USA - FINAL WEEK

  

 

Dear Friends,

The American churches did not use hymnals of words alone. Everyone in the congregation had music copies. One result of that was good harmonious singing but another was that there was little purchase of hymnbooks printed in the United Kingdom like Grace Hymns, Christian Hymns, Gadsby, Hymns of Faith, the Scottish metrical psalter etc. that were overwhelmingly word only editions. Even in their music copies the words of English hymnbooks were not written between the two clefs as they are in the USA but separately right at the bottom of the page. It is ironic that today in America one finds in most churches and conferences the ubiquitous projected words on the screen behind the pulpit. No music. They have caught up with the British. Will harmonies also go? In Wales people always took their music copy hymnals to church and there was the four part harmony that made singing in the Welsh language renowned. I still listen on Sunday afternoon at 4.30 in London to the weekly half hour of Welsh hymn singing on Radio Cymru. I do miss Grace Hymnal and those 400 hymns old and new that I selected and we sang each year. I shall never sing many of them ever again. What a privilege to have that responsibility. I think I gave to Wales the hymn “A man there is, a real man” which we sang each Sunday night of the Aberystwyth conference. So it became included in the new Christian Hymns - even though some hyper sensitive compiler toned down and changed the words of the first verse.

You know that Reformation Heritage Books published my In the Shadow of the Rock and if you go via Google to their website you will be introduced to a long section on the book. They have exhibited there the first 25 or so pages as an encouraging “Come on and buy me. Let me whet your appetite.” It contains all its positive commendations written by a dozen men, and then the first chapter about my father and his upbringing in Dowlais, It is presented well.

The Conference near Dallas ended Sunday lunch time after a morning divided into two, a prayer meeting of 150 people and then a service at which Timothy Conway customarily preaches. He brought a message on our need to evangelize. Vigorous, addressing our consciences by presenting us with the achievement of Christ and the plight of man without him. I need to listen to it again. The messages will be sent around the world on the “I’ll Be Honest With You” website. Do visit it. Already they have sent out my opening meditational or devotional on Philippians 3, “In everything by prayer and supplication make your requests known to God.” I watched the opening ten minutes, The notes were too low down and I was looking down, bent over, and the shirt I was wearing looked too big for me! Etc, etc. It is not easy looking at yourself preaching. It was the inevitable, “Down, boy, down” message after the liberty I had last Sunday,

We drove the five hours from Dallas to San Antonio, Timothy. Ruby, Ryan and me, It was a superb vehicle with all our gear in the back in the open and us high and firm in the cabin. We heard three sermons of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one after another, from his consecutive preaching on the early chapters of the book of Acts. What preaching it is! So full! So exhaustive! So evangelistic and so full of Scripture that he quotes naturally and pointedly, those beloved verses from Romans that he has preached on throughout his life. It was a feast. At dusk we got to San Antonio and the temperature was down to 85 degrees. I have a beautiful room in the Holiday Inn with a coffee making machine, and I can drink the excellent coffee out of the new mug that I was given at last week’s conference. I had forgotten just how powerful the water jet is in American showers! I felt it was taking a millimetre off my epidermis, and I glowed afterwards.

The temperature in San Antonio was just as hot on Monday and I ventured out of my air-conditioned luxury to get a meal. What I bought was enough to last me until Wednesday (taken back to the hotel in a doggy bag). Then on Tuesday the rain came, there was no sight of the sun and the temperature dropped to the fifties. I did my washing, learning how to operate these large powerful washing and drying machines. Tim Conway picked me up at 5.30 and drove me five minutes to a restaurant which had been one of the first places where they met as a growing church. A building had become too small and they had gone to the Holiday Inn to see if there was a room there available and large enough to hold a hundred people, but in the car park Tim met the owner of this restaurant to whom they told their mission. “Why don’t you meet in my restaurant?” he asked. And so they did, expanding it by taking down some of the internal walls, They packed in up to 200 people, and one morning baptized on the pavement of this thoroughfare half a dozen people. Then that building got too small and they bought the warehouse which now they have filled. So, on this Tuesday evening, the restaurant which is a burgher restaurant began to be filled by the church people, by I guess 100-150 people, many families, different races and social classes. I had the best hot dog I have ever had. We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Timothy, and he had to blow out the candles, and there was a large cake to be cut up and divided among the singing congregation so glad to have their pastor back for this happy visit, the conference and the wedding of his daughter in four days’ time. He is returning to Manchester in a week’s time. We had three happy hours there of buzzing friendship, laughter and serious conversations. What a fellowship they are. What stories behind the conversions of many. This is a spark of revival. I cannot think of another church in the U.K. like it.

