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.