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.