Wednesday dawned and I was invited by Tim Conway’s elderly father-in-law to a remarkable Mexican restaurant for breakfast. It is called Mitierra and you can work that out to see its meaning, ‘My Land.’ It is huge. Hanging from its ceiling are thousands of decorations and it long walls are covered in murals of hundreds of the leading Mexicans of the present day. Of course, the virgin Mary has her statues and paintings and shrines, and the Pope is painted in a prominent place. All the middle-aged waitresses are dressed in Mexican folk costumes. It is a place with a happy atmosphere, not for young people but for serious eaters who appreciate the ambience of that remarkable and troubled country to the south of the USA. Each night it is packed to the rafters but at this time, 10 a.m. we could choose where we wanted to sit and eat.

We went on to visit Ruby’s sister and family and had such a happy time there. Her brother in law, Sam, is longing for a heart transplant (with many others). He wears two batteries around his neck. They hang down on each side of him and keep his heart pumping. What a joyful home. Then in the evening it was the mid-week meeting at the church, held in the main auditorium. Maybe over 150 there, many children as good as gold. It started at 7 and we left at 10. I preached on Christ praying in Gethsemane and afterwards had long talks with young and old with their questions and problems. What an honour. Tim spoke to them and asked for their continued prayers. Again, his coming to the UK seemed such a remarkable event, a pastor of a continually growing congregation with constant blessing and scores of conversions, leaving that scene and coming to the barrenness of Greater Manchester, in the spiritual drought of the United Kingdom and Europe. He delivers a church that was isolated and hurting, deserted by its pastor’s departure, without a building, good people wondering where to turn, isolated from reformed Baptist churches in the north west of England, a loner group, knowing that they needed counsel and no one else to turn to whom they trusted but Tim Conway, He goes there himself! He lifts them up. When I preached there members talked to me and asked questions about the Christian life and the Bible just as they do in Texas. Such conversations are rare in most evangelical churches in the UK. It is a remarkable story, as if I had gone to Kenya if Keith Underhill had returned to the UK and given years to preaching there. I would not have considered that possibility. Oh me of little faith.

On Thursday I wrote and prepared for my talk at 7 p.m. to twenty men from the church on the subject of preaching. They videoed it all for later broadcasting on the web. I was quite free in my memories and comments. I spoke on the call, the training, counselling, taking it slowly in introducing consecutive expository preaching, the absence of awakening ministries today, books and websites. We had two hours of fellowship, questions and my teaching. What a delightful time it was and how thoughtful and serious were the men. The sad news was to hear that Timothy Conway’s cold was much worse and he was now in bed. It is the rehearsal tomorrow night and the wedding at 4 p.m. on Saturday when he is giving away his daughter (her husband to be was listening to me tonight) and then Tim is supposed to be marrying them, I hope there is some anti-biotic that can deal with it in the next 48 hours. By Friday Tim was out of bed and was able to attend the wedding rehearsal and dinner, which event I missed going instead to a meal with Katherine Wilsack and her mother who had travelled here from their home in Florida. We did have a happy time together and that is so on every occasion on which we’ve met. They have found a splendid church and pastor near their new home for which I am very pleased.

