A real blog

We are still committed to the idea of real blogging, which some of you certainly like. So, Wednesday, of course, was midweek meeting. I prepared during the day then slipped out in the afternoon to a nearby BUPA home where I speak from time to time. It is very difficult to make any impact as most of the residents are in quite a poor way. Anyway we try. The evening meeting was well attended (for us - that is in double figures). We have an Iranian in the congregation who is coming on Wednesdays now. He likes to pray in Farsi, which is difficult. I believe we should be able to say 'amen' so I ask him to summarise for us afterwards in English. We are learning the key words - Father, we thank you, etc. I don't want to stop him praying in Farsi as Islam will only allow Arabic and so if I say only English I seem similar. He had a friend with him this time and we hope to begin some Bible studies soon. We are going through Deuteronomy and this week we came to some of the most difficult couple of verses in the Bible (the law about a woman's hand being cut off - see Deuteronomy 25). I knew the visitor was likely to be there and so I could have left this out perhaps but I feel that we simply need to be honest. As it turned out going through Deuteronomy 24, 25 with people from the Middle East present gave things an interesting edge that would have been missing otherwise.

Thursday I was in the study for the morning then headed off, with Rhodri my son, to South Wales. En route we stopped off at a hotel near Heathrow where I'd arranged (through EP my publisher) to meet a man called Paul Butler, who is a producer for Moody Radio's magazine programme Prime Time America, which is syndicated across the USA. (His blog looks very interesting indeed). He was on his way to Uganda and wanted to interview me about two of my books, which I was glad to do. (He'd seen my video here). We found a corner in this nice hotel (it proved to be rather busy in the end) and he interviewed me on 'being born again' and on 'Proverbs'. I didn't enjoy the experience as I'm much happier in print where you can fiddle to your heart's content. When I speak. I tend to ramble a little. I'm also, on one hand, quite imprecise and, on the other, compensate sometimes by drowning my sentences in a heap of qualifications. Anyway hopefully he has enough material from the half hour to come up with two decent 8 minute pieces. We'll see. Rhodri and I then carried on our journey to Cwmbran where we were with the family for a few hours (more on that in a separate post). We were home around midnight.

Friday was set apart for more preparation for Sunday but I was quite tired and couldn't get much done. in the evening we had the regular clubs for children and young people. Numbers are up to around 15 (from 10) for the younger ones but down to under 20 (from 25) for the older ones. One of our deacons spoke (on the Pharisee and the tax collector). In the younger club they carried on with the mural they are doing and we played hockey in the hall. Gwion (just old enough for the older club) and Owain (only 8 but joined in fine) stayed with me as Eleri and Rhodri had gone to a meeting at the London Welsh School. The poet Ifor Ap Glyn was doing an evening for them. Ifor grew up in London and speaks English like a North Londoner. He has lived in North Wales for the last 20 years, however, and speaks Welsh like a gog. Eleri said it was an excellent evening with a good number present. She was in quite late so I put the boys to bed (for a change). Gwion was reading a Garfield book and so I read a book about sharks with Owain, learning that the whale shark is the biggest fish in the world and that (most) sharks must keep swimming or they'll die.