Pentecost and Beyond

On Sunday 19th May I preached at Arnold Methodist Church for Pentecost Sunday. I had prepared well, too well, as the sound desk could not produce any sound and so my visuals could not be used. It was Frances Hopwood's 70th birthday and she came out to the front to thank people for their love and good wishes. One elderly lady gave a testimony of healing which was met with rapturous applause.

In the afternoon we went to Wollaton Park where Esther had a craft stall selling jewellery. There was also a dog show and I took a number of photos of dogs which were being led through the courtyard. It was a warm, sunny day.

On Monday 21st I went to James Peacock school to do the training on the redesigned web site. They seem to be quite pleased with the final outcome and I have tweaked the admin system to make it easier for them. I still have some further modifications to do but they are minor. In the evening I played Danny Scott at squash. He's quite young and fit but is easy to beat and so I came away with a 3-0 victory.

Tuesday was the final 'Welcoming Churches' session at Kirkby. It was a good finale and people gave good reviews. On Wednesday I went to Hawtonville for a planning meeting of the new Local Preacher's course. In the evening was the fourth Alpha session at Wollaton Rad Methodist on the subject of Faith. Again I was pleased with both the talk and the discussions. I announced that I would be missing for two weeks. Numbers were down because of conflicting meetings. We discovered that Mick had had an operation for prostate can Eric and it was not too successful. I led prayers for him and the family.

Thursday was the MSM course at Langley Mill with Mark Rodel speaking. He spoke well but the material (the gospel and culture) was too heavily weighted towards culture and did little to apply the gospel to it. I changed my Virgin tariff from pay as you go to a £7 per month contract which can be cancelled any time. It provides me a quota of calls and texts plus 500meg of data. This should be enough for my average usage and give me the assurance that I can make calls anytime. I toyed with the idea of getting another handset for the old SIMM card but abandoned it after a while until I  an investigate European Simms. 

On Friday I played AGC at tennis and lost 2-6 3-6. Neither of us have improved much over the years. Margaret and I went to the Plough for a drink in the evening. Today we booked e flight for Geneva. We plan to stay with David and Leila for a couple of days while Andrew and Becky are in Lugano. We will have the use of a car from Andrew while we are there. On Saturday we did some shopping for Geneva and bought a baby book for Matthew. We also looked at Cath Kidston cases for Margaret but I thought it was expensive and not that practical in terms of pockets. However, compared with other good makes it was reasonable so the jury is out.