Eil Ean A'choe

Yesterday, I visited, what the travel magazines have called the “Most Picturesque” village on Skye for the last four years running. If I didn’t leave my camera at home!! I thought I had put it in my back pack, but I had not. I will take Linda there when she comes…22 days, yippee! The pictures of Plockton will be even more beautiful b/c my wife will be in them. Like so many other villages on Skye, Plockton is nestled in and around an ocean inlet with skads of shops and restaurants lining the main street which borders the water. It is a quaint, lazy little place. It is just across the bridge that joins the mainland to the Isle of Skye. I’ll show pictures in a later blog.

Big news, today!!! I am among the living…I have a phone in the manse. I will give out the number in the next blog...I will only have it for two more weeks and didn't memorize it. Talk about taking things for granted. Have you ever been without a phone for three weeks? I have had to go to church member’s homes to ask to use the phone and I have gone to the little red phone booths…you know the ones you have probably seen in British movies. I frequented one more than any other b/c it was just down the road from the manse about a quarter mile away. I started getting a little self-conscious about doing that b/c one day an elderly lady, whose house is just across the road from the booth, was looking out her window when I exited the booth. I could just read her mind: “Well, I never…another man setting up a rendezvous with a strange woman.” I don’t know if she ever saw me again, but if she did, I would not even want to imagine what she was thinking. J or should it be L?

I don’t have access to my blog right now, so I am sure whether or not I told you I am doing a short-story-run-through of Peter’s first letter to the dispersed believers. If I haven’t…I am. If I did, sorry. Tomorrow night we will be looking at 1 Peter 2. Pray that God will use it to encourage this generation “to long for the pure milk of the Word.” Someone recently told me that at one point in the history of Scotland, the people of Skye were know as the people of the Book. I pray that there will be a strong resurgence of that being true.

Yesterday, was a day that was more representative of the name of Skye than any other since I have been here. The name “Skye” is a derivative of a Gaelic term “Eil Ean A’choe” (Ale In A’kheów) that means “Isle of Mist.” That was yesterday. It was so misty and windy. The clouds were thick and heavy and just laid over the mountains like a thick cover. I have never seen anything like it in my life. I thought of Moses on Mt. Sinai as the glory of the Lord clouded the mountain. I did not take a picture, b/c it would not have captured the essence of what I saw. It was one of those “you would have just had to have seen it yourself” moments. And then around 9pm the wind picked up to near gale force and rained all night long. I was awakened several times in the night by the wind and rain. Today, continues to be quite cloudy, but there have been some breaks with momentary sun shine. Though the wind and rain proliferate, it is not what you would call cold. It is slightly cool, but not uncomfortably…at least for me, anyway.

All the wind here brings to my mind the encounter that Jesus had with Nicodemus as He tried to get Nick to see that it was not what He did to get God, but how God moves upon the hearts of people by His Spirit. And with that I close for now.

John 3:8 (NASB) "The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."


Below is the church at Arnisort.