Europe Trip: Day 1

I arrived in England around 5AM our time, after having gotten to the airport at 9:30AM yesterday.  At least I think it was yesterday.  Time seems so fuzzy after you’ve been travelling almost 24 hours and its light out, getting close to lunch time, and your body is saying you should still be asleep, it should be dark, and you should be looking for breakfast soon, not lunch.

To tag on to yesterday’s post a little bit about suffering and vacation and all that what-not, I really doubt I’d do a European vacation.  There’s too many nice places to see in the half of the world I live in to get me to fly across the Atlantic Ocean and five time zones.  I’m glad I never became a pilot like I thought about when I was younger. Spending that much time travelling is just draining, even if I did have Starbucks in the airport in Louisville.

Incidentally, I did enjoy the new latte flavor.  Some flavor of the berry that goes with the coffee bean called Cascara.  It was nice and light, but still let the coffee flavor through, it didn’t mask the coffee flavor.

Today, after finding bro Gerald’s car in the “car park” (US parking lot) which took quite some time as he had quite forgotten where it was he parked, we “popped over” to Bro Gerald’s house.  I had lunch there while he took care of some business, and then we headed to Sheffield which is the location of the church he is a minister at and to where I am preaching this weekend.

By the way, the English country side, or what I have seen of it mostly from the M1, is quite beautiful. It is nice and green, and there are a lot of sheep keeping the grass short.  International note, Caribbean islands use goats to mow grass, the UK uses sheep.

We arrived at the church just on time as traffic was a bit heavy on Friday afternoon.  I spoke on “Beholding Christ” and the saints seemed to appreciate the different point of view that is brought in that sermon. It is about seeing Christ, and not looking at your sin so much.  The sin question has been settled at Calvary!  You are free to spend eternity beholding Him.  Since you want to do that in the Millennium, why wait?  Why not start now. You’ll find yourself drawing closer to Him. It felt good to be back in the pulpit, I hadn’t preached since November.

The church is made up of mostly believers formerly from Zimbabwe. I think most of the believers in England are formerly African, and probably mostly Zimbabwean. So it’s been funny that even if I am in England, it kinda feels like I’m back in Africa. Except the English is a little better and there’s AC (which we currently don’t need!)

After service I practiced a song with the musicians.  I love this church! All of Bro John’s (the pastor – Bro Gerald’s Father in law) children are in the thirty year old range and most are musicians. These are my people!  We had fun singing and playing.  Forthwith we popped over to Nando’s and had some chicken which was really nice. Bro Jack and family had experienced Nando’s and had raved about it, so when we showed up in the parking lot, I was like “Oh cool! Nando’s!”

After the food and fellowship, I was taken to a hotel.  It was so nice to lie down.  I hadn’t lain down for at least 36 hours, so it was so nice.  I slept very well.