This final Saturday I replied to the letters that continue to come in. Then at 2.30 Tim and Ruby came and picked up his mother (staying at the hotel) and me and took me to a company headquarters where there is a large hall and stage where the wedding and reception was going to be held. We were an hour early and talked to folk, Ryan particularly has been such a buddy during this visit, having him to make my way to and chat to - great. Then at 3 the eight bridesmaids in black dresses (very elegant) lined up on the left of the stage and seven groomsmen in shirts and braces over their white shirts stood on the other side and then the bride came in and stood in the middle, We sang some songs and ‘Great is Thy faithfulness.’ Tim preached from Ephesians 5 on the institution and role of marriage. They made simple vows and were pronounced man and wife. We went out of the room, and the rows of seats were replaced with tables. We returned and chatted for an hour before it was our turn to go for a hamburger or a hot dog and salad, Then the best man and the groom spoke sweetly and briefly and I spoke with a microphone in my hand on “The Lord is good; a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knoweth them that trust in him.” Then all the chairs and tables were removed and there was fun dancing, mainly children in a large congo file running round and round with kids at the back trying to reach the fast line. Older ones danced jumping and shaking and finally there was one subdued dance at the end for the oldsters. It was all natural and noisy while all around the edges there was the bustle of conversation by the older ones. The evening finished around 9 when the couple drove off to cheers. They are going to northern California on their honeymoon. What a natural, easy, happy event. I was back in my room at 9.30.

Then the final anticlimax . . .  Sunday I heard Tim Conway preach at 10 and at 11.20 Ryan led the Lord’s Supper. Every seat in the building was taken. We sang four or five hymns including “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Then at 12 I preached on Hebrews 1 verse 3, a little fazed as the sloping lectern was not in place and my notes were very low on a shelf. They listen so well, all the seats in the church taken, and when you talk to people you meet many, many who have been converted there across the years, many men. It is remarkable. We had a delicious lunch as tables were brought in for everyone, lots of meat, and happy conversations. They sang to me, “The Lord bless you and keep you” and I needed that prayer for after Joshua Conway had brought me to the airport and I had gone through the formalities of getting my boarding pass and waiting the two hours for the flight to Dallas, then, that bad moment, the announcement that there was a bad storm in Dallas and the flight was delayed. So, I sat three hours in the airport and then another three hours in the plane on the tarmac and then another hour’s flight and we got to Dallas at 10.45. I called Mack for help and that wonderful man came searching for me from Denton to the airport and we finally got together around midnight and he drove me through ground water and heavy rain back to his home when finally I got off to sleep at 1.30 after telling everyone in the U.K. via Email that I would not be home for some days. The line of people waiting for new tickets to different parts of the world was about 80, and the queue was not moving at all. I spoke to two people in front of me and they had missed their flight to Australia. I spoke to another man who had lost a business deal and it was costing him $1000 and the airline just shrugged. All the hotels were booked and he had nowhere to stay. But I had Mack and I booked a flight home on Wednesday evening. I went with Mack to the home of Dr. John Green a few hours away and had a delightful time with John, Michelle and Rachel even meeting their son and his wife. The work of these two is in repairing and advising the maintenance of racing vehicles all over the world and is much sought after for his counsel. We went to their workshop. It was spotless. We had the happiest and most blessed time and that compensated for the loss of the experience of meeting old friends whom I see only at the Banner of Truth conference. Throughout our two days there Mack worked on the proofs of his life of David Brainerd, the book coming out some time later this year published by the Reformation Heritage Books.

I am not unused to these times when I have been ministering with divine help to know some interference from the god of this world bringing a trial at the end. The evil one hates the blessing God has given at those meetings, but God works it for my good. Inevitably the Texas Christian Experience came to an end. Mack drove me to the Dallas airport and we hugged good-bye. I had a safe journey home with an empty seat next to me and a good conversation with a woman across the seat. I got the tube from Heathrow to Acton Central where Pauline Cooke met me and drove me home to Chiswick to a happy reunion with Barbara and to the normal unpacking, reading of a pile of mail and adjusting to jet-lag. The next day I had another implant. All went smoothly. Texas was great, and coming home was also great.

