Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Southwestern Baptist Theolog= ical Seminary
Oxford 2005 Study Tour

TRAVEL JOURNAL of WILL WILLI= S

June 27 – July 18, 20= 05

= Will in a window of the ruins of St. Mary’s
Church in Tintern, Wales
– photo by Jeff Tilde= n, 7/13/2005

Initially I intended to do some fairly heavy e= diting of this because there are things here and there that I wrote never intend= ing for anyone other than my wife and myself to read. But, as I went back thr= ough it, correcting typos and clarifying some thoughts on occasion, I decided = to pretty much leave it alone. My rationale is that this journal reflects what life= is like. Over the course of three weeks being with people day in and day out, there’s good and bad. Sometimes you get mad at people, then the next day they are your friends. Sometimes m= aybe you’re a little tired and things irritate you that wouldn’t ordinarily. Personalities clash, personalities mesh. Ultimately, this jou= rnal is what it is, a reflection of the experiences I had on the trip and my thoughts either as they were happening or shortly thereafter. As I think = back on the trip sitting here on the plane just a few hours from home, I think= of it fondly, and there wasn’t a single person in our group that by the end I didn’t feel good about. As I told Dr. Swain at dinner last ni= ght ... I had high expectations for the trip, and it blew those away. It was = so much more than that.

&nbs= p; &= nbsp; &nbs= p; -- Will Willis, 7/18/2005

Pictures from the Trip

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

&nbs= p; A funny thing happened along the way yesterday. As much as I had been worrying about Duncan’s separation anxiety, it was me that started getting broken up when it was ti= me to say goodbye. I’m not entirely sure why, I know it is only for a few weeks. I guess I’m addicted to my family :-)

&nbs= p; We left Dallas at 3:05pm CDT yesterday, and after a 9+ hour flight arrived at London Gatwick (“gat” pronounced like “cat”) at 6:1= 5am GMT today. I managed to start my trip off with a bang, I had my plastic slip containing my boarding pass, birth certificate, and passport in the front pocket of my carry on bag when I got on the plane, but when I got to the security/customs checkpoint after exiting the plane and walking about &frac= 14; mile, it was nowhere to be found. I dumped my whole bag out, with panic set= ting in over the gravity of having lost my passport. To make matters worse, about 5am I dislodged one of my contacts and while it was still in my eye, I could hardly see out of my left eye. So I’m working half blind along with everything else. I literally stuffed everything back in the bag and ran bac= k to the airplane. Except since it has been vacated (I was one of the last people off anyway, sitting three rows from the back), it was locked up. I managed = to find a security person and explain that I *hoped* I dropped my packet containing my passport on the plane. I wasn’t allowed to go back on t= he plane with her and look, but fortunately she found it under the seat I was sitting in. I was very thankful for that!&= nbsp; I then ran back to customs, relieved I had my passport, but now worr= ied that since this whole episode took about 15 minutes and I was already behind most being at the back of the plane, AND another plane had landed in the meantime and had really backed up customs, that I was going to miss the bus= to Oxford. I guess the older gentleman who was directing people into the lines= at customs recognized my situation (and my huffing and puffing from the stress= ed out running through the airport), and he sent me through the first class li= ne. So instead of being late, I ended up getting to the baggage claim area abou= t 15 minutes before anyone else in my group since I only had to wait in a line o= f 2 in order to clear customs, instead of a line of 100+. I used the time to get my contact l= ens solution out of my checked bag and fix my left contact so I could see again= .

&nbs= p; After boarding the bus at Gatwick, it was about a two hour drive to Oxford. I was surprised at the amount of countryside for it being the L= ondon area. I had noticed a lot of countryside of the descent while flying in (despite my limited vision), but was surprised at the amount around the cit= y. Definitely not like Dallas-Ft.Worth or other bi= g U.S. ci= ties where you generally have limited greenbelt areas at best. We learned about = Oxford on the way= , and how the university sort of grew up almost as a collection of house colleges. The university is much different than an American university, where you have the sequestered campus type of thing. With Oxford the town and the colleges that m= ake up the university (there are 40 of them, we are at Regent’s Park) are so intertwined you really can’t differentiate one from the other. That’s also caused problems historically, literally to the point of riots/wars between the townspeople and the college people. Many of the buildings of the colleges have the appearance of forts, because they were actually designed with military operations in mind. There is also a memorial close by, which commemorates a 14^th century skirmish between the= town and the university that resulted in the slaughtering of many university peo= ple. And in the States we think *we* take our colleges seriously! There’s = also an Oxford Martyrs memorial, in remembrance of three pro= testants (Lattimer, Cranmer,= and Ridley) who were burned to death on Broad St. in Oxford under the rule of Mary Tudor (“Bloody Mary”) for not following = her Roman Catholicism.

&nbs= p; The day was pretty light in terms of activity. Once we arrived at Regent’= s Park College (of Oxford University), we had a 15-20 minute orientation and were given our security cards and keys and such for our room assignments. The dorms as one would expect of such an old place are pretty = spartan. My room is approximately 7’ wide and 14’ deep, and has a desk (where I type this), a twin sized bed, a bookshelf built into the wall, and a dresser/closet combo. Oh, and a couple= of chairs. It was highly recomme= nded to us not to take a nap during the day in order to get our bodies adjusted = to the new time zone. I fell asleep for about 20 minutes before 1:00 lunch, but other than that have stayed up. We had a second orientation at 4:00 that la= sted about 30 minutes, and then dinner at 7:00. Other than that we’ve been left to our own to settle in, go out and wander the town, or whatever. After the second orientation I gra= bbed my camera and went walking around the area immediately outside the Regent’s Park College walls. I to= ok about 30 pictures, but was mostly just looking around a bit and killing time. I k= now if I would have just hung out in my room I would have fallen asleep. I did = try to read before dinner, but after re-reading the same paragraph 4-5 times and not realizing it wasn’t new material, I figured it was a lost cause. = So I went and talked to some of the other people in the group and killed time un= til dinner. It’s now about 8:30PM, and I’m going to bed. Tomorrow morning we’re having lectures, but fortunately the professor lecturing first is not one whose cl= ass I’m taking, so I’ll get to sleep in a bit later than most. But = on the other hand, many of the people who have the early class won’t have the last class of the day, so they’ll be done before me. For tomorrow I’d rather have the extra sleep I think.

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

OXFORD PI= CTURES (covers all pictures taken in Oxford, not just = today)

&nbs= p; After getting up when my alarm clock went off at 9:15 this morning, I felt MUCH better than I did last night. I slept through breakfast intentionally, so I just showered and got ready and went to classes. It’s cool because the professors on this trip are all very knowledgeable in their topic areas, an= d are passionate about their teaching. It’s hard to ask for much more than that. My first lecture was with Dr. Roy Fish, world renown in the field of evangelism. The discussion on spiritual awakenings/revival was great, and in particular the problem of “cold orthodoxy” vs. “warm heterodoxy.” The former= are churches that are doctrinally sound but are complacent and without much fer= vor to evangelize or do much other than play church. Examples would be most Southern Baptist churches, and other major Protestant denominations. The la= tter is a church that has the fervor, but is doctrinally in error. Examples of t= hese are the Mormon churches and Jehovah’s witnesses. In periods of revival both extremes move towards a centering position of “warm orthodoxy,&#= 8221; combining fervor with sound doctrine. A question came up that often comes u= p in relation to evangelism and revival, and Dr. Fish gave a great analogy ... it’s like an old time sailor sailing a ship. The wind (God) can be blowing hard= but if the sailors (humans) do not put the sails into the proper position, they don’t go anywhere. Likewise, the sailors can position the sailors properly, but they are dependent on the wind to set things in motion. So revival requires a symbiotic relationship, it doesn’t happen without God providing the impetus and people doing something with it. So people waiting around for revival need to ask themselves if the wind is there and they are just not doing their part = to set sail.

&nbs= p; This afternoon after lunch most of the group went on a bus tour of the town of <= st1:City w:st=3D"on">Oxford. I took ab= out 120 pictures, maybe half of them worthwhile :-) We started out at an indoor thing = called “The Oxford Story” which had a short confusing/pointless movie = at the beginning, and then when we went to the main part the train cars were broken down and were going to take 30 minutes to fix. So we got refunds and then headed over to the bus tour. It was raining off and on quite heavily, though the tour bus operator called it “a storm in a teapot.” T= he bus was a double decker with an open top, and a number of us went to the top. I wanted to take pictures, and for the 7 pound entry fee I wasn’t going to let some rain bother me :-) Besides, I had an umbrella with me= . But while us tourists were getting our umbrellas up = and down with the rain, the lady doing the voiceover for the tour sat there on = top without even a raincoat. She didn’t seem the least bit fazed by it either. I did get some cool s= hots of people in the rain, I set my shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second on my camera to freeze action (in part because of taking pictures from a moving b= us), and had some good results. After I get back home I plan to upload pictures = to my website. The tour took abo= ut an hour and a half, and then we hit heavy “rush hour” traffic. Most things in the town are closed by 5:00, some as early as 3:00-4:00. We learn= ed a lot about the town, and a cool factoid I didn’t know. Apparently Oxford runs on a clock that is 5 minutes behind London. So, when = it is 3:00 in London it is 2:55 in Oxford. They’ll have to forgive m= e for not adjusting my clock for the 5 minute discrepancy :-) Some of the group opted to g= o to evening mass at Christ Church, one of the oldest and most famous churc= hes in Oxford,= but I needed to provide email tech support on my blackberry to my wife who was ha= ving laptop problems back home, so I skipped out on that activity and went back = to the room. I’ll catch ma= ss there another time. After din= ner we had a chapel service in the college’s chapel, which was nice. A lady named Mackenzie in our group plays the piano, and did a nice job covering t= he keyboard work during the songs. I think I was like most people in not knowi= ng the songs we sang. They were nice, just very old hymns that I was not famil= iar with. Dr. Swain did the message, which was on the apostle Peter and his redemption by Christ, and how the object of his faith, the faith of the Oxf= ord martyrs and other forefathers, our faith, and the faith of those to come is= in the unchanging Christ, who is the same then, now, and in the future (Hebrews 13:5-8).

&nbs= p; After service I returned to my room, about 9:00, and after an hour and a half of typing this and getting Melissa back up and going on her laptop, I’m pretty much ready to go to bed. First road trip tomorrow, I’ll have plenty to write about tomo= rrow night after visiting some famous places on our first “Baptist Heritage Tour.”

Thursday, June 30, 2005

MOULTON = PICS &= nbsp; OLNEY PICS= &= nbsp; &nbs= p; KETTER= ING PICS

&nbs= p; The day started at 6:30 when my alarm went off. Breakfast wasn’t until 7:= 30, but since there are at least a dozen guys sharing 3 shower stalls on the fi= rst floor, I just assumed get mine done early and not have to queue up for them (“queuing” is the term they use in the UK for lining up). After breakfast we went straight to the bus, where we headed for Moulton. The bus= driver couldn’t quite find where we were going, but after stopping and asking directions a couple of times we got to Carey Baptist Church in Moulton, = the church founded by the great preacher/missionary William Carey in the 18th century. It was a neat experience getting to see his small workshop where he worked as a cobbler and schoolmaster and developed his vision for evangeliz= ing the world, and of course the church itself. The current pastor told us that we’d probably be the last group from Southwestern to see the church in its current state/configuration, because there was a bad infestation of woodworm and they were literally going to have to have all of the wood in t= he building removed/replaced in the next 12-18 months. In the process the chur= ch will undergo a significant renovation, including the removal of the old pipe organ that they still use as part of worship. Dr. Fish gave a sermon from Carey’s pulpit, and it was as if he was speaking to me personally. The topic was on priorities and not allowing one’s vocation to consume th= em to where they neglect their own family. That’s pretty much me, between work and school my family really gets the = short end of my time. I’m not sure how to change that though since I have at least another year of school left and I still have to work to support my family.

&nbs= p; From Moulton we moved on to Olney, where the church of John Sutc= liffe (pastor of William Carey and the one who led Carey to Christ) is located. C= arey was also ordained in this church. After the current pastor and his assistant talked to us about the church and showed us around, we broke for lunch on o= ur own in Olney. After lunch a group of us met up with Dr. Yarnell and we walk= ed over to Olney Parrish Church, which was the church of John Newton (author of “Amaz= ing Grace” and over 200 other hymns). The church has been locked against vandalism and is no longer in use, but we saw Newton’s grave in the cemetery th= at surrounds the church. We had intended to sing Amazing Grace in the choir lo= ft of Olney = Parrish Church, but because it was locked we didn’t get to. We did sing it at Sutcliffe’s church though.

&nbs= p; After Olney we departed for Kettering, where we = went to Fuller= Baptist Church, a church that actually predates its namesake, Andrew Fuller, but was renamed after its most famous pastor. Fuller lived during William Carey’s tim= e, and was significant in helping Carey raise money to support his missionary efforts in India and in moving Baptists away from the hyper-Calvinism of the day that held t= hat God elected who he chose to elect, and it was not man’s place to even proclaim the Word to non-Christians. The people at Fuller Baptist were exceptionally nice, especially an older lady named Helga who showed us arou= nd and also helped the bus driver find a couple of spots in Kettering we were looking for. We had afternoon tea and scones at Fuller, which were great for tiding us over unt= il dinner :-) After we lef= t Kettering we made the couple of hour drive back to <= st1:City w:st=3D"on">Oxford, then had = dinner. The table I was at had a nice discussion going on liberal vs. conservative theology and the importance of upholding the Bible as everything it claims = to be, and the importance of believers to be able to defend their faith against attacks from the humanist world. Finally the staff had to kick us out of the meal hall since they needed to get things cleaned up and ready for breakfast tomorrow so they could go home. A few of us hung out in the junior common r= oom (a leisure area with a TV, foosball table, and comfy chairs and couches) ab= ove the hall we use for classes for awhile while others went to Starbucks to ac= cess the Internet or just read and drink coffee. After a little while though I w= ent back to the room, I’m pretty tired as traveling always wears me out, = and since we have another travel day tomorrow I need to get some rest after I d= o a little more reading tonight.

Tomorrow, Bath and Stonehenge!

&nbs= p; A few things I’ve noticed since I’ve been here. One, in part beca= use the road system can’t handle it and in part because of the high cost = of gas (converts to about $8/gallon in US dollars presently), you just donR= 17;t see the proliferation of SUVs, big trucks, and minivans like you do in the = US. I think I’ve seen about 3 SUVs total, and they were all the smaller “Ford Escape” size ones. I saw one minivan, which was a 5-seater (two rows, not three like in the US). Other than that, the vast majority drive little cracker jack boxes as I li= ke to call them. Very tiny cars, fuel efficient I’m sure but not much in the way of capacity. The bus driver also told us something else that was interesting. Most towns have laws against leaving vehicle engines running w= hen the vehicle isn’t actually going somewhere, because of pollution. A number of us were back to the bus at one spot, waiting on the rest of the g= roup before moving on, and a lady asked the bus driver if he’d turn the ai= r on because it was so stuffy. He said it was illegal for him to start the engine until we were ready to leave, and that if he did and a police officer came = by he would get fined £25, which is about $50USD.

&nbs= p; The other driving related thing is that the road system is poorly designed (much like New England in the US), inefficient, and can’t handle the traffic load. The result is general= ly one near miss after another, whether it is hitting other cars, buildings th= at are right on top of the road, or people trying to walk down the sidewalk. Turning corners in a bus is always an adventure. It gets kind of comical af= ter awhile, but I guess the people here are used to it. The signs can be pretty= funny too, especially as related to speed limits. First time I’ve ever seen= a “variable speed limit” I guess based on traffic levels. Also, I took a picture of a speed limit sign in a parking lot in Moulton and the sp= eed limit was “dead slow.” <= /span>Pretty funny.

&nbs= p; The language issue hasn’t been much of an issue, at least not as much as I thought it would be. Something funny though is that we were given a handout= by the college of common English to American word conversions. Most were pretty straightforward, but a few struck me as funny:

US &= nbsp; &nbs= p; UK

Second Floor &nbs= p; = First Floor (huh, is this a m= ath problem???)

