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.

A few trip photos...

Baked Mission

After another good nights rest at the ministry house where Chip and I are staying, we returned to Capel Gomer with Derek to find that we had neglected to tell anyone how to turn the sanctuary heaters off before we left. It was a rather cool night, so the initial heating was quite nice, but it had apparently gotten up to and stayed about 90-degrees for most of the night, and the team looked a bit “broiled” to be honest! We quickly taught everyone how to turn off the heaters, needless to say, but the comforts of the Dragon Hotel the night before lingered heavily in the air. Everyone was a great sport, however, and soon recovered from heat overload with a decent breakfast of cereals (including grey Fruit Loops since the UK has more stringent rules on the use of food dye; it was quite funny).

In our morning devotional, Chip encouraged us all in 2 Timothy 2 to remember that our message - the story we must keep in focus - is one of Jesus and him alone. It is he who has approved us to stand before the Father and speak in his name. Following this, our three teams split to visit the primary Swansea University campus, the Swansea Met campus and the Uplands community area for a day or local engagement, conversations and relationship building. We found this very hard work; like students anywhere, these are busy and a bit wary of strangers, although when we did get the opportunity, the conversations where warm and inviting and pleasant. We were able to hand out a number of flyers and invitation to our Friday “Wake Up” event. While the teams where engaged, I attempted to get my blog & accounting work that I’d left undone completed in a local Costa coffee shop. To my great surprise and pleasure, I sat down next to a couple of retired gentlemen who fancied themselves a little philosophy society. It wasn’t long before I was chatting with them an answering historical, political and cultural questions about the States and Oklahoma, and they were quite open and interested in talking about my Christianity. Even though we differed in many ways, it was amazing to talk with these gentlemen and share the foundations of the Christian worldview. One of them would like to connect on Facebook.

After a quick de-brief and even quicker dinner at a nearby pub, we had the great opportunity to travel with Gareth, his brother Aled, and their father to attend a football (soccer) match at the local Liberty Stadium. The Swansea FC Swans are a English Premier League (top division) football club in the UK. Tonights game was not a regular season game but was part of a special tournament across all of Europe called the Europa League. The opponents were a team from Russia, actually. It was a fantastic experience even though the game ended in a 1-1 tie after a rather disappointing Swans performance, and we did get to see a number of the top players in all of Europe on the pitch.

Day 2 - Connections

Our second day on the ground is largely about getting our bearings and establishing a routine for the rest of the week. After transitioning from the hotel to Capel Gomer, Derek’s local church building about a block away, the group settled in and held our first morning devotional. Gavin led us through the first chapter of 2 Timothy this morning and reminded us to be proud of Christ’s story and rely on the power that comes from his suffering as we share the good news of the Gospel with those around us. 

Derek then led a planning session for the rest of the week where we outlined a tentative schedule for each day. Afterward, three teams split up between the primary Swansea University campus, the Swansea Met campus and a student housing area called the Uplands. Each team walked the area and discovered the most likely places for them to return to and engage in conversation or just “hang out” with the student population, which will be the focus of both Thursday and Friday.

While these teams were out, I had the occasion for a quick visit to the Swansea Market just a few blocks away. The market area in in the heart of the city center and is a main focal point for the community. It is said that the market itself has been operating as a market continually since the middle ages! While looking through the booths of welsh cakes, fresh fish and vegetables, cockles (mini oysters) and laverbread (seaweed), I came across a Welsh-Chinese fusion art exhibit and was offered a cup of Chinese tea from a young artist named Stewart. He was volunteering for a shift in the traveling exhibit. I sat and asked him about his art, which strangely led to a conversation on Christianity (his idea, actually), and I was able to share an invitation to our Friday night event (more on that later). Stewart’s response was typical of many here: an “oh, that’s interesting,” attitude toward Christianity, but with no real awareness of the message or it’s implications or, finally, for their own need. I pray that as we go through this week, we find more Stewarts and have the opportunity to introduce them to the person of Jesus.

That afternoon, we regrouped and headed out to a community that I can barely pronounce and sounds something like “one eye lid” (but, obviously, not exactly) to Capel Seion for Kid’s Club. It was a bit overwhelming but none the less wonderful as a stream of some 30-40 children from the local primary (elementary) school came pouring into the chapel for club. They were so excited to see us, many of whom we’d met and become friends with on previous trips, and welcomed us with warmth and genuine interest. In two short hours, we fell in love with them (again) and all of us could do Club again and again.

After an excellent dinner at a local carvery (essentially a restaurant designed to serve what we’d have at holiday meals), our night got really interesting. While discovering that we were potentially locked out of Capel Gomer (where all our luggage and most of our beds were) for the night, Derek’s car was hit by another motorist. While the damage was mostly cosmetic, it was a new confirmation for Derek that something always happens to his car during an Oklahoma team visit (something he mentioned only hours before). As dodgy as our situation was only minutes before, Huw arrived with a rescue key for the church and got the obligatory hero-of-the-day award. Our final exercise was team discussion of the day and planning for day ahead. We got everyone setup in their air-beds and couches and Chip & I left with Derek for the ministry house where we are staying, leaving the group behind and the room heaters on (keep this in mind for tomorrows post).

