What a weekend

After I wrote the last blog I took a bus to Werrington, just outside Peterborough.

When I got there I had only a Google map to show me where to go for the training weekend. So I saw a guy smoking outside Tescos and asked him how I could get there. He ended up driving me and giving me his complete spiritual history. Not what I was expecting, but I love it when God does things like that.

A few people arrived at the venue after me and then we got down to training and at about 9.30 p.m. (my usual bedtime) we went out and talked to people in the Three Horse Shoes pub. I had prayed about this before I went and particularly the person the Lord would direct me to there.

Well, this guy nodded "Hello" as soon as I walked in the door, so I chatted to him. Then he drifted off and I talked to his mate. Then the first man came back but it was time to go.

When we got back to the venue, there was a bit of a mix-up in accommodation. I was taken back to a cottage next door to the pub. A lady answered the door and seemed a bit perplexed to see a man at the door when she had been expecting a lady.

I was tired out by then, so I made for my room. As I was on my way I saw a photograph, not just any photograph, but the image of the first man I talked to in the pub.

"Is that your husband?" I asked my hostess. "Yes." she said.

By the time I left the next morning, having spent more time with her husband, who is not a believer, she was delighted that I had appeared at her door. Funny, how God works, isn't it!

Pray for this man, his name is Dudley.

Another one

YES, another one! Now I'm sitting in a McDonalds in Peterborough, using their free WiFi and lovin' it! O, and I'm eating as well.

I have just sauntered round Peterborough Cathedral, following the historical booklet in every little detail. The last one was about a grave digger called Robert Scarlett who died in 1594 aged an incredible 98 years old.

In that time he had buried two queens, and very famous ones at that. The first was Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife. It was in divorcing her that Henry divorced the Church of England from the Church of Rome. She died near Peterborough and is buried in the Cathedral.

The second was Mary Queen of Scots who was executed near here and laid to rest for a few years in the same church. But her son, James VI of Scotland and James I of England, took over the throne and brought her bones to London after a few decades. What an incredible story! YES, another one!

This is his picture which is on the Cathedral wall-