Shall we Sing a Song for you?

Good points:
- The traveling was actually quite fun.
- Seeing people.
- Stuart. Who declared himself to be an honorary RP.
- A free book. Even though they forgot to actually bring them. But they said they’d post them out.
- The evening thing might have been good, but I’d a boat to catch.

Bad points:
(I know it looks bad that the bad points take up a lot more space than the good points, but there are actually more good points and it was a really good day!)
- Getting up at 04:30
- Shocked and horrified to see Roj selling out.
- Their decision to use hymns. Like, even if they do genuinely believe that Banner favourites such as the Westminster Divines, John Owen, Thomas Watson, Thomas Manton etc were wrong and that ‘Psalms, hymns and songs’ (as the BNI booklet was called) mean man-made compositions, surely in the interests of Christian unity we could just have sung psalms? Especially seeing that at least 22 out of the 60 or so there were RPs (making us easily the best-represented denomination). Stick to the psalms, and everybody can sing them. Use hymns, and a lot of people can’t in good conscience join in. (For the record, out of the 12 songs in the booklet, one and a half were psalms).
But good playing from Tim. If I ever decide to revert to “a silly delight in that worship of the Old Testament which was figurative, and terminated with the Gospel” (Calvin), I’ll give him a shout :-P
- The end of the drive back, approaching 20 hours of being awake.

Pictures

We arrived in NI after taking the secret passage from the Stranraer church to the Larne church, which brings you out in the middle of the shrubs.

Carla

More would’ve come if they’d advertised the fact that Strob was speaking

Not Happy

Boat!

Members: Quite a lot. See photos (courtesy Bob P)

Activities: Leaflet Dist, Fellowship time with congregation, a few people went down to some central-type place to talk to people, singing in an old people’s home

Croissants for breakfast

It seemed like a good idea at the time…

Bob snapped these in some castle

Carla modelling the t-shirt! There were only 10 of them, and I think the Irish contingent took them back home again. Gutted! It’s the only reason I went!!

Note the newly painted church bit, looks good. New sign too.

A history plaque that wasn’t there before. GM (not GMO!) says its known locally as “the Presbyterian Church”.

Heather looking pure distressed at the shenanigans

CTI 1 Lorna 0

Last weekend was the Scottish RP Church weekend, held at Lendrick Muir. Here are some photos, with all the good ones courtesy of Karen Reyburn:

Things started off with a few icebreakers

Stace & Alan

Some managed to put a brave face on the mammoth Beetle Drive!

I was never happier to see Matt!

We didn’t get tea till about 10pm, by which time Grant was pretty hungry…

Saturday morning

Matt getting schooled

More games on the Saturday after the talk

Willy T, Brenda & Matt – note Stephen Alexander in Beckham top!

“Who’s Peter Jemphrey?”

I wasn’t actually poking my eye out…

Catherine

Yep, the My Chemical Romance Fan Club are still going strong…

Aww

Sam and May

Willy’s English (!) cousin Kat and Carla

Some football was briefly played

The most important thing however was finding somewhere to watch the NI match. Me and Matt eventually did, a nice little place called ‘Dollar’.

They were doing sound checks for a thing later on, so we watched NI to a variety of Disco Music & Scottish Football Songs – the result and performance put a dampner on things though :-(
Cannae mind what the screaming’s about…

Josh

Calvin

Beats Bushmills…

Debbie and Louise

No swings taken yet

Fire at Will

Bob Dylan himself – David Duly got lost on the way to Busmills…

Fire at David

Chillaxing

This is Mission Brochure material right here!

The Celidh

…With a real live accordianist!

Peter and Andy at the old ping pong

“Megan and Stacey – a great double act”

Everyone

CTI Blog
There is now a blog for the CTI, which will be updated each week by one of the students. Check it out: Semester in Scotland.

ALSO HAPPENING LAST WEEK…

Airdrie United 5 – 1 Arbroath

Building

Ken Ham
at Dowanvale Free Church, Glasgow

I realise that the above may be slightly stalker-ish…

Ken later confirmed to SWS that he’ll be back at the Waterfront for a couple of days next year with David Menton

I couldn’t cope with being at a church event and not knowing anyone (except those I brought) so I texted David Lockington who soon joined us. Ken fairly slagged off the Scotland. He also described Northern Ireland “the Christian part of the UK” :-)

People keeping me sane update:

Mr. David Lockington.
Mr. Christopher Somerville (again) (and he would have got on a few more times if he had succeeded in playing party tunes on his pitch pipe as I wanted).
Mr. Matthew Jess.
Mr. William Tait.
Mr. David Duly (Last night we had a cultural evening and listened to The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem).

So I’m spending a few months chillaxing over at the mother Church. As I’ll be spending vast amounts of time with my fellow CTI students (including weekends) between now and when they leave on the 17th of December, I thought I should supply some profiles of them. As always, just in case I have some new readers, it’s only a bit of a laugh*

*Now I’ve said this, I can say whatever I want of course :-)

Profiles:

Name: Jasmine

Breed: OPC
Knows Titus: No
College: Some Community College
Homeschooled: Yes.
Does it show? Yes.
Claims Irish descent: Yes.
Most likely to say: “That just happened!!!”

Name: Brenton

Breed: PCUSA
Knows Titus: No
College: Geneva
Homeschooled: No.
Claims Irish descent: Yes (Grandmother).
Most likely to say: “Jeez”. :-S

Name: Brenda

Breed: Christian
Knows Titus: Yes.
College: Geneva
Homeschooled: Yes.
Does it show? She’s not as weird as Kaitlin… :-P
Claims Irish descent: No
Most likely to say: Not as much as the other 3. She does talk about Tony quite a lot (oh), although I think that’s mainly out of sympathy for me as he’s like the only Geneva student I know. Incidentally there’s a video of Tony on youtube talking in American accent. This should not be.

Name: Heather

Breed: PCA. (RP during term time).
Knows Titus: No
College: Geneva
Homeschooled: No.
Claims Irish descent: No
Most likely to say: “Gosh”.

New words I’ve learnt: Scillup (Frying Pan).
Americanisms I’ve noticed myself picking up: I have to say things like 7:30 rather than half 7 so they understand me. I’ve also said the s word a few times. As in ‘soccer’.

PS: Brenda is the only one who likes Mr. Kebab!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

Photos:

Heather and Jasmine

The Scots certainly aren’t helping the stereotypes by walking around in kilts, playing bagpipes, and (probably) eating haggis

Me an Brenda

Coffee (pronounce in a Rich Ganz accent)

Brenda, Carla, Beth

Heather and Brenda

Troon Beach

Bean BBQing

He got a bit carried away…

‘Artsy’

People who’ve kept me sane so far:
(from the Yanks, I’ve only met about 2 Scots!)
(I may keep adding to this list as time goes on)

Mr. Christopher Somerville.
Mr. Neil “Bean” McQuillan.
Rev. George Johnston.
Mr. Stephen “Macus”.

Finding my way around:

I’d be lost without John Joe:

[audio:http://www.shallwesingasongforyou.co.uk/audio/JohnJoe.mp3]

(ht Macus)

MOTD

The fact that you can now watch it on the BBC site came in handy tonight, with no TV in the church hall. However, with the nearest life-form being a rugby-loving American, I’ve no-one to discuss it with so I’ll have to inflict it on my readers:
- Hansen: What’s the craic with the beard?
- Berbatov: Far too good for Spurs. And United struggling to score even a goal per game. Nice clearance from him off the line though by Chris Baird. Who supplied the throw in for Kamara’s overhead kick, practically a carbon copy of my one for Renwick last season.
- Why aren’t the BBC currently running competitions?!