Another Birthday?

Now we begin another tribute to another fine man on his special day! This man is one of the unique individuals who tries to beat me at word games. His attempts to win at Dig, our famous Scrabble game, are often futile, but yet we keep playing! Maybe that is where I got my play till you win philosophy. He is the champion of the universe though when it comes to our other word game, Quiddler! ...unless of course, Earl has a say in the contest. Growing up, my grammer was corrected continually but today I can say I am very thankful for that blessing? My dad is the word master. He can take any subject and turn it into a delightful poem. His sense of humor is amazing and he is always telling a new joke or story. I love how he laughs at his own jokes and stories! I also find his desire for things to be done right refreshing. He has little patience for a presentation or experience that is not striving for excellence. So, unfortunately, this holiday I will not be able to see my fine father, but my prayer is that he will be blessed abundantly on this day and in the year to come! Have a great birthday Dad! Love ya, Bec

Happy Birthday? sure

There is a picture of my dad, he doesn't look a day over 79 does he? Today we celebrate his birthday (not the 27th of November) although there has been some debate over the actual date, but I won't go into that here. He is a hardworking, retired, volunteering, candy making, door opening, decoration applying, fixer uppper, dad, husband, friend and an all around nice bloak. I had trouble coming up with all the descriptions because whilst he is retired he is quite busy, although I did hear that he is home today with Mandy Sue, I think that is ok to sleep in and hang around the house for a day:) I have not been able to celebrate his birthday with him for about 16 years, but like the last 16 we'll celebrate when we are together next which happens to be in about 3 weeks, my parents are coming to Oxford to see the sights, and they'll hang out with us as well. If I could bottle the excitement they have for the trip and sell it, it might be as popular as Coke Classic, certainly more than New Coke. Anyway have a happy birthday dad, enjoy the virtual cake at the end of this blog, and eat a piece for me as well. later and love ya

earl (deeder)

P.S. Dad if you are reading this part don't... if you are not my dad and you are reading this part and you would like to wish him a happy birthday please do so on the comments area of this blog, thanx

Turkey Day?

All of you Americans know that yesterday was Thanksgiving Day, the day that we all get up with nothing to do except eat, do the washing up, watch some football, sleep and make plans for the Christmas season. That is when you are in the U.S. Here in Oxford it is a little bit different. If I didn't know that Thanksgiving was a holiday being here I wouldn't have known that yesterday was a holiday. Turkey Day is not a big deal, last night late in the evening one person said happy Thanksgiving and then another girl said "Is it Thanksgiving" It's not that they aren't thankful, it's not that they don't like to eat (although they're not into pumpkin pie) it's just that they don't know about our little holiday. So anyway Rebecca and I had pizza twice on Thanksgiving, the second one having turkey on it. I savoured the bite of turkey off of her pizza, mine had ham, mushrooms and olives, not exactly late November material. But anyway we had a great time, the Pizza Express is a wonderful option (thanks Katherine), Oxford on a non-weekend night is managble, and now that we understand when the 4C bus comes to the bus stop we can get home without having to walk the whole 45 minutes home. After all of this moaning I now can tell you that I am leaving in about an hour to celebrate Thanksgiving of all things. Mary who is a teacher at our school is originally from Pennsylvania, and Dave another teacher is also from Pennsylvania, and then there are a couple of Canadians that are going to join us as we give thanks. Maybe they don't disregard Thanksgiving as much as I thought, I'm sure I'll be thinking that after the turkey, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes, etc... I better get going the food is going to get cold. later
earl

Staying Busy?

