Shall we Sing a Song for you?

Relay teams for the Belfast Marathon seem to be proving more popular among RPs than GO teams this year! The Marathon takes place on May Day (Monday) and this year there is a (mostly) Renwick team (‘Really?’ – me, Strob, Lindsay, Amy & Rachel M), a Kilraughts team (2 Pinkertons, Davy F and 2 randomers) and ‘PJ’s heroes’ (Joel, Conor, Mark, Cream James (both of them) and Steven McC). There was also going to be a Dromore team, but they chickened out didn’t get it sorted in time.

The map of the route can be seen be clicking here. According to those who actually know where these places are, it’s not a great route. I’m running the second leg which is 6.2 miles. Last year’s ‘Renwick House’ team did the whole thing in 04:24:14 and Joel’s team (‘Scrabo Harriers’) did it in 03:57:10. We definitely need to beat the Renwick team from last year ‘cos they only had one boy! There’s a pace chart that shows you what your final time will be based on what speed you’re running each mile.

More exciting than the marathon however is the annual Renwick post-marathon BBQ which kicks off at 7pm! Here’s a few snaps from the warm-up one we had on Thursday night:

What a guy

The dude

The hammock’s back!

Who let Rosie loose with sharp implements! It’s a wonder any of us survived!

And as a bonus, spot the RP minister who appeared in this week’s Londonderry Sentinel!

By the way – 20 comments on the birthday thread, easily a record!!

The 2006 Airdrie GO team took place from Friday 14th – Saturday 22nd April 2006. Before I get completely sucked back in to reality against my will, here’s a wee report.

My fellow team members were (Fire at) Will ‘Bap Man’ Tait, Debbie ‘Part timer’ Pinkerton, Bob ‘Paint thinners’ Parkes, Jonny ‘Shut up about the Spar in Cullybackey!’ McCollum and Rachel ‘We still haven’t found anything to slag her off about!’ Bond. The boys arrived on Friday evening after travelling for 2 hours 25 minutes in Willy’s Suzuki Swift, which is the premium mode of transport in the RPC Worldwide, but after hitting a pothole on the way to Derry it vibrated like it was about to fall apart at speeds between 55 and 80. Apparently. It was also rather cramped with 4 boys and their luggage, so we were rather glad to see the first sign for Airdrie, a long time after we left Stranraer.

On arrival in Airdrie we met up with Debbie, who hadn’t bothered researching when the team actually was and had turned up the day before. We were also informed that due to a miscommunication with the printers, we wouldn’t have any booklets to give out till Monday.

On Saturday morning we had our first study with Andrew, using the book How to Grow in Christ by Jack Kinnear (P&R). We then helped Rob putting up this year’s mission banners:

Give that man a ladder!

SAQ and Jonny look on

The first banner nearly up

Andrew asked for a volunteer to go up and stand on the ledge – nobody else was up for it!

No bother to Rob!

Everyone’s favourite wolf was also on hand

Airdrie have a new sign up, it’s very nice

In the afternoon we went to Edinburgh, where the boys (apart from Will who did a 150-mile round trip to Kelso for the craic) were dragged about the shops went shopping with Kate, an American Presbyterian who is at Geneva and is over in Airdrie on the CTI (the 4 month version for people with ‘yankee twangs and dollars’ as Pete would say, not the one me and the dudes were on this time last year and which wasn’t held this year due to us not having the two aforementioned key attributes).

We did find some ways to pass the time

We went to a second hand bookshop just up from the Grassmarket, but the only interesting thing we found was this 1912 (ish, can’t even remember) edition of The Scots Worthies which was nice and big and nicely illustrated, but £50 quid and probably not that unique

We then went back to Airdrie where we paid a visit to Mr. Kebab. I thought it time to add to the collection of ‘Steve and famous people’ so I got Jonny to try and take photos of me with Mr K. We tried this again on our next visit on Friday, and we even managed to get Rob in the photo:

We went back and ate it, and then we watched ‘the best movie ever’ according to Kate – ‘The Young Frankenstein’ or something. In case Kate’s reading this, I wouldn’t want to contradict her claim ;)

Rob had to drink out of a jug so he could fit his nose in it, wonder what Pope JG would need ;)

Willy and Cu Alliadh (or however you spell it!)

Note that Willy’s hand is actually in the wolf’s mouth!

On the Lord’s Day we went to the Bible class, prayer meeting and worship service. It’s class being at a prayer meeting which nearly everyone in the congregation attends, pity it’s such a rare occurance. Kate had been working for most of the weekend to make us our lunch, Greek-style lamb and a lot of stuff I can’t remember what it’s called. We had balaclava for pudding, great stuff. I discovered over lunch that Rob is Titus’ (second) cousin! Wow! That automatically puts him into the list of the top 10 coolest people I know!

Here’s Rob wearing a Martin Family Reunion t-shirt – as in Titus Martin!!

On Monday we started the distribution. The photo at the start shows us all raring to go. We were giving out a booklet inviting people to the ‘Your Life Has a Purpose’ Mission that Airdrie are holding from the 8th-12th of May. It was a class production, so much better than the average RP effort that it’s unreal. Of course we may say that we don’t have money, but we have the money to spend on less important things like games equipment for CYs and stuff, but should evangelism not be first and foremost in our priority list and funded accordingly? You can download the brochure here (although it’s 20MB and the colours are wrong). We distributed from 10:30-12:30 and 2-4. In the evening we went go karting. We won’t mention anything about Bob P writing off a go kart.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we went out 3 times to distribute the booklets, going out from 6:45-8 so that members of the congregation could come along too. We had a lot of help from the congregation which was great, people just coming and taking boxes and doing the areas round where they lived. Here’s another few team member photos:

Kate

Debbie in a stupid hat

Since Airdrie is so full of Americans, it’s not surprising that you find some of their publications lying around and one lunchtime I came across a whole article in the RP Witness about Titus and his companions Jason and Matt.

