Day 2

I got a pretty good night’s sleep last night. It eventually got so cool that I needed a blanket. We got up this morning and had morning devotions. We did devotions in the “storytelling” form that David had taught the church last summer. I loved it then and I still do!  Then we walked to Caersalem chapel.  There is this beautiful auditorium, but they meet in the basement instead. There aren’t very many people, but there are quite a few young people and that is very encouraging. It was very interesting to be in a service where they speak a different language. We had the little headsets so we could understand the praying and sermon. We sang “In Christ Alone” in Welsh. Very cool to be able to hear a song you know and love sung in a different language…and to kind of sing along J I really wish we weren’t all so tired though, I know I would have enjoyed it even more. But it was very hard just to keep my eyes open.

We got home and had lunch. I tend to eat a lot on trips and I had 2 ham/cheese/chip sandwiches and then an extra bag of chips. However, this did make me even sleepier. We were given strict instructions that we were not allowed to nap or go to bed before 9pm tonight. Doing that would just make the jet lag worse. We had a few hours of orientation and training in regards to what we are going to be doing here. One of the girls on the leadership team is named Harley and I think one sentence she said kind of summed it all up. “Our ministry is eliminating the lenses so that people can see the Gospel more clearly.” Their (our) target audience is the Cymru Cymraeg people. These are the native born, native speaking Welsh people. We believe that ministering to/fellowshipping with/ building friendships with (and hopefully at some point sharing the gospel with) someone in their heart language is going to be much more effective than trying to “Americanize” them and then try to reach them. I think that my work at the ILC has really driven this whole “language barrier” thing home for me. Their language is “them” and to go to their level and learn about them is going to open up a lot more doors than pretty much anything else.

This was kind of how she broke it down: (to make it easier to understand the “us” refers to the missionaries who live here full time)

Us                                                                           Them
1. We speak English primarily                      1. They speak Welsh primarily
2. We speak Welsh secondarily                  2. They speak English secondarily

***When we speak Welsh to them, we are automatically putting ourselves in an inferior role to them. We are giving them the higher position, which is exactly what Christ did for us. I don’t think it gets much clearer than that.

There are people who live and engage these people full time. Teams come in for weeks or months at a time to help and give new perspective to this mission. I am very excited to really “get to work” tomorrow although I have to admit I’m a bit nervous. Yes I can talk to people no problem, but it’s the initial “meeting” someone that I’m kinda scared of. The other stuff will be interesting too, but I’ll explain more of that later…gotta keep you hooked J

After orientation was done we went walking and shopping. Again, just trying to stay busy so we would stay awake. We got some souvenirs and then walked some more places to kind of figure out where we can go for our “Missional Encounters”. Again, that is something I’ll explain more about later J

Came back home to Isfryn and I went up to the roof deck to do some more sketching and painting. Not sure if I will ever show anyone these sketches, but it is fun and relaxing. Half of our view is the Island of Anglesy, but the other half is just rooftops. It reminds me so much of Mary Poppins when she is dancing with the Chimney Sweepers. And then of course you can see the castle over the rooftops. I could smell them cooking chicken and hotdogs below on a charcoal grill and my tummy was growling! On Sunday nights the leadership team who lives in this house invites locals over for dinner and a movie. Tonight was “American food” night. It worked for me J

It is almost 9pm here and I came up before the movie was over to get ready so I could be in bed ready to go to sleep right at 9. Gotta use my mask though because it isn’t going to get dark until 11:30ish. I don’t think I’m going to have any problem sleeping tonight either. 

The Wi-Fi here is funny. You can only get it on the 1^st floor and only a few people at a time. So most of my posts will be typed the night before, but not posted until the next day. And my email is taking forever so I’m just uploading pics to the blog straight from my phone.

Actually everything is funny. The showers have to be turned on before they can be turned on. The recycling rules are ridiculously strict. The no AC thing is just so weird to me, but again I do see why they don’t waste their money on it since they generally don’t need it and all the doors are fire doors so they are very heavy and tend to slam shut.

Thank you all for praying for us, please keep it up because tomorrow (Monday) is when the work really begins!!

Nos Da!! (But that would be “Prynhawn da” to everyone back home since it’s only 4ish there