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.