Penzance: Part of Day one in Cornwall

This is the town of Penzance on the South coast of Cornwall.

Beautiful scenery along the drive throughout Cornwall.

Ed thought this sign was funny.

The Harbour in Penzance.

Day one in the Southwest: Cornwall

For some odd reason, we had no guests or seminars lined up for this past week. So Ed & I borrowed Will's car and made a couple reservations and some B&B's and headed to the Southwest part of England. We slept the first night in a charming self catered barn that was divided up into five living areas. Ours was called the Granary. I can't believe we didn't get any pictures of it. It used to be a farm but converted some time ago to a self catering business. They had a games barn, a swimming pool which of course wasn't in operation yet, lots of lawn to play in. A great place for families.

After waking up late we headed to the southern most tip of England to a village called Lizard. It's a fishing village, not terribly big but the water was really blue and the skies on our first day were clear. It was windy and cold but still very pleasant to be out.

This is a view of the coast line in Lizard while having a cup of coffee in a small cafe.

This is Lands End, the western most part of England which is also in Cornwall. Again, beautiful water. We have so many pictures that I will post more every few days until we have bored you sufficiently with them all.

Stonehenge and Spring flowers

On our way back from Bath last week, we realised that we were close to Stonehenge. They were closing at 5pm and it was 4:50pm and cost to get inside the fence. So not wanting to spend the money, we were able to see it from the roadside. We didn't get the commentary which you get with the entrance fee however. As you may be able to see, there is a path around the stones and you are not allowed to get off the path to go up to the stones.

Spring is in full bloom in London.

Forsythia in our back garden.

Bath, England

We haven't been 'out and about' in awhile so we borrowed Will's car and headed for Bath which is less than a three hour drive to the West.

This is a shot of the Roman Baths.

This is the Bath Abbey right next to the Roman baths. This is one of the few cathedrals we've been in that they allowed us to take pictures.

A view of a central park in Bath. It was a beautiful day with the sun shinning all day and warmer temps.

This is the River Avon that runs through Bath.



It was packed out at the Pig & Fiddle.

Well either this prayer hut user is either very short or very young! Actually, the large flat that we rent out has been recently rented to a couple with two small children. Needless to say the garden sees a bit more use.

Ahhhhhh....finally warm enough to use the patio to have coffee.

As promised, I have pictures of the new people at the centre. In the previous entry I talked about Hannah Clymer who is pictured above.....

....taking it easy on a beautiful sunny day in our back garden.

And Wayne & Lois Hochstetler. I knew she was cool when she showed up with her Pike's Peak Ascent shirt on. She's climbed the peak something like 6 or more times.

I realised tonight that it's been nearly two weeks since I have added to the blog. After two years we have tried to add to this every week and sometimes have blogged twice a week. I guess that shows how busy we have been. Plus the fact that we haven't traveled anywhere!

Last week we had the volunteers from Virginia here and we got a lot of work out of them. Painting, rebuilding stone walls in the garden, a murphy bed in one of the flats we rent out was made and installed, patio furniture re oiled, all the bookshop and library books wiped down and the shelves that they live on, tools sharpened, our bathroom floor repaired, the prayer hut door realigned so that it now locks, several windows repaired.....we saved lots of money with this group.

We have added three new people to the centre. As soon as I can get them to hold still, I will put some pictures up of them.

First is Hannah Clymer who grew up in Pennsylvania, went to university at EMU, most recently was in Niger with Dr's without borders as a nurse, and is now here to take a class a the London school of hygiene and tropical disease university. She will be here until late July.

Also new to us is Wayne and Lois Hochstetler. What we know of them after one week:
Wayne comes with a background as a pastor, having served in several Mennonite Church USA congregations and as conference minister. He is an ordained pastor with skills in pastoral care, using the perspective of family systems theory. He is trained in conflict mediation. He holds an M.Div. from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. He has served as a consultant to pastors and congregations in areas of congregational life, purpose, vision and effectiveness.

Lois has a Master of Social Work degree and is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She is a skilled and experienced psychotherapist with a family systems approach. She has skills in dealing with childhood abuse, relationship stress, depression, anxiety, grief and other challenges. She is experienced in individual, group and marital therapy. She has served as a retreat leader and seminar leader. She is trained in conflict mediation.

Wayne grew up in Pennsylvania, Lois was born there but at 8 moved to Alberta Canada. They met at EMC, and later married, Wayne was a science teacher until going to seminary at Elkhart. Evidently they were on an Outspokin' trip at the same time Ed was on the Outspokin' staff. They were later in La Junta, CO pastoring at Emmanuel church, then in Hutchinson, KS at Faith Mennonite for 15 years (?) before their last move to the Champagne/Urbana, IL area where Wayne served as the conference minister.

They are taking some time to settle in and get to know London a bit before they head off to parts of Africa, Asia, & Europe where they will be support to mission workers in those areas. Their small little flat was not quite ready for them when they came as we were waiting on the Virginia volunteer team to do some of that work. And like most plans, things didn't progress as fast as we had hoped. They are being champs about sleeping on an air bed until their mattress is delivered on Monday.

They are a breath of fresh air and an injection of new energy.

Tomorrow I am cooking for a seminar that the centre is having on church planting, specifically in the urban area. Hopefully, pictures of all this tomorrow???

New slideshow pictures

I changed the slideshow to a collage of 2008 pictures of London. If you've been here to visit us you just might see yourself!

Volunteers from Virginia: Partners In Mission

Our volunteers from Harrisonburg Virginia arrived early Saturday morning. You may remember that we had a small group last February from Virginia come for a week. The programme is called: Partners in Mission. They are staying at the Centre and we provide breakfast and lunch and work! Hopefully they can find some time to see London. We don't have a van anymore so Ed was able to take their luggage and one person in the car from Heathrow to the Centre. Sharon, who knows most of the group as she is from the same area, escorted them back to the Centre via the underground.

Here they are scoping out the outside of the Centre.

They arrived in time for some coffee, breakfast rolls and some time to move into their rooms. At 1pm we had a light lunch......Then off to work. They wanted to try and stay awake and not succomb to the lure of sleeping.

They all offered to go right to work. It helped to keep them going and awake. Here Clara is cleaning off shelves and dusting books. This old Victorian house gets dusty so quickly.

The guys went right to work scraping paint off the windows.

In the evening we had an evening talk with Ron Sider speaking, international peace and justice advocate and writer from North America. We began the evening with a meal that I catered at 6:30 PM followed by Ron presenting his thoughts on “Does nonviolent demonstration really work?” We had 32 people in attendance. This was outside of our usual Cross-Currents programme. Ed & Sue (lead Elder at our Church) knew that Ron was in the UK for a conference and approached him about speaking at the Centre. We had a full room as you can see.

The meal before the talk. It was set up to be a discussion topic and there was some good discussion.