Last Friday we headed down to Cardiff, where we stayed with our third son Dewi and his family and had a lovely take away with Eleri's sister Fflur and her family who are also denizens of Cardiff.
Our main reason for heading that way is that on the Saturday our second son, Dylan, was ordained and inducted as pastor of Bethel Evangelical church in Clydach. I had never been to Clydach before. It is a community of around 8,000 just off the M4 Motorway and 5 miles north east of the centre of Swansea. It grew up in the coal era when the Swansea canal ran through the village and coal was broughtdown from Ystalyfera and other mines to Swansea and the sea. It also has the Europe's largest nickel refinery, nickel being important these days for batteries. Anyway Bethel have a lovely building but it was rightly judged too small for Saturday and so we used the large, beautifully kept Welsh speaking Capel y Nant (Clydach is 24% Welsh speaking) for the service and came over to Bethel for refreshements after.
The service was a double one in that Dylan was first ordained by Paul Whitely and the other elders of Emmanuel, Cardiff and then inducted by the three elders already at Bethel (Nigel Clifford, Nathanael Ayling and Mark Barnes). Paul Whiteley preached a very appropriate sermon from Isaiah 6.
There must have been 200 present - family, friends, Emmanuel and Bethany members, etc, etc. It was good to chat to many but there were lots I missed chatting too. Great day.
We then stayed in Gowerton with Dylan's parent-in-law. They looked after us very kindly. Gruff seemed a little confused to have four grandparents in one house but he took it in his stride. he's three so he's aware that there are changes going on but he's coping well. Poor Daisy, his sister, is really not well at the moment. Anyway, it was great to hear Dylan preach his second sermon from Titus on Sunday morning in Bethel. It really is a wonderful set up there amd Dylan seems to be fitting like the proverbial hand in glove.
After lunch with the Davies's we drove through the rin to Cardiff. We had wanted to be there for the evening service but all three of us (Owain and his dog was with us) are not 100% so we presssed on to London. Eleri managed to tune in to the 5 pm service in Aber so we heard most of Rhodri on Romans 1:18 and then Dylan's sermon on God's Image from Genesis 1. They are different in style but both can preach and have learned well from various good teachers. What a blessing they are.
Arrived home not too late after a great weekend. Eddie kindly preached for me here. I hope they got on well.
