Day 3

My beard progresses slowly but surely.

We have run 2 festivals so far with a third tomorrow. Today it rained a fair bit during our festival in Clayton Brook which always makes things interesting - particularly when you're playing water-balloon volleyball.

Tomorrow we run a second festival in the same place as the one today before heading off to Scotland. I suspect that by the time we drive to the place we're staying it will be time to get up and drive on to the island of Iona where we begin the 'pilgrimage' part of our pilgrimage. We'll check out the church and community there and hear more about the lives of the Celtic Christians and how they brought faith, education and social reform to Ireland and Scotland.

Today saw a few hundred people come to our festival. Not bad going really - two local churches just engaged with a few hundred people from their community for around 3 hours. Probably many will engage again tomorrow for another 3 or 4 hours and some will volunteer to help make their community a better place. All of them will walk another step in their journey with God whether they realise He journeys or not.

I directed the festival today which basically means I told the MC what to say and oversaw the running of the central games program - an interactive community building series of games and activities for the 3 hours. Hard to describe easily but they basically form the heart, soul and values of the entire festival. If the whole thing does it's job well people relax, start to engage together in a healthy way and love being with one another. They start to like who they are, particularly who they are together and begin in some way to hear the still small voice God's Spirit in their own human spirit. The MC, team, activities and central games become the mirror and values of that move - from an unknowing and wary hostility to a welcoming hospitality.

Generally speaking: job well done. The local team and the two churches were great.

Quotes for the last two days:

Guy: you do know that's illegal don't you? Tim: oh really? Well I'll stop doing it once I've finished.
Tim: Can you drive my car over to Novlette whilst I drive Andy's? Guy: Not really no. I can't drive. Tim: That's ok - the keys are in the ignition.
Whilst booking a flight (a process that took no small amount of time and several attempts at getting the credit card number right over skype) somebody to somebody else: you do know that you have a lousy member don't you? [I think they meant memory].

I've now been driving twice in 24 hours - not bad since I can't drive. Once was 4 wheel off-road driving. It was closely followed by an incident at the Burger King drive through when we may have accidentally neglected to use the road whilst leaving the BK premises.

Sleep this pilgrimge seems to be optional.