Canvas & Club

Tuesday began early for Derek and Chris as they left for a day trip to Bala, a mountain lake community in North Wales, where a Welsh-speaking pastor’s conference was being held. Bala is about 4 hours away from Swansea, along a beautiful ocean road, then a mountain pass, ending at Lake Bala. Derek was attending a Welsh-speaking, evangelical pastor’s conference where a number of our other ministry partners was attending. Over lunch and a follow up coffee, we were able to catch up with Rhun, Rhys, Aron, and several others known and new. We talked about their church’s and personal ministry, the leadership and congregational challenges, and potential for new opportunities and ways we can support them back in Oklahoma. Many of these men are faithfully serving the Lord and carefully considering the best ways to move their people to maturity, depth and vision for those outside their walls. To give you a sense of the challenge, two of the congregations key prayer requests right now are: (1) that there would be at least one new believer conversion at Pen Y Bryn in Wrexham, and (2) that there would be at least one family to join the church at Capel Seion.

While they were traveling across the Welsh countryside, the Oklahoma team - along with help from Huw and new-believer Katie on the Welsh team - folded, combined, stuffed and delivered over 400 copies of the Capel Seion newsletter and invitation to the Waunarlwydd community. The team is doing some fantastic work, diligently committed to their tasks and working though some wild situations, including snakes-in-gardens and dogs-behind-the-mailslots.

On Wednesday, the teams reconnected in the morning before heading down to Tesco’s for supplies for the afternoon kid’s clubs, a quick trip to the market for Welsh cakes (2-dozen turned into 3-dozen pretty quickly), and a rush out to Capel Seion in time for the extra-hours Kids’ Club from 1-5pm, and Youth Club from 5-7pm. We had games, snacks, candy and - most importantly - some great Bible lessons from Jenny, Darrin, Greg and Anna. We even cooked Tex-Mex food (the best we could) for the older kids, and it seemed to be a great hit.

The night wrapped up with a team flyer-printing, folding-and-stuffing and envelope labeling party out at Carmel in Pontlliw. Tomorrow (Thursday) we’ll be delivering the remainder of the community flyers - approximately 800 more - with the goal of reaching every household in Waunarlwydd!

A Whirlwind Blog Post

Things are moving so fast here on the ground, and we’ve been so busy, I’m struggling to find a way to update those who would care to know about the our time so far.

First of all, our travel was really quite good and even immigration was the fastest and smoothest of any trip to date. After arriving in London, we took a series of trains to meet up with Derek at the Cardiff Central station, but to our great surprise were met by 10 of our friends including Sophie and a friend, Emma & Liam, Yvonne & Paul Skryme, Huw, Tomos, and Gareth! We took a brief walk around the city center to take in a castle, especially the portions built by the Romans in the 1st century. We were all fading quickly at this point but took in a nice dinner and drove the hour to Swansea and our favorite Dragon Hotel. 

Sunday was a very busy day, beginning with the excellent buffet where all the newbies were encouraged to try Marmite (you only try it once). Then we all headed to the village Waurnarlwydd (“wine-arl-wythe”) just outside of the city where Capel Seion is located to workshop with the church there. Well, I say “everyone,” but the truth is that Gavin had the opportunity to travel over to Capel Carmel and preach to the bilingual service in Derek’s place. We later had excellent reports from the thankful parishioners there about both Gavin and Tomos. Tomos did, however, take a selfie of he and Gavin as they set in the Deacon’s box at the beginning of the service - a picture I’m still trying acquire for posterity. Derek was completing a sermon series from Acts and spoke powerfully and wonderfully on prayer. 

After the service, the nice ladies of the church provided us with tea and cakes (I just LOVE this tradition) followed by a return to Capel Gomer, buying out the lot of pasties from Gregg’s and preparation for the Capel Gomer service where Gavin was once again going to lead the group while Derek and Chris returned to Capel Carmel for the afternoon all-Welsh service.

We finished the evening in great style with the Hope Siloh kid’s club which is always full of fun, laughter, games and sweets. Oh, and Greg did a great job sharing his testimony with the kids!

After all the fun and “nourishment” (both physical and spiritual) on Sunday, Monday is when all the hard work began. As usual, this is when things can get sticky and challenging as if someone were out to stop you…go figure. But morning challenges of rain, sickness for a team member, rental car difficulties, and late-night copy making turned into an excellent morning of devotional, planning and packet-stuffing, walking Waunarlwydd in preparation for tomorrow and delivering the mandated Christian lesson at the local elementary school. Jenny told the story of Peter & Jesus walking on the water, Gavin led a fun song and Layla invited the whole school to our Friday event. Interestingly, on the way out, we found out that the school is participating in a strike on Wednesday and the kids are going to be out of school. We’re going to make lemonade out of lemons and create an event on the fly to give them all something to do on Wednesday afternoon. It’s a extended version of the regular Kid’s club which is already seeing 40 kids show up on a regular basis.

