I know who the Devil is!!

Hello all. Another good day here in the UK. It started at 9:30 with what was supposed to be a rather cheap and uneventful breakfast. Stella met me at my host home, which is next door to the church. We walked to Ikea, a furniture and home decorating store. I think that there are a few in the States. I digress. We had a lovely breakfast that only cost us £3. That's pretty cheap here in Wales. Well, we get done with breakfast and try to leave the store. The key word in that sentencee is try. To begin with, Ikea is bigger than a super Wal-Mart. Why this place has a cafe in it is beyond me. Secondly, you can't go out the store the same way you enter it. They make you walk the length of the store to the exit right by the cash registers. Rather brilliant if you ask me, but really inconvenient. Add to that there are no signs that tell you where the exits are and you make for a 15 minute adventure to start your day. As we were walking out of the store Stella made the quote of the day. She said, "The next time someone tells me Wal-Mart is the devil, I'll tell them they are wrong. Ikea is the devil, not Wal-Mart." So today I learned who the real devil is. After we played the role of the Jews lost in the wilderness, Troy met us at my home. He took us around where we live to get us familiar with the area. It was really great. My area of Cardiff, Grangetown, is very diverse. In Cardiff there are 47 first languages spoken. In a city that is smaller than Birmingham, it makes the city really diverse. I went in to many shops today. I think Stella and I have found our bakery that we will be frequenting. It's called "Yum Yum's" and we met Rob, who I think is the owner. We also went in a new Arabic restaurant. It smelled really good and I hope we get to go back. We also went in Pakistanini grocery store. IT was really interesting. I bought pomegranatete that will soon be devoured. I almost bought you one Ginny, but I don't want to see your face after you eat it. :) Then Josh and I went to a refugee center at Tredegarville Baptist church. Josh is a member of mine and Stella's team. They have rec time for refugees. They have pool, foosball, and ping-pong. Needless to say I played ping-pong. I beat poor Joshua pretty badly. Then another guy named Josh from Nigeria played me. He beat me 2 games to 1. I think I can beat him when I shake off all of my rust. But I've been told he's not the best one there. I'm excited to play these guys, they should be some stiff competition. The highlight of my day was talking to Joshua and Armin. Joshua is a converted Muslim whose name was Mohammed before he got baptized. He spoke pretty good English, good enough to help Armin and I have a 45 minute conversation. Joshua and Armin are from Iran. They've left Iran because they were tortured for not supporting the government. Armin showed me scars he has from plastic surgery. Apparently the government beat him badly enough to warrant plastic surgery. They asked me all about America and I asked them about Iran. It's amazing how the media portrays their people. Both guys told me how much the Iranian people love and admire the US. They also told me how desperate their people are for democracy. They are fed up with the government, and how they are treated. I was amazed at some of the stuff that they told me. It was an eye opening experience. Hopefully I can start going to the rec time every Tuesday. Armin isn't a Christian and hopefully I can start some dialogue with him about what Christianity is really about. Today was great but I still feel run down. I've been getting good sleep, but I just hit a wall at 5:30 or so. Please pray that this passes soon. Next week is when we start up with everything, and I want to be refreshed and ready for it. Thanks so much for all of the comments. It's good to hear from my friends and really encouraging to hear from all you guys at 1st Baptist. Leave some more love!! -Robert