Prayer request

Certain issues have arisen with the local immigration department that may affect our future ministry.  Please pray for a quick resolution so that our ministry here may continue.  Thank you!

Trying to catch up here

Hey, folks: it's been ages since I posted anything - been really busy.  

I wrote the following on the 8th of this month (!), so I'll paste this up now and post more recent news directly.
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Tours, tours, tours!  We heard June is a busy month.  We must have a 100 people coming through here every week now.  They sure do enjoy themselves, so that's great.

We've been attending the Sunday morning services at Pusey House.  It's a bastion of high church Anglo-Catholicism, so there are some things we just put up with.  The folks are great; some are fellow Wycliffe Hall students.  I got to read the OT lesson recently, which was the first time I'd been able to do anything in a service since I got here.  I really appreciated being able to do that.  Yesterday they had a dinner in the "quad" after the service and I wound up having a conversation with two people who do not appear to know the Lord - one definitely does not.  It just underlined for me how important it is in these churches that they not get so philosophical and academic in their homilies that they fail to make the gospel call clear: repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  There are going to be people in those congregations who are there because of the beauty of the building and the music who really do not understand Christianity or their need of a personal Saviour.  Of course that's obvious, but the fact was so plainly there before me yesterday.

We are excited that our friend, The Rev. Victor Morgan, of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Blue Ridge, GA, is going to be in town next week.  Victor is an American representative of Wycliffe Hall, and every year he comes over here for the last week of Trinity term.  I have often wished I could come over to Oxford with him for a trip, but it never worked out.  Now I get to welcome him here instead.  

We've had to spend a lot of time recently learning how to deal with gallstones.  Yes, gallstones.  Two weeks ago yesterday, I had a classic, full-blown gallstone attack, spending a night in the emergency room.  I had been having symptoms for some time; I just didnt' know what they were.  Now we have to watch what I eat.  Of course, Sheila is enjoying fixing me all these salads she has been wishing I would eat for a long time!  :-)  We've got the symptoms under control and I will have an ultrasound tomorrow to have a look to see what's going on.  Once this confirms the diagnosis, we'll get rid of them. [update: the test did not reveal gallstones so we are quite puzzled about my symptoms. I'm taking a PPI for my stomach for a few weeks to see if that helps.  We'll go from there.]

The C. S. Lewis Foundation will be holding their two-week summer seminar in July.  We've been helping them get ready for that.  I've spent a lot of time this past week finding some mini-buses to rent.  Those will be two busy weeks.

Sheila's also been trying to make a few improvements.  She's getting some new door mats and she has been working on freshening up the linens in the house.  She is also planning a house dinner for our current scholars.  We are so happy that Dr. Laura Smit of Calvin College is back with us for a month.  We also have Jacob Imam, who is translating some ancient Greek papyri.  He's a godson of Walter Hooper and a really great guy.  I'm especially glad to have him around because he likes to help with the tours! [update: we now also have a lady from France who is a Thomas Hardy expert, working on C. S. Lewis.]

A great way to keep up with what's going on at The Kilns is to follow our twitter feed.  It's been dormant since 2012, but I've started it back up.  Search for @TheKilnsOxford.  I do "retweet" some of my posts to my Facebook page, but not all.

Called for another year

Folks:
It has become plain that the Lord would have us accept the Foundation's invitation to come back to The Kilns for another year.  We will be home in Chattanooga for August and September.  We should be back in Oxford by 1 October at the latest.  We'll be home this summer visiting family and friends, raising support, and getting ready for a much broader ministry here in Oxford.  Details to follow.  Do pray for us.

Visit from Gianna Jessen

Yesterday, we were delighted when Aiden Mackey (G. K. Chesteron scholar) brought over a friend who was entertaining Gianna Jessen.  We learned about Gianna years ago and were very honoured to have her with us.  She has been befriended by the lady on the left of the picture, Amanda, who was here with her four-year-old daughter, Grace.  Sweet little girl.  Amanda works diligently for pro-life concerns here in Oxford.  You never know who's going to show up.

To learn more about Gianna, you can watch her testimony below.

Another letter for Professor Lewis

A great C. S. Lewis trip

A couple of weeks ago, we had C. S. Lewis scholar Will Vaus to visit with us for a few days.  He had with him Russ Head from Thomaston, GA.  Russ is the owner of The Travel Connection.  He and Will were touring the UK for the purpose of putting together a tour about C. S. Lewis that would include both Ireland and England as well.  We spent a good bit of time talking to Russ about this and some of his other tours, and I'm certain that his tour (which should be next year, I believe) will be one of the best C. S Lewis tours anyone could go on.  If you think you may be interested, you can contact Russ at www.russhead.com. 

Lots of visitors

We've really been having the visitors lately.  We had a couple from the States to visit for a few days; she was here to visit a Rhodes scholar from her school and he was here to take pictures - in Morocco!  We had Archbishop Foley Beach of ACNA and two other bishops to visit for a day.  I put the Archbishop up in Lewis' room!  We've had more tours, of course.  There are more people walking around just looking at the house.  Sometimes they peer in the window!  Amazing.

We also had the Buntings from our home church in Chattanooga visit for a few days.  Neither of us had ever been to Stratford and, since it's only an hour away, we went up to visit Shakespeare country.

We got a new scholar-in-residence today named Jacob.  Sadly, our Italian, Maria, will be leaving tomorrow.

Needless to say, we're a bit tired, but thankful.  We have two tours tomorrow, but thankfully our tour-guide, Myriam, will take care of them.  The one in the afternoon is some officers from the Salvation Army! 

Sheila and the Buntings at Shakespeare's birthplace.

Sheila and the Buntings in John Shakespeare's leather shop, inside his house.