History lessons

The final day of any trip is always full of mixed emotions: joy & relief at successfully completing the mission, excitement for the day of fun with new friends, hope to soon return to family and those we love at home, and heartbreak and the thought of leaving this place & the people that you love so much. It was fairly complex day and we didn’t quite get in all the stops on our original agenda, but we did get to visit a number of really cool sites:

• First was the country site, out in the Gower Peninsula area, where the first Welsh Baptist church was established in 1640. It is built on the site of a pre-Reformation Catholic church by the Trinity Well (a natural spring), and was likely a former ancient Celtic/Druidic site before then.
• Next we visited the Long Cairn & Cathole Cave area where ancient peoples lived and were buried. There is evidence there that the cave system has been inhabited as far back as 10,000 BC, and included skeletal remains from wooly mammoths, wooly rhinos and other ancient species.
• Finally, the Mumbles is a really nice, somewhat touristy, area with Welsh spoon stores, another Joe’s ice cream, pubs, and lots of souvenir shopping. This was our last stop before heading back to Capel Gomer to get our luggage and the journey to Cardiff for our hotel.

After a quick detour back to the Mumbles to retrieve a lost backpack and passport(!), we packed up the cars with all our luggage and headed off to Cardiff. We made another stop at the Toby’s  in Cardiff, and enjoyed a carvery and some puddings (desserts) with Derek, Alaw, Gareth, Huw, Tomos, Sophie and Matthew before the final journey to the airport hotel. The “long goodbye” is an understatement when it comes to describing our hugs (and a few tears), but eventually our exhaustion overcame all and our Welsh friends had to head home. After a long week, late nights and emotional days, a 3:30am wake up call is difficult to imagine, but our hotel shuttle left at 4am even though I flight didn’t leave until 6am. We all made it, however, and are happy to be on the way for very long 22 hour travel day.

Encouraging Signs

Monday was another day of full ministry on the ground at the main Swansea University campus, the Swansea Met campus and the local student housing area called the Uplands. Before we began, Gavin once again prepared our hearts through a look at 2 Timothy and encouraged us to establish our genuine service in, and only in, Christ. Probably or most successful day yet, several of the team were able to meet and have long spiritual conversations with a number of interested and open students, some of who had little or no idea of what the Biblical story was even about. Two of the ladies that met with Gavin, Stephanie and Sean, later joined out team for sodas as the local pub later that evening to continue to discussion.

Meanwhile, as our team was serving in their respective locations, I was able to schedule and hold several professional conversations with me peers at Swansea Univeristy. The information technology team was so kind and open and spent a good 2 hours with me talking over issues and concerns that we all seem to have in common. After a quick lunch in the student union, I met with Ms. Angela Jones in the International Development office. Ms. Jones is responsible for developing and supporting all of the student exchanges with North American universities, including a grant program in Oklahoma (funded by the state legislature through the OK State Regents for Higher Education) that provides airfare, all tuition and all housing costs for students at Oklahoma regional colleges - including UCO - to attend Swansea university for a full semester and earn up to 15 credits.

After a quick take-out dinner from a local fish shop, we cleaned up Capel Gomer again for the renewal of Derek’s Monday night Bible study, now delivered in English as part of the outreach to the non Welsh-speaking student population. The 10 Welsh, 10 American attendees had an excellent discussion of Matthew 7 and were all challenge to carefully judge our motivations for ministry & service to the Lord. We finally ended the night at the pub again; I believe we’ve all become addicted to a fruit-juice soda called “J20” and will be experiencing the signs of withdrawl when we get home.

Worshiping across south Wales

Sunday is always one of my favorite days here in Swansea as we get to visit the churches and hear Derek preach. This trip, we were not able to go back to Capel Seion in the morning as they were having a special shared service with another nearby church, so we packed up and took a ride out to Carmel Pontllu and worshipped with about 25 members in a great little chapel, ornamented with candle holders (because it was built in the 1830s), a pipe organ, high preaching lecture and a deacon box (complete with 2 deacons). It was a wonderful service, conducted in both Welsh and English, on our behalf, with the most warm and welcoming congregation. After an excellent sermon on stewardship, sacrifice & service, the congregation held a tea for us in the vestry and we got to see a few of the kids from last Friday’s kids club. One of them, Ioin (pronounced “yo-ann” and is Welsh for “John”) had told us about his mother who had been injured when falling from a horse. We got to meet her and Ioin’s father, both of which - it turns out - had only become Christians within the last few years. We spotted a large display of photos of them being baptized (in a pit dug in the middle of the parking lot, actually), and I was reminded of how a salvation & baptism are such a huge event (a party!) for them…we’re missing out in that respect back in the Bible belt.