Popsicle &n= bsp; = ; Ice Lolly

Drug store = &nb= sp; Chemist

Trash can = Dustbin

Washcloth &= nbsp; &nbs= p; Flannel

Toilet paper &nbs= p; &= nbsp; Loo roll

Lawyer &nbs= p; Solicitor

Wake up &nb= sp; = Knock up

Sneakers &n= bsp; = ; Trainers

Friday, July 1, 2005

BATH PICTUR= ES &= nbsp; STONE= HENGE PICTURES

&nbs= p; Yesterday ended up being a miserable day. The weather was gloomy, and my mood turned = that way shortly after the start of the day’s bus ride. The professor lead= ing the trip today to Bath and Stonehenge wasn’t the usual one, and apparently he personally couldn’t care less about Stonehenge because = at first he was encouraging the group to opt for a “drive-by,” whe= re we would go by real slow and not even get out of the bus, and then after deciding with the other group leaders not to go that approach, he announced that we could get out if we wanted to, but that he was going to cut it down from the allotted two hours to one hour, and extend the stay in Bath by an hour. Well, other than the ancient Roman baths in the city of Bath, and Bath Abbey, there’s not much worthwhile to do in Bath (unless you’re= a fan of Jane Austen of “Pride and Prejudice” fame, at which point you can go see her house and the museum about her). By 12:30 I had pretty m= uch seen as much of the first two as there was to see, but we weren’t lea= ving Bath un= til 3:00 now instead of 2:00.

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&nbs= p; I got separated from the smaller group I started out with somewhere in the ba= ths, and joined up with another group after finishing up touring the Abbey. It w= as a mistake on my part. While very nice, almost all of the 6-7 were in their ea= rly 20s, and to put it plainly ... I’m not. I accept that I’m out of tou= ch when it comes to pop culture, I have no use for secular movies and I don’t listen to popular music. In this century the only movies I̵= 7;ve seen that aren’t kids movies are the Star Wars trilogy and the Lord o= f the Rings trilogy. I just don’t care about going to movies. The group I w= as with, you wouldn’t know them from any college age kids, Christian or non-Christian. The same obsession with pop culture and the things of the world, and an appalling sense of amusement messing aro= und with people in the city centre of Bath. After the Bath Abbey we went to lu= nch at a little place, and while I ordered the same Thai-type chicken and noodle d= ish as two other people, it turned out to be a mistake. Everyone else got their food right away, and even though the three of us ordered the “daily special” the other two didn’t get there’s until the rest = of the group was just about done eating, and I didn’t get mine until abo= ut 10 minutes after that. Most of them were fine with waiting, but a couple of= the group were getting annoyed and wanted to just bail. I wished they would, and encouraged them not to wait on my account. But they waited, and when I got = my food I inhaled the thing along with my drink in about 2 minutes flat. I wou= ld later pay for that, especially since it was a spicy dish.

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&nbs= p; So we left the restaurant, and went walking around. It turns out that three wa= nted to go do the Jane Austen stuff, which held no interest for me, and the other four wanted to go shopping, which also held no interest for me ... we’= ;re in a commercialized tourist trap mind you.= But, since they waited on me, I felt compelled to pick a group and s= tay with them. I opted for the shopping over Jane Austen, largely because the t= wo people who seemed most annoyed at having to wait were going that way. I just felt out of place and really wanted to just go on my own way at this point,= I had already figured out that fellow students or not, only one of the group I actually felt like I had something to talk about with, and she was going to= the Jane Austen stuff as well. So we went back towards city centre, pretty much just killing time and not doing much other than wandering in and out of sto= res and me listening to the others joke around. I felt myself aging rapidly, for the first time in my life really feeling like I just didn’t relate to= the younger crowd.

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&nbs= p; After doing much of nothing for an hour, we ended up back on the path towards the bus, but still had an hour to go before we left. I should have just went of= f on my own at that point, but I ended up standing around for the hour while the group sat on some concrete steps observing people and either making offhand= ed remarks to or about them, or just joking about ways to mess with people.

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&nbs= p; So at 3:00 we leave for Stonehenge, except = now we hit traffic. We have to leave Stonehenge by 5:00 to make it back to the col= lege for 7:00 dinner, but we don’t get to Stoneheng= e until 4:15. Again the discussion comes up of whether we’re actually g= oing to pay the £7 to go in, or just take pictures from across the street behind the fence (about 200 yards away). By the time it was decided that whoever wanted to go in could, and we got through the line to pay and then = walk through the tunnel under the road and up to Stonehen= ge, it was 4:35. It was also now cold and raining. So here was the part of the = day I was most excited about, with all the enthusiasm sucked out by a leader who basically didn’t want us to be there in the first place, and many of = the other students jumping on that bandwagon and cracking jokes about the place= . I shot about 40 pictures all around the monument, in part I took so many beca= use of the rain and it being hard to keep my camera lens dry/spot free. I only = got to listen to about a third of the pre-recorded audio tour (they give you personal audio handsets to listen to as you walk around) and get my pictures taken before it was quickly 4:55 and I had to get back to the bus. The professor who really didn’t care to be there made a comment over the = loudspeaker, “aren’t you glad we didn’t spend 2 hours here?” in = an “I told you so” type manner.&n= bsp; I was fuming inside, but since it was apparent that I was in the minority in actually wanting to have more time at St= onehenge, I just kept my mouth shut, put on my headphones and started up my MP3 playe= r. I just tuned out the rest of the bus ride back to Oxford, and when I got off the bus I we= nt back to my room and laid down for a few. Well, intending it to only be a few minutes anyway. After a few minutes I was getting sleepy, so I decided I didn’t care to be around people at dinner anyway since I was still pr= etty upset about how the day went, so I just went to sleep. I woke up once at so= me point and realized it was dark out, then went back to sleep and slept until= the alarm went off Saturday morning (today). I was so annoyed I didn’t ev= en want to type this journal yesterday. If I had, my feelings and comments wou= ld have likely been much harsher than they are now. But I did want to get it t= yped today, because the day was what it was, and there’s no sense in sugar coating it. But at least the immediacy of the emotion is past.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

LONDON PI= CTURES

&nbs= p; Today was infinitely better than yesterday. This morning we went to the British Library and British Museum, where we we= re shown around by the great theologian and professor, E. Earle Ellis. I took Dr. Ellis last semester for Theology of the Gospels and will have him again in the fall for Theology of Paul. Whether you agree with all of his theology or not, he makes a compell= ing case for what he believes, and despite just having a brilliant mind, he can also teach in an understandable manner. I have nothing but the utmost respe= ct for Dr. Ellis. At the British Library we got to see some of the most amazing documents in all of Christianity. They have on display Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinu= s, two of the three oldest Greek manuscripts of the Bible. The first is from around 350AD, and the second from around 400AD. They also have the original 1604 King James Bible, and the Gutenberg Bible (Gutenberg invented the prin= ting press, and the first thing he printed was a copy of the Bible). They also h= ave the Tyndale Bible, written in Middle English, and John Wycliffe’s Eng= lish translation of the Bible. It is ironic because Wycliffe was burned at the s= take for his Bible translation, yet the note in the library says the Bible was l= ater owned by King Henry VII. There were also some ve= ry old Hebrew Old Testament books and scrolls that were really cool to see. Most o= f us were simply in awe looking at these great texts and the history they repres= ent, stuff we’ve only read and talked about before today.

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&nbs= p; The British <= st1:PlaceType w:st=3D"on">Museum was almost equally amazing.= Just a magnificent facility, and many many amazing artifacts. The Rosetta Stone was a highl= ight, and also the Greek Parthenon area. Lots of ancient Egyp= tian and Babylonian things relevant to Judaism/Christianity as well. We o= nly had a little more than an hour, which wasn’t nearly enough time. This= was the first year the Oxford group had done this activity, and I recommended that next year they give longer in the museum a= nd library and take some of the time away from general = London touristy stuff.

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&nbs= p; After the museum we parted ways with Dr. Ellis and went back to the bus, which to= ok us up by the Thames and the Parliament building, where we were dropped off. Unfortunately for us, today was not on= ly the Live 8 concert, but also a huge gay pride parade through Trafalgar Square. I ended up hanging out with a grou= p of guys that I fit in much better with, and had a much more enjoyable time in fellowship. The parade was pretty much what gay pride parades seem to be, pitiful cries for attention and acceptance, but done in an “in your face” manner of shameless immorality/sexual perversion. While there were some paraders that just walked in support, the majority se= emed to be competing for who could have the most outrageous outfits and were just being overtly sexual. Doesn’t do much for gatheri= ng sympathy for their cause when they behave in such an offensive manner, whet= her I agree with their lifestyle or not. [ed: 7/4 ... talking to a couple of students who were walking with a different group, one of them almost ended up getting attacked because they said somet= hing when a group of gay men who weren’t in the parade but were out in sup= port were whistling at/making sexual overtures towards a few young boys on the streets. And we’re supposed to think that is acceptable?]

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&nbs= p; We took a lot of pictures around the Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey areas. We didn’t know Westminster Abbey closed to visitors at 1:45, s= o we ended up getting there after it closed. We still took a bunch of pictures f= rom the outside though. It turns out it really isn’t a real church anymore anyway. We also went by the Prime Minister’s palace and also saw the changing of the guard at the Queen’s Life Guard. Didn’t make it over to Buckingham Palace though, but = that was okay. Around 4:00 we ran = into Dr. Fish and his wife, and a couple that were walking with them over by Westminster Abbey. We all sat down talking, and over about 30 minutes a few others from our group found there way over to where we were. We went over by where the bus was supposed to pick us up, and hung out at a park until then. We were all pretty tire= d from all of the walking and just the busy day. The bus picked us up at 5:00 and = we made the hour and a half bus ride back to Oxford.

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&nbs= p; After dinner some of us ended up in the junior common room (JCR), which more or l= ess functions like a student lounge. It is a pair of rooms, a larger one with couches and chairs and a foosball table and stereo, and a smaller room with couches and chairs and a TV with a VCR.&nb= sp; I played foosball for awhile, then went in and watched the last half= of Bruce Almighty. It had an okay premise, but the theological “answer” still boiled down to man deciding his own fate. I obviously didn’t expect Hollywood to take any kind of biblical approa= ch to living life despite the premise of God’s involvement in the world,= and the message of “Believe in Me, but live your own life and solve your = own problems” was pretty consistent with what I expected from it. The mov= ie makers also didn’t seem to find any problem in having “Bruce,” Jim Carrey’s character, being God yet at the same time being involved in a live-in out-of-wedlock sexual relationship with Jennifer Aniston’s character. This was of course the feel good non-judgmental God that most of the world that actually confesses a belief = in God chooses to believe in.

&nbs= p; After the movie I sat in the main room of the JCR talking to some other students, then came back to my room and emailed Melissa back and forth for awhile. Th= en I did my journal for yesterday and today, and now at 12:27AM I am signing off= and going to bed.

Sunday, July 03, 2005

&nbs= p; As I expected to, I opted to sleep through breakfast and not get up until 8:30= . I did my morning routine, and then met Bill, Rob, and Jeff down in the courty= ard at 9:30 to head over to Christ Church Cathedral for morning service. It is = an Anglican church, which is very much like a Catholic service in that it is v= ery structured and ritualistic. The building itself is magnificent, just awesom= e to look at and imagine how much work went into it. Once service began, I was amazed at the boy’s choir they had. Singing along to the playing of t= he massive pipe organ, it was quite an experience to take in. In addition to t= he stuff they do as part of their ritualized worship, the choir also sang Psal= m 92 and The Lord’s Prayer. We could use more of that in the Southern Bapt= ist church, just the singing of the biblical text like that. I was blown away by the beauty and simplicity of it. The sermon itself wasn’t particularly good, primarily because the way the service is structured the sermon is only about 10 minutes long, and ties into the Old Testament and New Testament readings that are done earlier in the service. There’s just not much = room for expository preaching, really getting into the Word. I was impressed tho= ugh that what I was hearing was doctrinally sound if superficial, and did call people to put aside their doubts and to place their faith in Christ. Not a Baptist type of invitation, but the message itself was where it should be.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> The whole thing ended with a sour = note, after service we were walking out, and there is a massive courtyard between= the sanctuary and the street where you enter into the church grounds. Apparently someone dared to step on the sacred grass, because one of the church people that seemed to serve no other purpose than to observe what people were doing suddenly bellowed “GET OFF THE GRASS” repeatedly in a loud condescending tone of voice. After a service where we had just prayed to em= body the love of Christ in the world, that was an iro= nic ended with the church’s own staff demonstrating anything but love in = the way they handled a stupid matter like stepping on the grass in the courtyar= d.

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&nbs= p; At lunch a rather annoying conversation started up by one of the professors re= garding his annoyance at a crying baby at the service he attended this morning at S= t. Aldates. I suppose it is annoying to me because there’s a general sel= fish attitude I’ve grown to recognize when it comes to worship. At a time = when we should be most focused on God, we’re still focused on ourselves and our own needs, and our own comfort, and our own rights to this and that. It reminds me of at my home church, where we barely even have a nursery and th= at we have one at all is because pay people to do it. Other than the paid workers, very few feel any sort of concern to watch children if it means impacting t= heir own time of worship. Never mind that it ends up being those who have childr= en who end up working nursery at least 25% of the time if not 50% of the Sunday morning services, but then again the prevailing attitude is “I’= ve done my time” like it is a prison sentence they have fulfilled and no longer have any obligation to deal with. But so goes the attitude of the co= mmon Christian, regardless of the lip service they pay to the Scriptures. Am I a= ny better? Of course not, I know this. I am as selfish as anyone else. My indignation is probably even born out of selfishness without me consciously realizing it. But today’s conversation just reeked of that sort of ar= rogant “get this baby out of here because it disturbs ME” type of selfishness. Yes, the mother should have been respectful of others and taken the baby out if it was crying for more than a minute or two (I didn’t= go to this particular service, so I have no idea how bad it was or for how lon= g, other than that of the 7-8 at the table, only two said they could hear a ba= by crying). Yes, one of the ushers probably should have asked the mother to st= ep outside for a minute with the baby to calm it down if it genuinely was a problem. But even if none of that happened, as was the case here, the Chris= tian response should not be one of anger and feeling like their own personal wor= ship experience was someone deprived or diminished and it was someone else’= ;s fault. We’re in worship for the sole point of focusing all of our attention and energy on the worship of God. We should try to at least set a= side our concerns for ourselves for an hour and a half on a Sunday morning.

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&nbs= p; This evening we went to St. Aldates, another Anglican church which is literally right across the street from Christ Church. Despite the proximity, they were worlds apart in terms of service styles. Aldates is al= so an ancient cathedral, except they have spent in excess of £3,000,000 renovating/remodeling the interior to be a modern multimedia setup with projector screens and monitors and a stage with drums, guitars, and a keybo= ard. The service was very charismatic, complete with speaking in tongues, prophe= cy and visions, and laying on of hands. Doctrinally nothing that came from the pulpit was really out of line, but the “presentation” so to speak was interesting to say the least. Mu= ch different from what people who went to Aldates this morning reported. The m= usic service was good, other than it went on more tha= n an hour and really needed to end. That’s probably the Baptist influence = on me, I’m just not used to services lasting 2+ hou= rs like this one did tonight. What I did like about the worship service in relation to how a typical Southern Baptist service goes is that once the mu= sic started, it didn’t stop. It was just a continual movement from one song/hymn into the next for more than an hour. It made it much easier to actually get into a genuine worship experience, unlike the Southern Baptist= way where “worship” is more of a formality and the experience is a start/stop affair interspersed with announcements, meet and greet, and the offering. I liked that St. Aldates had an actual greeter ministry, and memb= ers of the “welcome team” sought out visitors prior to service and talked to them and were very friendly. They made us feel welcome, despite us being visitors and from a different denomination, and that just made the experience much nicer than in so many churches back home where you can literally be a visitor for more than a month in a church without someone so much as saying “good morning” to you.

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&nbs= p; It was somewhat ironic that in light of my comments about the lunch conversati= on today (I wrote those right after lunch), one of = the songs we sang tonight had a chorus that went something like this:

I am coming ba= ck to the heart of worship

and it is all about you, all about you Je= sus

I am sorry for= what I have made it

when it is all about you, all about you Je= sus

That sums up in far less words exactly what I was tryi= ng to say this afternoon. I’ll need to Google when I get back and find out = the actual name of that song and who does it. Singing that was as close to being moved to tears in a worship service as I’ve ever been.

