I did not have a very rushed day today, but I knew I had to be in Telford by the evening. So I relaxed around Matt and Rachel’s house for a while and around lunchtime headed into the city center to get a train. I got there fine and made it to Telford. I walked to the shopping center and decided to grab a snack and try to figure out where my hotel was. I finally found where the street was I needed to walk down on one of the mall layout maps, but it took me forever to find the road because it goes underneath the mall. But I did and walked to the hotel.
I had a lot of internet problems but after 3 different passwords and an hour and a half I was online. During that time I got to watch some tennis though, and I didn’t really have anything else to do. It got to be time for me to head over to Mark’s house (the guy who leads the group I would be visiting today). I went and could not find any taxis by the mall where there were tons of spaces for them. So I rushed over to the train station and found one. He did not know where the street was that I was trying to get to and the area it is in is called Newdale. He knew that but asked me if it was new Newdale or the old Newdale. I had no clue, so he went and asked the driver behind him. But we made it there fine and right on time. He was actually a very nice guy too.
So I walked into Mark’s house and met everyone. We soon all sat down around a dinner table (there were 8 of us) and shared dinner together. We had quiche which was jokingly called a Christian dish since it is at every Christian function. We talked for a while about all kinds of stuff while we ate and immediately after, and a lot of it happened to be about stuff I would have asked about concerning their community. It was almost as if they were answering my questions before I could ask them. It also worked kind of in a pattern, where someone would bring up something and then someone would tie in some scripture to back up a view. It was almost like a bunch of mini sermons by all the people completely unplanned.
Eventually, Mark focused everyone and we spent some time listening to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac and meditating on it. Mark guided our thoughts with some things to think about and the story was read again. After a while we had communion and some time of prayer and a final blessing. Then everyone slowly began to talk again about a bunch of different stuff. Texas got talked about a lot (Mark had recently been to Houston), especially southern breakfast. Eventually we got on to the topic of British comedy and within minutes Mark went to get his laptop to look up clips from Black Adder, The Boosh, and other funny clips on YouTube. We spent a very long time sitting around watching these. People trickled out, and eventually we all left. I got a ride back to my hotel and almost immediately went to sleep.
What I learned:
British comedy is slightly an acquired taste.
Holiday Inn in Telford is huge and I found that my room was so big, I did not really know what to do. I have gotten used to the small, compact English style bedrooms and it really threw me off.
Telford is a very new city and is even built on more of an American city planning model with different sections of malls, and no true town center with a major street.
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