A photo from Cyprus with Tony, Alex, Loukios, Robert and Titus

The front of the magazine

Despite having started distributing a day late, we managed to get finished by the Thursday afternoon, so in the evening we went to the cinema to see The Ringer. Still pretty funny second time round.

Pity Pirates of the Caribbean 2 wasn’t out yet!

On the Friday, Andrew took us on a Covenanter Tour to St. Andrews. It may have been our day off, but we still left at 9am! We did a few circuits of a dual carriageway near Stirling before eventually getting to St. A’s. They had a tan shop there called ‘Sun-tan-drews’ which I really should have taken a photo of. Made me chuckle anyway.
Our tour started by seeing the spot marked with PH where Patrick Hamilton was burnt at the stake to become the first Protestant martyr in Scotland. We then moved on to the GW where George Wishart was martyred.

Samuel Rutherford’s grave

We went to the church in Leuchers where Alexander Henderson ministered. The minister these days is some aul woman

We saw a monument errected to mark the death of James Sharpe, and then saw where 4 Covenanters had been taken and murdered in response to the killing of the Archbishop

Then it was back to Airdrie for the kids’ clubs, a bit of banter, the longest ‘either or’ game ever, a few hours sleep and the long journey home.

This is what lack of sleep does to you

Of course our minds were very much on Airdrie the next day and we were delighted to hear that there were 5 new people out at church. And the Mission doesn’t even start for about 3 weeks! Please remember to pray that the people would keep coming to church and that they’d be converted, and that God would bring many people into the Mission and bring many in the community from death to life.

Thanks to Beth and Jonny for some of the photos above. Here’s two photos I nicked off Kate to close with:

On the 9th of April 2005 I made the first post on Shall we Sing a Song for you?. 1 year, 198 posts and 245 comments later, we’re still here. The year saw Norn Iron beat England, six of our boys go into the College and Stuart Olyott become a paedobaptist. That last one may not be 100% true. The year was not without its tragedies however, Stute were first of all taken over by Frenchies, and now we’ve slipped into the relegation Play-off spot.

I was in no form earlier this week to be trawling through old posts or anything, but I thought I’d at least jmark the occasion. Posts that spring to mind as being among my favourites would be my review of the “For Christ’s Crown and Covenant” DVD (which incidentally received a record 11 comments) and my 2005 Highlights post (probably because the post itself contains so many good memories). Also, it was remarked on at the time, and I feel that my ‘Olyott on Headcoverings’ post is the best headline and picture combination in the history of the world ever.

I haven’t got a telegram from the Queen yet, although I hear one’s an avid reader.

Thanks for reading! Catches win matches!

On top of all the usual advantages of being a student, you get access to some great websites that aren’t accessible to the general public. Two of them are of particular value to anyone interested in Covenanter history: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Early English Books Online. EEBO isn’t available to individuals full stop, and the ODNB would cost you £195 + vat a year. Thankfully however, Queen’s pays it all.

ODNB is “a collection of 55,000 specially written biographies, which describe the lives of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond”, from the 4th century BC to 2002 AD. The offline edition comprises 60 volumes. One of our lecturers told us last year that it’s so good, we could revise for our exams solely off it. She said she wasn’t meant to tell us that though. The articles are written by proper historians, and have been written recently. It’s a million miles ahead of the likes of Wikipedia or Encarta. Anyway, it’s got biographies of the Covenanters on it. On top of that, it gives you a detailed bibliography for each one so you know where to go for further reading.

However, ODNB is nothing compared to EEBO. In its own words:

This incomparable collection now contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 – from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.

So a scan of nearly everything printed in the above countries up till 1700! Many of the books are available in text format as well. That’s loads of Covenanter and Puritan stuff! Sadly I don’t have Gary handy so I don’t know just how valuable a resource this is, but I reckon he’ll probably explode with excitement when he sees it.

So maybe you could see what the original cover of Watson’s Body of Divinity looked like – or read it in the original spelling!

(You’ll need to click on the pictures for the full effect. If your screen is small, you may need to scroll down to get to the close button (at the bottom right) for some of them)

Or else check out what Banner etc left out in their reprints – yes, they do leave stuff out, even if they reprint the original edition:

Maybe you want to see a picture of the author-dude:

Or maybe you would just rather rather read the book for free on the internet rather than buy it!

So yeah, just a bit of fun. But then you get onto the Covenanter stuff. Samuel Rutherford:

An early edition of his Letters:

David Dickson:

George Gillespie:

Donald Cargill:

James Renwick

Most of the above stuff has been re-published I reckon. Again, I need a Gary. However, some of the stuff hasn’t been re-published, and this is where the site stops being just something you look at for fun or to get pictures off, and becomes really useful. I know for a fact that Alexander Shields’ A Hind Let Loose hasn’t, because Gary is always going on that someone should. However, you can download the text of the whole book online (with modernised spelling – mostly at least). There could be loads of Covenanter/Puritan stuff on the site that just isn’t available anywhere else at all.

Shields has more, including:

There is earlier stuff on the site as well. Wycliffe and Tyndale have stuff on. You can get George Buchanan’s History of Scotland as well as Paterick’s Places by Patrick Hamilton – the first Protestant witness in Scotland:

So some amazing stuff! Most of it is only scans rather than the actual text – although they’re constantly working on this. Most authors have a couple of full-text works up anyway. There’s also a lot of duplication. You might see someone with 32 books on, but it turns out that 10 of them are the same book scanned in from different places.

Links: ODNB Queen’s Login – EEBO Queen’s Login