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&nbs= p; Initially we thought service was at 6:00 and that we’d be back around 7:15, whi= ch should have been close enough to make dinner. Instead, service started at 6= :30, and we finally left at 8:20 and they were still going strong. Since we had = long missed dinner, we went over to The Eagle and Child, the famous pub where C.= S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien used to meet with a few others and discuss literat= ure. It was a neat experience, even if I took a bath on dinner by paying the equivalent of $19 for fish and chips (chips in Britain are French Fries) and= a couple of diet cokes. That’s something you’d normally pay about $4-$5 for in the States. After dinner we wandered outside and saw a guy unconscious on the side walk with a couple of women trying to help him. They said he was okay, but he sure didn’t look okay to us. I thought maybe= he had too much to drink and was passed out, and so we made our way back up St. Giles Rd. towards McDonald’s, where we got some ice cream for dessert= . As we were walking back down we ran into Dr. Swain and Jason Deusing, and talked to them for a little while about our experience at St. Aldates a= nd Jason’s today at Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, where he took a group of studen= ts. Dr. Swain had went to St. Aldates this morning, = so we compared our experiences. At some point Bill noted that it was almost 10:00= PM, and we were amazed because it was still light out. It doesn’t actually get dark until about 10:15 here, and it gets light in the morning around 5:= 00. So we started heading back towards the college. As we got near, we saw an ambulance with its lights flashing over by the Eagle and Child. I guess that guy wasn’t alright after all. We stayed out of their way, and just we= nt back into the college and back to our rooms. After emailing Melissa back and forth for awhile while typing this, it’s bedtime. Tomorrow morning we’re going to Wind= sor Castle, which IR= 17;m not real excited about. I guess British royalty has never done anything for= me, and I couldn’t care less about the Queen’s residence. Hopefully= my attitude will change tomorrow when we actually get there. Tomorrow afternoon and evening is lectures back at Oxford. We haven’t done a lot of lectures yet, so it will be a nice change of pace from the on the go traveling we’ve been doing so far. I have to = say, outside of the mess with Bath and Stonehenge this has been an incredible trip so far.=

Monday, July 04, 2005

WINDSOR PICTURES

&nbs= p; Independence Day.&nbs= p; They didn’t seem to be celebrating it around here though :-) The college was nice enough to do = an “American” meal for us at dinner tonight though, more on that later.

&nbs= p; After breakfast this morning we boarded the coach for Winds= or, where the primary destination for us was Windsor Castle (summer home of the Queen). As we started getting close to Windsor and seeing signs, we saw one for Legoland Windsor. I forgot that there was a Legoland in England= . Last summer our family vacation was to San Diego, where the Legoland in the States is located= . I thought about hopping a bus over and seeing if I could pick up a t-shirt fo= r Duncan with the L= egoland Windsor logo, but it was going to be costly and I really didn’t have = the time.

&nbs= p; As I said yesterday, Windsor= Castle didn’t initially have much appeal for me. It had even less when I found out it was going to cost £12.50 ($25) just to get in. I was pretty disappointed = that at that price we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the castle, = just in the outside areas inside the castle walls. That is ridiculous not to all= ow photography at those prices. That aside, it was a really good experience go= ing inside the castle. It’s practically its own little town inside the ca= stle walls, and the views from the north terrace overlooking the town of Windsor were incredible. St. George’s Chapel was also very= nice, an ancient cathedral where the old kings are buried. They do death in England= a lot differently than we do in the States. There it is practically superstition = not to step on a grave, here they bury people in the floors of cathedrals and people walk on them all day :-) It was pretty cool seeing the famous kings from history (even if they were dea= d), and just experiencing so much history in general. In some ways it feels wei= rd seeing so much stuff that I’ve just read about in books and such befo= re. We also got to see the changing of the guard at the castle, which led to a funny situation. I was trying to get off to the side to take pictures witho= ut people in the way, and I ended up by the King Henry VIII gate. A security g= uard told me to either get back behind the barricade with the people or go throu= gh the gate (which was open). Thinking I could just get my pictures through the open gate and then go back to where I was, I went out the gate. After getti= ng my pictures I tried to walk back in and got stopped. The guard was like “it’s a one way tour, you can’= t go back in there.” I was l= ike “okay, what do I need to do to get back in, I wasn’t trying to exit, I didn’t realize this was the exit.” At first he tried to tell me too b= ad, that I’d have to go back and pay another £12.50, but then he decided to let me go back in through the exit. That was good :-) I bought a little stuffed bear dre= ssed up as a castle guard for Bekah. That was the only souvenir I picked up toda= y.

&nbs= p; After wandering Windsor Castle, Jeff, Rob, = Bill, and myself went into the town looking for lunch.= We opted for a Pizza Hut buffet, which with a drink was about $14/each. Ouch! It’s painful with the conversion rate! We decided to eat our money’s worth, which we pretty much managed to do. I wasn’t even all that hun= gry for dinner later on, though I ate anyway.

&nbs= p; It started raining and got really cold as we got out of Pizza Hut, but by then= it was pretty much time to head back to the bus. I had left my jacket in my ro= om at the college, but I was very glad I had my umbrella. I really would have = been miserable without it. After the bus ride back we had about 30 minutes before lectures started. All three of my professors were lecturing today, so I had lectures until 10:00 with an hour break for dinner. We were also supposed to have a guest lecture on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales in advance of our = trip to Canterbury tomorrow, but that got cancelled on us. The lectures were good, though toni= ght it was Dr. Hamilton’s turn to steal the show. The lecture was doing a breakdown first of Ephesians 2 and then of 1 Corinthians 1:17-31, and in the process there was some great expository teaching and a discussion of Paul’s theology. I’ve found that Dr. Hamilton thinks a lot like= I do, or vice versa, and that I find it refreshing to find a professor that is not only willing to stand up against tradition where necessary, but more th= an that is focused strictly on what the Scripture says. I love that he defends what he believes with well reasoned arguments backed by Scripture, as oppos= ed to appealing to tradition or belief in something just because it is what Baptists are supposed to believe. One of the main points tonight was in reference to Ephesians 2:15 where Paul says Jesus abolished the Law and the ordinances, and how that relates to Jesus saying He didn’t come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. Basically Jesus through the fulfillment = of the Law, so that it would have all appearances of righteousness, abolished = the Law. That’s how I have = felt about it, and feel that Christians who seek to cling to Old Testament ordinances such as tithing are being legalistic. I believe that Jesus not o= nly abolishes the Law, but the New Law he puts in place radicalizes the old Law= and makes it even more personal. Jesus forces personal responsibility onto the believer, it is no longer the lette= r of the law but rather the spirit of the law that we are held to. Tithe is thrown out for instance, but in its p= lace is the command to give generously, sacrificially, and with a glad heart/not grudgingly. That’s more strict than a legalistic 10%, since many Christians if not a majority can afford to cut back on their lifestyles and funnel significantly more than 10% back into God’s work.

   &nbs= p;        Dr. Fish gave another great lecture as well. He is such a captivating, eloquent speaker. Knowing I won’t have any tests in his class I’m having= a hard time making myself take notes. I just want to sit and listen and absorb :-)

   &nbs= p;        Dinner ... it was funny, because while they prepared an “American” mea= l of hamburgers, French fries, and apple pie, it was just a bit “off.” We were ve= ry grateful for them thinking of us and doing that, but it was also somewhat humorous in the execution. The burgers were baked, and served on big sourdo= ugh rolls. The French fries, or “chips” as they are called in the <= st1:country-region w:st=3D"on">UK, wer= e baked as well. The apple pie had no sugar in it (just literally baked apples in a crust), and on the side instead of whipped cream they served what it like a heavy whipping cream (not actually whipped though). At one point, people started breaking out in singing the Star Spangled Banner, and one of the gu= ys Bill had a t-shirt on with an American flag. He stood with his jacket open = so everyone could see the flag, and that was what we sang to with hands on hea= rts. It was patriotic and comical all in one. I think the kitchen staff thought = we were nuts, and we probably were :-) But it was cool that they tried to give us an American meal when we = were away from home on Independence Day.

   &nbs= p;        After lectures I stopped into the JCR and played foosball for about 30 minutes ju= st to unwind. A couple of students came in trying to round up people for a pra= yer meeting/daily debriefing/fellowship in the college chapel, but it was alrea= dy after 10PM and after Windsor and three classes I was just burnt. Pretty much everyone else playing foosball or watching a movie in the other room felt t= he same way. After foosball I went back to my room and am working on this while emailing Melissa back and forth on the blackberry.

   &nbs= p;        Tomorrow is another 7 hours on the bus. I’ve never read Chaucer, and know noth= ing of the Canterbury Tales. I should have made it a point to read them before = this trip! There’s supposed = to be a bus tour available there, I think I will definitely try to take that and learn as much as possible!

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

CANTE= RBURY PICTURES

   &nbs= p;        On the bus returning from Canterbury to Oxford now. Since the trip back is 3.5 hours, I figured I’d work on this for a bit. This morning came early,= not just because we got up an hour earlier, but because I didn’t get to s= leep until about 1am. I went to bed around 11:30 and was just about asleep when = the person in the room next to me yelled out while they were talking on the pho= ne. When I get woken up when I’m either almost asleep or haven’t go= tten into a deep sleep, I’m done. I laid there for over an hour trying to = get back to sleep before I finally made it. The walls are paper thin at the college, so when people are talking even at a conversational level in the n= ext room you can hear their voice, and when they yell it is as if you’re right there next to them.

   &nbs= p;        We got on the road about 7:30am after breakfast, and most people slept on the = bus. I was sleepy, but since I have sleep apnea I generally try not to sleep when I’m around people not sleeping since I snore really badly. I mainly j= ust listened to my MP3 player for the first couple of hours, until the bus made= a pit stop so people could take bathroom breaks and such. I tried to read on = the second leg, but I have a hard time reading without getting motion sickness = and starting to feel nauseous. It’s too bad because that would be plenty = of time to get some reading in. = Even typing this I have to do it without staring at the screen or I start gettin= g a headache. Pretty pathetic really.

   &nbs= p;        Once we got to Canterbury we first went as a whole group to a Canterbury Tales tour. It was pretty fu= n, though not really worth the $10 it cost. The thing is,<= /span> prices would be reasonable if one pound equaled one dollar. Instead everyth= ing is so expensive. Talking to Jeff and Rob at lunch we agreed that in the de-briefing at the end of the trip it would be good to suggest for next year that they are more upfront in telling people what the trip will cost in personal expenses. We all seem to remember in orientation being told that entrance fees to most things would be paid, we&#= 8217;d be given money to cover lunches when we were out, and that pretty much the = only money we’d need to bring would be what we wanted to spend personally = on souvenirs. Unfortunately it is hard to find anywhere to eat for the £5 they give us, meals are generally closer to £7-£8 if you get a drink (even water costs in England). That equates to hav= ing to kick in an extra $4-$6 of your own money to cover a meal. Also, we have significant out of pocket expenses for entrance fees. As noted yesterday, <= st1:place w:st=3D"on">Windsor Castle was $25 to get in. After pa= ying for the Canterbury Tales tour and another £7 for lunch, I opted not to pay another £6 to walk through Canterbury Cathedral. Instead, we walk= ed up to St. Martin’s, the oldest church in England. It was put into use = in the 6^th century, and was built on top of a Roman church that was bef= ore that. Some of the original Roman stones/bricks are still visible, and the R= oman church floor sits about 18” below the St. Mart= in’s church floor. We also got lucky and as we were coming up on the church, an older gentleman coming out gave us a quick history and also told us about a Roman aqueduct that was about 300 yards up a path into the woods that looked like it went nowhere. It ended up being a great find, and we were the only = ones in the group to even find out about it. Apparently (according to the gentle= man) it was used to supply water to the city in ancient times. I got some good pictures of it while we were there, even though we had to climb down a steep hill to get around to the side of it and really see it.

   &nbs= p;        By the time we finished with St. MartinR= 17;s it was time to head back to the bus. Earlier we had tried to go into St. AugustineR= 17;s Abbey, but weren’t able to. We went up a side path and took pictures = and found a wooden gate/door with holes in it that looked like what you’d= see on a medieval prison, so we took turns taking pictures of ourselves behind = the “prison” door. It was pretty funny.

   &nbs= p;        The rest of the day should be pretty blah. We’ve got dinner at 7:00 after= we get back, and then nothing else planned. Since I have 9 hours of lectures tomorrow, I might actually try to go to bed reasonably early. I’m pre= tty tired now actually. Today mar= ks one week in England. As Rob said, even while we’re in a whirlwind of activity and seeing things, time is also starting to drag. We all miss our families and look fo= rward to getting home. If absence makes the heart grow fonder, after three weeks = my heart should be ready to explode in fondness for my family.

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   &nbs= p;        We stopped at a truck stop on the way back for bathroom breaks, and it was kin= d of funny. One of the leaders on the trip, Jason, came out of a little store carrying a “Magnum,” which we soon found out was an ice cream b= ar with vanilla ice cream and a white chocolate exterior. Pretty soon about a dozen of us we= re queued up (in line) buying our own Magnums. Yummy! About the best ice cream bar I̵= 7;ve ever eaten. I think Jason is addicted to them though, he says he gets one a= bout anywhere he finds them over here.

   &nbs= p;        It’s about 10:30 now, and I’m wrapping up the day and getting ready to go = to bed. After dinner I went out walking with Lewis and Jeff. Lewis is a student and pastor and actually has his name in at our church for the open pastor position we have. Pretty interesting. I’d = love if someone like him got the job, he’d do a great job. I figure his age will eliminate him from consideration though, I found out he’s only 24 even though he looks more like 34. The thing is, talking to him you wouldn’t think he was 24 just because he carries himself so much beyond his years. We went over to an Internet cafe so those= two could check their email, and when Jeff went off to find a “toiletR= 21; as they refer to them here, he came back and told us that he walked in on a couple of guys sharing a bathroom stall making sniffing noises, and one of = them said “someone is in here” and then he heard shuffling noises. N= ot drawing any conclusions, but that seems like a rather suspect situation :-)   We met up with anot= her guy, Thomas, who is the trip coordinator, and we then walked back to the co= llege in order to pick up another guy that Thomas was supposed to meet back up wi= th. When we got back we ran into a couple of students that had gone jogging and forgot their access cards, so we let them in. Where it gets really funny ... one of the ladies comes up and is upset, saying she realized she locked her= key in her room, and there was no staff around to let her in. So she was basica= lly locked out of her room. While= the discussion about what she is going to do is taking place, a couple of young athletic guys, Jason and Ben, come along.&= nbsp; They decide that despite her room being on the second story, since t= he window is open they’d just climb up and go through the window. So Jason gets in the window sill o= f the first floor window and hoists Ben up to the second floor window, and he cli= mbs in. Meanwhile, just as Ben is climbing into her window to safety, she bends over and her key falls out of= her fanny pack onto the sidewalk with a clang.= Just a brilliant moment, great comedy. I’m just glad neither Jason nor Ben got hurt, it had been raining and the building had to still be wet since the sidewal= k was. If Ben had fallen the only place to land would have been concrete.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

   &nbs= p;        A day at the college today, 9 hours of lectures. The material was good, but it made for a long day. After Dr. Hamilton’s lecture this morning I had about an hour before lunch, so I went out walking towards the city centre. I didn’t accomplish much other than getting some exercise (always neede= d), though I did wander through a cool marketplace they had, and also went down= Broad St. a= nd saw the university stores where they have Oxford paraphernalia for sale. I made a mental note of where they are since I need= to buy shirts and such still. I didn’t buy anything = today, instead I briefly looked at the selection and compared prices since they we= re slightly different. It’= s kind of annoying running into the exchange rate again. I am wanting to get a sho= rt sleeved collared shirt that I can wear to work rather than a t-shirt for myself, but the polo type shirts are about £30-35, and I canR= 17;t see paying $60-$70 for a shirt. If I don’t find any significantly che= aper (I’d go as much as £20), I guess it will be a t-shirt for me too :-)

   &nbs= p;        At dinner there was a pretty funny happening. Typically the professors take a spoon and rap it on the table several times in quick succession to get the attention of the hall when they need to make an announcement. One of the students, a young guy named Carl, was sitting at the head of one of the tab= les next to Dr. Swain. He did the spoon rapping on the table and everyone got silent, expecting it was Dr. Swain. Then Carl shouted down the table “please pass me the salad dressing!” and got a laugh out of everyone. It was genius on his part, though Dr. Swain looked embarrassed by= it.

   &nbs= p;        Dr. Hamilton’s lecture continued to work through expositing the theology = of Paul. He’s basically showing us a method of working through a passage= and diagramming the flow of thought to get to the main point, the supporting points, and just how the grammatical structure flows. It’s a way of b= eing able to take a text and get the meaning out of it intended by the author, w= hich is really cool. Dr. Hamilton = is a gifted professor, and his knowledge of the Bible is awesome. More than anyt= hing he just always seems exceptionally well prepared, and you can tell he takes= a lot of pride in his lecturing and puts a lot of time and energy into getting ready for class. Yet at the same time he exudes a genuine humbleness. He is based on the Houston campus rather than Ft. Worth so I’d never heard of him prior to the trip, but he’s been a blessing to me. It is very refreshing to me to hear someone who is so knowledgeable about the Bible and is so willing to say “this is what = the text says, this is what it doesn’t say” even when it means going against denominational tradition. In a conversation at a table at breakfast yesterday morning, one of the guys asked him where Southern Baptists get th= eir views on total abstinence from alcohol.&nb= sp; He said rather plainly that while he personally did not drink and did not see a good reason to drink, that it was not a biblical view but one of tradition. That’d been the position I’ve held as well. There’s not much good (if any) to come from drinking, but there’= ;s no scriptural basis for the tradition of being against partaking of alcohol= .

