We're Driving . . . SCARY!!!!!!!

We continue to be amazed at the way the Lord has watched over every detail of this adventure with Him. We have now been in our wonderful little house for 24 hours and actually feel like it will easily become home to us quickly. It is cozy and warm and the folks here have outdone themselves to furnish and equip it in such a way that we have everything we need.

David and Janice Bosley, Ray Cole, and Sue Williams traveled an hour and a half in 2 cars to London to pick us up yesterday morning. We zipped through the customs process and were waiting in the main concourse within 30 minutes. They were all quite surprised to walk in and find us waiting for them instead of the other way around. We saw very little of the countryside as we came west to Ducklington on the 6 lane “motorway.” We took the “ringroad” (loop) around the west and north sides of Oxford, so we didn’t see much of it either. All along the roadways are quaint, beautiful stone houses and fences. They hardly look like they’ve been touched for hundreds of years and are still very beautiful. As we came into Ducklington we turned off the “double carriageway” (2 lane highway), the road narrowed and we began to wind our way through the street of this tiny little village, passing Ducklington Baptist on the way to our home. Even though our little “terrace house” (condo) is in a newer neighborhood, it has the look of all the other structures in the village – stone walls and cement shingle roofs. We’ll be posting pictures on Facebook.

From the time we woke up in Abilene on Thursday morning, we were up for 36 hours before we laid our heads on our pillow last night. They allowed us all afternoon to get acquainted with our house and to rest. Then they treated us to a wonderful meal at one of the two local pubs in Ducklington. It was everything you would have expected complete with thatched roof and huge roaring fire. We both had to duck our heads to keep of colliding with the door frames and rough beams that support the centuries old ceiling. It’s a mere 2 blocks up the street from our house, so we did what most Brits do, we walked.

The adventures of today have involved Brenda’s first trip to the grocery store with Janice and Sue which proved to be not so different than our local United stores except twice as expensive. We met one of the young Mums who attends Mums and Tots on Monday mornings. She assured us that she and her little one would see us Monday. David and Ray came to get Dennis for his first trip out in the car. We have decided that riding on the left side of the car is almost as terrifying as driving on the right side. Dennis drove us to the grocery store again this evening. We were so proud! We only went the wrong way on one road after 3 trips around a “roundabout” (traffic circle) and thank goodness, no one was coming. No doubt, we will quickly become adapted and think nothing of it, but in the meantime, PRAY HARDER!

As thrilling as all of these experiences are, the thing that weighs heaviest on our minds is that in a village of 3000 people, only 12-15 folks attend Ducklington Baptist and about 40-50 attend the Anglican Church up the street. In the land of Spurgeon, Packer, Müller and Lewis there seems to be very little interest in the things of God. The people are warm and helpful and very courteous and very interested in why we are here and what we are going to do. So, we have an open door for conversation as we meet people as well as an invitation to join us at church, Mums or Dads and Tots, or for the regular Bible study on Monday evenings. We plan to spend a lot of time prayerwalking the village on a regular basis and hope to meet many of the locals. We met our wonderful neighbors, Nigel and Jill Clark, to the left of our house and they are quite nice. They live in England half of the year and the other half they live and play golf in Tuscan. Maybe they will be enamored by our accents and desire to get to know us better. We think we will entice them with a night of Mexican food. Whatever method the Lord chooses is fine with us. Your prayers are the greatest treasure to us as we begin this ministry.