Chicago comes first

Today was one of those crazy days when just about everything happened! It was a beautiful sunny day, and that is always something to cheer the soul and energise our personalities into action. I did my laundry first thing, and then hung the clothes out to dry on my "Rotary Airer", a pole with three struts (that hold the washing lines) that I keep in my garden shed. It made me a little late for my voluntary work at the church office, but I phoned them up and wonderful Tony said "No trouble, make the most of the good weather"! Once there it was all go with phone calls to take and cups of tea to make, bills to pay and banking to be done...

One of the calls was a dear church member needing prayer. Another was from a Dutchman called Gerard who works in India with the street children. He founded a mission called Good Shepherd Homes ... here's a link you can click on to check out their work - http://gsh.org.in . And he was in England! And coming to our church office at 3 o'clock! Wow! I visited his Children's Homes in India last year, here's a photo of him looking exceptionally cool in some classy shades!

Well, it was good to catch up with him. But then it was quite a rush to get to the bank before closing to order my US Dollars for my trip...

Which brings me back to one of the reasons for this blog.... it's to solicit your prayers! I may have been to India and many countries in the Far East but  I have never been to America before, and I have heard that Chicago has a crime rate worse than New York. So I would appreciate your prayers. Isn't Chicago the city where the ground crew open your checked in luggage and rifle through your belongings helping themselves to anything valuable? It may be a rumour, but I'm sure I saw video footage of staff actually stealing things out of people's cases on  one of those expose TV programmes. And we all know Chicago is home to the Mafia!

But it is also home to Barack Obama's home church, Trinity United Church of Christ....

This church is very important in Barack Obama's life. It's where he came to Christ, got baptised and got married. God challenged me "You may prefer the warmer climes and exotic locations of Hawaii and Indonesia but you cannot be serious about Barack Obama's faith without visiting Chicago and his home church of Trinity United Church of Christ. You may feel apprehensive about going there, but go there you must!" So I changed my itinerary to include it, and it's my first stop! Please pray for me!