October Trip to Swansea University

I’m way behind on getting something written about our trip, and now I’m worried that I’ll forget something. But I’ll try to get you caught up on our trip so far:

Our team this trip is an eclectic one ( as it always is) but is leaning toward college-age students whom God providentially led to us and which perfectly aligns with our focus this week at Swansea University. Our first travel day was gratefully(!) un-eventful, arriving in Cardiff after legs via Minneapolis and Amsterdam. This was good news for all of us, but especially for one of our team who had never flown before. Anywhere. Ever. (Darrin’s mom…he did great, but his eyes got kinda big on the the first take off).

After immigration, luggage, rental & cash exchange, we met up with both Derek, Alaw and Garreth to begin the long, grueling and terribly exciting day on tour throughout Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. It was raining, so we changed our first stop to Castle Coch, a Renaissance era castle built on top of a 13^th Century castle. We followed this up by touring the Museum of Welsh Life housed at St. Fagans, a Victorian era mansion complex on the edge of town, and concluding with dinner and a tour of the Cardiff Bay Area, now familiar for its Dr. Who & Torchwood locations. We've already fallen in love with Derek and crew and are so thankful for their hospitality,navigation, good humor and love.

After an hour drive to Swansea (by the way, driving a van, in the rain, on the wrong side of the road, with no clue where you are going, after 3 hours sleep in 48 was…interesting), we checked into the wonderful Dragon Hotel and collapsed into bed. By morning, though, we were up and well rested, now on Greenwich Mean Time and starving for a good Welsh breakfast of bacon, eggs, baked beans, grilled mushroom, tomato and other classic sides. Oddly, none of us tried the black pudding (or blood sausage).

The team is excited and ready for what the day would bring!

Travel update

This is Chris Jones, sitting in for Allen yet again, with our team in transit from OKC to Cardiff, Wales (via Amsterdam at this point). As with any trip, there are always obstacles to overcome and faith to be exercised; in this case, it includes a team member's asthma attack the night before we left, and another team member's very first ever flight! These have all been minor blips but good reminders to stay focused and reliant on The Lord. We  leave for the final leg of the flight in a few minutes, and I'll update again after a day or tourism.

July 2013: Wales Mission Explosion

Monday July 1, 2013: Wales Mission Explosion

For the first four and one-half years of our church's adventures to Wales, we have had only 2-3 missions a year. This summer and fall, we are radically expanding our vision by pouring a stunning nine missions into Wales! In addition to the individual missions of T.J. Kerr (who is staying six months), Doug Mikes, and Jennifer Mansour (who are separately staying one month each), we will send a total of six mission teams.

Chris Jones will lead a team in October to help Derek Rees establish an English-speaking component to his church at Capel Gomer in Swansea. Our friend and ally, Jeremy Smith, pastor of Eastwood Baptist Church of Midwest City will be leading the American contingent who will partner with the Welsh in late July to sponsor our third youth camp. This has been highly successful in leading young people to Christ, and this summer promises to build on the success of the two previous years. More than sixty Welsh children are planning to attend.

Already this summer we have completed three missions and are in the midst of a fourth. They are as follows:

Mission One and Two -- ACTS Camp -- June 16-24, 2013
Mike Wall led a group of twelve ACTS Camp Missionaries from Brussels to Wales where they were met by Allen and Deedee Rice. The group was divided into two mission teams, one team supporting Welsh pastor Derek Rees in Swansea, and the other team (known as the Panthers) supporting Welsh pastor Aron Treharne in Carmarthen. The Swansea team helped run kid's clubs and youth groups and discipled some young teenage fledgling Christians. The Carmarthen team got to do a skit and preach in the local school as well as introduce American sports to the Welsh children in five regular school P.E. classes. In the culminating American night at Aron's church, 7-10 new unchurched children came to eat American food, play American games, and hear a testimony from Payton and a short sermonette by T.J. Kerr.

Mission Three -- Pastor's Retreat -- June 24-27, 2013
Near the end of the ACTS Camp week, Allen Rice left Swansea, drove to Manchester Airport and picked up HHBC pastors Rob Hunt and Jimmy Quinn. Along with T.J. Kerr, they joined together with nine Welsh pastors (including old friends Derek Rees, Aron Treharne, and Rhun Murphy) in a Pastor's Retreat located at the magnificent mansion of Gladstone's Library in northeast Wales. The event was not really focused upon teaching and doctrine (though there was plenty of both) but rather a time of both Welsh and Americans to bond and unite deeply with Christ and with one another. At the end, one young Welsh pastor playfully suggest we hold hands and sing "Kumbaya." We didn't literally, but we did spiritually.

Mission Four -- Wrexham 2013 -- June 28-July July 7, 2013
A team of 12 missionaries flew into Manchester Airport and were met in Wrexham by Allen and Deedee Rice. We toured Valle Crucis Abbey and Chirk Castle, and then settled in to the week by attending Sunday worship at Rhun's Capel Pen Y Bryn. Monday we spread fliers (announcing an upcoming event) across several neighborhoods near the church. Rhun led a team into the school where they informed the children about living in tornado-plagued Oklahoma; this was capped off by Rhun preaching to the children about the time Jesus calmed the raging storm. The rest of the week promises several events where the American and Welsh churchmen and churchwomen can bond and fellowship as well as another opportunity to preach in school, opportunities to reach out to the community through offering free car washes, free tea and coffee socials, and by giving free gifts of appreciation to local businesses. Rhun's church has doubled in attendance since last summer when we had our first mission partnership with him. We pray that our mission this year might (at least indirectly) help his ministry to continue to grow.