   &nbs= p;        Dr. Fish’s class was good as always. The lecture was mostly the backgroun= d to the Wesleyan Revival of the 18^th century. We talked about the socio-political environment that John Wesley came up in, about his family, education, and so on. It is amazing to me that John Wesley kept such detail= ed journals of his activities and thoughts and ideas and such, his are publish= ed in 9 volumes! Dr. Fish told a funny story at one point that wasn’t relevant to the lecture, but it popped into mind as he was talking about something else:

(paraphrasing) There was a man and wife who were married, and fought like cats and dogs. One day the man dies and goes to heaven. He reaches the gates of Heav= en and is met by St. Peter, who asked him if he wants to get in. The man says = yes, and St. Peter tells him that in order to get in he has to be able to spell = the password. The man says he isn’t a good speller, but that he’d t= ry. St. Peter tells him that the password is “love.” The man spells love correctly and = gets in. Some time later St. Peter sees the man again, and tells him that he has= to go do some business for God, and asks if the man would watch the gates of Heaven while he was away. The man agrees.&= nbsp; A short while later, the man sees his former wife on earth approach = the gate, as she has died. He asks her if she wants to get into heaven, or go d= own to hell. She says she wants into heaven. The man says that’s okay, but she has to spell the password in order to get in. So she asks what the pass= word is. The man replies, “Czechoslovakia.”

   &nbs= p;        I went to Dr. Swain’s class a couple of minutes before 8PM, when it was= due to start, but the room was packed. There was no place to sit down. So, I decided to just leave and go back to the room. Probably not the best idea, = but I didn’t want to hassle with sitting on the floor with my laptop or pulling up a chair to an already crowded table. One of the guys, Ron, is ta= ping all of the lectures to a digital voice recorder, so I’ll get the lect= ure copied from him tomorrow along with the notes.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

   &nbs= p;        Today was supposed to be a relatively quiet day of lectures, but we got word this morning about the terrorist bombings in London. At the time we heard it had just happened, and word was that at least initi= ally it was suspected to be a power surge in the underground. By the time the double-decker bus was hit, I think it was obvious that it was a terrorist attack. Standing in the lobby of the college entrance talking to other stud= ents while waiting to go down to the library archives, one of the students mutte= red “damn muslims.” While a few of us immediately said= that we don’t know what’s going on yet and it is too early to leap to any conclusions, I don’t think the thought was very far from all of o= ur minds ... though maybe not in such harsh terms. It’s just a reaction = in the post 9/11 world, when terrorism immediately brings al-Queda and muslim fundament= alist terrorists to mind. It’= s a scary thought to think of how more prevalent these types of attacks would b= e if more muslims followe= d their faith as laid out in the Qu’ran. It’= ;s such a myth that it is a religion of peace. These terrorists are called “fundamentalists” because they hold fast to the fundamentals of their faith as laid out in their scriptures. The peace-loving tolerant muslims are the ones not f= ollowing their faith as given by their scriptures.

   &nbs= p;        We continued with our lectures today, and at dinner Dr. Yarnell announced that Saturday’s trip to Londo= n was cancelled for obvious reasons. The public transportation system may not= be fully operational, right now the authorities don’t want people out on= the streets in London<= /st1:City>, and seeing a few sights isn’t worth a potential follow up attack on a Saturday when tourist activity is likely to be at its highest. While I was mostly indifferent as to whether we went or not (the nice thing about being= a Christian is that death is not the end), I was glad to have them make a decision not to go so people don’t have to feel awkward about decidin= g on their own to go or not go. This way it is decided, on the side of caution, = and people don’t have to worry about it. As far as we know at this point,= the rest of the trip is still on as scheduled.

   &nbs= p;        By this evening the initial death count of 3 had risen to at least 40, and “dozens injured” to 350. I’m not sure if it will go any higher or not, but I can’t help but think of 9/11. I went out walking around Oxford this evening before dinner, and the mood on the streets was pretty somber. Talking to the bursar of Regent’s Park College at lunch, he said that w= hile London used to ha= ve terrorist activity from the IRA (Irish Republican Army), there hadn’t been any real activity from that front in more than a decade, and people had developed a sense of security. That was definitely shaken today. There was another parallel for me.= I missed 9/11 by a day, Duncan and= I were visiting my mother and sister in New Hampshire<= /st1:State>, and we flew back home on American Airlines out of Boston on 9/10. I don’t have it here to refe= rence, but I believe on the original itinerary for our trip today was supposed to = be London (a few thi= ngs were shuffled around from the original itinerary to the one we’ve actually followed upon arrival here). Makes me wonder what God’s plans are for= me, since He keeps me out of harms way. I don’t believe for a second that stuff like that is a coincidence.

   &nbs= p;        I guess part of me is annoyed though in relation to the London bombings, from a purely selfish = point of view. I emailed Melissa before she was even up so she’d know I was safe, and my friend Lisa emailed both Melissa and me to find out if I was s= afe. My sister-in-law Donna called Melissa, and my grandmother called Melissa. A couple of other friends checked in on me as well. However, no one at my chu= rch bothered inquiring, not even my deacon (I have no idea who my deacon even i= s, which means he’s doing a real bang up job whoever it is) or Sunday Sc= hool teacher. No one at work, even my boss, contacted me or Melissa to find out = if I was okay. [ed: my boss emailed after I had typed this and gone to bed, so he did check in = ... someone from the church called a couple of days after the fact] Neither my mother nor sister bother= ed to call Melissa either. Nor a few people that I consider friends at work. Mayb= e it is just a pride thing on my part, it probably is ... but it’s disappointing not to even warrant a courtesy check-in when people know I’m over here in the London area and= am doing things that have me in L= ondon multiple times on the trip.

   &nbs= p;        As far as lectures go, I had Dr. Swain and Dr. Fish today, and then the princi= pal (president) of Regent’s Park College at Oxford, Dr. Paul Fiddes, gave a lecture this evening on Shakespeare= 217;s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which we’re seeing tomorrow night at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. After yesterday’s lectures i= t was hard to focus today on more lectures, I wish maybe that they would have separated the two days of lectures by swapping Tuesday’s Canterbury t= rip with yesterday’s lectures. But they didn’t, so we went on. Dr. Swain’s lecture was very good today, we di= d a quick run through Mark’s gospel as it related to Christology. My favo= rite part was when we got to Mark 11 and the episode of Jesus “cleansing t= he Temple.” Dr. Swain made a compelling argume= nt for not looking at it as a “cleansing,” but rather as a “cursing.” He poi= nts first back to Jeremiah 7:1-14, where God tells the people of Israel through the prophet what he did to = the first house (Shiloh), and that he will do it to this = Temple that they place their trust in w= hile making it a “den of robbers.”&= nbsp; In Mark 11, Jesus curses a fig tree as He and the apostles are approaching Jerusalem. It seems like a strange act unfitting of Jesus’ character. In Mark 11= :17, Jesus refers to Isaiah 56:7 (house of prayer for all the nations) and Jerem= iah 7:11 (den of robbers). A little while later, in verses 11:20-21, the apostles notice that the fig tree Jesus cursed has wit= hered up and died. The fig tree is basically a precursor to the dying of the Temp= le, because when Jesus dies and rises again he “destroys the Temple made = with hands and in three days builds a new one made without hands” (Mark 14:58). So in effect Jesus is cursing the man-made Temple, just as YHWH did in Jeremiah 7.= The Temple, while not physically destroyed until 70AD, i= s in effect withered and dead upon the resurrection because Jesus becomes the New Temple, in which became a house of prayer for all the nations. As a result, the “cleansing” idea is superficial, missing the deeper point of wh= at Jesus is really doing.

   &nbs= p;        This morning I went out souvenir shopping since Dr. Yarnell lectured in the morn= ing and I’m not taking his classes. I bought a fleece jacket for myself with the Regent’s Park College, Oxford logo and crest on it, a University of Oxford= polo shirt, an Oxford University t-shirt,= and similar t-shirts for the kids. I got free Oxford baseball hats with the jacket and polo, so Melissa will get one of those. T= he tax system here has residents pay 17.5% sales tax. However, non-residents c= an get a refund on it if they fill out a form and get it processed at customs = on the way out. I asked the burs= ar of the college (I really don’t know what that position title means, but it’s his title) at lunch if there was a difference between the use of= the name “University of Oxford” and “Oxford University,” because you see both regularly here. The “officially licensed” stuff from the university always seems to say “University of Oxfor= d” rather than the other way around. The way David explained it to me, at this point both are used interc= hangeably, but the “official” name is “University of Oxfor= d.” But from a marketing standpoint “Oxford University” rolls off the tongue better and over the years has become accepted as the s= ame thing. Most stuff that isn’t “officially licensed” by the university says “Ox= ford University” o= n it, and in the campus stores you can buy things with either name on it.

   &nbs= p;        Tomorrow is Tewksbury and then Stratford-upon-Avon for a formal dinner and then the Shakespeare play at night. We won’t = be back until quite late, so I may or may not journal tomorrow night. It might have to wait until Saturd= ay morning, but we’ll see.

Friday, July 9, 2005

TEWKSB= URY PICTURES     &= nbsp;           STRATF= ORD-UPON-AVON PICTURES

   &nbs= p;        It’s actually Saturday afternoon now. We didn’t get back until about 12:15= am last night, and then I emailed back and forth with Melissa for about 45 min= utes before falling off to sleep. I jotted notes here and there into my blackber= ry yesterday though so I’d remember the things I wanted to make mention = of.

   &nbs= p;        We’ve got kind of a running joke with the four of us that are going around togeth= er to most places now. I think it was when we were in Lo= ndon that Rob was looking for a restroom, and in England public restrooms are = simply called “Toilets” on the signs pointing the way. But, whereas we= say “for rent” in the U.S. when a real estate property is available, in England the phrase is “= To Let.” So Rob, needing to find a toilet, = sees a sign that he didn’t read right, and walks up to a “to let.̶= 1; After that we were joking with him that he needed to just go in and explain that Americans evaluate how good a property is by its toilets, then use it = and walk out and say “no thanks” and leave :-) Since then whenever someone needs = to find a toilet when we’re out and about, we refer to it as a “to let.”

   &nbs= p;        At breakfast yesterday I sat next to Dr. Fish and his wife and some other students. It was a good conversation. One thing that Dr. Fish and I have in common is that we’ve both lived in Fairborn, Ohio (Wright-Patterson Air = Force Base). He was the pastor of First Baptist of Fairborn from 1962-1965. Of co= urse I wasn’t born until 1971 and we lived in Ohio from 1974-1984 when my dad was stationed there. When I told Dr. Fish we had spent 9 years of that time liv= ing in Page Manor, he knew exactly where that was. So that was pretty cool. A funny incident at breakfast, som= eone commented on how it looked like it was going to be a sunny day, and so Dr. = Fish said he needed to take a “cap” with him on the day’s trip. Mrs. Fish looked at him and said “what do you need a cat for???” Visuals of Dr. Fish carrying a cat under his arm onto the bus must have pop= ped into everyone’s heads at once, because we all cracked up.

   &nbs= p;        Ironically, this day was the hottest day of the trip so far ... when we all had to be dressed up in long sleeve shirts and ties (and some people even wore jacket= s). The temperature was high and it was humid, so we sweat a lot. One girl wore jeans to the formal = dinner at the Falcon Hotel in Stratfo= rd, and I imagine she felt horribly out of place. I don’t think anything = was said to her though, at least I’d hope not. There wasn’t much to= say really, she was way underdressed for the occasion despite us being told sev= eral times to dress up nicely that day (before the trip during orientation, and a couple of times in advance of today). I didn’t much care personally w= hat she did or didn’t wear, it was just mainly= a noticeable thing.

   &nbs= p;        After breakfast we boarded the bus for an hour and a half drive to Tewksbury, where the oldest Baptist church in England is. Outside of the Ba= ptist church and the abbey across the street from it, there isn’t a whole l= ot to do or see in Tewksbury. On the way I took a few pictures of the countryside. That’s one thing that has really made an impression on me so far on the trip, just how much greenery/countryside there is in such a small country. England= has done well not to develop it all up, even if it means having a crazy road system. It’s just beautiful when you’re out driving around. Whe= n we got to Tewksbury, Rob, Jeff, Bill, and myself followed the main gr= oup towards the Baptist church. When we got there, it was humorous because there were a bunch of women in there having a quilt showing and sale. So we kind = of had to work around that walking around the chapel. At first it was kind of = like “this is neat,” but that’s about it, and we walked over i= nto the graveyard next to the church building and then were standing around tal= king and overlooking the Avon river, which runs through Tewksbury. Thomas, one of the group leaders, = walked over and said they had met the caretaker of the church and that he was goin= g to tell us more about the history of the church. When we got back inside, the = guy initially started talking about how he was new and didn’t know everyt= hing about the church, but he’d give it a go. He had long hair pulled back= in a pony tail and reminded me of our shipping/receiving guy at work ... really nice guy, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Anyway, the caretaker starts talking and the knowledge just poured out. He had some awesome insig= ht, not just about the church itself but also about how the church protected it= self from persecution by the Church of England. We also found out William Shakespeare’s sister was buried in the church cemetery, and later saw= her grave. He told us about how the house next to the church, which is connecte= d, has a secret passage way designed to hold the entire congregation if someone came to arrest them for practicing religion other than the official Anglica= n of the Church of England. He explained that many churches in that era were bui= lt with “priest holes” (or something like that), which were secret rooms designed to stash away the pastor when someone came to arrest them. T= he rooms sounded like what we found Saddam Hussein in, small hidden areas desi= gned for one person and where they might have to hide for days at a time. The caretaker also told us an interesting story about the ewe tree (“u= 221; tree ... no idea how to spell it) outside the church. It is a poisonous tree that has strong wood used in medieval times for longbows and was used extensively in construction because of its strength. Most of the trees have been cut down in Bri= tain, and are now protected. The caretaker was saying most now are found on the grounds of churches, and that it was cool that such a tree was present by t= he Baptist church.

   &nbs= p;        The people of Tewksbury were very nice. We were having a hard time finding a place to eat lunch that wasn’t £7-8, and I’ve just resorting to asking locals whenever in doubt. A guy told us of a couple of places, and this sweet old = lady said she’d take us by a good place on her way to the grocery store if we’d walk with her. So we did. When we got to the grocery store she pointed the restaurant out about 300 feet further up the street. So we than= ked her and continued up the road. But what was funny, is that when we got to this restaurant, “Melanie’s,” it had dolls in the window and was all decked out in pink and lace, and was very frou-frou. All of the people in there eating were older ladies. Rob was like “I am NOT eating in this place” and we were all laughing about = it. Jeff said those were the types of places his wife tried to get him to go ba= ck home, and he didn’t want to eat in them there either. I mostly didn’t care, thinking I’ll likely never be back in Tewksbury again in my life, but we went= on back down the road and ate at a pub called The Anchor that the first guy had mentioned to us. It was pretty decent, and I’ve learned to nurse my D= iet Coke along because the British don’t have the concept of free refills= and us Americans are used to drinking 3-4 glasses fu= ll at a meal.

   &nbs= p;        After lunch we went into the Tewksbury Abbey. There was a sign out front that they wanted £3 to enter and £2 more to take pictures. I guess I’m not understanding the situation, but it seem= s like so many churches want to charge you money to enter and walk around. I don’t really get that. It’s almost like they know they are historical spots that tourists want to see, and are therefore exploiting th= at. We went in and took pictures. It was nice, but we’re rapidly reaching= a point where an abbey is an abbey, a cathedral is a cathedral. They are all = very ornate and elaborate and beautiful. But after awhile there is also a sameness to them. [ed 7/18: Reading thro= ugh this journal – later on in the trip we found out that the government doesn’t support many of these historical sites like they do in the states, so the places are responsible to their own upkeep. So they charge m= oney in order to raise the funds they need].

   &nbs= p;        We left Tewksbury at 1:30 and headed for Stratford-upon-Avon. The “upon Avon” bit refers to the Avon River, and there ar= e a number of towns that have upon-Avon in their names. Dr. Yarnell noted that = Avon is the Celtic word for river, so Avon River is actually “River River.” We arrived in Stratford about 3:00, and were pretty much left on our own at that point with the cha= rge to be at the Falcon Hotel at 5:00 for our group pictures in the garden and = then our formal dinner at 5:30. Close by where we were dropped off was the birth house of William Shakespeare. Some people opted to pay the £6.50 to t= our the inside of Shakespeare’s birth house, but a number of us opted to = just take pictures of the outside and call it good. By the time I was done shoot= ing my outside pictures, the people who had gone on the tour were coming out of= the gift shop at the end of it. Total time elapsed was probably 7-10 minutes. At that point I was very glad I didn’t pay to go through it, especially = when they weren’t allowed to take pictures either.