This should not really be a question, there is plenty to keep us busy here in Oxford. I would walk you through a normal week, but alas that would be difficult, there is no such thing as a normal week. Sure some of the elements are the same, class in the morning, lunch after that, and from there it is a pot pourri (spelling?) of seeing people, meetings, meals, relaxation, reading, going out to the pub, birthday parties, church meetings, working on papers, shopping, etc... Today I arrived home at 5 minutes till 3 it was still light outside, that is great feeling to get home before it is dark, it starts getting dark around 4:20 or so. Last week we had a normal week in that it was different than any other week. We had lecturing on Monday and Wednesday and the other days were devoted to practical outworking of the Holy Spirit that we had been learning about. We did some prophetic singing, gave prophecies aloud, prayed for each other, prayed for healing and had a generally wonderful time together as a community. Saturday we usually have off but that day we were together in groups of guys and girls for an Encounter day. i think that we did Encounter God that day, it was wonderful teaching and more praying and blessing each other. It is amazing how much people are blessed by a kind and thoughtful word. Then that evening there was a birthday party, it was a blast, there was an open mic, I sang a new song that I had just finished the previous day, I'll finish this post with the lyrics to the song, I was quite nervous because it was an atmosphere sort of a party and then everyone stopped to listen. I did get to watch a bit of the Ohio St. Michigan game, not surprised about the outcome, the Bucks are the best in the land. Sunday our church placement began and the church that we are going to is quite lively, and so far the people that we have met are nice, I think that it will be a great experience there, although it is an hour drive. Anyway I should get back to writing my paper about martyrs for church history, but the blog is a great little step away. Enjoy the words to the song, it was born out of a time of singing prophetic (from God) songs last Thursday. Later
earl

How lovely are You, the lamb who was slain

How lovely are You the Lion of Judah

How lovely are You the Shepherd of my soul

How lovely are You the King of all creation


And You are alive forevermore

Your majesty reigning for eternity


The robe of Your glory draped across the throne

The crown of thorns You wore exchanged for a precious stone

The blood and water that poured down from Your side

May it flow like a mighty river through me


How lovely are You the Bread of Life

How lovely are You the Light of the world

How lovely are You the Rock of the Ages

How lovely are You the Son who died for me

Why were we singing in the streets?

On friday night myself and Mike, Anna, Beth, Tash, Ellen and Rach went out to Broad Street in Oxford, it was sort of raining, sort of windy. I had my guitar, Mike had his bongos and all of us had our voices, guts and interest in singing music to the Lord on the streets of Oxford. We stood underneath an overhang of an old building and behind us was a plaque that informed visitors of the spot where 3 famous reformers of England were burned at the stake in the mid 1500's. The x in the middle of the street was where the stakes were placed, and where Ridley, Lattimer and then one year later Cranmer were martyred. It was quite an experience to be standing there singing praise songs, and talking with people on the street. Then after we had sung for a while we went back to the bus station and Ellen and I sang some of our songs, at that point we had quite a crowd that were "listening", who knows if they were:) We do plan on going out some more times, maybe asking people if they would like a song sung over them, or a song from the Lord for them. There is also this thing of busking where people sing on the streets and have their case out for change for people to throw money into, we might do that. We batted around the idea of going to an open mic night, that would be cool to share God's word in that way. I guess we'll see, either way it was an experience that I have not tried before and look forward to trying again. Enjoy the pics from where we were. Later

Here are 4 of the girls that were out singing, yes they are dressed up, and no that is not how they looked that evening:)

This is the plaque I talked about earlier.

Who is Guy Fawkes?

