Hello all! I wanted to share with everyone our first church experience here in the U.K. Some of you we may have already talked to about this so sorry if you are bored!
Looking in the yellow pages is not always the best way to find a church but when you have transportation issues it helps with finding one that is close. Everyone that we have met, so far, either is Catholic or they don't go to church. We are finding a lot of people our age don't go to church. It's really sad and intimidating to think of the huge mission field there is here! Anyway back to the yellow pages...
We found a bapist church that was fairly close (a 15min walk) and decided that we would try them out on Sunday. The Sunday morning service starts at 12. The Baptists share their building with The Free Church of Scotland and their service starts at 10:30. There's no sunday school at either of these, by the way. So we decide to check out both services. See what they are like you know? I was a little distressed that morning because (and all the women will understand me here) #1. We have no mirror bigger than my compact to see ourselves in. #2. I realize I have no pantyhose nor tights which to wear with my dresses. So faced with the choice of either being cold but being in a dress or wearing dress pants and being frowned upon; I decided I would risk the frowns.
We walk to church and on the way it starts to rain a bit so it didn't really matter that I tried to do something with my hair that morning while straining to see my face in the tiny mirror. We arrive at the church and are greeted warmly by the door greeters and pastor. We are always asked right away, "So then, are you on holiday?" it is really very singsongy the way they talk and I find that as I am talking to them I start to mimick it in away. The way John Fellers does when he is talking to Spanish speaking people (sorry John...i do it too apparently).
Anyway we are led into the sanctuary and given a bible (nkjv) and the Scottish Psalter. (Look it up--quite interesting http://www.cgmusic.com/workshop/smp_frame.htm ). We have a seat in the 3rd row from the front...sounds good doesn't it? I feel obliged to tell you there were only 4 rows! The boys are looking around. Joshua is sitting on Troy's lap and Caleb on mine. There are two mature women sitting behind us and pretty soon Caleb is handing one of them the books we brought for them to look at. The pastor comes in along with the gentleman who leads the songs from the psalter and a gentleman sits under the pastors podium we weren't sure what the reason for that was at that time. However we begin with a psalm (i think it was 94) and since we don't know the tune we read along (not outloud). Then the pastor greets us and gives announcements, they never did take up an offering. He reads John 15 to the congregation and then we sing a couple more psalms. The boys both fall asleep after this, thankfully! Then he preaches from 1 John 2:1-6. Knowing You, Walking as You Walked was the sermon title. It was very good and biblical. Nothing to raise a red flag. The man under the pastor gets up at the end and starts to sing from a big Psalter that is in braille! He had a voice that sounded like bagpipes! So then we understood while he was there. Everyone was so nice at the end coming up to greet us and say they were happy to have had us visit. We talked to the pastors wife for a bit and found out that there were no other young people attending that church and no children. We were also told the Baptist congregation was the same way. So we went to McDonalds just across the road from the church and decided that we didn't think the boys could handle another service.
We went home and found two churches on the internet that we thought we would give a try. They seemed somewhat bigger and had more activities going on...including ones for children. We decided to try the Findlay Memorial church first, it is Independant Evangelical. They are about 3 subway stops from us so we took the last train for that evening at 5:40 or something and went to church. They had more people and some families with kids although no toddlers but we were told that there are in the mornig services. They don't have nursery (creche) or anything for the p.m. service just in the a.m. so we sat on the back row and the boys ran around a bit. They did okay through the singing. We sang some praise and worship songs that I had never heard but they were nice and then they sang a "new" one...In the Secret! We sang some hymns and I had heard those before. The pianist led and then there was a girl singing too. There were two violinists, 2 guitarists, a bass player and a drummer.
The boys started being too active and we were going to go ahead and leave but a really nice lady who had been talking with us before the service started came and said she would watch them while we went to see what it was like. It was so nice of her. This pastor preached on prayer and he skipped around quite abit sorry I don't remember it all. I thought it was very neat because he talked alot about the holy spirit part of it all and that is what we had been discussing in Sunday School at Parkway back home. After the service they had coffee, tea and biscuits (cookies) for everyone who wanted to stay and fellowship. We talked to several different people and I got invited by Anne (the nice lady who took care of the boys) to come to Bumps and Bundles on Tuesday. It's a playgroup for moms, babies and toddlers. I did go to it and it was great to meet others and see that I was going to probably have some friends. We were going to get a taxi for the ride home but a man who we had been visiting with offered to give us a lift. So Josh sat in the backseat with me and Caleb sat on my lap. Troy sat in the front. It was a little car but we all fit. I was just praying we would get home safely since the kids weren't in carseats.
Anway, I feel bad that we met some nice people at the first church and probably won't get to visit with them again.
I am sorry that this was so long...I just wanted to share. Also please forgive any grammatical infractions?! I am too tired to go back and make it into something beautiful! I love you all and I send hugs and kisses your way! Thank you for the prayers and the thoughts and the emails!
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