The changing world (149) Jan 89

Jan 1st  I led for Paul Cowney in the morning with a renewal of vows Jacobs family and Jan Haag to lunch. Sylvester was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1944, the challenges of growing up as a black man in a city infested with prejudice wore on the fragility of his youth. “I grew up with folk teaching me that I was nothing. Nobody. Not even worth talking to, listening to, looking at.” As a response, Jacobs served in the US Army, stationed in Panama from 1962 to 1965 where he first began to learn the trade of photography. “You just begin photographing the people around you,” he says. But the prejudice wore on him. In 1966 he went to Europe with Operation Mobilisation, an organisation that transports Christians abroad on mission trips. He didn’t come back until 2007: forty years later. That initial bitterness has gradually turned to a residual sadness, a sadness that was enveloping at one time. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see America again, or see my family again. One-way ticket,” he says. “The advantage of being in another country was that I was a stranger and I knew it, and they knew it. But in my home country, I was at home, but I was a stranger and I didn’t know it. I thought I was at home.” Once in Europe he travelled to Italy, Switzerland, and finally settled in England, where he continued to hone his craft. Later he became a schoolteacher so popular with his pupils in Luton, many of the Muslims, that some have contacted me to try and be put back in contact. His popularity though earned envy from fellow teachers. 

I preached in the evening and on our return studio George was noisy again.
2nd To Braithwaites.
3rd  Took Jonathan to work at my pharmacy on my day off. Sermon prep. Pastoral counselling. Mr Overend here for lunch.
4th   Three hour drive to Kinnears, Newport. Two hours back.
5th    Assistant Mary back to work from Irish holiday. depressed.
6th    Depressed and novel reading at work. Not a demanding pharmacy.
7th    Bjarne Thelin to dinner.
8th    Preached. Mr O here. Katy cooked for the IPC youth. Pastoral counselling.
9th    Depressed at work. Reading Cookson. Deb at judo. No wish to go to deacons meeting.
10th  Inactive again.
11th  Good session all day at Joe's near Oxford. Planned three sermon series up to August. Heard more of Paul Clowney's testimony. Pot in Vietnam.
12th Busier at work. Too much talk and not enough prayer at house group. One member not happy as I refuse visit the excommunicated member.
13th With no school for Katy I could have the car to work and do the grocery shopping. We had a battered old Peugeot 504 estate for the next few years. In Nigeria the Hausa name for these which were the main taxis was Dafa Dukka, cook them all. Meaning all passengers would die in a high speed crash. No speed limits there. Getting the groceries at on stage I had a strict Hindu assistant who refused to take my frozen chicken from my trolley. I pointed out she was not touching a dead animal but a plastic bag.
14th   Cooked trout for Davis and Sue Egg to dinner. I have known him since he was a bot in Northallerton.
15th   Elliott preached morning, Mary evening. Cooked tandoori. Took girls swimming. Scott Cahei dined .
18th    Off work. Pastoral visiting including relations between IPC and OM. Alperton High governors. Cooke fish pie.
19th    happier at work. Costons Conservatives adopt me as council candidate. Planning holiday in North wales.
20th    Dennis Skinner wrecked abortion reforms.
21st    Pastoral counselling. Booked holiday in N Wales. Shopped for curtain, £160 Brent Cross. Good Chinese gateway staff meal.
22nd   Preached Tower Hamlets Christian Fellowship.Charismatic.Picked up Norman Norris at Victoria and he spoke at IPC. 
23rd    Started scanning bar codes at pharmacy.
24th    Chat on phone with Mrs Gummer, wife of Thatcher's minister and their son is in school with deb.
25th    Work at IPC with Larry. Cooked haddock for dinner.
26th    House group here on Rev 12.
27th    Long queues at checkouts with new scanning.
28th    Care conference at All Souls on politics, Cooked Italian chicken.
29th   John Ross and family here all day. We new them from Qua Ibo Mission in Nigeria then from the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Now with a mission to Jews.
30th Deb at Felix Gummer's party. Years later during the mad cow scare he was photographed being bought a burger by his minister father.
31st   Visited by David the superintendent pharmacist my boss.