Keswick

Imagine for a moment, green covered mountains (by British standards) with a lake filling every valley, untouched by modern buildings and housing developments, with sheep and cattle littering the hillside. For you visual people, think of Braveheart, without Mel Gibson and his painted countrymen, with its rolling mountains, beautiful landscapes, and unending grey sky (which was ever present in Keswick). This is the location for the Keswick Christian Convention, where we spent the previous week.

The conference has been in existence for over 80 years and has expanded around the world with similar conventions in the US, Japan, and several other countries. The convention lasts for three weeks with new speakers and a different focus each week; unfortunately, we went when the average age was over 60 years, but the age difference was not too big of an issue for me. Throughout the week I heard a couple of sermons by Tim Chester, a vicar at a church in Stoke (I am not sure it is Stoke), a couple of messages from Dr. Helen Roseveare, a missionary doctor that has spent over 60 years in service to the Lord in numerous countries around the world, and a study on the book of Jonah by a pastor from Sri Lanka (I do not remember his name, mainly cause I could not pronounce it). Each one presented a different perspective and look at the Christian life and missions, which is the theme of the Keswick convention this year. Dr. Roseveare was the most intriguing of the speakers because she showed a great zest for life and knowing the Lord, and it seemed as though it only got stronger as she got older.

The two most memorable messages for me were by Tim Chester and Dr. Roseveare. On the third evening Tim Chester gave a message on prayer and its importance in the life of the Christian. With prayer being one of the weakest aspects of personal faith, it was beneficial to hear how pivotal it can be for the daily growth of a Christian. He had an interesting structure to his sermon, repeating the same phrase, "Perhaps it is because I get up too early from prayer," after each story or point he made, like a refrain in a poem.

The second message that I remember well came from Dr. Roseveare. Similar to Tim Chester's, she did not say anything I had not heard before, but reminded me of the importance of each person in the roll of missions. She told a story of how an outrageous prayer by a young girl was answered by the Lord. To cut the story short, a young girl in her orphanage ask God for a heating pack for a newborn baby, who needed it to survive, and a doll for the newborn boy's older sister, who had just became an orphan with the death of her mother while giving birth. Having not received a package in her previous four years there, Dr. Roseveare thought it was a bit of a daft request to ask God for. However, the next day they received a package which had several things for the orphanage Dr. Roseveare had ask her supporters to send over six months prior. At the bottom she found some hot water packs and a little doll. This package had been sent out five months before the little girl had prayed, and while you could argue that it would have come anyway, it showed Dr. Roseveare of the importance of prayer. Often times I find myself in the place of Dr. Rosever, thinking that prayers cannot be answered so specifically, but the story reminded me that Christ said we must have the faith of a child to enter the kingdom of heaven. Obviously, we are meant to grow in the knowledge and wisdom throughout the process of sanctification, but faith is not to be overlooked. Also, she emphasized the importance of each person who worked to bring that package to Africa, starting with the teacher and students who sent the package, the mail carrier who sent it, etc. Each person was pivotal to fulfilling God's purpose.

Throughout the week we got to know the town of Keswick well, to say the least. During the 10 minute walk through town you will pass shops selling fish and chips, sweets, pizza, and hiking gear, as well as coffee shops and pubs. The stores would repeat every five or six shops, in almost comical predictability. We would arrive between 9:30am and 10am every day and leave around 10pm, which gave us more than enough time to see everything the town had to offer multiple times each day. One of the more enjoyable attractions was the "pitch and putt" course right next to one of the lakes. We played several times as a team during the week, to help pass the time.

You may ask why we spent so much time in the town if we had accommodations in Keswick? Well, for starters our housing was a 25 minute drive from the town, making it challenging to go back and forth. The primary reason, however, was that we were staying in converted horse stables. For the nine of us who did not have a wife or a sister with us at the convention, we got to stay in a single room with nine foam mattresses lined up side by side down the length of the room. We were all a bit shocked, initially, when we walked in on Monday night, but after that wore off I think we enjoyed the banter and the opportunity get to know one another better (probably too well).(You can imagine though that it did not smell good with so many men living in such close quarters.)  We brought all of our own food for breakfast and lunch, to help cut back on some unnecessary costs, but the stables charged us for the use of electricity and water, separate from the fee of the rooms. In the end, it was not too bad because we were not stuck there all day.

My one regret from the trip is that we did not go hiking. A few of us talked about doing so on Wednesday, but with the unpredictability of when the rain would come (predictably, we did not see the sun until we were leaving on Friday), it was hard to make definitive plans. Cameron shared this annoyance of not going for a hike, so on our way back on Thursday evening we decided hike the hill near our stables. We started by trekking through a pasture to make our way towards a path. We followed this path up a road and past a pair of homes until it took us down towards the lake, away from the hill we wanted to climb. So we diverted from the path to walk directly up the face of the hill, which appeared to be covered in long grass with the occasional plant. We underestimated the length of the grass and the number of bushes, finding ourselves in the middle of a bog. After 10 minutes of walking through some very wet marshes and multiple thorn bushes, we decide to return the stables, not being able to find another path and having a torch that was quickly dying. In spite of our failed attempt, it was worth the effort.

If you have hung with me for this long, I appreciate your perseverance. I did not intend for this post to be too long, but since my previous post was several weeks ago I wanted to make it worth your while. Thank you for your continued interest and prayers this summer. If I may ask for a selfish request, as the summer is drawing to a close I have several things to consider as to where I will be in the fall, what I will be doing, and how will I be supporting myself. So I would appreciate your prayers. Cheers.

