Tuesday 10/9/13 (covering 2/9/13 to 10/9/13)

I’ll back up to last Monday since I didn’t write for several days prior to our travels on Friday.

The ICRC conference continued with its various meetings, but there’s not too much to describe about that without going into the whole aim of the ICRC. Suffice it to say that we enjoyed meeting church leaders from many countries. This was quite encouraging; understanding the English of some of them was quite a challenge, however!

We left Wednesday afternoon – missing the last evening and its special events – because Bruce had, right from the beginning, the wrong date for the finish of the conference! Apparently he was not the only one, so they said there was some confusion in initial information. But Bruce had agreed to speak that evening at the church where Chris and Julie Kavanagh attend, telling about the ICRC and the RCNZ, so we went ahead with that plan.

We stayed with Chris and Julie that night and the next one. On Thursday they took us to Oxford University, which is about an hour’s drive from their home. What a privilege to have them to introduce us to the highlights. But it is hardly able to be described. There are nine colleges – but each of these is a whole complex of buildings, each with its own students halls, chapel, gardens, lecture halls. These are all such large structures (as most every other historic building is in this country – don’t think Wheaton or Grace College dormitories and lecture halls).

In the UK the history behind each building, each college within Oxford, each old church in each town, each mansion, each castle, is something that boggles the mind. With Chris and Julie we also visited a couple of the small villages and towns; ‘small’ is relative, anything from 1500 to 45,000 in population, it seems, but each making the most of its history. Every village or city, by the way, seemed to have as a draw card their old church. I’ve never seen so many St. Mary’s Church or Church of St. John the Baptist. Most of these were, at least in part, 500 or more years old.

As for other old structures, I guess our photos that Bruce is posting on Google+ show best the variety we are seeing. On Friday on our way to London we detoured to visit the Salisbury Cathedral; the immense construction they managed in medieval times and the outstanding architecture make me wonder if our technology is really so advanced! Well, we have different technologies and different skills.

Saturday we began our sightseeing in London. We could not have managed much of this without the detailed help of Rob Boere, with whom we were staying. He not only gave us advice on what to see and where but also introduced us to the complex transport system and explained how to make the most of it. (That’s a summary, for I can hardly describe what he did.) 

Anyway, I’ll just highlight a few of the places we visited: Greenwich with the Maritime Museum, the observatory, the Market, and the Cutty Sark; walked across Tower Bridge (which some people wrongly call London Bridge) and viewed Tower Castle from outside. We did not, however, pay the many pounds required for tours of any number of things.

Sunday we attended All Souls’ (Anglican) Church, evensong at St. Paul’s Cathedral at 3:15, and the evening service at St. Helen’s Bishopgate. It was good to know that a couple of these old churches (All Souls’ and St. Helen’s) now have a faithful witness to the truth. St. Helen’s is a very old church that was down to about 15 or so people, I believe we were told – or maybe it was 50; but a faithful rector began a work that has mushroomed through diligent teaching of Reformed doctrines. The church now has over a 1000 attending its three services, and the vision of the church is to teach and train what is a rather mobile church population. They are planting new churches as they are able, but this mother church meets in a building that is centuries old.

Well, I could write more about Sunday. At All Souls’ there was wonderful organ accompaniment for the first and last hymns and a band or orchestra for the others (well played). Overall a good service with a challenging sermon. The evening service at St. Helen’s used a band (again, things were well played), mostly contemporary hymns by the likes of Townend and Getty. (Note to Berwyn: “In Christ Alone” was used only once in our four Sundays in the UK – and chosen very appropriately for the text on that occasion.) The message was once again excellent – and these churches don’t aim for brevity; I guess if they have the people there once a week they want to pack it in. Getting to church in London for most people, by the way, takes commitment in itself – not cheap, not quick, and twice would be difficult for most people.

Evensong at St. Paul’s was well performed, though the choir could not be understood very well because of the 2½ second reverberations in the huge (and magnificent) cathedral, and there were a few other drawbacks. The evensong we attended in Salisbury Cathedral was better in that respect. Evensong often has no sermon, as far as I know, but at St. Paul’s there was a very short sermon since on this occasion there was a formal induction of young boy choristers. The rector of All Souls’ Church had been asked to present the message! and he did an excellent job in scarcely over five minutes using the text of John 5:30-47 and challenging the ‘audience’ (which always includes many visitors to this historic cathedral) on the topic of missing the point (of the scriptures) and thus missing eternal life.

