Monday, May 16th
Our first full day in England got off to a somewhat late start. It was nice to be able to sleep in a bit after such a busy half day on Sunday. We were headed to a coffee shop for our morning devotional, so since Shelby and I were staying the furthest away, we walked to collect the rest of our group. The coffee shop we went to is called Creative Coffee. They had a full coffee shop, plus a crafting area and all kinds of seminars and classes offered throughout the week.
After Connor led our daily devotional, we walked to Canvas for the first time. We met with most of the staff and split into groups to do a prayer walk around Birmingham. Rachel and I went with Abby, who is married to the team leader of Canvas, and we just walked around the Selly Oak park while she gave us a quick history lesson and prayed for the week ahead.
Every other Monday, Canvas puts on a small church service. The staff said it's usually about 5 people, but this week it was bigger because they were doing two baptisms and the women being baptized invited people from their church and other friends. Derrik did a few worship songs before the women getting baptized each took a few minutes to tell us their story and why they've chosen to get baptized. After they each spoke, Stephen did a quick teaching on baptism. It was cool to hear a bit of Flatirons in his teaching. We all went outside to the pool they had set up for the baptism and ate cake afterward. We mingled with the people who had come to see the two of them get baptized and got to meet a lot of awesome people.
[A cloudy morning in Selly Oak]
Our first full day in England got off to a somewhat late start. It was nice to be able to sleep in a bit after such a busy half day on Sunday. We were headed to a coffee shop for our morning devotional, so since Shelby and I were staying the furthest away, we walked to collect the rest of our group. The coffee shop we went to is called Creative Coffee. They had a full coffee shop, plus a crafting area and all kinds of seminars and classes offered throughout the week.
[Christina, Rachel, JW, me, Connor, Shelby]
After Connor led our daily devotional, we walked to Canvas for the first time. We met with most of the staff and split into groups to do a prayer walk around Birmingham. Rachel and I went with Abby, who is married to the team leader of Canvas, and we just walked around the Selly Oak park while she gave us a quick history lesson and prayed for the week ahead.
[Canvas chalkboard art by Christine]
When we got back, the whole team met with Abby and she gave us the scoop on Canvas and what our week would look like. After that, we went to The Bristol Pear for lunch with Tom and Derrik. Tom is the only Brit on staff with Canvas and he gave us a culture talk, starting with a game where he would say a British word of phrase and we had to guess the English equivalent. That was a lot of fun and really interesting to hear about some of the changes, no matter how big or how subtle.
[University of Birmingham]
After lunch, we headed back to Canvas to meet with Vanessa, another staff member, for our tour of the University of Birmingham. We were lucky enough to have a student from Canvas join us for the tour and he killed it. He gave us a lot of information and it felt like a real, organized tour put on by the university with all of his fun facts!
[Beethoven, Virgil, Michelangelo, Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, Watt, Faraday, Darwin]
The University of Birmingham has the tallest free standing clock tower in the world, called Old Joe. The students consider it bad luck to walk under it while it's chiming, so most people don't walk under it at all.
[Old Joe]
We had to hustle back to Canvas to meet with Stephen, who is also from Flatirons, and Christine, who hosted Shelby and me for the week. We did a Q&A session with them, then helped get the house set up for Canvas Church later that night.
[Representing the other Globalscope locations in Germany, Thailand, Mexico, Spain, Chile, and Scotland]
Every other Monday, Canvas puts on a small church service. The staff said it's usually about 5 people, but this week it was bigger because they were doing two baptisms and the women being baptized invited people from their church and other friends. Derrik did a few worship songs before the women getting baptized each took a few minutes to tell us their story and why they've chosen to get baptized. After they each spoke, Stephen did a quick teaching on baptism. It was cool to hear a bit of Flatirons in his teaching. We all went outside to the pool they had set up for the baptism and ate cake afterward. We mingled with the people who had come to see the two of them get baptized and got to meet a lot of awesome people.
[Me & Connor]
On Monday nights, they usually go to Country Girl, a local pub, to play trivia, so we all made our way back up the hill for dinner and trivia. A lot of people who were there for the baptism went as well, so there was quite a large turn out. (Although I'm not sure how many people from Canvas usually go.) We had two different teams and we had a lot of fun sharing appetizers and trying to figure out the answers. I met quite a few more people who we would end up hanging out with for the rest of the week.
After a while, we made our way back to the houses and went to bed. It had been another long and busy day, but it was a lot of fun.
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