UK Tour #2: Doncaster, Norwich, Buxton (Part II)

The service at Surrey Chapel was lead by Josh Walsh, one of our player managers and former Surrey Chapel member. The entire service was lead by or involved one person from our team, with Josh Kimball giving a short message to the children, Paul Gilbert, and James Jaagard (our other player manager) both doing Q&A's with Walshy. It was a good service for us to be able to continue to grow our connection with the church and help them have a better understanding of what our sport ministry entailed. In the afternoon half of us met at a local park to host a small-sided footy tournament for about 25 to 30 kids. Six showed up to play football, and only two of those six knew it had something to do with the local church. So most of us played with the kids that were there, and a couple of us played basketball with another group that just happened to come out while we were there. After everything began to wind down, we were able to share the gospel with both sets of kids. Our last event of the day was to attend the church that tried to arrange the tournament that afternoon. In the youth group session after the service, called CYFA, our player managers, James and Josh, had a Q&A session with the youth pastor. It was a good time for it as well because a U-18 side was there that evening to get their trophies for their season, so they got a chance to ask questions about what we were doing. It took a while for it to get going, but they got into it after a while.

Monday saw us travel up to Buxton (about 3 and a half hours) for our last stop before returning to the Wirral. Due to one of our cars overheating , forcing us to have to take a short break, we arrived just in time to start warming up for our match. The team was a church team that played in a competitive league in Buxton, and are the best team we have played to date (mainly because they actually tried to attack). It finished 9-1, but we played better because we were being pushed, so it looks a bit lopsided. On Tuesday our team split up between three different schools to do some ministry. Five of us, including myself, were placed at a primary school, working with kids ages 8 to 12. During a given teacher's planning period, they brought out their class (roughly 30 students) to us and we played some football games with them, such as "sharks and minnows" and the "gauntlet" (or so we called it). In all we had four different session, each lasting about one hour. We shared the gospel with each class at the end of the sessions. What surprised me was that the teachers and the administrator who worked with us were able to hear everything we said, and did not give us any problems. In the States I do not think we would have been able to be as explicit as we were to those students. It is probably our best ministry opportunity to date, primarily because it went well and the pastor who arranged us being there will be able to work with those schools again in the future.

The day in the school was our last ministry for the tour and we returned home that evening, which was greatly welcomed. We will not be taking any more ministry tours this summer as we begin to refocus on training and the upcoming season. We will be taking a week to go to a Christian conference in Keswick, which I think will be a week from this coming Monday. If there is anything in particular you would like to know or hear about, do not hesitate to tell me as I could use help on making these posts a bit less boring.

UK Tour 2: Doncaster, Norwich, and Buxton (Part I)

Only two days passed between getting back from our first tour and leaving for the second. After getting back late from Wimbledon on Tuesday night (really early Wednesday morning) we left around 10am on Wednesday morning, travelling first to Doncaster for a training session with the Esprit Academy. It was a typical session as far as the football was concerned, but the primary purpose was to continue to build a relationship between 90+ and the Esprit Academy and also for the coaches there to see the level of play 90+ has. Fortunately, the Esprit coaches were surprised by our ability and professionalism. After spending the night at a hotel near the Doncaster we took a long drive down what was often a two lane road in farm country, getting stuck behind a large, slow tractor far too often. Upon arriving in Norwich, our first stop was at Surrey Chapel, where lunch was provided along with a pair of Biblical training sessions, one with the pastor of Surrey Chapel and the other with one of the elders (I have forgotten their names). We ate dinner, spaghetti and garlic bread (not suggested ninety minutes before playing), before we played our first match of the second tour. We started slow and the other team flew in with a few dodgy challenges early on, which lead to a rather cagy first half. They sat in for most of the game and we only won 1-0, rather disappointing given that they were a side from the local church league (the pitch was awful though).

The next day we met with the chaplain from Norwich FC, who recently got promoted to the Premiership. We were to go in and have a tour of Carrow Road (Norwich's stadium), but they were doing construct to increase the seating which kept us from being able to take the tour of the ground. In the evening we went to the home of one of the church members from Surrey chapel to work with the youth group from the church. We played a some games with them and a few of us Americans had our first encounter with nettles, awful bushes that make you itch immediately upon contact (a fast version of poison ivy). After the games were over, I shared my testimony with the kids for about ten or fifteen minutes. I just gave them an overview of my life and what brought me to the point where I decided to come over to England. The night would not have been complete without a bit of footy though, and the home fortunately had a small pitch on their massive plot of land. Fortunately, none of the players got hurt, and the kids only had a few cuts and scrapes.

Saturday was a bit of an off day, with us only having a match early on in the day. We were supposed to have done a few coaching sessions with some local kids, but you can always count on English weather to come through. So while the morning clinics were canceled, the game still went ahead, and we battered the Norwich church league select (all-star team) 7-1. I netted the second, and it was 3-0 by the half. After the match we had a team lunch at one of the host families homes and watch Wimbledon on the telly. That evening Paul Gilbert and I stayed up for the Gold Cup final, which kicked off at 2 am for us. We were both rather put out by the result, crying for the sacking of Bob Bradley, but as the game concluded at 4 am, sunlight began to creep over the neighboring homes, so we both decided to go to bed for a few hours before church...