Be at peace.  Geoff

A WEEK IN THE USA (2)

 Dear Friends,                                        Easter Sunday 2022

So my first full week in Texas, from Sunday to Sunday, is over. The first Sunday dear Mack Tomlinson drove me a few miles to their Providence Chapel. He once spent three weeks living in The Manse Aberystwyth and preaching in Alfred Place. It was the happiest holiday they have ever had, so he and Linda claims often,  and he showed me photos of Aber with Ieuan and Ivory, John and Janet and they asked about Christine. I had hiraeth. He took me to the united Sunday School that started at 9.30. There were about 100 present. I was introduced by Mack and then it was just me preaching for 45 minutes. The church is now meeting in what is called the ‘Ballroom’ at one of the local universities, but nothing like the Blackpool Tower ballroom. It is just an ideal airy room for the 200-strong growing congregation who gather at the 10.30 meeting. I believe that I was greatly helped in all the three messages I preached; I don’t think I have had a better day’s ministry, and as this was the beginning of my two weeks in Texas I was full of gratitude and peace at the end of the Lord’s Day. But there will be other sermons and after they are over I will want to apologize to the congregation for wearying them. The 10.30 service was characterised by things old and new. The old were the 4 hymns, the praying and reading by Mack and the elders. There was also a message to the children given by one of the elders. The kids poured down to the front and sat on the floor, the girls in their dresses and the boys in their colourful shirts and jeans. Almost 50 children listened intently to a 10-minute talk. The new (at least for me) was the ten minutes given over to sharing and testifying when 8 people spontaneously got up, men and women, one by one, and spoke of the help they had had from God in the past weeks. Then there was also a time of open prayer and six people, both men and women again, prayed. So, an hour had gone by before I climbed up the flight of stairs onto the platform and began my second sermon. I preached for 45 minutes and there was no restlessness in the congregation. We finished at 12.20 and soon there was the customary happy buzz of friendships.

At lunch we were joined by the late Dr Will Thomson’s daughter Susan and her husband Lee Tyner and an hour sped by. They are a great couple and we reminisced and especially the familiar story was rehearsed of my discovery of Atari and playing it night and day in the Thompson’s den. Thus I became their favourite visiting preacher . . . and I thought my popularity was all because of my sermons! I began sending out my weekly musings that recorded my last few days in Mississippi. The climax of this Sunday was going to the church’s fortnightly men’s meeting in a home where a number of bachelor young men live. There were 25 men sitting in a circle around the walls of a large room. An elder prayed and then I spoke on the absolute greatness of Christ. During the second hour they asked various questions about relationships and the message I had given. We came back to Mack’s home and he made popcorn and sandwiches and I completed sending off my letters. Around 10 p.m. an old friend arrived. Mack’s heating and air-conditioning system has reached the end of its usefulness and this brother had driven here to install a new system. He was up early this Monday morning beginning the work before he had a break when we had a breakfast of scrambled egg on toast. I had a pile of Emails from Barbara and Fflur and friends in the UK and the USA, all so welcome when one is far away. But I love being here and hearing all the news of Christian life and strife in this mighty nation.

In the afternoon Mack took me to Barnes & Noble’s bookstore where I bought a compiled book of essays and paragraphs written by C.S.Lewis that I had never seen. It had been given the title The Reading Life. It is so easy to read; its first three chapters are entitled  ‘Why We Read, How to know if You Are a True Reader, and Why Children’s Stories are Not Just for Children’ and there are many more such brief chapters. There is a chapter entitled ‘The Case for Reading Old Books.’ The print is large and the small hardback is not heavy to hold. I paid for it with $100 bill because I needed some change.

An elder’s wife has the reputation of being a great cook and she has cooked a chicken for us and Mack promised me that it was going to be the best chicken I has ever eaten. I told him I liked gravy! It indeed was delicious, the best chicken I have tasted for a long time, that is, not dry, but tender and juicy (Don’t I spend too much time in these musings writing about food? Sorry. I am married to a great cook. No slur on Barbara). Jarrod and Joann Courtney came for supper and they stayed until after 9 and we happily talked away.

