6th Day of Christmas: Visitors and Camels

I can't say I was feeling very good this morning, having woken up way too early with a bit of an intestinal upset, but I was on deck to serve this morning and so I went anyway. I'm rather glad I did.

We welcomed several visitors this morning, including Mark who had visited us last year from down south. I remember last year Mark and I had talked about my visiting his church (Saint Luke's Santa Ana) when I was to be in Long Beach, CA, for a week of meetings last June, but it didn't happen. They had services Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. I was prepared to attend Wednesday evening (Sundays my meetings start at 7 AM and I'm not free until 7:30 PM), but my travel budget was cut last year and in order to make all the year's primary meetings I had to cut well back: instead of leisurely flying down Wednesday I flew down early Thursday morning, missing several hours of the first meeting (a bad thing, as it turned out).

Another couple really enjoyed their visit, saying that we're quite a friendly church. Well, that's how St. Bartholomew's was when I first visited, almost 25 years ago, and I guess it's never really changed. They say they'll be back in April; I'll look forward to that, though with my luck I'll be flying to D.C. for another week of meetings that Sunday.

(Luck: we are hosting the diocesan Synod this year and I am the main organizer -- and just learned that the wrong dates for Synod had been published and yes, it coincides with April's week of meetings. I also wanted to attend Archbishop Provence's enthronement, but I get home the night before from January's week of meetings in New York; it could be a big expense and definitely difficult timing to get to the enthronement in time.)

Fr. Daniel and Matt had a surprise for us during Announcements: next week the Outreach Group will begin a three-week study of John Stott's "Why I Am A Christian."

And I was a little surprised to see the Wise Men missing from the windowsill where they were in the last posting. I found them after the service, across the Nave next to the Creche.