The Old and The New

October 08, 2020

We drove fifteen miles to Didcot today for lunch with Casey, an 18-year-old girl who was baptized shortly before COVID hit last spring. She doesn't drive and doesn't have a car, and has to take the bus or train to Oxford when she comes. With the virus running roughshod all over the place and with all of the restrictions in place, she doesn't come to Oxford often. She has been to church on Sundays for the past two weeks.

We took her to lunch in a quaint little eatery that was delicious and inexpensive. We sat with her for an hour and a half and re-established our ties and our acquaintance with her. She is cute and energetic....and 18. She is so young, but she seems wise. She is working long days at Burger King - entirely on her feet the whole shift. But she is grateful to have a job and it pays reasonably well. She is trying to get into a college somewhere in the UK.

We enjoyed our visit with her very much. As always, I was surprised at how easily she visited with us. She laughed and talked and asked questions. We have that experience often here....it seems that so many young missionaries and YSAs in general seem at ease with "old people." Perhaps they all have grandparents they are close to. It is pleasant for us to be in their company and to hear what they are doing and what they are interested in.

After a lovely drive through the rain, and a quick stop at a large grocery store, we came home, and then went for a walk through Oxford. We wandered down streets we haven't been on before, we stepped inside of Blackwell's - a giant of a bookstore, reputed to have miles of underground aisles of books on shelves.
We were on a mission, looking for a specific book, but were out of luck.

But just being in the bookstore was so delightful, we didn't mind at all. This is the original Blackwell store built in the 1800s.

On our walk we encountered an old church. A lovely old decaying building and yard. The gravestones were moldering into the ground and were tilted at odd angles. Very few had discernible writing on them. The church itself looked abandoned. Old leaves cluttered the weed-choked sidewalk up to the door. We circled around it and found a notice of mass, what days and what times. We looked at each other in a bit of shock. It is very much in use!

One of the interesting things about it is that it sits on a very busy street, where a Five Guys restaurant sits, as well as many other much-frequented businesses. You can see in one of the pictures as the buses go by. Life is carrying on with little regard for the bodies sleeping peacefully in the old graveyard, It looks perfect for Halloween.