I’ve probably bored any readers since it is hard to enter into the experiences of others (unless they are very good writers, which I’m not).

But on to Monday. We visited the British Museum (dozens of highly recommended museums to choose from in the city of London, but we chose the ‘big name’); walked around the area of Westminster and other Parliament buildings, saw and heard Big Ben, and looked at Westminster Abbey on the outside. The tour was hugely expensive so it was one of those we gave a miss. However, it would have been a good day for a tour since it rained all day; that literally put a damper on some of the walking we had intended to do. But we got in enough activity. We then took a boat ride on the Thames and had all the famous sites pointed out to us – though this was not so good for me because I couldn’t understand the recorded talk very well. Bruce took plenty of photos; do I need to mention that? :-)

And now today, Tuesday, we headed off early to be sure to make it to Heathrow Airport in time, which was on the west side of London while we were staying on the east side. We didn’t want to take any chances after the long traffic delay we had on arriving in London. Of course, today it was smooth sailing, and we’ve spent nearly six hours in the airport. I must say, however, that a whole lot of the time is spent going through the steps of checking in, checking luggage, going from one place to another at the appropriate times for boarding, etc. A huge airport for a huge city. Even the one terminal we were in after dropping off our rental car is huge, huge, huge.

We arrived safely at Jeremy and Lillian’s house at 10:00 p.m. Tuesday evening with no trouble finding our way from Philadelphia airport to their house. The signs are much better here than in the UK!!

Friday 6/09/13

Well, we’re sitting here stuck in a traffic deadlock, so I’ll pass the time by writing about it. We’ve had a good trip from Salisbury after staying for evensong at the Salisbury Cathedral. But just over two miles from our exit off the M25 (the big motorway around London), traffic came to a halt. Of course, this was just after the last exit before the one to Rob Boere’s, so there was no way to escape. We have come about one mile in that last hour. Now I’ll tell you, seeing four lanes of traffic (one way) bumper to bumper and not moving is quite a sight. But I’m wondering how far back it is behind us. I suppose people would have tried to get off once the traffic had backed up to the previous exit. 

It was interesting that probably 20 miles back there were already messages flashed above the motorway warning to avoid Dartford. Of course, we didn’t know where Dartford was, but it turned out it was just north of the exit we wanted to take. Anyway, we are expecting to hear of a huge accident or something serious.

We got here to the stalled traffic about 9:30 p.m., with only a few miles yet to go. But it might be midnight before we get there. It looks like all the traffic that has built up might be getting off on ‘our’ exit. (Late addition: we finally got off at ‘our’ exit at about 11:00 p.m. And then made it to Rob’s by about 11:30 p.m. Here's a news item about the delay: Dartford Crossing Closure.)

Sunday 1/09/13

Lois writing again. We are enjoying the conference; Bruce is enjoying it more now that he has been able to relinquish his chairman’s duties after the first morning when the new chairman took over! Now he only has smaller advisory committee meetings and discussions with delegates from our sister churches.

I have enjoyed singing various psalms and hymns to different tunes in the ICRC meetings and also in the services we attended today. The singing was exceptionally good, of course, with so many delegates plus some of their wives in the services. The morning message in the church we attended was on 1 Peter 2:9-10 by Rev Ray Sikkema from the United Reformed Church (North America), and the evening message was on Psalm 73 (the minister, Rev Iain Campbell from the Free Church of Scotland, had quite a good way of bringing out the ideas of the psalm, particularly the last half). 

Not too much else to write about unless I go into our “day off” yesterday. I joined the trip to the Cardiff Castle and Mansion and to the museum of Welsh life. 

I, Bruce, took a tour through Big Pit coal mine. What was most impressive was the terrible working conditions in the mine for the miners who worked deep underground, often with their wives and their children as young as 6 until early in the 20^th Century. Children 6-8 years of age operated the doors in the mine which were to be shut or opened to regulate the ventilation. Young boys up to about age 12 shoveled the coal into the trolleys which their fathers dug out with picks. Young girls and women pushed the trolleys with 500-1000 lbs of coal to the cage (mechanical elevator) that took it to the surface. The children were often in total darkness for most of the 12 hour working day, six days a week. The miners were paid a pittance, barely enough to survive.