We had gorgeous weather of 22deg on Sunday and so I suggested to K to drive out to Kent for church. See Hillsong is such a big international church with many "rooms" as we call it. Over here, the main church meets in central London at the Dominion Theatre, and there is one in Tonbridge (Kent), and one in Leatherhead (Surrey). The latest "room" is in Bermondsey, not too far from where we live where we occupy an old warehouse and the whole place is done up in a very hippie style. Before the Bermondsey church started, we knew that we would take the same amount of time to drive to Kent and central London. Just because to get to central London you get stuck in the traffic jam (and there are many road closures on the weekends, trust me) and then when you finally come out from the jam, you need to then start looking for a parking lot which is very stressful. Finding a lot is akin to striking the lottery. Whereas Kent, though far out, it is an easy drive on the motorway and we took 45min to arrive on Sunday. Free parking too woohoo!
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| An old pub |
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| I call this.. the white bridge |
We both really like this Kent "room". It is more family oriented and smaller in size. People seemed to know one another and the atmosphere is very relaxed. There was no rush to evacuate after service to let the next service in. Funnily, when we walked in, I had a flashback deja vu feeling. The blue carpet, the individual plastic chairs, everything just reminded me of how church was for me when I was growing up. A blast from the past in a flash of a moment! Jules was leading praise and worship and we just felt at home right away. It helped that the guest speaker that day Jeff Lentz was really good too. He reminded us that we can pretty much segregate our lives into 4 main areas: health, financial, relationships and spiritual. He posed a question: Is God in the middle of these 4 areas of your life? And I just thought wow. I think I have been taking relationships, health and spirituality for granted, focussing way too much on my work (i.e. financial aspect of my life). It felt like God just nudged me. Work may sound cool or great from my previous post but like any job, there are ups and downs and at the moment it's more downs unfortunately. In fact sometimes I find that I am losing the drive. Everyday work is on my mind and there is this battle internally where on one hand, I am determined to fight for my career progression and then on the other hand I am asking myself "Is it worth it, Bel? Really?" It is a constant struggle from within seriously. I love it when sermons like that nudge you and make you think from a God point of view.
After church we walked up to the high street 5 minutes away for lunch. We were undecided as it was our first time in this town and so we settled for this restaurant within a hotel which looked relatively posh to us, but when we saw the menu, the prices were actually okay. I think that's because we are outside London. Funnily the customers were all old couples and it felt a little strange. K ordered a huge Sunday roast (beef) as you can see.
We took a walk along the river in the sun and sat on the grass for a while. There was a boat race and so people were cheering and it was pretty nice to sit there, both of us in silence just watching people.
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| Plucked this from our garden - giant yellow rose! |
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