   &nbs= p;        After seeing Shakespeare’s birth house, Jeff, Bill and myself, and another = guy Ron, walked across the town to the church were Shakespeare was buried (Rob stayed behind to shop in the city centre), Holy Trinity Church. We had to p= ay £1 to see Shakespeare’s tomb, which is actually inside the chur= ch. That was fine, and I took a number of pictures there too. My pictures didn’t come out very well. I had used my camera a little bit on Wedne= sday and had forgotten to charge the batteries, and my batteries were running lo= w. Normally I have a backup set just in case, but I had given them to another = guy named Zion whose batteries had run out. I had to stop using the display screen and swi= tch to using just the viewfinder, and was having a hard time keeping the camera steady with the slow shutter speed I was using in the low light conditions. I’ve seen a number of people with portable tripods that basically all= ow you to brace the camera against your belt. I need one of those before I go = on a big trip again. I did manage = to get some good pictures in the church, but a lot of them are pretty blurry.

   &nbs= p;        After the church we piddled around killing time until it was time to make it over= to the Falcon Hotel. Taking pictures turned into a production trying to get everyone organized, though we finally got it done. In addition to the girl = that wore jeans, there was a couple of other funny th= ings with people’s dress. One guy wore a Texas Longhorns polo shirt, and he had to be told to stop making the “hook ‘e= m horns” hand gesture in the pictures. There was also a guy that wore a three piece suit with no tie and flip flops. That was an interesting look, actually someone commented that he looked like he stepped out of Miami Vice, and that’s probably about right. They had a formal dinner for us at t= he hotel, and while the appetizer was pretty bad (some salmon patty thing), the dinner and dessert were good. After dinner we all walked down the way to the Royal Shakespeare Theater, where we watched A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The theater was very beautiful, but it was quickly apparent how poorly ventilated it was. As I s= aid, yesterday was quite warm (at least by England standards), and as the theater filled up with people it got very uncomfortable in there. I was sweating while watching the play. As for the play itself, I’m not the most cultured person when = it comes to “the classics.” In fact, I don’t think I’ve read any classic literature = that I didn’t have to read in school. So I’m mostly Shakespeare illiterate anyway. Watching the first half of the play prior to intermissio= n, I just wasn’t getting it. The play was boring, and the plot took foreve= r to develop. At intermission I commented to Lewis that I guess I just don’= ;t get Shakespeare, because to that point it was boring and sleep inducing. He pretty much agreed. While tha= t was going on, I was overhearing some effeminate guy whine about the play, saying how the fairies were too dark and not playful enough and blah blah blah about how they weren’t true enough to Shakespeare’s intent. I was just thinking “wheeee” at that moment. The play p= icks up quite a bit after the intermission, and the second half was significantly better. The “play within a play” at the wedding ceremony had me crying laughing. Thinking about the play now, if Shakespeare had left out t= he whole business with the queen of the fairies the play would have been overa= ll much better. It was just a total bog down every time there was a scene involving her, and these little baby dolls the fairies were carrying around just seemed kind of freaky. None of us had any idea what that was about. Overall though I’m glad we w= ent, it was definitely a good experience. Once that was out we returned to the college by coach.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

OXFORD PI= CTURES

   &nbs= p;        A number of optional things were given to us since going to London was cancelled. I opted to not se= t my alarm and sleep until I woke up, which was about 10:50am. After showing and getting dressed I downloaded the pictures from yesterday to my laptop and organized them, and then did most of yesterday’s journal entry prior = to lunch at 1:00. At lunch Rob and Jeff said they were going to see “War= of the Worlds” at the theater, but I declined going. Not just because of= the £6.50 price ($13!), but because I really don’t have much intere= st in feeding Tom Cruise’s scientology empire. I’m a believer in n= ot showing financial support for things I am against, and there’s not mu= ch good coming out of Hollywood. Many Christians lament the lack of quality movies acceptable as “clean family entertainment,” but as long as they’re willing to pay to= see the trash, that’s all they’re going to get. Not Jeff and Rob, I don’t find them to be that way at all, but I’ve been amazed at = many of the younger people on the trip and their total obsession with pop culture and just the garbage they fill their minds with. I’m by no means perf= ect, but I’ve really pulled back from pop culture over the last several ye= ars. If I could get past watching sports I wouldn’t even need to own a TV,= I really don’t watch anything else outside of maybe the news once every week or two.

   &nbs= p;        It is 2:30 now and I’m going to go out walking in = Oxford.

   &nbs= p;        I walked for about three hours, taking about 75 more pictures today. Thank God for digital photography, I took a quick look after sorting the new pics/deleting the bad shots, and I’m up to 781 pictures so far for the trip. We’ve got three more outings on the trip, so I’m expectin= g to be a little over 1000 pictures when it is time to go back.

   &nbs= p;        The coolest place I took pictures from today was the top of the tower at the Un= iversity Church of St. Mary the Virgin. It was £2 to go up, but you go up 3 flights of wooden stairs, 2 flights of metal stairs, and then into the towe= r, which is 127 concrete steps in a steep/narrow spiral staircase. They have r= opes to hold on to while you’re going up and down, and outside of the occasional window still to stand on, there’s not room to pass when you come to someone coming down while you’re going up or vice versa. The = view from the top is awesome, overlooking Oxford, and it’s nice because you can pretty much stay up there as long as you want. They don’t allow more than 25 up there though, so the queue can= be long if you’re waiting on people who stay up there a long time. I stayed up there for probably 15-= 20 minutes, taking about 50 pictures and just looking around/taking in the view. I could’ve stayed= up there a lot longer, but it was starting to get crowded again and I figured I’d better give up my spot to someone else and went back down.

   &nbs= p;        Saw an interesting site while walking ... there was a guy that took the command= to “take up your cross” literally. He was walking around carrying a h= uge wooden cross over his shoulder, and it was actually pretty cool because unl= ike general street witnessing, enough people were interested in him to engage h= im in conversation and listen. I thought it was pretty clever as far as an ice breaker goes to get into witnessing, and took a picture of him.

   &nbs= p;        Right now I’ve got about an hour to kill before dinner. I think I’m g= oing to play some Bejeweled and just unwind a bit. I may email Melissa in a bit = and see if she wants to talk on the phone after dinner. I miss her, and the kiddos too.

   &nbs= p;        It’s 11:00pm now. I just got off the phone with Melissa a few minutes ago and al= so replied to an email Duncan sent. He had his first church minicamp yesterda= y and today, and it sounds like he had a lot of fun. I was a little nervous for h= im since it was his first time away overnight from us that wasn’t staying with family. But it sounds like he did well, and had fun.

   &nbs= p;        After dinner Jeff, Rob, Bill, and I decided to go walking at University Park with Lewis, Dr. Yarnell= and his 10 year old son, and Dr. Swain. Dr. Fish was going to go, but ended up = not going. It was a great experience, and any time you can get into a small gro= up setting in an informal environment with your professors and get to know them as peo= ple, it is good. And it certainly doesn’t hurt for Dr. Yarnell to know who I am since he is the head of= the Theology department at Southwestern. If I do decide to pursue a Doctorate he’d be one evaluating whether I get in or not. It was a nice walk, a= nd he’s a very engaging/personable person. That the group of students on= the walk have been hanging out together for awhile now and gotten to know each other, that made the conversation that much better because we’re alre= ady comfortable with each other and past the initial “tell me about yourself” phase. After awhile Dr. Swain went back to the college, and when we were almost back a few of us decided to make a run for ice cream. D= r. Yarnell asked us if we knew about this ice cream shop around the corner and= a bit down the road, which we didn’t know of. He walked down there with us and t= reated us to “Oxford Blue” ice cream cones (kind of a blueberry flavor) and bottles of this sweet tasting lightly carbonated water called Elderflow= er I’d never heard of but tasted really good. It just made for a nice evening in t= he company of people who are rapidly becoming friends and Dr. Yarnell, who did= his doctorate at Regent’s Park and lived here for three years, and has all kinds of interesting stories about Oxford.

   &nbs= p;        Tomorrow is Bedford and Cambridge, and should be a pretty full day. After that we only have = two travel days left (Tuesday and Wednesday), both very long bus rides (6-7 hou= rs on the coach). Monday, Thursday, and Friday will be 9 hour lecture days at = Oxford. Packing t= hat much lecturing into the last week is good and bad. Good because I’m mostly “bussed out” and ready to slow down on all the touring, but bad because those will be some long days and it is hard to stay focused through that much lecturing. Next Sat= urday will be a free day, and then Sunday will be a light day with worship servic= es in Oxford before flying back on Monday the 18^th. Two weeks is about enough for me t= hough, I’m ready to go back now.

Sunday, July 10, 2005

BEDFORD PICTURES     &= nbsp;     CAMBRI= DGE PICTURES

   &nbs= p;        This morning started off with an hour and a half bus ride to Bedford, where we saw the birthplace and church of John Bunyan, a prominent figure in Baptist history and author of The Pilgrim’s Progress. When we first walked in, it was almost startling looking at the congregation. Probably 95% were over the ag= e of 60. My first thought was that it wasn’t a healthy church, and I wonde= red where it will be in 10-15 years when most of the congregation is dead. Some= of the people were really nice, but most acted like they’d rather a bunc= h of American “kids” weren’t interrupting their Christian sleepwalk. That is harsh, but I didn’t see a lot of passion in that church, and the guest preacher was horrible. He decided he didn’t like the textual meaning of the Parable of the Sower in = Matthew, so he just invented his own alternate meanings. We had packed lunches we brought in the church hall after service, and the people who had to babysit us acted mostly put out and grumpy. Dr. Yarne= ll said their attitude changed greatly when he paid them for that service, and they said they hoped we’d be back next year. I’m sure next year’s group will simply because Bunyan is such an important person in Baptist history, but we certainly didn’t feel welcomed there. We also toured the Bunyan Museum while we were there, and that was really nice. They had some interesting items, including= his will, which was found hidden in the chimney 200 years later when the house = he was living in was demolished. I got a good picture of it.

   &nbs= p;        After that we went to Cambridge, first stopping = at the Cambridge= American Cemetery on the outskirts of town. It is a WWII memorial, one of 14 around the world= . It looks similar to the cemetery at the end of Saving Private Ryan, with the l= ong rows and rows of white stone crosses. It is a beautiful memorial cemetery, = and also has a wall of missing that was interesting to look at. With my grandfa= ther and father both spending their 20+ year careers in the Air Force, and both dying young in part from health conditions developed on active duty, I have= a very high respect for the military and the sacrifices people make to serve = our country.

   &nbs= p;        When we left the cemetery we went into the town of Cambridge. It is much like Oxford really, with a series of colleges that make up “Cambridge Universit= y” that are intertwined with the town. Many in the group went “punting” on the river, which involves a long boat that is “driven” by a person pushing a long pole into the riverbed to p= ush the boat along. That’s something I’d have fun going on with my wife, but I didn’t care= to spend my afternoon doing that just with a group of students crowded on a bo= at. So, Rob and I just went walking around Cambridge. He was looking for an “off the wall” gift for his wife, and we found it in a bookstore. The Marmite Cookbook advertises itself as “possibly the most divisive cookbook ever.” Not sure what th= at means exactly, but Marmite is this really disgusting tasting brown spread t= hat people seem to like over here. I’ve yet to meet an American who can s= tand the taste of it. Rob is taking several packets home to have his wife and daughters taste, and now he has the cookbook to go with it. I told him he should bill it as “English Chocolate” and let them dive into it :-) There was a funny photo op while we were out. I went to “the toilet” and there was a sign = in there for “sharp disposal” with pictures of a hypodermic needle= , a razor blade, and a bobby pin. After Jeff’s experience with the guys snorting coke in the public toilet in= Oxford last week, I guess these disposal units in Cambridge are des= igned for people to throw away the evidence when they’re done taking their drugs :-)

   &nbs= p;        Is it time to go home yet? IR= 17;m ready. Tomorrow is all day lectures, and I’m dreading it. Not because the professors are bad, actually they’ve been quite good. That’s just a long time to sit and concentrate. But I guess = we have to do the classroom stuff in addition to the touring. If nothing else, since tomorrow sh= ould be a slow day of lectures, maybe I won’t type a whole lot in this tomorrow night :-)

Monday, July 11, 2005

   &nbs= p;        Today was a long day of lectures, 9 hours worth. After that long it is kind of ha= rd to remember what the first two classes talked about. We continued talking in Dr. Swain’s class about the nature of Christ and how the early church fathers and their opponents interpreted that. We focused mainly on the personalities and how the councils of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381) affirmed God as three natures but one person.

   &nbs= p;        In Dr. Fish’s class we continued our discussion of John Wesley, whose ho= me town of Epworth we’re visiting tomorrow. We also spent significant time on George Whitefield, who Dr. Fish said was likely the best preacher who ever lived outside of Jesus, Paul, and the apostle John. I learned that Whitefield die= d while on an evangelical trip to the (then) 13 Colonies, and it buried in a Presbyterian church in Newbury= port, MA. That’s in the nor= theast of the state close to where my mom and sister live, next time I’m up = that way I think I want to visit. = We also talked briefly about John Wesley’s younger brother Charles, but = Dr. Fish is saving the majority of that lecture for his 45 minute lecture spot = on the bus tomorrow. All four professors are lecturing on the bus since we’ll have 7 hours drive time roundtrip.

   &nbs= p;        Dr. Hamilton’s class this evening was one of the highlights of the trip. = The primary passage we discussed for the first two hours was 1Tim 3, which talks about the requirements for elders and deacons. He pretty much stepped on a = lot of Baptist traditions such as total abstinence from alcohol, plurality of elders, deacons as servants and not functioning as elders (and that true biblical deacons can be women), tithing and greed/materialism, and what “husband of one wife means.”&n= bsp; It was a good discussion from my point of view because Dr. Hamilton simply says “all I can do is go by what the Bible says,” and that’s been my viewpoint as well. I found it interesting that the 3-4 people that were pushing back against him the hardest are the ones I know h= ave been Baptist all their lives and two of them have fathers who are Baptist pastors. Tradition instilled = early puts on such blinders as to what the text really says.

   &nbs= p;        After Dr. Swain’s class about 20 of us went on a walking tour of Oxford that was supposed to cover “The Inklings,” which was the group of scholars/writers that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were members of in Oxford. The tour wasn’t very good, and it became obvious that there wasn̵= 7;t enough Inklings stuff to sustain a tour, so the guide interjected a lot of extraneous stuff about Oxford that we had already heard on the bus tour we = took of the city our first day. The coolest thing was seeing the house Tolkien lived in when he wrote The Lord = of the Rings, as well as the hotel where inside had a pub called The Prancing = Pony ... the name of the pub in Hobbiton in Fellowship of the Ring, and the guide told us of a hotel called Baggins Inn, where he used the name for Bilbo Baggins. The guide also explained how different locations in England were used/modified for Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Other than that it was pretty blah, and e= ven comical in a bad way when at one point we walked past a place and the guide just kind of paused for a second and said “and up there Lewis was kno= wn to stop in for a beer from time to time” and moved on. It just seemed= so random. Also, when we went into The Eagle and Child, the main hangout of The Inklings, I overheard the owner of the place say in disgust to an employee, “I’m trying to operate a business here, not a f*&^ing museum.” Obviously this tour guide didnR= 17;t clear it with him first before dragging 20 or so of us into a small restaur= ant and interrupting people dining. Many of us ended up huddled around some guy’s table who was trying to eat, very awkward. For the £120 our group paid = to go on this tour, and that this guy apparently does two of them a day, you̵= 7;d think the places he takes groups into would at least get a kickback for let= ting him do it. He repeated the sa= me thing at The Randolph Hotel, which is the fanciest/most expensive hotel in = Oxford. We basica= lly barged into a hall where people were having business meetings and eating and such, and he starts telling us about how scenes from the movie “Shadowlands” about Lewis’ life were filme= d in that very room. Okie dokie= ....   Maybe if I had seen Shadowlands I might have been more impressed. Actuall= y did get one cool tidbit out of the walk, which had nothing to do with The Inkli= ngs. Apparently Oxford survived Hitler’s = WWII bombing of England int= act because Hitler intended to setup his headquarters/capital in Oxford after he conquered E= ngland, and he didn’t want it damaged. So he ordered his bomber pilots not to touch Oxford.

