This morning John preached at the English service at Kollupitiya (pronounced Collpetty) Methodist Church in Colombo – it was the 120th anniversary of the opening of their building. (John wonders if he could lose weight by sweating that much every time he preaches.) Methodism has strong roots in Sri Lanka since Methodist missionaries played such […]
This morning Dr Arul Anketell picked us all up and took us to the Health Care Christian Fellowship in the centre of Colombo for their prayer meeting. We sang and prayed; John shared a short talk (translated into Singhala) and we celebrated Carmen’s 86th birthday. It was such an encouraging time. Along with discipleship and […]
Today was a lesson in translation for communication. The day started with trying to give to a taxi driver the address of the Colombo Theological Seminary. Even writing it down in English didn’t work since being able to speak a little English is not always the same as being able to read Latin script. Thankfully […]
Last night was a great festival in Dubai – Ramadan Kareem – after fasting through Ramandan Muslims then eat out as they begin to celebrate Eid. We managed to miss the month of fasting and arrived in time for the eating. Pastor Thomas and Emerald (from his church) not only fed us well but also […]
Today was a day for breaking records: we went up the tallest building in the world, walked round the largest shopping mall in the world and ate the most expensive breakfast in the world.* Pastor Thomas Francis, who leads a Tamil church here in Dubai picked us up from the airport and was a fantastic […]
So this evening we went to Gatwick with a very chatty taxi driver. There was no doubt he voted ‘leave’ and we talked about that and our trip to Sri Lanka on the way – he did say he would follow this blog! Okay, so the flight was delayed by an hour which meant that […]
Since internet access while we are away won’t be as easy I’m try to put myself in credit with the blog posts 🙂 As the country comes to terms with the momentous referendum result from last week it is clear that we are a divided nation. One interesting analysis of the vote was according to […]
As the UK begins divorce proceedings with the EU it was wonderful to witness James Whymark and Jenni Taylor make their wedding vows today. What a great day it was – lots of fun, lots of emotion, and lots of glory to God. In an uncertain world Christ’s love can enable us to stick with […]
Well, I didn’t see that coming. I was so confident of a ‘remain’ vote that we haven’t transferred any money into rupees for our trip. That short-sightedness is going to be very costly. We live in a time of massive change in the UK and the future is uncertain. Hopefully Brexit will remind us that […]
For Tuesday through to Thursday I (John) am at a conference for Pastors in London – the Evangelical Ministry Assembly. This year’s theme is ‘Leaders who last’, which is proving to be timely. I was particularly struck by the lessons Vaughan Roberts drew out from the life of John Newton, about perseverence. In order to […]