Festival time in Downham

Its that time of year again and so it was off to the town center for the parade. We stopped at the Salvation Army for coffee and toasted cheese sandwiches so Douglas could have his capsule. After the snack and fellowship we strolled to a central position opposite the Town square where we would have a good view of the parade. The weather was not playing ball and it nearly "Rained on our Parade" but not quite. We managed to enjoy the passing parade of clowns and tractors, cars and bikes and only as we followed behind the parade to the Howdale did it start raining. We had our umbrellas in our back packs and as we had been praying for rain for weeks, we did not complain as we huddled under the slide in the park enjoying our fish and chips. After looking at all the stalls and chatting to the many people who wanted to know how Douglas was doing, we bought huge ice cream cones and walked back to the church where we had parked our car. It was good to be back home again and we soon dried out in our warm house.

Douglas is blessed.

Last night at the evening service in Downham Market Douglas was blessed to receive a Prayer Shawl from the Prayer Shawl Ministry group. He said he was rather emotional at all the love and support shown by the congregations in this section and receiving the Prayer Shawl was the cherry on the top. He has received so many Get Well cards that he will be writing Thank You cards for weeks to come. As he wears the shawl he will be reminded in a physical sense of the comforting arms and healing power of Jesus. Praise the Lord for this ministry that helps those who are weak and hurting feel the loving presence of our Lord in a tangible way.

Back in the Pulpit

Today Douglas took his first service since his eye surgery and all went well. The service was at one of the village chapels. He managed to get two readers to read the scriptures and as he does not need a script for his message he managed that well. As usual we had Prayer and Praise at the beginning of the service and then the usual other hymns so there was much singing. After the service the folk were invited to write a verse from the Bible on the special sheets provided by the District for the handwritten Bible that the District is producing in celebration of the 400 anniversary of the Bible in English. Tonight he is at Downham Market and I am sure it will also go well.

A trip to Greenwich

We had a lovely journey along the Thames River to Greenwich.The trip had lasted over an hour and so the first thing we did was to have some lunch before we set off to explore the area. There was much walking but all we saw made the sore feet worth while. The weather was fantastic but we wore our hats and used sunblock so we were spared sunburn. The walk to the observatory took forever and was mostly uphill but the view was our reward and then of course the return walk was all downhill. We saw some mad dogs frolicking in the pond but the ducks seemed not to be worried so maybe this happened quite often. There were several groups of tourists and school children but the area was so vast that we hardly noticed them at all. When we got back to the river we discovered that our means of transport had a faulty engine so we were transferred to another vessel and made good time speeding along the river. We walked through a lovely park on our way back to Trafalgar Square to catch the bus that arrived as we got there and so I did not have to stand around on my sore feet but instead we sat upstairs in the bus enjoying the scenes on our way to Kings Cross station where we managed to catch the express train back to Downham Market with only a minute to spare. All in all a day to remember.