" . . . one all-round good egg"

We have now finished our third week in this beautiful country and continue to be blessed and amazed by these that the Lord has seen fit to send us to. We’ve just returned home from our Monday evening Bible Study and were so encouraged by the interest and participation of this sweet group of folks. Lent begins on Wednesday, February 17, and Dennis has decided in the meantime to go through the little letter of Philemon with our Monday evening faithfuls. Since we have been actively working with our South Side family in Abilene on learning how to correctly observe, interpret, and apply Scripture, we decided to take our Ducklington group through that same process using Philemon. They quickly jumped into the process tonight by discovering all they could about the persons of Paul, Philemon and Onesimous. Janice Bosley summed up the observations on the person of Philemon with the quote of the evening when she said, “Philemon was one all-round good egg.” We told her immediately that she would get honorable mention on The Blog this evening. We may have to bring the Bosleys back to Abilene with us. They are such a blessing! (Yes, Janice, you are now “notorious”:) )

Mums & Tots was again the fastest hour and a half of our week. Apparently, Chicken Pox is working its way through the village. Therefore, several of our regulars were not with us this morning. We continue to visit with the women as we serve their tea and the children are beginning to warm up to us as we are becoming familiar faces to them. Our desire has been to gracefully move this group in a more spiritual direction and today Janice incorporated the song “The Wise Man Built His House Upon A Rock” into the repertoire. It was obvious that this was not a new song. As Janice and I visited about children’s songs, I discovered that “Zaccheus Was a Wee Little Man” is not known in the UK. She was quite amused when I stood in the kitchen and sang it for her . . . complete with the motions. I hated to admit that I’ve probably been singing that particular song for about _____ years.

We were blessed yesterday when a new couple showed up for the Sunday service. They had started attending DBC about 6 months ago, but left in November to spend the holiday season in New Zealand with their children. They returned last week and were back in church yesterday. They were also at Bible Study this evening and plan to join us for our newly scheduled weekly prayer time on Wednesday evening here at our house. Everyone seems very excited about this prayer emphasis and we are anticipating at least 8 people on Wednesday evening. That’s 50% of our total congregation which is a really good percentage. The other 50% are quite elderly but have expressed interest in having a prayer time if we would be willing to do it in Witney during the daytime hours. Jo and Alec Matthews, who we’ve talked about in earlier blogs have already offered their home and so we anticipate a start for that by next week. Not many churches can boast of 50% of their congregation attending Bible Study and 100% attending prayer meetings. So, we believe that God is going to bless these faithful servants and their diligence to study His Word and seek Him through prayer.