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Our Sabbath started at the bright and early hour of 3:00am. Why so early? When we were making our plans to visit Ireland we looked around at where we could go to church that Sabbath. There is a Living Church of God congregation there in Dublin, and we considered going there, but we knew there were several United Church of God congregations in neighboring areas, and it would give us the opportunity to visit a new area. We found a flight from Dublin to Birmingham for $50. It turns out we have a congregation in Gloucester, England. Even better, we have a friend (David Harris) who lives about an hour from the Birmingham airport, and was willing to pick us up, and bring us to services with him in Gloucester, and spend the night at his home, as we were flying back to Ireland the next day. This fabulously priced flight was at 7:30am, which means we needed to be at the airport by 5:30am, which means we had to catch the 4:15am bus to get to the airport, which means we had to leave Luke's apartment by 3:50am. It was an early morning.
We were catching the bus at the Royal Marine Hotel; it is gorgeous, and way out of our price range, but it's a pleasant place to wait for the bus. As we were waiting we had a bit of "entertainment." An extraordinarily drunk young man (who happened to be missing a shoe) was escorted out of the hotel by an equally drunk female, and a slightly less drunk male, and two completely sober hotel staff. Lewis, being the kind person that he is, opened the door for the three inebriated folks, he was repaid for his kindness by the extremely drunk young man punching the door he was holding open three times. We heard bits and pieces of the drama. The drunk guy had bumped into someone else, the "someone else" punched the drunk guy in the face; somehow he lost his shoes, and was threatening to kill the guy who punched him in the face. I was thankful for the security guy at the door, and very relieved to get on the bus to the airport.
We had an uneventful (though slightly delayed) flight to England, and were greeted by David Harris. He drove us back to his home in Stourport-on-Severn; unfortunately jetlag was in full force and I slept much of the way from the airport to his home and missed much of the beautiful English countryside. We then walked around town and the canals for bit before heading to church.
The Gloucester congregation was so kind and welcoming; we couldn't have asked for a better reception. After services and fellowship we headed back to David's home. I think we had planned to go tour around the town, but we ended up just sitting together and talking. We headed to bed early because we were going to have another early morning getting to the airport.
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