After a generous lunch of  Sunday grill at the Potters Wheel pub, we returned to Capel Gomer to convert our living quarters back into a church for the Sunday afternoon service. Derek has been teaching through Ecclesiastes and we were able to hear him preach on chapter 3 where the writer reminds us of our mortality, eternity and the eventual promise of God’s ransom. It’s always wonderful to hear Derek preach. He is a gifted communicator and speaks with wisdom, power and joy that is always an encouragement. After service, we walked (in the rain, imagine!) down to Costa and had a great conversation with Aled, Llyr, Huw and several other Capel Gomer members.

We then learned that another of Derek’s friends, Aron Treharne who pastors the Penvel Welsh Baptist church in Camarthen, was having a contemporary evening service and had invited us to attend. Even though we’d had a busy week and long day, our team was always up for another opportunity to minister, and this was no exception. We drove the 30-minutes to the town of Camarthen, and met Aron along with young Sam whom I’d had the chance to meet last summer at the Bala kids camp. After several rounds of around-the-world ping pong, Sam gave talk on Psalm 90and we worshipped together. We’d missed dinner but late night pizza is apparently a universal option.

We don't starve here

After our Defro event last night, the team went out for a late kabob (not everyone had been able to eat that much), had a brief review of the day and discussed how neat it was to see all of Derek’s efforts together in one room and finally got to bed around 1 or 2:00 am. Needless to say, everyone had quite a slow start to our Saturday morning. We all walked the few blocks down to the Swansea city center and market, bought some hot (and extremely good) Welsh Cakes for breakfast, and set the team loose on the area to wander, explore, hand out flyers, and seek opportunities for conversation. After a nice lunch at Greggs (famous chain of a british speciality called a pasti, pronounced “pass-tee”), we gathered the group for trip out of town to watch Gareth’s old rugby team play a match.

The rugby game was really fun: Gareth’s father somehow worked a deal to get us an invite to the sponsors balcony and we even had our attendance announced over the loudspeakers and Gareth’s home team won the game and pass on to the next level of the tournament. That night, we gathered and all experienced a “curry” (many more Indian resturants there) before ending the night a local pub to play an oversized version of Jenga, pool and other games. 

Everyone was quite pleased to return to the Dragon Hotel for another night and get a fresh bed, long warm showers and a big, full breakfast the next morning.

Wake Up!

Today is Friday, the night of our special event called “Defro!” Basically, “defro” means “wake up!” and was originally an idea started by a brand new Christian in Cardiff who was saved but immediately became frustrated with many of his longer-term Christian colleagues who seemed cold or indifferent to the pursuit of their faith. His idea was to “wake up!” those around him to the power, joy and purpose that Christ brings to our lives. One of the students who attended that event was a young man named “Milon” (Ok, the name is in quotes because he is actually Chinese and we can’t actually say his name). Milon is a student at Swansea University who is part of the very large foreign student population, and is apparently the son of an affluent business leader in the Bejing area. Through a friendship with some students as Swansea - one of which is our good friend Tomos - Milon began to attend Capel Gomer (even though he doesn’t understand Welsh, and not much English either!). In the course of attending worship, talking with Tomos, Derek and others, and the Defro event, we understand that Milon has become a Christian, and tonight’s event was all his idea!

In addition to final preparations - like cleaning up the room where 8 college students had been living - Derek took a few of us to Carmel, Pontlliw, another of the churches where Derek runs a kids club and where we will be attending church on Sunday. After some great fun, crafts and games, one of team, Kirsten, even got to teach the story (Jesus calming the storm) and did a wonderful job. We did forget to take 2 cars with us and ended up stranding a few of us at the church until another ride could come, but that we fairly easy to overcome.

In the meantime, Milon & Derek had gone shopping and bought an enormous amount of food. Milon literally spent from 12:30 until 6:30 preparing, chopping, cooking, dishing and serving our meal. He actually prepared 7 Chinese dishes to serve 50 people! The food was actually very, very good and enjoyed by all. The night itself was a huge success. In fact, between groups from Hope Siloh, Capel Seion, Carmel, Capel Gomer, some college students from Aberystwyth, Cardiff and Swansea University, around 20 high school students, Derek’s parents, Gareth’s parents and Arfron Jones (the actual translator of a new translation of the Welsh Bible - www.beibl.net), we had 70 people attend!!

The food just stretched far enough, Derek powerfully shared the Gospel, we worshiped together (singing English & Welsh together), played games, heard Tomos’ testimony and made lots of new friends - several of our men Oklahoma men seemed to be continually surrounded by the young Welsh college ladies for some strange reason. It was a fabulous night for everyone a great lead in to the new English-language Bible Study Derek is starting on Monday.