Then Tuesday we travelled 90 miles to Graham, four of us, Mack, Lee, Jeff and me. sometimes passing groups of Long Horn Texas Cattle, and, my, they are long, five feet from the tip of one horn to the tip of the other. We often past clusters of the Texas national flower, the bluebonnets. In Graham we entered the most extraordinary and beautiful modern house at the side of a lake, a pool and a hot tube outside. The ceiling of a vast kitchen was as high as Alfred Place ceiling with flowing wood everywhere, vast doors and huge windows overlooking the lake. The house is a second home of a Christian oil man. Three women served our meal and then the twenty or so men sat around and I spoke on Christian Encouragement. The men were almost all under 35, young fathers, having been less than 15 years in the ministry, some much shorter, but part of the new wave of men who have discovered the doctrines of grace. We were four on our table, and I was able to ask them what parts of the Bible, what books, were they preaching on at the present time. They made helpful comments after I had spoken and they gave us some books.

The most joyful discovery of the day was my brand new autobiography, In The Shadow of the Rock. They were selling it for half price $15. It is full of photographs and almost 300 pages in length. It looks beautiful and I searched through it from first to last page and was impressed. I don’t suppose it will be in the UK until May. They have almost sold out all the sets of the four children’s books, while the new evangelistic paperback, Everyone’s Welcome, is selling well and the 900 people coming to the Conference which starts tomorrow night will probably buy the lot. This was a most interesting day. We arrived home at the end of the afternoon and Mack cooked steak on the outside grill for supper which we ate with baked potatoes, salad and sweet, smaller, darker, brown, baked beans more delicious than our HP baked beans. There I go harping on about food again . . .

Wednesday was an unforgettable day, and as you hang in with me you will discover why. We began by a visit to a Cowboy-themed restaurant in the old centre-city square of Denton, Cartwright’s Restaurant Café, where I had hash browns, a strip of bacon, egg and tomatoes swallowed down with a large glass of ice cold orange juice. Then we called in at a charity shop for five minutes where I got a garment, and then drove on through blocked highways (a crash?) to the Dallas branch of the Reformed Theological Seminary to hear Sinclair Ferguson who is teaching there all this week. We finally arrived at 1.10, but the afternoon class had not yet started. The dozen or so students were drifting in. settling in and chatting with Sinclair entering and joining them. Then he spotted me. “Geoffrey Thomas!” he cried and came over and hugged me and then, rapidly changing his mind, he announced that for the next two hours I was going to teach this class! What an honour! He said lavish things about me, and then asked me a question or two and I was away, speaking for the rest of the afternoon. It was a delight, not difficult being steered by him about my ministry, and then about preaching and the situation today, and then he handed it over to the class and they asked me good complicated as well as straightforward questions. I got a round of applause at the end. It was an exhilarating experience, though I would have enjoyed listening to Sinclair. We drove back in 30 minutes to Denton.

The early arrivals at the Fellowship Conference were turning up and we met three of them for sandwiches and soup at five before making our way out of Dallas and into Denton. I was preaching at the opening conference prayer meeting at 7 and about eighty gathered for that. I spoke on Philippians; “In everything by prayer and supplication make your requests known to God. And then the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your heart and mind,” and there was a gratifying reference to the talk in many of the prayers that followed for an hour at the end of my speaking. But this was the first time I had spoken in the USA on this visit when I felt that the preaching was ordinary – my frequent experience. I want to hit a home run every time I come up to bat but the Lord knows how to temper my understanding of the impact of my messages. He steers the people away from talking to me in praise of what they have heard. He removes the inner testimony of assurance that something had been blessed by Him, but God did bless the meeting. Then we wandered around the lovely conference centre and went to the main 1000 seater auditorium and there were all my books, especially my new evangelistic book Everyone’s Welcome. I saw it for the first time. Attractive. 100 pages and I read the first chapter and it was enjoyable. That was the icing on the cake at the beginning of the conference. What a book table, 40 yards long! Magnificent books. I used to have many of them but I gave them away to Newcastle’s Westminster Seminary. But if I could read the books that I now have then that would be more than enough. I know what books I will be reading next, the two new one that I have written. Once when John Murray was staying at our house I told him how much I had enjoyed in the Calvin Theological Journal his essay on Definitive Sanctification, “Has it been published?” he asked in astonishment. I went upstairs and got it for him. That was it for the next hour as he read his essay carefully from beginning to end. I did not disturb him.