   &nbs= p;        Not much more to say about today, it was a very full day with classes and not a whole lot beyond that. Since = I have to get up at 6am to get ready for tomorrow’s bus ride, I’m goin= g to head off to bed after I tell Melissa good night.

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

GAI= NSBOROUGH PICTURES     &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;    EPWORTH PICTURES

   &nbs= p;        Well, the trip today was long. We left after breakfast at 7:30, and after a 15 mi= nute pit stop about halfway, we got to Gainsborough about 11:00. Gainsborough is= a dingy industrial looking town, and there wasn’t a whole lot to it. We went to the Gainsborough Old Hall, where the first Baptist congregation met= . Also of interest was a room preserved where the group that boarded the Mayflower= for what eventually became the U.S. met for a period of time prior to their trip. That was the main stuff of interest there. We were served a “ploughman’s lunch” at t= he hall, which consisted of a salad of lettuce, two tomatoes, and two cucumber= s, some small sandwich with a meat-like substance in it, three small pieces of different kinds of cheese, some slaw, a roll, and water to drink. It wasn’t particularly good. After lunch we boarded the coach for Epworth.

   &nbs= p;        Epworth was the home of the Wesley’s, most notable of them were John and Char= les. They founded the Methodist denomination. We toured the Wesley home, which t= hey have turned into a museum. It was exceptionally hot in the house, so the to= ur wasn’t very comfortable. Interesting things included seeing a life si= ze model of John Wesley, who was 5’2” and 105 lbs. I had a hard ti= me paying attention to the tour guide though, because it was so uncomfortable = in the house and because 10 year old Matthew Yarnell was bored out of his mind= and intent on being the center of attention and a distraction to everyone. He&#= 8217;s a very good kid and is generally well behaved, but he wasn’t today. I don’t blame him though, the more historica= l type stuff is hard to ask a 10 year old to stay focused in, particularly after a long day on the bus and this being the second stop. After about the third r= oom I just bailed on the tour and went back outside into the garden. I took a f= ew pictures of flowers and such, and just kind of killed time with Dr. Swain a= nd a few students who had also exited the tour. After the tour they hosted us for tea and scones and mini-sandwiches, which were really good. Must better than lunch! After that we boarded the coach and drove four hours back to Oxford and got th= ere a little late for dinner but they served us anyway.

   &nbs= p;        After dinner I went back to the room, but it was hot and after that much sitting = on a bus I decided I just wanted to stretch my legs for a bit. I went down to the quad and there were a couple people throwing a frisbee, so I joined in and did that for about = an hour. As time went on the group got bigger and bigger, and other people were standing around talking as well. Around 9:30 a number of people decided to = play a game called “Mafia,” which about 20 students and Drs. Yarnell, Swain, and Hamilton played. Students had been playing this game previously = on the trip, but this was my first time. Basically it starts with a non-playing narrator setting up a deck of cards to deal such that the deck has the same number of cards as players in the game. We had about 20 people playing, and= we had 4 “Mafia,” 2 “Sheriffs,” and 1 “doctor.” The narrator setups a deck with four aces for the Maf= ia, two kings for the sheriffs, and a jack for the doctor. Everything else is non-face cards, and those represent the townspeople. The narrator shuffles = and passes out the cards, and everyone keeps their card a secret. The narrator immediately comes back around and collects the cards so there’s not a chance for people to sneak a peak at other people’s cards. If you dra= w an ace you’re a mafia, a king a sheriff, and so on. For playing the game itself, the p= remise is that a series of “nights” take place, each one which is a ro= und of game play. The narrator tells the townspeople to go to sleep (everyone i= s a townsperson, even if they have an additional role of mafia, sheriff, or doctor). After everyone has closed their eyes, the narrator says that while= the town slept, the mafia woke up. So the people who drew the mafia cards open their eyes and using silent communication (don’t want to give yourself away as a mafia), they select a townsperson to “kill,” and iden= tify that person to the narrator. When they’ve done that, the narrator says the mafia goes to sleep, and then a few seconds later says the sheriff wakes up. The sheriff opens his eyes, and is allowed to query the narrator by pointing to a person in the group to ask if they are mafia members. The narrator nods yes or no, so the sheriff is essentially doing fact finding. After making the query, the narrator says the sheriff goes to sleep, and th= e sheriff closes his eyes. With two sheriffs it works like the mafia, where the sheri= ffs coordinate to pick a person to guess. Next the narrator says the doctor wak= es up. The doctor gets to choose= one person in the group to “heal/protect.” They can pick themselves= or someone else. The doctor of course doesn’t know who the mafia has selected to kill that night, but later in the game if they figure out who the sheriff is they can choose to protect the sher= iff so the mafia can’t kill the sheriff out of the game. Once the doctor chooses a person, = the narrator says the doctor goes to sleep, and then a few seconds later the ni= ght is over and the townspeople wake up. At that point everyone opens their eye= s. The narrator (a good one makes the story interesting as they tell it) then identifies the “victim” that the mafia has killed during the ni= ght. If that person has been protected/healed by the doctor, they don’t die. If not, they are killed and out of the game. = At that point the town is given three minutes to discuss and bring a formal accusation against another townsperson as being part of the mafia. Once an accusation has been made, the person accused is given a minute to defend themselves against the charges. At that point the town votes whether to kill the accused person or save them. If they are voted to die, they are out of = the game. If they live, they continue on. It’s fun because the mafia has = to try to pretend to be a regular townsperson trying to figure out who the maf= ia is, in order to avoid detection. The sheriff, who accumulates info as the rounds go on, has to be careful when to reveal himself because if the mafia figures out who the sheriff is, they are naturally going to kill him off in= the next round. Once a townsperson is killed off or saved, the narrator starts = the next night/round with all the townspeople going to sleep again, and the pro= cess repeats. The game ends when either the mafia has killed off all the non-maf= ia, or the non-mafia have figured out who all the ma= fia are and killed them off. When someone is killed and out of the game, they a= re not allowed to talk until the game is over. So you don’t find out whe= ther someone accused and killed is really mafia or not until the game is over. We played until about midnight, an= d had a great time. It’s a great game for groups of about 10-15.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

CARDIFF PICTURES     &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;      TINTERN PICTURES

   &nbs= p;        This morning was similar to yesterday, early breakfast at 7:00 and the bus leavi= ng at 7:30 for Wales. I was pretty tired this morning, after Mafia last night and then having the= guy in the room next to me talking on the phone until 1:30, I didn’t get nearly enough sleep. The temperature has warmed up here this week, running = in the mid-80s. But it is also very humid, making it more muggy and uncomforta= ble than the temperature would suggest. I actually reset my alarm for 7:00 afte= r it went off at 6:00, intending to just skip breakfast and go straight to the b= us after showing and cleaning up. I woke up at 6:45 though and went ahead and got on up.

   &nbs= p;        The ride to Wales was pretty smooth, we have a better driver today= than we’ve had the last two times. Yesterday especially with spending so m= uch time on the bus I was getting very motion sick from the heavy braking/acceleration of the driver and his jerking of the wheel through the roundabouts. We arrived in Wales around 10:30 and the first stop was = Cardiff Castle. We were split into two gro= ups for the tour, and I got lucky because the group I was in got as a tour guid= e a guy named David (every man over here seems to be named David or Jim) who is= a professor of Christian theology at the University of Wales, and he also tea= ches Greek and Hebrew there. C= ardiff Castle has tons of Christian symbolism and imagery, with Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic scripture passages in most rooms, and it was very cool having someone who was very familiar with Christianity and could give a lot of insight into what we were seeing. Two funny things about the castle, we learned when touring the nurs= ery room that in the era in which it was built (700 years ago), boys wore dress= es like girls up until the time they turned 7. Kind of unstable if you ask me :-) We also got to see the wo= rk of the great Dr. Crapper, the inventor of the toilet (seriously, that’s where the term “crapper” comes from). Cardiff Castle apparently has the first = toilet even introduced to W= ales.

   &nbs= p;        After touring the Castle we got to go up in the high tower, and we took pictures = from the top overlooking Cardiff. It was just a really good time, an= d a beautiful view. I didn’t get many particularly great pictures, but th= ere was just something about standing there on the landing looking out over the rest of the castle and the town that was nice.

   &nbs= p;        We then left the castle, with Bill, Jeff, Lewis, and I going over to Pizza Hut= for the lunch buffet. Nothing like a group of Americans walking into a buffet i= n a foreign country :-) I think b= etween us we ate about 10 small pizzas and drank a couple of gallons of soda. There was another group of 6-7 from our group that sat at a different table and cleaned up as well. Still, it’s not like they didn’t make money= on us at about $11 each with the conversion rate. After lunch we boarded the b= us at 1:30, and are now on the way to Tintern Abbey, which is also in Wales a= nd is about an hour’s drive. To be continued...

   &nbs= p;        On the bus now heading back to Oxford. We’ve got a little= more than an hour left of the drive. The back of the bus gang is singing TV theme songs and other pop songs. It’s mostly the same younger students who = are thoroughly consumed with pop culture. The ones that don’t think twice about the junk they’re filling their minds with. Other than I donR= 17;t hear them cursing I wouldn’t see them as any diff= erent than a typical college crowd. After awhile they shifted gears to sin= ging hymns, which was good. I didn’t mind that (even joined in the singing= ), just not the other junk. Dr. Fish cracked a one liner over the intercom: With that singing you guys should be o= n a stage. I hear the next one leaves at 6:00. Corny, but in the context of what = was going on it was quite funny. A little while before this Dr. Swain and a stu= dent named Jason sang Neil Diamond/Barbara Streisand’= s “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore.” It’s kind of a running gag, Dr. Swain isn’t a particularly good singer anyway, and he’ll intentionally sing ballads and such off key and badly, which cr= acks everyone up. He’ll often adlib the words as he goes, which can get ev= en funnier because usually it is a chance for him to poke back at Dr. Yarnell,= who likes to pick on him in his joking. At the beginning of the trip I found Dr. Swain to have kind of an intense/serious personality, but he’s really shown a lighter side to that and definitely makes the long bus rides go eas= ier with his humor and “singing.”

   &nbs= p;        Tintern was awesome. The abbey was actually mostly ruins, with no roof and a lot of rubble, but a lot of it was still standing as well. I took a lot of picture= s, it was just a really neat place tucked into this valley with tons of trees = and a river right next to it. Very beautiful. There = was also up on a hill an old church that had burned years ago, and the four of = us plus another guy named John climbed a steep overgrown path to get up to the church. It was funny climbing, because only Jeff is in decent shape. The re= st of us were huffing and puffing hard to get up there, and were quite winded. Lewis was cracking jokes the whole way about how he wasn’t going to m= ake it. There was no one up there when we got there, and it was just quiet and peaceful. There really wasn&#= 8217;t much else in Tintern to do or see, but the scenery was amazing and it wasn’t crowded. It ended up being a nice time just to absorb the beau= ty and take pictures and enjoy the company of the guys I was hanging out with.= We spent the last 30 minutes or so sitting outside a pub drinking Elderflower = and chatting. Found out that Bill had heard from another guy that the 30 year o= ld single guy on the trip who talks constantly and gets annoying as a result of being so immature, broke out this line on the Welsh waitress at Pizza Hut: = Can I get you a glass of water? You su= re look hot. Yikes. It sounded like it went over as well in Wales as you’d expect it to in the <= st1:country-region w:st=3D"on">U.S. Th= is outing was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Just a really nice day, and the places we went were more than worth the 7 or so hours spent on= the bus. After we get back we’ll go straight to dinner, and then who knows what afterwards. I know that like yesterday, after all the time on the bus I don’t want to just lay around the room. That’ll be tomorrow nig= ht after 9 hours of lectures :-)

   &nbs= p;        Ugh. I hurt. I hurt a lot. I’m fat and out of shape, but then again one pr= etty much implies the other. After dinner tonight the suggestion was made to hea= d to University Park and play Ultimate Frisbee. I haven’t played since college, the game is like a combination of football and soccer. There are two teams = each defending an end zone like in football. Play involves a team trying to move= the frisbee up field and ultimately into the end zone by passing it. You can’t run with the frisbee beyond a step or t= wo to stop if you catch it on the run. If the frisbee hits the ground, either from a defender knocking it down, intercepting it, = or the frisbee is just plain missed or dropped, the other team takes possession of the frisbee righ= t at that spot and play starts going the other way. So in that way it is like so= ccer or hockey, play goes back and forth and offense and defense is fluid as the= frisbee changes possession= fairly frequently, and you don’t stop on a possession change but just contin= ue playing. I am not the man I u= sed to be, and while the mind is more than willing the flesh cannot begin to keep = up. It’s more like “are you kidding me?” when I try to make a burst to either close as a defender or get into the clear on offense. I haven’t had that much exercise at that intensity level in years. Naturally a point came where my body couldn’t get to a pass on the ru= n so without considering the consequences I laid out for the pass. I caught it, = but I also landed on my right arm and bloodied up my elbow pretty good. Initial= ly I slightly wondered if I broke it because I landed right on top of it and I didn’t have good feeling in my forearm for several minutes. But I cou= ld move it, so I didn’t think it was broken. It feels better now, and Bill gave= me some Ibuprofen he carried on the trip. I’ll still be quite sore in the morning, I’m sure of that. I already showered this evening and set my alarm for 9:00 when Dr. Swain’s class starts in the morning. I’= ll just roll out of bed and throw on clothes and a hat and brush my teeth, and make the 30 second walk down the hall to the room where we have classes.

   &nbs= p;        I wasn’t the worst off by any stretch though, a girl named Kelly got hit on the corner of the eye by a throw from Lewis and= got bloodied up. I was surprised, but she kept playing. Fortunately on the trip= we have a lady that is a nurse and an older guy that is a retired thoracic surgeon. Kelly was able to get cleaned up and taken care of after we got ba= ck. Ironically, about 30 minutes later Lewis was trying to make a catch and twisted/sprained his ankle. In talking to Bill when he was giving me the Ib= uprofen, he said he strained his quad while trying to chase down Dr. Hamilton towards the end. There’s going to be a lot of worn down/sore people in the morning. A lot of the group w= ent to the JCR after showering after we got back, where the Mafia games are still going on. I went back to my room, but laying on = the bed I started getting real dizzy. I realized I hadn’t had anything to drink since dinner, and that I was probably very dehydrated. I made myself = go down to the JCR, where they have a water dispenser, and I drank about 3/4 gallon of water in about 15 minutes (six 16 oz. glasses). It took a little while, but I feel a lot better now. I’m back in the room, and thought I’d look through today’s pictures and then go to bed.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

   &nbs= p;        It’s actually a bit after 1am Friday now. Lectures didn’t get over until 1= 1PM, and I’ve just been kind of unwinding. Well, actually about 45 minutes= ago things got interesting here for a bit. We heard four loud booms off in the distance, and kind of gathered in the hall outside our rooms to discuss wha= t we might have heard. Several minutes later a low flying helicopter came over c= lose by and circled for about 15 minutes. We’re guessing it was probably fireworks, perhaps a shotgun, but we figured we’d have heard sirens a= nd all sorts of chaos if it had been bombs. Makes you pause for a minute thoug= h.

   &nbs= p;        We found out this morning that it is possible to get either a Saturday afterno= on or Sunday morning flight out if we want to leave early, without incurring a change fee. I think at least half the group is leaving early now. But it so= unds like they’re going through a lot of hoop jumping to get their tickets redone. At first I seriously thought about the 10am Sunday morning flight, = but there just seems to be a lot of confusion over these flights, different peo= ple being told different things when they call, and in addition I’d pretty much be on my own as far as getting to the airport, negotiating my way arou= nd to get where I needed to be, and so on. After thinking about it, I decided = that it would be better to just stay until Monday and leave with the main group, when my only real responsibility is to not lose my passport again and to ju= st follow the trip leader where I need to go.= Maybe if I was more experienced at international travel I’d be more willing to go it alone, but I’m not experienced at it, I donR= 17;t want to pay the $40 bus fare to the airport, and the hassle and confusion involved is just a stress I don’t need. I could see the tickets very easily getting messed up and becoming a big headache at the airport trying = to sort out. I hope that doesn’t happen to the people leaving early, but I’m skeptical as to how smooth of a process it will be getting to and through and out of Gatwick.

   &nbs= p;        Because of the mass exodus, we had our trip debriefing/survey tonight instead of Su= nday night. I thought we’d get more of an opportunity to provide feedback,= but the survey was mainly giving a numerical 1-10 grade for the different thing= s. There wasn’t much room to explain answers. So that was kind of disappointing. I figure I’ll email Dr. Yarnell after I’m back a= nd tell him in more detail the good and the bad.

