot every day and hoping to complete our manuscript by summer’s end.

A month before our flight from France to Montreal, we started our own monthly magazine, Carnet de Voyage, which we began to send to a hundred people, mostly family members and Christian friends along with some ex-colleagues (non-Christian friends from the bank where I worked and social workers from Mandy’s former employment).

But as we started our journey, living by faith took us in quite a different direction. Our journey became a quest for truth. In a society that is devastated by all kinds of violence, death paved our road. First, in Montreal, we were writing about the difficult topic of suicide. Even more taboo than sex, this subject is barely, if ever, discussed in churches. Still, there are few Christian communities that haven’t been touched by it. I took an online course with the QPR Institute in Seattle (an institute working for the prevention of suicide) and thoroughly studied the Bible with regard to suicide and mental distress. On her side, Mandy also started studying Christian counseling. And the week we decided to publish our writings, a father killed his two young children before ending his own life. This happened in our neighborhood, and two friends we met in Tetreaultville (Montreal) asked me to come for a gathering at the house to pay our respect to the children. That hit us hard.

In December, after three months in Montreal, we left Canada for the United States. The idea was to cross the country from East to West till California, then head north to Vancouver in March. Of course, such a travel necessitated quite a budget; and, despite our savings, our funds were not unlimited. But we trusted God and hoped that people would open their doors to our family here and there along our way.

As we crossed the border, we had only one U.S. family—in Washington, D.C.—who had promised to host us. But then, thanks to Helen and Phillipe Choinere-Shields, friends we had met at the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Montreal, we were put in touch with Drew and Lynne Gordon in Pittsburgh, Pa. And that’s how it started. From there God confirmed His faithfulness to us through a chain of hospitality involving so many Christian brothers and sisters, particularly in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America.

For our family, it was also an amazing opportunity to discover a Christian denomination that we had not heard about in France, and one in which the family and the transmission of faith were highly valued.

Meeting brothers and sisters who believed that God’s promise was also for their children and with whom we finally found a common ground on the important subject of infant baptism was really refreshing.

Back to our road trip: the Gordons contacted the B Family [name withheld for security purposes] in Kansas City, Mo., and Pastor Matthew and Marcie Sexton in Quinter, Kan. Both families opened their homes to us. Then Marcie asked some friends of hers, Keith and Jill Mann in Colorado Springs, Colo., if they had a room available for our family for a week. Once there, Jill called her cousins Tim and Lori McCracken in Fresno, Calif., who happily agreed to host us later in January. In the meantime, Marcie found us another place to stay, in Los Angeles, where Pastor Nathan Eshelman offered the Bunk Room in their church. He in turn put us in touch with Pastor Ryan and Alicia Hemphill in Seattle, Wash.

After we reached the West Coast and headed North toward Vancouver, we arrived near San Francisco, where Marcie helped us one more time. Her uncle and aunt, Pam and Ray Majauskas, invited us to stay with their family for a full week. That’s where we met their three daughters Suzy, Margaret, and Michelle, and Ray’s mother—“Grandma,” as Caleb liked to call her.

What we didn’t know when we arrived in their house was that they were strong Bible believers as well, to the point that they believed Genesis was history and that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old. For months I had been working on the subject of what I saw as a war between Christian faith and the religion of naturalism disguised under the name of evolution. While in Kentucky in December, we visited the Ark and the Creation Museum, and I even had the opportunity to interview Dr. Terry Mortenson and Dr. Danny Faulkner, who both work for Answers in Genesis (they hold PhD.s in history of geology and astronomy).

But it was not until the end of January while staying with the Majauskas that I managed to finish my work. As we published another issue of our magazine raising the questions of the origins and the theological implications of the old-earth view, something strange happened again. A few days later we received feedback from one of our readers, telling us that the age of the earth was not relevant to Christian faith. To support such a standpoint, that person sent us a link to an article from scienceetfoi.com. This website is by one of the French leaders of the theistic evolution position, leading astray many Christians from the true faith in Christ. And it didn’t come as a surprise to find out that this organization was supported by Francis Collins and his foundation Biologos. As I read through a few articles on their website, I was stunned to find a tribute paid to their founder who had just passed away. He had died suddenly the day following our publication. He was 48 years old and an influential evangelical pastor in France. Sadly, here is one of his last comments he posted on his website: “It’s sad to see how one can deny the reality in the name of a literal interpretation of the Bible which leads us to imagine a physical world which has never existed. Let’s hope with all our heart that the French evangelical world will not fall into intellectual and scientific obscurantism and thank you for contributing.”

That’s when our journey took a different direction, as we came to realize that what we were looking for all the time was nothing less than the truth, the total truth from Genesis to Revelation. In a society that claims that God doesn’t exist and neither does the truth anymore, our journey had become a quest for truth. In the Western world where truth is dead (or so they think) and relativism is the new leading religion, what is more important for the church than to proclaim that the truth exists?

How many young Christians abandon their faith because they think the church has lost the battle of truth and historicity? What does it say about the church? Are we ashamed of the Word of God? Have we lost the battle of origins, limiting our faith to symbolism and values? If so, we need to reclaim history, real science, and the meaning of words in order to prepare the next generation for the battle, which will only worsen. Faith without historicity has no power against evil; the cross without a historical Fall can offer us neither grace nor eternal life.

After three exciting but tiring months on American roads where we had seen God display His power and faithfulness, we finally reached Chilliwack near Vancouver. Once again a Christian family contacted by the Majauskas hosted us. Linda and Bert Vane offered us a place to stay with them the last week of February until the start of our rental in March. But once more, death was going to force us to look deeper into our quest.

At the beginning of March, barely two weeks after our return to Canada, the coronavirus spread death and fear on a scale we would never have imagined. Suddenly we felt as never before the littleness of human beings, of ourselves. There in Chilliwack, far from France and our families, far from Europe, which was closing all his borders one by one, we were left alone with our faith in God as the sole remedy to our fears. How would we reach Montreal in June with our car? Would it still be possible to drive through Canada by then and board our flight? Did it mean we had to use all our savings to modify our flight at a very high cost and leave now? If we stayed, what would be the state of the world and of France?

After this pandemic, the world as we know it might well change, but our faith will not; or, if it does, we know it will be strengthened. For our part, we’ve decided to continue our journey of faith. We trust God will open new doors for our long drive between Chilliwack and Montreal in May and then show us how and where he wants to use us once we’re back in France.

We know where we come from, we know what death is—certainly not a fatal gift from Mother Nature—and especially we know what life is because we know Jesus Christ. In a world that is morally collapsing, the only way to protect our children is to teach them the whole truth—not just ideas, concepts, or a philosophy of life. We need to remember that real knowledge is only available through the Word of God; true science is the fear of God. He is the beginning and the end, our loving Creator and the only way to eternal life.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!” (John 14:6–7).

Lars and Mandy Fracheboud and their two-year-old son, Caleb, are from South West, France. Their website is highest-peak.fr.