At 8 a.m. my phone rang for the first time. Wow! I didn’t know it was working. It was the optician in London booking me for an appointment. Then I spotted that there was an unanswered call from Barbara and I pushed a button and I actually spoke to her in Germany, 7 hours ahead of me. She told me of her journey yesterday and of a good reception from Hermann and Ann her sister, and that her niece was arriving to show her how to download her Emails. That was great,

In the day I went to a Louisiana restaurant with Mack and Timothy Conway and most of his family. I had Louisiana gumbo, that is a fish soup with rice. Three of his children were there, the trio who are converted. The one who has thrown aside the faith was not with us. One is getting married a week Saturday 7 bridesmaids and 6 ushers. Another has been married three months and I sat with him and we discussed the call into the ministry. Then we went across to the Conference centre and picked up Kenneth Kiambati and his new wife Elizabeth. He is finishing in a month at Joel Beeke’s seminary and he hopes to return to his native Kenya and teach in the Nairobi seminary set up by Keith Underhill. I spent an hour with them. They are staying with Mack in Mack’s house and attending all the meetings of the conference. He has been to this conference twice. He is a gem and so is she. I have never met her before. While he first heard me preach years ago in Kenya. I think she will easily survive being the only white woman in the congregation

All six of us speakers at the Conference met for a meal at 5 along with the wives of some and then we prayed together. I moved into my room and then we went to hear the first speaker who spoke on the nature of saving faith and urged the congregation to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Afterwards I signed the first three copies of my autobiography for three working men in their twenties, one of whom had been attending the ministry of Derek Thomas for 14 years. The other two I have known for a few years. It was a lovely evening but I struggled to send my Emails out with the weakest connection. I later found the situation of the strongest connection in this hotel, and then I can send out my Emails from that spot. The conference organisers kindly gave me a box of flavoured teas and I could heat some water in the microwave oven and enjoyed cherry flavoured tea alone with one golden wrapped chocolate ball.

On Good Friday I heard one of the most animated preachers I have ever heard. He was even a little over the top on a couple of occasions. It is not something I often meet.  He preached on the Lord’s relationship with his people from the Song of Solomon and challenged us all. Then after lunch which is at 12 I returned to the auditorium whose walls are lined with tables full of books. It was 1 p.m. I was the third of four men to speak to 200 or people about books. My vocation was to show and tell my own books. I found about 9, not spotting the biography of Ernest Reisinger or my book on the Revival in Samaria until late that night. I think all the children’s books were sold immediately and quite a few copies of my autobiography. Most of the two evangelistic books, You Could Have It All and Everyone’s Welcome were also sold (and there were many of them). They had ordered many copies of my autobiography but they did not sell so well except to old friends. There were plenty left over. I spent the rest of the afternoon going over my notes for tonight’s big meeting. Every seat was taken, around 1000 people. They largest number ever. They listened well, though I ‘went on a bit.’ Afterwards I had about six different people coming on to me. We sat at the front and there was an hour of counselling. What a privilege! There was one bit of advice I wanted to give to a man who asked for a ‘last word of counsel;’ I was silent for a whole minute as I struggled to think of the words I wanted to tell him, but they would not come to me. Yet, the moment he had gone and a few other people came to talk then I remembered what I was struggling to tell him. I looked out for him afterwards but could not find him. So now I am back in my suite, three rooms to myself (or even four if you separate the toilet and shower from the sinks and mirror). I am really being spoiled. But the food is pretty basic. But there are plenty of ripe bananas and apples, but no machines selling chocolate! But I found them later. I talked with an old friend, a dentist. His wife bought every book of mine that I had shown, and his daughter bought her own copy of In The Shadow of the Rock. She is a terrific photographer and will take our photo on the football pitch tomorrow. She is also the photographer at the wedding of Tim Conway’s daughter next Saturday in San Antonio. I can read the Times each day, and I have Borodin’s 2^nd String Quartet playing over and over again on my Ipad. I told everyone I talked to that Barbara had been tuning in to our Conference and heard me preaching last night in Germany!

