God in Motion – Scotland, Highlands

Life with Chloe is a life lived in prayer. She is so wonderful at taking everything and I mean everything to the Lord in prayer. It brings a whole new meaning to pray without ceasing. I learn a lot from my little girl! Yesterday as we got on the bus to the Wallace Monument, our bus driver was having a bad day and decided to try and share some of it with us. His ascent was thick and I was having a hard time understanding that when he said “one and a half”, it meant the price of the bus fare for one adult and child. He was pretty rude. I remained friendly with him, but Chloe it took it so much further that being friendly. She took it to the right place, right up to the throne of grace. When we got to our seats Chloe let me know she was praying for that man. She prayed until we got off the bus twenty minutes later. The bus driver’s attitude got more and more friendly as we drove. At one point we almost got off the bus at the wrong stop, but our bus driver let us know if we would stay with him a little longer he would gladly get us closer to the Wallace Monument. We stayed on the bus and by the time we got off we were all the best of friends. His complete countenance and heart change were based solely on prayer.

Breakfast is served!!!

Time for Church

After walking the several miles back from the monument, Chloe was in bed by 6p. We both did not wake up until 8:45a! It was such a needed and restful sleep. The breakfast of tea, toast, and eggs were delicious too. Since it was Sunday we made the decision to go to church in Stirling. We asked the Bed & Breakfast owner where we should go and the length of the service. She broke our hearts when she told us that the service would be around forty-five minutes or less because no one wants to go to church in Scotland, so they make the service as short as possible. We wound up going to a protestant church, St Columba’s Church of Scotland. The people were so friendly and we felt at home as they welcomed us. We let them know we would need to leave a bit early to catch the train and we got special permission from the church beadle (just like in Oliver Twist) to leave early. This church beadle was a great guy and helped us quietly leave before the service ended. One of the very cool things about this church was some of the men were big strong hairy guys wearing dress coats and Scottish kilts. The men were massive and there was nothing feminine about them or their skirts. The sad thing was the church could seat maybe 500-700 people, but Chloe thought there were less than 50 in attendance and everyone was over 60. The church in Scotland is literally dying (one death announcement during service) as the young ones are no longer coming and the older ones are getting ready for their journey home. The minister had a great ascent and a chanting tone we were not use to. It was fun to listen the Youth Choir of Scotland, who were making a special appearance while on tour. Their voices were incredible, even though their hearts were not present in the music or hearing the message. It was this same group of kids that filled up the hostels we were trying to get a room in the night before. 🙂

Ivy Walls

Train-ing

We made our train with two minutes to spare and left to go see if we could find the Loch Ness monster (Nessy is what her friends call her). We have not been reserving train seats as I am not sure you can with our passes, but we were blessed to have seats all the way into the Highlands of Scotland. Scotland is such a beautiful place! I could definitely see living here part of the year as there are mountainous rivers everywhere and plenty of rain to bring them up.

We got to Inverness and could not find Nessy anywhere. We dropped our packs off at the B&B and then went to rent bikes. The bike company said we were too late (an hour before they closed) and that we could come back tomorrow. We knew this might happen, but Chloe was still very happy to go to church putting the Lord first on His day. We left praying for what the Lord had in store for us instead. Chloe suddenly got struck with a strange urge to eat Mac & Cheese, asking if we could go get some. I thought it was an interesting request since she does not really live off the stuff at home. We started walking around looking at restaurant menus until we found the one with Mac & Cheese on it (I was amazed)! We went in and started a conversation with the waiter. When he brought us our food I asked him how we could pray for him as we were getting ready to pray over our meal. He became speechless and had to pick his jaw up off the floor. I asked him if there was anything in his life he needed God’s direction in or some other way the Lord could help him. He was still dumbfounded and eventually left. What we did not know is he went around the corner so he could watch and listen to us pray over him and our meal. After we prayed he came back and apologized for his behavior. He said that no one in his life had ever prayed for him. He went on to tell us a bit about his family and how he wished his parents would have prayed for and with him. He let Chloe know how lucky (i.e. blessed) she was to have a dad who would pray with her. It was definitely a God moment. After our meal we wanted to have more conversation with him and Chloe had a Jesus track for him, but he was no longer on duty. If we would have gone biking we would have missed him! Chloe had even prayed for the opportunity to give him the Jesus track, but God answered with a no, which is still answering. It gave us great conversation on our walk home. I told Chloe that God was moving in this young man’s life and gave him exactly what he needed in His timing.

Nessy! Where are you???

The long way home

Once we got to the B&B we had one last answer to prayer to finish our day. Our toilet does not flush. Chloe worked on it a while before we had left and then I tried for a while when we got back. I knew that we could just make do for a night, but it is nice to have a flushing toilet. After I gave up, Chloe came to me and reminded me that we had not prayed for God’s help with our toilet. I agreed so we prayed over the toilet, which of course flushed wonderfully on the next try!

Chloe Take:
Missing you a lot. When we woke up this morning, God kept breakfast waiting on us even though we slept past breakfast time. We got to go to church this morning! Please pray for Great Britain, because they do not seem to want to go to church or love Jesus. The Scotland Youth Choir, especially need prayer, as they did not seem to want to sing or be in church at all. God is so marvelous that He has answered prayer over and over and over again today. I am very tired. Thank you for the compliments and prayers. Good night!