A Day in the Life of a Steward

It's all over, it's all over! First off, I pray you all, forgive the lack of updating. Allow me to describe the last few days in their glorious normalcy and not so glorious insanity.

Sunday we began work at 6:30am in the Big Top, where most of the stewards were singing in the choir. There's something about all these English and Commonwealth Anglicans... they can all sing four part harmonies without even knowing the song! There something diconcerting (in a jealousy-making way) about that! :p. The service went quite well and was the final worship service held in the Big Top. It was run mainly by the chaplaincy team, who were basically the stars of conference in many different ways. They were a fabulous group, absolutely amazing people.

In the afternoon was the final plenary session with the thanks/congratulations and the Archbishop's address. That went quite well and drew together a lot of the discussion on the Covenant process, which was important for many as it clarified somewhat the intentions of the Covenant as well as the report that will be released by the conference.

In the evening, we all went down to the Cathedral for an evening Eucharist. It was quite exciting. Not as opulent as the opening service, but moving in a very different way. It ended with a procession of an absolutely beautiful icon which was written by one of the stewards. The icon and procession commemorated the seven Melanesian brothers (from one of the monastic groups that made up the chaplaincy team) who were murdered a few years ago, and inducted them into Canterbury Cathedral's chapel of the martyrs.

On a slightly less sober note, we all went for supper after that in an old school hall with a twenty-piece jazz band right out of the 60s. Forget flying bishops, Dancing Bishops are a sight to see! I couldn't even imagine some of them moving like that. It was tremendous! We then got back and had our last stewards' meeting, finished at about 11:00pm, and then were back on shift at 1:30am. Needless to say, that was a fantastic shift! The first coach left at 3:00am, so we were moving luggage around all through the night/morning. All the bishops and nearly all the luggage left campus on time. Hurrah! Success!

The Lambeth conference of 2008 is now over. But there's still lots more to come!
Gotta run. Thanks all for your encouraging messages and notes!

God bless,
Nick.