London: Last day

In just a few hours Amy and I will fly from Gatwick to Atlanta to LAX. Since May 3 each of us has been living out of a 21 inch roller bag and small backpack: few pants, a few shirts, toiletries, art supplies and a few books. We've learned to live the pilgrimage by traveling for the love of God, letting go, being led, praying, giving thanks for all see and meet, and telling stories. We are ending our sabbatical, but we know we are not ending our "pilgrimage" as we travel back home.

We have spent the last 12 days in London in flat of our friends who have been back in California these last two weeks. It's been a great gift to us to be able to relax and begin our transition home.

London is a great city. We walked for miles and didn't run out of things to see. The shows are so good it's hard to choose. Public transportation is amazing. The museums are free and so are the evensong services.

We worshipped at All Souls Church, where John Stott served as pastor for many decades, caught the 5pm service at Holy Trinity Brompton where Alpha Course author Nicky Gumbel is vicar and took in evensong at St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey. Each was special in their own way. It was moving to sing songs at All Souls that we haven't sung for months. We both looked at each other when we were singing "Indescribable" and saw we both were tearing up. It was as if we fasted from familiar worship music all these months. HTB was very contemporary with lots of students, youth and adults of all ages. Sitting right behind us were two college students studying in London from Point Loma Nazarene University. We enjoyed talked together after ther service about their time in London and our sabbatical. Both services had great biblical messages and were full of people--a great contrast to many of the churches we visited the last four months. St. Paul's and Westminster were both beautiful choral evensong services in these historic churches. Both the deans greeted us at the door after each of the services I thanked them for their consistent ministry of worship (now for mostly tourists) which glorifies God and has continued for 1500 years at one and 1000 years at another.

We saw Jersey Boys and Billy Elliot (cheap last minute tickets in the first row… but they were good seats!) and Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe Theatre. We laughed so hard at Falstaff and the whole cast that sang and performed Shakespeare so well. We sat next to four students from Germany who said they were having a hard time understanding the English—we admitted we were having a hard time as well. We bought five pound "groundling" tickets which put us right in the action next to the stage.

We're grateful for our time away these four months and the gift of sabbatical to rest, enjoy time together, learn new things and see what God has been doing and and continues to do all over this part of the world.  We've experienced so much that processing it all will be a challenge. But as we have done on this journey, we'll take one day at a time and see what God has for us.