Title? What Title?

So I came up here with this fatastic intention of 'blogging away' my wonderful day, when I all of a sudden realized... I don't actually remember most of my day. Ooh, Candice! (Candice Young-Rojanschi that is [yes I did check Facebook to make sure I spelled it right, and no I did not spell it right]). You'll love this one. You know, when you get back to using computers and of course decide to read through every blog entry I've ever written on here. As you can likely tell, I'm a bit overtired tonight. Anyways, guess who was in the breakfast hall this morning! Seriously, guess. Here are some hints. 1) Famous Bible historian 2) Bishop of Durham, England 3) First name is the coolest name in the world, i.e. Nicholas, though he often goes by the initials N.T. That's right, if you said N.T. Wright, you've probably read too many books about the New Testament! - Seriously, really, really tired tonight.

The reason for that is that first of all, the day started with my group on break, until all of a sudden we were working at the car park, which is the British equivalent of a parking lot, which is the Steward's equivalent of one of the two ethereal realms. Needless to say, with approximately 800 bishops left to arrive, plus their spouses, we were a tad busy. Once I finished that shift I moved onto reception at one of the buildings, which on the fantastic side, gave me a walkie-talkie all afternoon, but on the not so fantastic side, lasted all afternoon. Anyways, that was a pretty productive afternoon. We got a number of the bishops into their rooms and everything, so they're safe and sound, and most have their luggage. Tonight there was the opening plenary. It will be one of few plenaries, but there wasn't much to be said. It was mostly a welcome and some short instructions. Tomorrow morning the Bible studies start, as does the bishops' three day retreat inside Canterbury Cathedral. They'll essentially be cloistered in there for the whole day with time to pray and to speak in small groups or wander without fear of intrusion from visitors. It's incredible, there's a huge wall around the whole cahedral grounds. It's quite impressive, and quite cool! I was struck today though by how archaic some of the language and rituals are. Archaic in a good sense. In other news, I did forget to update yesterday, but I should note that I finally met the Archbishop of Canterbury (aka. The Archbishop)! He was leaving the hall I was working in and on his way out he came over to say hi. I was quite pleased, he was very nice, but he moved on pretty quickly.

In other news, I was speaking to one of the other stewards tonight. His name's Isaac, and he's from Tanzania (by the way, today I also saw Bishop Mwachiko from Montreal's partner diocese of Masasi in Tanzania). I was speaking to Isaac about commodity prices where he comes from (Dar es Salaam) and found out some incredible things. So apparently one 10 kg bag of rice in Tanzania costs $800 USD - it can be used to feed 6 people for 6 months. An average annual salary is about just over $2000 USD. Now the annual salary figure isn't all that shocking, but $800 USD for a bag of rice, that amazed me. I was also talking to Daniel, from Myanmar, who said that in his entire diocese, there are two computers: one at the library, and one at the diocesan office. Having quite limited experience in the developing world (read: vitually no experience) this things still astound me. On the positive side though, I've been invited to Tanzania twice today!

That's all for tonight folks,
Have a blessed day, evening and etc.
Pray for us! The bishops, the stewards, the staff, volunteers, I think we'll all need it quite a bit pretty soon. Already exhaustion is starting to set in for many of the staff and stewards.
God bless you all.

:). Nick.