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On what would be the first of many trips to England, we could tell
that, once again, each mission trip had to start as an adventure.
On the day of our scheduled departure we sat at the American Airlines
gate in Orlando for 9 hours while they told us every half hour that
we would board momentarily—then they canceled the flight!
After a good
deal of negotiating with the airline staff they made arrangements
to send us off the following morning, routing us through Chicago
rather than New York as scheduled. A slight detour of half the continental
US. Well, at least we were in the air and headed for our destination—Heathrow
airport in London.
Because of the
delay of a day we missed the person who was supposed to meet us
in London. Our main contact for the time in England and in Paris
was to be our Director from Africa, Arnold de Paix. He however was
delayed because of visa problems with the UK Embassy back in Cameroon.
We used the
time to see London and take some photos (click
links on the left to see those) and to try and
get an idea of the "spiritual atmosphere" of the city.
Everywhere we went we were amazed by the number of Muslims in the
city.
Along the way
we stopped at what is known as the Speakers Corner at Hyde Park.
This proved to be one of the highlights of the trip. After watching
the speakers for a while, both Christian and Muslim, I spoke to
one fellow who seemed to be preaching the Word. It turned out that
he was originally from Fort Myers, Florida—practically a neighbor
since we had lived in Naples, just 30 miles away. He asked me if
I would like to speak. Would a duck like to swim?
I had just climbed
up on the stepladder and was about to share my testimony when a
large group of Muslims, led by by an Islamic cleric swept through
the crowd and came right up to me. The man, carrying his own stepladder,
said to me that he could show me that Jesus was not God. I said to him
that the Lord spoke through the prophet Isaiah and said "come
let us reason together," so pull up a ladder and let's see
what you've got!
And off it went... {more}
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