All of you British readers who have read the title are like "I know that guy" but in reality the rest of the world needs to be enlightened. November 5th in the UK is a special day, with celebration, fireworks, bonfires, revelry, and renewed togetherness (word?) of the society. A holiday has been celebrated since 1605 when 13 young men thought that they would blow up the Parliment building in London by setting 36 barrels of gun powder underneath the House of Lords. While this sounded like a full proof plan, all but one of them ended up not being there and they were thinking twice about actually going through with it except for Guy, he was the one bloak caught with the 36 barrels in the cellar. He was then tried, found guilty of much, and excecuted. So that evening bonfires were set to celebrate that the King was still alive, and they placed effigies of Guy on the top as the bonfires burn. Sometime later fireworks were added to the celebration along with food, carnivals, and an overall great time. We went to the gala in Oxford, a few thousand people, carvinal rides, the silhouette of a man on top of a huge pile of stacked wood, colorful fireworks, the best tasting donuts I have ever consumed and two bites of a hamburger later meant that I had experienced Guy Fawkes night. It was somewhat surreal standing in the middle of a field watching fireworks and being bundled up like I was going Christmas caroling, last time I checked I usually watch fireworks on a hot, steamy July night. In all reality they are quite fun when you can see your breath, and my how the bonfire was toasty when it was lit after the fireworks show. I'll leave you with a quote that I didn't pen but found when Googling Guy Fawkes " Some of the English have been known to wonder, in a tongue in cheek kind of way, whether they are celebrating Fawkes' execution or honoring his attempt to do away with the government" I thought that was a compelling way to put it. later
earl

Who is Tony Blair?

I had been planning to write about the competitive games of table tennis I have enjoyed with Mike, Dan, Jack and Dave, but I don't think that I will. I had been planning on writing about the crisp autumn/winter type feel outside, it reminds me of a crystal clear cold day in Indiana, but I won't write about that. I had also been planning on writing about our church placements, for those of you who know or care we are in East Baskingstoke (Phil Norris is pastor) with Mark Eley, a youth pastor from Middlesbrough, he is a good friend of both of ours. But I am not going to write about that. Who knows who Tony Blair is, if you do that means you are either British, up on world politics, or happened to read the paper lately. If you don't he is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. This means that he might be one of the 3 most influential governmental people on earth today, and in Europe the most influential person in government. When his Jaguar pulled up to the Kings Centre today we realized that the hush-hush, the sniffing dogs, the numerous police, the many black coated men hanging around meant that Tony Blair was arriving for a speech he was giving today. People that were invited to this gathering found out yesterday, they were told where the speech was at late yesterday and found out that Mr. Blair was going to be giving an address late yesterday, or this morning when they arrived. With all that being said, we as a KBC group was giddy, interested, excited, surprised and galking as he showed up, shook hands with Dave Perry, Beth, Abi, Amy, Lisa and others. Somehow Rebecca was ushered over to the Press area (I think because she had a camera) that was cool, there she was smiling, and standing next to all of these huge cameras reporters. I thought that was really cools! Then the BBC reporters came over and asked some scientific questions to some students (you can watch some of this on the link to the BBC news report) http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi?redirect=st.stm&news=1&
bbram=1&bbwm=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1&nol_storyid=6112666 > (This site does not work totally, after clicking go to the BBC news link, then politics and look for Blair talks with young scientists link)Then after his address was over a few of us wandered out just in time to see him leaving, I along with others shook hands with him, he had a nice tie on. That's who Tony Blair is,enjoy pics

What is church history?

Don't worry, I am not going to attempt to cover 2000 years worth of church history in this blog. This is the topic that we are learning about this week and next here at Kings. It is a compelling topic, I like it especially because studying history has always been a favorite subject. So far this week we worked up to the Reformation, next week will carry on with the Reformation and up to the present day. Some quick reflections upon the first 1500 years are:

• The church has made a number of mistakes, but it has also grown, attempted to listen to God and been a beacon of light for many people
• The church during the Roman Empire had much faith, not like what we see today in the West, but more of what we see in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia
• The persecution that the church went through before Constantine took over was brutal, and the early church fathers were incredibly strong.
• There is much value to liturgy and stating what you believe, even though we do not use that type of worship much in our stream of churches
• The monastic (monk) movement that sprung up as a revolt to the established church was probably needed to give people another point of view, I am glad that I have not been called to be a monk
• The Celtic tradition is quite compelling, if you have the internet do some searching on their history, I am going to

I could go on and on, but I alas I won't, don't worry faithful readers, not all posts will be this meaty, maybe next time I can write about the joy of table tennis, our booked travel to Prague in February, the simplicity of a nice walk on a cool autumn day, etc... later

earl