This morning’s preacher is a missionary in Lebanon and he was special. The father of 8 or 9 children meeting attempts to kidnap one of his little girls to send her to Syria, and also to kill him. He was running out of petrol one day last year and he wouldn’t stop in one garage because the owner was an Islamic extremist. but he went up the hill from the garage but the car stopped. So he reversed down the hill and stopped next to a petrol pump on the forecourt. This man came out, recognised him, and knocked on the window. He let down the window and the man spoke to him, telling him “You know who I am?” that he had been paid to shoot him last year. However, some years ago members of his family were ill and this missionary had raised some money and had bought a number of drugs and given them to the family and they restored the woman to good health again. “How could I kill someone who had been so kind to my family?” he asked. Men see our good works and God is glorified through such a response. By the way I have been asked to go to Jordan next year to speak to some Arabic Christian pastors at a couple of small conferences. Some of the men from here are talking of coming to John MacArthur’s church the first week of October where I am preaching at the Puritan Conference.

This Saturday afternoon from 1 until 2.30 six of us speakers sat on the stage and we each had a microphone and about 20 questions were addressed to us one at a time each to one person. I think I had four and there was one when I floundered. I was distracted by an old woman in a wheel chair in the front row who had a telephone call She took ages to find her phone. It rang on and on, and, then, finding it, instead of switching it off she engaged in conversation with the caller, while I was trying to answer a difficult message on the meaning of a verse of Scripture. It was sad. That was my weakest answer, but two answers were spot on and they laughed loud and long at something I said, and that was very reassuring. It was a good afternoon for me.

Then a group of young men gathered around me on the platform and asked me questions and we talked for an hour. They are all from San Antonio and I will be preaching for them twice next week. What an educated blessed crowd they are. It is a remarkable church and I hope I have real liberty when I am there as the final days of this happy time in Texas draw to a close.

My friend Lee preached at 7, my spot last night, at this Saturday night meeting to 800-900 people. We sing some old-fashioned Southern Baptist hymns, but I chose “The power of the cross” for the last hymn last night and loved singing it. But they love to sing the great English hymns of Watts and Wesley, etc. Lee preached on Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and it was a fine, helpful, moving message. When it was over I signed a dozen copies of my autobiography. I am being given 12, and so they will be for most of the grandchildren, the three daughters and Rhiain and Keith. They will arrive some time in a month or so.

Blessings on you,     Geoff

MY POST-COVID VISIT TO THE USA

 Dear Friends,

I was awake at 6 on Wednesday morning, April 6, 2022; I had had a solid six hours of sleep; thank God. I got up at 6.45 and finished packing. Barbara and I had our devotions and then Saeed came downstairs and joined us; he also prayed, soon insisting of coming with me 100 yards to the bus stop carrying my suitcase. He prays so freshly. Then the bus took me to the Acton tube station and in half an hour I was at Heathrow. There were no huge crowds of frustrated passengers facing cancelled flights. Nothing like that at all. It was the same as usual and I speedily went through Departures. They asked to see the confirmation that had arrived by Email last night that I was Covid-free. Security was a pain having to unzip and extract from my packed case my I-pad and my laptop, but having done that I was ushered through the security arch. I had two hours to wait for the flight departure to Charlotte, in North Carolina. The plane was totally full. There was an American old boy sitting next to me, ten years younger than me, but not very talkative. He had been visiting his daughter who runs a wine shop in London. She had married a Brit but now they were divorced, but she had remained in London. There was a film called ‘Pig’ that I had read about and so I watched it because of my books on Piers Pig (as yet unpublished, if ever . . .). Very odd film. Slow and confusing; I could not understand the ending. Then I watched the film about the deaf family that had been chosen as the best film of the year in the Oscars. Again, it was not too wholesome and I ached for it to finish. The nine-hour flight was too long to be spent exclusively in reading, but the meal was good, delicious salad and then cheese and crackers and warm chicken. I was not too sleepy; too much adrenalin through the anticipation of the next 17 days. I had a good conversation with a man in the Charlotte queue as we went for 15 minutes through security crawling along in yet another long departure line, but putting these inconveniences behind me, with over an hour to wait for the Mississippi flight to be boarded, I filled the time by beginning this letter.