   &nbs= p;        We also had lectures today at Oxf= ord. All three of my professors lectured today, so it was pretty much an all day affair. I took a nap between the first lecture and lunch, and also got my laundry done this morning. I was a bit annoyed because when I went to put o= n my Oxford t-shirt, not only had it shrunk quite a bit after its first trip thr= ough the dryer, but also the letters faded in some places very badly. At lunch I= saw Lewis had a different color but similar t-shirt on and his had faded badly = as well. Granted it was only a $10 t-shirt, but after one washing/drying it lo= oks like I’ve had it for years. I may go ahead and buy a better quality t-shirt on Saturday so I can have one that won’t ruin with one wearin= g. At the rate this one I’ve got is going, it’ll be shredded after about a dozen washes. In addition to laundry and a nap, this evening Bill, Jeff, Ron, and I got together and swapped trip pictures. One of the guys in= the flat Ron and Jeff are in named Chris, had an iPod that works as a USB hard drive. We used that to = copy all of our pictures over and then copy them to each other’s laptops.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> I’m not sure how many of the= other guys’ pictures I’ll keep, mainly I w= as interested in getting pictures that I was in. There were probably a half do= zen of those that were decent enough to want to keep.

   &nbs= p;        The lectures were pretty good today, though I had a = hard time concentrating in Dr. Swain’s this morning. I think it was just b= eing tired and sore because the lecture material actually was pretty interesting. There wasn’t anything that really stood out in the lectures today, probably because the students and the professors are ready to get back, and= for Drs. Swain and Fish today was their last lectures. Drs. Yarnell and Hamilton are lecturing again tomorrow and then we have free days Saturday and Sunday before going back on Monday. =

   &nbs= p;        The food is beginning to get bad here. Well, actually it has been bad a lot of = the week. It seems like they’re at the time when they’re feeding us leftovers thrown together, which I think in some ways is kind of lousy in t= hat we’re supposed to be paying them £5 per student per meal. Lunch today for instance looked like leftover peas and corn from a couple of days= ago mixed up with diced up roast and gravy from two days ago poured over the leftover french frie= s from last night. It was pretty gross actually. Made me long for a Chipotle burri= to about then :-)   Dinner wasn’t much better really, and the pickings have been kind of lean at breakfast. Hopefully tomorrow will be better, but I’m not holding my breath. It’s a shame because the food was really good the first coupl= e of weeks. Oh well, only a few more days until I’m back home again. One neat thing at dinner was that a couple of the students had birthdays today and tomorrow, so some of the oth= er students hired one of the local street performers to come in to the dinner = hall and play classical guitar for the dinner hour. I had seen the guy in the ci= ty centre last Saturday when I was walking around and thought he was really go= od. So he played, and that was pretty cool to get to listen to live classical guitar while eating dinner. There’s also a running joke here about potatoes. I think we ha= ve had some form of potato at every single lunch and dinner since we’ve = been here. It takes a lot to get me sick of potatoes, but I, like everyone else,= is sick of potatoes. Some rice o= r a nice pasta side dish would be great about now! I didn’t even finish my boiled new potatoes last night at dinner even though I was still hungry. I seriously considered going to BK for a Whopper before late lecture, but aft= er Dr. Yarnell announced the mandatory 8:00 meeting for the trip debriefing, that was the end of that. It’s alright though, I’m not going to wither away just because I didn’t eat as much = as I’m used to.

The kids were awful tonight. I just realized I hadn= 217;t talked about the group from Christopher Newport College in Virginia that began staying here about a week ago. It isn’t a Christian school, and they aren’t actually here studying, which makes it odd to me that they’re at Regent’s Park College. They’= ;re all 18-19 year old undergrads, and in talking to one of the guys in their g= roup he said that this is a “mentorship program” they’re on. What’s comical about that is that most of them have been drinking hea= vily in the college since they got here because the drinking age in the UK is 1= 8. The professors chaperoning them are drinking too, even bringing wine bottles in= to the meal hall for lunch and dinner. Someone from our group said the other d= ay that while walking in the quad late at night he walked past an open window = and saw one of the professors in a room with the door closed with several girls= in their night clothes. While a few others confirmed that and Dr. Yarnell said something to the effect of “nothing good can come of that,” my thoughts centered on the professor and the “good” he was probab= ly hoping he’d get out of that. He probably very much was preying on tho= se young girls, hoping to bed one or more of them on the trip if not that nigh= t. Even if I wasn’t a Christian, as a parent I would be incredibly upset= if I knew my 18-19 year old was in a foreign country supposedly being mentored= to by older men, and they were being allowed to run wild and drinking was endo= rsed and so on. It is the height of being irresponsible, especially when they the kids aren’t even being supervised. They just wander around the street= s of Oxford = at all hours of the night, drinking and being stupid. They’re lucky if they don’t get hurt.

Friday, July 15, 2005

   &nbs= p;        Since I don’t have lecture until 11:00 I opted to sleep in this morning. I got up just after 10:00 and hit = the showers, and am now just kind of sitting back on the bed relaxing until it = is time to go to class in about 25 minutes.&n= bsp; Dr. Hamilton is only going from 11-noon, and then again from 2-5. At least he’s scheduled from= 2-5, he made the comment towards the end of last night’s class that he probably wouldn’t use all of that time. That’d be nice. He told= us what are take home final was last night as well, to do a chronology of Paul’s life. Basically in table form put the event (born, writes Galatians, whatever), where it happened, the date it happened, and a script= ure reference to support the dating (also possibly an outside source if we want= to cite one). Have to do that for birth, conversion, and death, and all thirte= en of his letters. One of the st= udents asked jokingly if we only think Paul wrote 3 of the letters attributed to h= im do we still have to do all thirteen, which was funny because one of the top= ics in an earlier lecture was on the issues where some scholars think certain letters weren’t written by Paul. The pastorals are often accused of b= eing second century early Church writings attributed to Paul for instance. But w= hile Dr. Hamilton did get a laugh out of that too, we do have to do all 13, and = then have a serious discussion with him about our faith :-)   To be continued...

   &nbs= p;        Lectures are officially over. Dr. Hamilton went for an hour this morning, and then t= wo hours this afternoon before calling it quits at 4:00. Actually a few studen= ts kept him talking until at least 4:30, but since he officially let us go at = 4:00 I took off since Jeff, Bill, Lewis, Ron, and myself were planning to go back over to St. Mary’s tower after class got out. Jeff and I had been up = in the tower before, but the others hadn’t. It’s a great experienc= e. After we were done with the tower, Lewis and Ron headed back to the college since they have to pack to leave in the morning. I showed Bill and Jeff the spot at the entrance of Queen’s College (another of the Oxford Univer= sity schools) where they have the curved mirror for seeing out of the blind driv= e, where I took an amusing picture of myself earlier this week into the mirror with the buildings warping/curving in the background. We goofed around shoo= ting a number of pictures into there, and then continued walking around over to Christ Church’s meadow, as Bill wanted to get some pictures of the co= ws and hay bales they have out there against the backdrop of the massive Christ Church cathedral. It was a nice walk, just getting to hang out and talk and enjoy the company. I’m hoping that Jeff, Rob, Bill, and I stay in tou= ch after this trip is over. After spending the better part of the last three w= eeks hanging around them, I feel like we’ve become friends. There are a few other people too, like Lewis and Ron that I want to keep up with. And I hope that getting to know the professors a good bit makes it such that I’ll have the opportunity to have personal relationships with them as well.

   &nbs= p;        Since the food has been so bad this week, and lunch was terrible again today, we decided to eat again at The Eagle and Child. I had the sausage and mash, wh= ich was really good. Basically a plate of smoked sausage over mashed potatoes covered in gravy. Another big group went to some French restaurant for Kelly’s birthday today, and from talking to a couple of people after = dinner in the JCR there were only about 10 people in the meal hall for dinner. Wit= h so many people leaving tomorrow because we were able to get earlier flights without having to pay a rescheduling fee, it will be fairly quiet the next = two days I imagine. Talking to people though, it sounds like there are so many hoops to leave early. First they have to sit on an international long dista= nce call for about 45 minutes talking to American Airlines. But even then, it sounds like they get different answers every time they call. Then, none of = the earlier flights are direct. A number of people taking the 10:30am flight tomorrow won’t get home until 9pm tomorrow night because they have a 3 hour layover in Raleigh, North Carolina. A couple of others hav= e a 5 hour layover in New York. A group of 6 leaving on Sunday morning have to spend the night in London at about &= pound;50 because the bus and rail doesn’t run overnight and their flight leave= s at 8am. They have to pay their own way to the airport, which is £20, and then figure out where they need to go from there on their own. Most of us h= ave VAT tax forms to get refunded, which has to be done at the airport somewhere around Customs. They’ll have to figure that out as well. While I real= ly want to get home to my family, and would love to be home earlier, the more I think about it, the less I feel like I’m supposed to go home early. I don’t know why, and to some degree I wonder if I’m rationalizing because of the hassle and expense involved in switching plans. I don’t think I am, but maybe I am. I just have this feeling like the barriers being put up is telling me something, but I can’t explain it any better than that. I wish that maybe the entire trip was cut short a couple of days, but= I know that really wasn’t feasible as far as getting us all on planes, = and not fair to the people who chose to use Friday afternoon through Sunday to = go places like Scotland or London. I guess one thing I haven’t done yet = that I’d like to do is go see the Cliffs of Dover, but I doubt I’ll = make it out there.

   &nbs= p;        After dinner we walked up to Sainsbury’s (grocery store) for some bottles of Elderflower. I’m going to get another bottle Sunday night and take it home for Melissa to try. I think she’ll really like it. It comes in g= lass bottles, so I figure I’ll transfer it to a regular plastic water bott= le for the trip home. I’d hate to have a glass bottle broken in my bag. = We went back to the college and up to the JCR after that, and just kind of hung around talking. The big talker of the trip, Eben, came in from the TV room into the main room of the JCR while we were talking and plopped down on the couch. He opened his mouth and began to talk, and I don’t think he took a breath for the next hour. He rattled off story after story of his travels around Europe= after he graduated from his undergraduate school. It was funny at first, then got annoying to me since no one else could talk. I really dislike being around people like that for very long who have to domi= nate every conversation they’re in and don’t give other people room = to speak. From what I have seen, Eben is a good gu= y and has a great heart, he just doesn’t know when to be quiet and let other people talk. After he left the rest of us resumed talki= ng, and also talked to a guy named Clint who is an American student actually enrolled at Oxford<= /st1:place>. He’s in his probationary year trying to formally get into the D.phil program here. Oxford awards doctoral students Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil<= /span>) degrees rather than using the term PhD like most places. According to Dr. Yarnell, Oxford has always done D.Phil and PhD originated at Cambridge, and for whatever reason the = name PhD became what the vast majority of places used. They’re basically t= he same thing though.

   &nbs= p;        While we were talking, a helicopter started flying real low right over the colleg= e, much like last night. We looked out the windows and saw the helicopter flas= hing a spotlight, obviously looking for something. Clint mentioned that there ha= ve been bomb threats all over England this week, including one at the Oxford train station earlier this week. Someone else confirmed that, and said that= was the main reason that flight reschedules were being offered for free to get = out of England, and why Dr. Yarnell was providing people with the info to get their tickets changed if they want to leave early. My wanting to leave early has nothing = to do with security/terrorism, mainly I just miss my family. I guess I don’t worry a whole lot about my life, at least not= to the point where I feel any kind of need to leave from a safety standpoint. =

   &nbs= p;        I’m not sure what all we’ll do tomorrow with the free day. I need to go g= et another t-shirt, but beyond that there isn’t much I haven’t don= e in Oxford = that I want to do. As kind of a joke we’re still trying to find an “Elderly People” sign to take a picture of. We’ve seen th= en while on the bus driving to places, but never when anyone has a camera hand= y. The British signs are so funny, this one in particular features what looks = like an old guy hunched over walking with a cane. It just looks funny. Rob talked about taking the bus to= ur of Oxford again and = just taking pictures from the top of the double decker bus, but that’s what I did the first day and I’m not sure I wan= t to pay £8 to do it again. I still would like to find something for Melis= sa, but I’m not sure what to get her. It’s hard= , she doesn’t collect anything, and doesn’t even drink coffee or = tea so a cup/mug of some sort is useless as well. What I really wanted to get h= er was a sheepskin rug at a store in Wales, but I didn’t hav= e a good way of getting something like that home. I’m running out of time= and don’t have much in the way of ideas at this point. Maybe I’ll wander through stores tomorrow and see what I can find.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

   &nbs= p;        This day began on a sour note, with Melissa mad at me for not coming home early since it has been offered to us. I talked to her until 3am, trying to expla= in my point of view, and failing miserably. Because I was up late, I opted to sleep through breakfast and didn’t get up until 10:00 when my alarm w= ent off (I set it so I wouldn’t sleep the whole day away). After getting = up and showering I grabbed my Oxf= ord t-shirt and headed back to The Varsity Shop to exchange it. Yesterday I went over there with Lewis, who returned the same style shirt in a different col= or. They gave him a hard time about it, saying he didn’t wash it properly, because it is supposed to be washed at 30 degrees centigrade. Not sure what that is in real temperature, although a lady told us the other day that 82F= is 28C and 61F is 16C (the numbers are mirrors of each other). I guess both Le= wis and I washed ours on permanent press. Anyway, he got his exchanged yesterda= y, but she wouldn’t take mine back. I guess it isn’t the end of the world, the shirt still fits, it just looks like I’ve had it for a couple of years. Good thing I only paid £4.99= for it! I bought another shirt fr= om a different store that looks to be of higher quality.

   &nbs= p;        After getting the shirt I walked around for a bit with Jeff and Bill. Kind of sil= ly, but we were looking for an Elderly People street sign. We had a great conversation while walking, but struck out looking for the sign. We got back to the coll= ege in time for lunch, which was advertised as “hot dogs,” but these weren’t American hot dogs. It was actually more like a sausage on a sourdough roll topped with onions. We also had fried potatoes (of course, what’s a meal in England without potatoes?) that were cut flat and had smiley faces punched out of t= hem. I thought that was a really cute idea. We had onion rings as well. So lunch= was actually good. Despite all the walking I’ve done here, the food tends= to be so rich and lunch and dinner is always three course<= /span> including dessert, so I can’t imagine I haven’t gained weight. I’m going to have to get serious about losing weight. I see pictures people have taken with me in them here and I look horrible.

   &nbs= p;        At lunch it was apparent that Dr. Yarnell was feeling horrible. He said he had been just laying in bed drifting in and out of s= leep all morning, and that he planned to sleep all afternoon as well. I think he just ran himself into the ground on this trip. I offered to watch his 10 ye= ar old Matthew so he could get some rest and Matt wouldn’t have to be bo= red out of his mind sitting in the room all afternoon. I ran up to JJB Sports (= or something like that) in the city centre and bought a f= risbee for £2.99 since Kelly owns the frisbee we’ve been playing with and she is in London today with the group that was going to do street preaching/witnessing. Jeff stayed down in the quad w= ith me and Matt and we threw the frisb= ee around for a couple of hours. By about 4:00 though, Matt was getting tired,= so we took him back to his room. As Jeff and I were coming back out into the q= uad, Bill was walking out to see what people were up to. He told us about this <= span class=3DGramE>old Saxon tower from 1040AD that we had seen earlier o= n the so-called “Inklings” walking tour. It is the oldest building in= Oxford. Apparentl= y you can still go up in the tower, so we walked over and paid the pound and went= up. It wasn’t as high as the tower of St. Mary’s= , but in some ways it was better because it overlooked the city centre, which was just jammed packed today. Earlier in the day at the store I bought the shir= t I overheard a clerk telling someone it was so busy today because it was graduation day. I took a number of pictures from up there, and it was interesting just people watching. We stayed up there for about 30 minutes before going back down. An interesting historical thing (they had a bunch of historical stuff there) is that in the lower part of the tower they had the wooden prison door from the cell where Baptist dissenters Lattimer, Cranmer, and Ridley were held prior to being bu= rned to death on Broad Street.

   &nbs= p;        After getting out of the tower we walked up further into the city center and got = a 59 pence ice cream at McDonald’s. While eating= that we were watching an anti-war protest group and Green Peace with tables set = up in the city centre handing out info. It’s kind of ironic how aggressi= ve and militant these anti-war protestors are. It’s like it isn’t = okay for one country to be aggressive towards another, but it is sure okay for t= hem to be aggressive towards people who disagree with them. Oh well...

