Sunday 28th: 'The best-layed plans of mice and men.'

Or... more biblically:
     "In his heart a man plans his course,                             
      but the Lord determines his steps."
                                                     Proverbs 16 v.9

                                                                                           

Anointing and Praying for staff in Morning Prayer; Coventry.

Today we had a Sabbath rest and started with worship in the chapel of Coventry's vast Walsgrave hospital at 9am. In our wisdom we had planned to anoint and minister to staff during the evening worships and lead a brief morning prayer for walkers before we set out each day... but each time we have stopped; the Lord has brought NHS workers to us.. so we are following his lead now! As well as staff there was a young, distressed Romanian lady whose husband had been crushed by a falling concrete block on a building site and had lost limbs. She turned up in the chapel just as we were doing the unplanned prayer-ministry. Please pray for Anne-Marie and her husband. We set-off moved to tears of compassion and wonder at who God is bringing to us. This had made us behind-schedule. The 5 1/2 mile walk across farmland to the beautiful village of Brinklow brought us to the beautiful medieval church of St John the Baptist, Brinklow, where they were expecting us to join their 10.30am Communion Service. It was now 11.35am and as we came in the last 2 people were leaving the Communion rail and we were invited up to receive. The vicar Jonathan commented to Dave afterwards that mysteriously his carefully-timed sermon had taken him longer to deliver than when he rehearsed it yesterday..... strange that??  After the service, drinking coffee, eating cake and chatting we discovered that 3 of the 16 congregation worked for the NHS; a receptionist, a pharmacist and a Pedietrist. Out came the anointing oil... and we did prayer ministry with this little group in the chancel whilst others of us were praying with John, a Lay-reader with joint pain and Joyce in a wheelchair who has given up hope of ever walking again as circulation in her feet has failed and both feet gone black and were bandaged.... this is such a privilege. Please pray with us for Joyce and John to receive healing and hope.  We had a special 30-minute picnic sat in glorious sunshine round a bench at Brinklow Castle, (sorry we were enjoying the banter far too much to take pictures of that!!)
Most of the afternoon's walk was along the canal . This is proving to be a much better place for conversations than the busy cities, because people's pace of living has slowed and they are open to engage. The 'punters' come to us.... as soon as we reached the towpath, a lady hopped off a barge to tie-up and turned out to be a Radiologist at St Mary's, Paddington and Charing Cross hospitals. I have learnt to carry the Prayer books and anointing-oil in a small satchel over my shoulder!!  After a pleasant walk we reached the Barley Mow pub where our loyal support vehicle was awaiting us. The driver had decided that pub ministry was more up his street and was having an amazing conversation with the owner who was so supportive of what we are doing and so grateful for the NHS. Much refreshed by our beverages we walked the last 3 miles into Rugby, over the railway line (below) where we were re-united with Isobel for the final silent mile to the hospital walking behind the banner.

Crossing the railway at Rugby

Time of prayer during the service at Rugby Hospital chapel

They had opened the double doors (never used) at the back of chapel to let us in and as we gathered to worship with four others, the wind blew in; the Wind of the Spirit into the NHS, I prayed and we smiled. It was a very different service. Beatrice was the only local Church member to attend, along with one of our hosts - Barbara (also a volunteer chaplaincy visitor at the hospital). Unsurprisingly Beatrice turned out to be a willing pianist, as Paul Holmes (the chaplain) hadn't found one! Paul read the scripture and asked Judith, a matron in the hospital to tell us about St Cross hospital. She did this in a very gifted way which helped us understand and see the benefits of the new 'hub and spoke' structure of the NHS. She acknowledged the pain and bereavement for the smaller hospitals losing specialist services, but spoke of the benefits of being a smaller local hospital focusing on recovery, dialysis and orthopedic surgery for the area. She felt there was now a real unity and sense of family among staff; caring for each-other to enable care of patients. Gave us lots to reflect upon through the lens of Stafford's experience. If only Stafford could lose its blame and shame... there is new hope and purpose!   The ministry time was not really right after this sort of talk.....

"In his heart a man plans his course,                             
      but the Lord determines his steps."

Too tired to tell you about how God provided for accommodation - an amazing story for another time, but I will leave you with a few pictures and just explain that (having showered at Barbara's) we are being fed in Rugby Methodist Church Centre (RMCC) where 4 of us are sleeping on the beds and bedding provided by the night shelter. Outside are three homeless guys who live in old cars or the bike shed on the Carpark. We have had free-run of the whole building and Matt has had 3 piano's to play... and has played each one (which has helped my nerves fighting with technology in the Church Office!!
I will close with the RMCC daily prayer:
     "Lord Jesus, we thank you for all we have at RMCC and pray that you will guide us through
     your Holy Spirit so that we can see what you want us to do to increase our love for 
     one another  and be able to spread your gospel to those who use our building, 
     live in our town and share our lives."

The wonderful spread provided at Rugby Methodist Church