Church, lunch, and the Thames River Festival

Today Laura and I went to All Souls Church; it was a good service. The normal pastor was gone to another city so we had another preacher. He was pretty good, but both Laura and I got lost in the middle because he just kept repeating himself. But it was still good and it was really good to be in church again since I didn't get to go last week.

After church, there was free lunch for returning students. We (Laura, Andrew-who we found after the service, and I) had lunch at a guy, Josh's house. He was another guy who works with the college students. There were a bunch of other college students there. There were so many college students that they broke us up into groups and sent us off to different houses. We met several people from Northern Ireland and there was one guy who had just gotten there from Germany and was only going to be there for a little while. Afterwards, people were going back to meet up and play frisbee in Regent's Park. The three of us bailed because we were rather dressed up and had homework to do. But, it was a lot of fun and I think we will be going to the evening service, at 18:30 on Sundays, because apparently a lot of the college students go to that one.

I got to talk to my good friend and sister today, on her birthday. It was really fun to get to talk to her! I've really missed her and the Aussies from camp since camp ended. But it was good to talk and laugh for a while with her. Hopefully, we'll get to talk more in the coming months.

After that, a bunch of us went back to the Thames River Festival to see the Night Carnival and the fireworks. We started out with most of the people in the program, but most of the group walked really fast and got way ahead of the normal six of us (Andrew, David, Chris, Laura, Heather, and I) and so we just left them to their own devices and took the tube down to the river.

We wandered around for a bit and then watched the Night Carnival. It was really neat. It was basically a parade at night with lots of different little groups performing.
After that we stood at the edge of the river to watch the fireworks. Apparently, all six of us went to watch the fireworks believing that they wouldn't be very good. But they were spectacular! We had so much fun watching them! It was really neat to hear the big 'BOOM' of the fireworks reverberating off of the buildings on the other side of the river. There were two barges in the middle of the river that were shooting off fireworks at the same time. It was beautiful!

Tomorrow, I am going, it looks like with several other people to a free concert given by the faculty at the Royal College of Music. For our music class we have to go see 20 concerts over the course of the semester, as I might have said before. So, we are going ahead and getting a start on that. I might try to head over to the National Gallery for a little while, too.

Prayer Requests: Tracy lost her voice and now Mary seems to be getting sick. I am having a hard time finding a good place and time to have my quiet time. The six or seven of us are having a lot of fun exploring the city and getting lost together. :-) The weather is still beautiful; getting a little cooler, but still gorgeous. I don't think I'm as tired tonight as most nights. I think that's about all for tonight! Thank you so much!!!