A wet and overcast day until late afternoon. I slept even worse than the previous night with coughing and a very runny nose has gone from niggling to nightmare during the week. When I went print off my sermon before getting ready for bed, I discovered that I'd only half finished editing it. Earlier in the week I learned that the Old Testament lesson I was working on was incorrect and had to switch to the alternative one and graft it into the drafted sermon. What happened then I not sure. I may have accidentally deleted work I'd done on my laptop and not copied it to a Cloud drive. Easy enough to do with a work in progress if you're interrupted in full flow. Anyway, I had an extra half hour's work to do before printing off and turning in, so it too me a while to get into sleep mode, even though I was tired. So I've been tired all day as a result.
The progress of cold like symptoms is similar to when I was in Fuengirola back in March at a three hour open air dinner party. It didn't catch a cold but had an allergic reaction to something in the air which took me a couple of weeks to get through. I was glad not to have a service earlier than eleven o'clock today, as I had time to get myself completely functional before driving over to St German's. There were thirty three of us. Pretty good considering it's holiday time and a very wet morning.
Afterwards I chatted over coffee with an Iraqi woman applying for settled status with her daughter. She told me the rise of Da'esh in her homeland had driven the family to other countries. As her husband was wanting to force marriage on a fifteen year old, they left him and eventually came to Britain. They've been here five years, waiting to be granted settled status. There's no going back to islamic countries in the Middle East for them as they left without the husband's permission, and is wanted for this 'crime'.
Finding out that St German's is the church nearest where she lives has proved a great blessing for her, as she's been warmly welcomed into the community. Today she brought a tray of savoury goodies to share over coffee, resembling spring rolls but with meat and cheese fillings. She was raised a muslim but as a questioning teenager twenty five years ago began surreptitiously to visit Christian churches in Iraq and learn about the Gospel, a very risky thing for her to do, but she fell in love with Jesus and his teachings and learned to pray the Jesus Prayer.
She's loving the freedom she experiences here in Britain and being able to join with others in worship gives her a joy which shines out of her. Once they both have settled status she'll feel free to be baptized. If her asylum request was refused it would end in deportation to Iraq with possibly fatal consequences if she was known to be a Christian convert. For now, she is waiting patiently and in hope.
It was half past one again by the time I got home for lunch, coughing and exhausted. Siesta was out of the question as Mark came by at three to talk about wedding ceremonies. He and Fran are starting to make plans, and they want me to be involved somehow. The conversation has started!
Late afternoon the rain stopped, but I didn't have enough energy to go out for a walk. It's quite rare for me not to make the effort, but with the coughing and my nose running constantly, I felt the need to rest. Also my right ankle has been giving me trouble all day, and I didn't fancy limping around the park. After supper I watched a double episode of 'Silent Witness' I'd not seen before, and then went to bed.
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