Tommy Peaster was waiting for me at Jackson airport. What a lovely sight! He called Linda, outside with the car, to bring it to the upper exit, and soon we were driving the 40 minutes to their home in Flora and chatting away as if we had seen each other just last week. I was not weary and kept awake until 11. Linda made me some warm cheese sandwiches and vegetable and meat soup and we talked until I went to my suite. I took a sleeping tablet and it helped. I was awake briefly at 3 and then at 6 and finally got up at 8.30. Perfect! One has to add six hours to USA time, and I am rapidly training my body clock to adapt to the new regimen of Central Time here.

We drove into Yazoo City for lunch and then went to a funeral service of a beloved old lady in the church. Up in her 90s she and a companion would visit on Sunday afternoons old people’s homes to encourage the residents. I met a host of the sweetest people during the hour before the service renewing friendship with them as we sat and I talked to this one and that. Then at 3 p.m. the service began with 60 people in the congregation, the suited elders sat in the front. We sang Great is Thy faithfulness, and It is well with my soul. The service was led by Guy Waters, one of the professors of Systematic Theology in Reformed Seminary (under an hour away) who is often the preacher in the Peasters’ Second Presbyterian church in Yazoo City. He was great, speaking on what difference Jesus makes to our attitude to death and pointing out the answer from John 11 and Jesus’ conversation with Mary and Martha and the raising of Lazarus. It was simply grand. Then we drove in a procession led by a police car 25 or so miles to a country graveyard to the burial. That was brief, no singing and no coffin being lowered into the ground. Those earthy elements I did miss, but talking to people before and after that service again was most enriching and we got home by 4.45. We had an evening indoors and Linda cooked my favourite dish of hers, Crab Gratin. On Friday Tommy had an appointment to test some hearing aids and I sat and wrote and read and walked down the slope to the lake passing the tiny humming birds swooping down on their feeder just outside the window on the veranda. It is still too cold to enter the swimming pool, but it has been a bright sunny day. They returned at 1.30 and in the afternoon six old friends joined us including Will Thompson’s widow and Sonny Peaster and his wife Patsy and Bob Cato and his wife Marie (in spite of her ill health). I enjoyed their company and conversation very much especially Sonny who later told Linda it had been the best hours for him in an age. I gave them a story and lesson that they received well. I have admired these men for years and what they have done has set a standard for a local church for me. Jonathan Winch of Newcastle is speaking there this Sunday.

That night we went out for catfish and when we got back Tommy and I had a golden hour together quietly talking about God’s dealings with us over the forty years that we have known one another. Tommy has three things seriously wrong and yet he is active and his mind is sharp. He is a great man and it has been one of the Lord’s blessings that our families have been close for all these years. I cling to them with my letters, and it had been so rewarding.

So Saturday morning Linda drove me the 45 minutes to the Jackson airport and I flew to Dallas just over an hour away. There was Mack Tomlinson waiting for me and after another 45 minutes riding with him we were in Denton, at his home, meeting his wife Linda once again. He has preached in Alfred Place Church in Aberystwyth and they stayed in the Manse. They remember the congregation, and my sister-in-law Rhiain Lewis and Keith, and also Ifan Mason Davies and Ann. Mack set out before me what we would do the rest of the day. Then we were eating with some of the church officers at 5.30. 

At 5 we left for the Greenhouse Restaurant, and there were five couples from the church waiting for us. I was asked loads of questions about Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in particular, and later about John Murray. They enjoyed my memories and laughed at the appropriate times. What a superb group of men and women they are and I was preaching for them on this my third visit starting at 9.30 tomorrow. The temperature here is in the 80s and Mack and I went for a walk in the nearby park before turning in for the night.

Geoff Thomas