   &nbs= p;        By the time we finished wandering around, we headed back for dinner. One of the older ladies on the trip, Paulie, had been witn= essing to a 23 year old psychology student named James at a news stand around the corner where he works. She invited him to dinner to “talk about God,” and apparently he was intrigued enough to go along. I listened = to the conversation between him and the other students, and at one point he sa= id “now that’s a bit rich isn’t it?” in his British accent. I almost had to laugh, immediately my thoughts turned to the prison= er Mr. Pincher in the VeggieTales The Star of Christmas. But I also realized that the people witnessing were never going to get through to him because he was like me at that age ... it’= ;s meaningless to discuss “Bible” things to someone who doesn̵= 7;t believe the Bible is an intellectually viable book. James was very science oriented and just like me, thought of “creation” nothing more t= han folklore and religion nothing but something to make people feel better about their lives. At a good moment I interjected and shared my testimony with hi= m, and talked for about 10 minutes on issues related to science and the Bible.= His eyes kind of perked up, and I could tell the wheels were spinning as he tri= ed to get a handle on what I was talking about. I think the main thing he need= ed to realize was that his own faith in naturalism isn’t as airtight as = he thinks it is.

   &nbs= p;        Dr. Yarnell came up to me after the conversation had shifted to someone else talking, and asked that if I would be willing to take Matt to play Laser Ta= g in the city centre that he’d pay for a small group to go. I agreed, so J= eff, Jeremy, Zion, Matt, and I went to play laser tag. The games are only 20 minutes for &poun= d;5, but it was a lot of fun. While we were waiting a group of three Swedish tee= nage girls came in. Rather than making them wait until we were done with our gam= e, we invited them to join us. They were smart in playing the game, basically they didn’t shoot each other, but teamed up and went after = us. Out of 8 people, they finished 2, 3, and 5. Zion finished first, but he took the ap= proach of finding a little cubby hole to get into and s= niping people as they ran by. He said something about covering up his sensor so he couldn’t get hit. I just kind of rolled my eyes at that type of attit= ude towards playing. I finished dead last, but I also did a lot of running arou= nd shooting and so people who were sniping had an easy target. I didn’t = care about winning though, it was just fun to me.

   &nbs= p;        After laser tag we went back to the college. Jeremy took Matt up to the JCR to wa= tch a movie, and as we walked back into the quad from the street we noticed that the guy James that Paulie brought in for dinner= was just wrapping up his conversation and getting ready to leave. He made the comment that he had a lot to contemplate, which is hope= fully a good sign. He thanked us, and Paulie w= alked him back down the street. I hope he converts, though it will be tough on hi= m in this town. It is not popular whatsoever to be a conservative Christian in t= his town, and most Christians have a very liberal theology. Regent’s Park= is quite liberal as we have noticed, the JCR even has a bar in it (though Dr. Yarnell pretty much made it clear that if we drank we would be violating the agreement we signed at seminary and would be brought up for discipline). Bu= t I suppose that a liberal Christian belief is better than none at all, so I pr= ay for him.

   &nbs= p;        About the time we were wrapping up that, Jeff asked if we were still going to play Monopoly, which we had talked about at lunch. I said sure, I didn’t h= ave anything pressing I needed to do. Rob, Jeff, Bill, and I planned to meet in= the JCR in about 15 minutes to play. A few minutes later I got an email from Melissa pretty much ripping me as being selfish and always putting X ahead = of my family. I wrote her right back, and then she came back with both guns blazing again. I had no idea what to say, so I held off on replying and wen= t to play Monopoly. Rob decided not to play, but a guy named Vernon did. He is a student at the American University<= /st1:PlaceType> in Jerusalem and is here with his mother, who is a seminary student at Southwestern. My heart wasn’t in it though, and I had to regularly be reminded of it b= eing my turn because my mind was thousands of miles away. I was glad to lose ear= ly, I was just getting out of the game when Melissa emailed me again asking for= an explanation. I just didn̵= 7;t have it in me to fight, I felt like nothing in her eyes. Why is it that the ones you love the most are the ones that are able to hurt you the most with their words? I know I’m= not perfect, and that I make mistakes, but I really didn’t know how to respond. I guess that’s how I made her feel too. We emailed back and forth for a couple of hours, and fortunately worked everything out. In hindsight, I can easily see that the way I handled it initially really wasn’t very good, I did make it sound like getting home wasn’t = that important to me. After that I fell off to sleep.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

   &nbs= p;        The last day. I woke up at 8:00 when the breakfast bell rung. Since they were fixing us what is called a “Full English Breakfast,” I rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes and a hat a= nd went down to the meal hall. It was good, with eggs, bacon (British bacon is more like Canadian bacon than American bacon), sausage, mushrooms, and pork= and beans (not sure why that’s breakfast food, but okay). It is 12:15 now= and I’m still full. After breakfast I hit the showers and got ready for church.

   &nbs= p;        We opted to go to St. Ebbe’s Church this morning, which is an Anglican church but is reputed to be the most conservative/evangelical church in Oxford. We thought service was at 10:30, but it was actually at 10:00, so we got there 25 minu= tes late. We missed the opened song service, but got there before the scripture reading and sermon. The sermon was actually very good, on 2 Corinthians 11:1-15. After the sermon and= a couple of more songs, they did the Lord’s Supper. While the prayers during it made it sound like they recognized it as symbolic, the Prayer Book recital we had to do on the Lord’s Supper was very much into transubs= tantiation, where the bread and wine is literally transformed into the body and blood of Christ, and it is a salvation sacrament because you are re-crucifying Christ and actually partaking of his body and blood. I was the last in the line of= our group where we were sitting, and everyone in front of me took a piece of br= ead from the plate. I didn’t. I guess that if they are doing the service believing theologically in transubstantiation, I didn’t feel comfortable participating. Rob was sitting next to me and kind of looked at me funny, and I pointed to the pra= yer we recited and simply said “that looks like transubstantiation to me, I’m going to pass.” He looked at it, nodded, and then set his b= read down and didn’t take the wine chalice when they passed it down the ai= sle. I don’t think any differently or any less of the rest of the group for participating, I just personally didn’t know if what we were doing in= the manner of which it was prayed was in accordance with Scripture, so I opted = to just let it pass by. Other than that service was very good, and it was a neat church. Kind of like St. Aldates, they are in a cathedral that was original= ly built between 1000-1100 and had been renovated a number of times, and finally modernized several years ago. It still looks l= ike an old cathedral on the outside, but the inside is a blend of ancient and n= ew. It was also kind of interesting singing the hymns/songs there. The last one= was “The Solid Rock” (I think that’s the name), which has the chorus “on Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking= sand, all other ground is sinking sand.” Except, they d= id the hymn to entirely different music and with a completely different melody. In the U.S. that hymn has a very driving rhythmic feel to it, whereas here it had more = of a soaring melody that was much less rhythmically oriented.

   &nbs= p;        It’s about 30 minutes to lunch now, after which I will probably take my laptop o= ver to an Internet cafe and email this to Melissa along with maybe a few of the pictures from the trip. I also need to pickup a t-shirt for Donna. I can’t believe I’m on page 40, single spaced. I write entirely t= oo much I suppose, but I think it will be cool to read this in a few years and remember what all went on. I’ll finish up tonight, but for now I̵= 7;m drawing to a close so it is at a good stopping point to email in a couple of hours.

   &nbs= p;        After lunch I did go over to an Internet cafe, and emailed Melissa everything up through the preceding paragraph along with a few pictures. That took about = 20 minutes and cost me £1, but that’s no big deal. When I was done sending the files I stopped by the Oxford Campus Store in the city centre a= nd picked up an Oxford University t-shirt = for Donna. That was mostly uneventful, though the cashier was clueless. I was trying to buy a £9.99 shirt that came with a free hat, but the lady s= aid the shirts on that shelf were really £7.99 and didn’t qualify f= or the hat. I was just like “whatever,” just give me the shirt the= n. I was actually fairly abrupt with her, but she acted like I was the idiot for= not knowing that the sign didn’t actually go with the shirts on the displ= ay.

   &nbs= p;        I headed back to my room after that, and walking back into the quad off the streets I found Jeff taking pictures of the quad from his room window up ab= ove on the end. He asked me what I was up to, which wasn’t much. Rob then st= uck his head out his window to see what was up. We decided to walk over to University Park a= nd just go for a walk. Jeff got Bill while I was putting my stuff up in my room, and off we went.

   &nbs= p;        We were having an interesting conversation on the state of Christians and the Church as a whole while walking, just following a long walking path. After crossing the long arched bridge towards the back of the park, typically we’d turn left and follow the path that way and back around to the fr= ont of the park. Instead, we noticed a long path going straight that seemed to = go into nowhere. At the time, seemingly for no reason, we opted to follow it instead of the normal path. We walked a long ways, and eventually came to a dead end and had to turn left. We walked maybe another 100 yards and saw a cricket field off to the right, and were kind of standing there commenting = on it when an Indian/Pakistani looking guy came out of nowhere and was in our = midst. Bill and I were a little ahead of Rob and Jeff, and the guy was talking to them. After about 5 minutes of standing there we walked over, and ended up talking to him for about 30 minutes on this path in the middle of nowhere. Looking around you wouldn’t even know you were in a town, it was all country. We found out his name is Ben, and he invited us to a pub for a dri= nk and to continue the conversation. He is 41 and has an Oxford degree, and is very philosophica= lly minded. He says he believes in God, but has no use for organized religion a= fter multiple bad experiences. His mother, whom he seems to admire more than any= one, went to Woodstock Baptist for years and years. She died when he was 23, and Jeff perceived that he seemed to have some bitterness towards God over that. We talked at the pub for about 2 hours over our cokes and lemonades, and it was very enjoyable. We witnessed to him quite a bit, but also talked about a lo= t of subjects. Rob commented afterwards that he felt like we didn’t do a r= eal good job though, that Ben is really intelligent and needs more than the VBS “ABC’s” of Christianity. I felt like that was a knock aga= inst Bill, who was doing the more traditional witnessing method and did the majo= rity of the talking. But Ben knew the Bible well, he just didn’t believe i= t. He didn’t need to be told what Christians believe= , rather he needed to know why it was viable, why it was true. I agreed with = Rob to an extent, though as Jeff pointed out, it was good because we all brought something different to the table and were able to talk from different perspectives. I actually feel like I have a more useful witness here in Oxford than in ma= ny places back home. There’s so many people I relate to here because of my non-Christian background, whereas people who h= ave been lifelong Christians don’t relate as well. In some ways I actually feel more comfortable here than in my church at home.

   &nbs= p;        We got back just in time for dinner, and it was good tonight. Spaghetti with meat sauce. They managed to put potatoes in the salad that was = the appetizer though, so they succeeded in getting potatoes into every lunch and dinner we ate here. I talked to Melissa a little while ago on the phone and jokingly requested NO POTATOES for at least several days after I get back. = For dessert we had ice cream cake, which was great. One could get spoiled eatin= g 3 course meals all the time served to you at the table with dining hall staff there to get you whatever you need :-)&nbs= p; Somehow I don’t expect I’ll be asking for that at home := -)

   &nbs= p;        All that is left to do now is to pack and go to bed. It’s only a little a= fter 9:00, but by the time I pack and get settled down it will probably be close= r to 10:00. We leave the college at 9am for the airport, and the flight takes of= f at 2:30. I may or may not write anything about tomorrow since it is just the flight back, though I guess I will if anything interesting comes up. If thi= s is the end though of this journal, then it has been a profitable 3 weeks spent working on it. I wish I had the discipline to continue with this at home. M= aybe I’ll at least try. There are a few things I’ve resolved to do a= s I leave here much more spiritually invigorated than when I came. In no partic= ular order:

* Continue my Greek studies on my own. I want to conti= nue towards being able to read the Greek NT as if it were English.

* Have a more consistent prayer life. I am very sporad= ic in praying, and never really do it out loud at home. I need to be a better example, and to be more regular in communicating with God.

* Be more conscious/aware of being a good husband/fath= er, and not being so self-centered about the things I have to do.

* Make time for daily Bible reading, even when I feel = like I don’t have time. I don’t read the Bible as much as I should rig= ht now.

* Be more active as the spiritual head of the family. I can’t expect my family to grow in God if I don’t do my duties.<= /p>

* Train my body as well as my mind. My body is a stumb= ling block to myself, and certainly a negative witness. If I have no discipline physically, what does that say about the rest of my life? I need to project Christ in all that I do, including how I present my physical body to the wo= rld.

Monday, July 18, 2005

   &nbs= p;        My final entry in the Oxford 2005 journal. Right now w= e are eight and a half hours from home, 4194 miles away. We’re over the Atlantic, at 36,000 feet, going 550 miles an hour a= nd the air temperature outside the airplane is -32 degrees. We’re on a 777 t= his time, much better than the 747 we had coming over here in terms of space. I have a window seat next to a guy that is passed out after downing a couple = of double gin and tonics shortly after take off. Nice enough guy when I was talking to him, he works on power generators and has been in the Middle East for a year. And I think 3 weeks away fr= om home is long!

   &nbs= p;        There was a funny thing this morning while we were getting ready to go. When we f= irst got to Oxford, Jeff had found some handcuffs with fuzzy leopard print padding on them in o= ne of the drawers of his room. Kind of an odd thing to fin= d at a theological college, but okay. As a gag Rob put the handcuffs in Eben’s carry-on bag, when he wasn’t looki= ng. We were thinking it would be funny to have the baggage inspector at airport security pull those out and question him about it. He actually went to get something out of his bag a little while later, and found them. He thought it was funny, and then turned around and put them in Jason’s bag. Jason found them a little while later and put them back in E= ben’s bag. Eben found them again, and this time he pu= t them in what he thought was Matt’s bag, but Matt was carrying his girlfrie= nd Jordan’s bag. After we had gotten off the plane and were getting out = bags together, Jordan opens her bag and pulls those out in front of everyone, and is horrified. Matt’s eyes get really big and he is like “where did you get TH= OSE things??” She then got indignant, thinking Matt put them in her bag. It was a really funny scene. After a couple of minutes we let them in on the gag. I’m not sure what happened to the handcuffs after that, other than I carefully watched my bag= s to make sure they didn’t end up in there.

   &nbs= p;        I got through check-in okay after standing in a long line, but Bill didn̵= 7;t. Like Jeff, he was trying to take on two carry-ons. Technically you can have a laptop bag and a carry-on for the overhead bin. Jeff’s backup and carry-on were much smaller though. He got through, = but Bill didn’t. He tried to claim his backpack was his laptop bag, but it was this huge hunting/camping style backpack like you’re going out in= the woods for a week. The other bag was as large as the duffle that I checked. I guess he argued enough with them that they finally took him to another room= to search his bag, I guess they were curious as to = why he was so insistent on getting that bag on the plane in the cabin. He ended up having to check it anyway. For me, the whole airport thing was fairly uneventful, though I had my carry-on searched at the gate and I got frisked= . No big deal though. We ate lunch at a bar/cafe in the airport, and then made o= ur way to the gate and hung out until it was time to go. I sent Melissa and Du= ncan an email about 15 minutes before boarding and then shutoff my Blackberry si= nce I can’t use it on the flight anyway. The plane is nice, we actually have individual TV screens for each seat. I’m watching ES= PN Classic right now, a 1984 Texas-Auburn football game. The rest of the flight should be pretty routine, and in about seven and= a half hours I’ll be on the ground in Dallas...

   &nbs= p;        Three hours and thirty nine minutes until we get to Dallas. I&#= 8217;ve occupied a lot of the time so far by working on the web version of this journal. I also wrote the “apology” that appears at the beginni= ng of the journal, explaining why I decided to leave the journal pretty much intact, warts and all. I imagine some people will take offense to some thin= gs I said. But that’s okay, because I know I probably irritated others mys= elf at times. That’s the nature of things. I now officially draw to a close my Oxford 2005 Study Tour journal, and hope that whoever might read this will = find value in it. For myself, it is something I look forward to reading again years from now and remembering the incredible experiences I had and the wonderful people I met and got to know.

   &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;            &= nbsp;           &nbs= p;      -- Will Willis, July 18, 2005

OXFORD<= /a>	MOULTO= N	OLNEY	KETT= ERING	BATH<= /p>
STO= NEHENGE	LONDON<= /a>	WINDSO= R	CAN= TERBURY	TEWK= SBURY
STRA= TFORD	BEDFOR= D	CAMB= RIDGE	G= AINSBOROUGH	EPWORT= H
CARDIF= F	TINTER= N

Southwestern Baptist Theolog= ical Seminary Oxford 2005 Study Tour

TRAVEL JOURNAL of WILL WILLI= S

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Friday, July 1, 2005

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Sunday, July 03, 2005

Monday, July 04, 2005

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Friday, July 9, 2005

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Monday, July 11, 2005

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Friday, July 15, 2005

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Monday, July 18, 2005

Southwestern Baptist Theolog= ical Seminary
Oxford 2005 Study Tour