Yes. Yes, so the idea of a history lesson sounded, well, that sounds pretty bad. But then I thought, well, some teachers manage to make history lessons interesting. So that would be my challenge, to make the history lesson interesting. And then I was thinking today of the verse which says that God said to the Israelites, you shall remember all the way that the Lord your God has led you. And so I thought, well, that's a good reason to be looking back at what God's done over the last however many years to bring us to now, because a lot of you folk, you've come here, great, and you come and you walk in, the church building's here, the pastors are here, everything's here, and you kind of assume that it's been, always been, but it's a process that God's done over the years. So to start at the beginning, which is the best place, 34 years ago, almost, to the day, very beginning of February, 34 years ago. We did what you've all done, arrived at Air John Airport, felt kind of somewhat lost and bewildered and had your big case and your little backpack and obviously time six because there were four children, plus, plus for Andrew and I. And we're very, very thankful that the landlord who my husband had actually met a few months before and arranged a house, had come to meet us, even though we didn't know he was coming. And so here we were, you know, this little family arrived in Cyprus with, as far as we knew, no other evangelical Christian witness on the island at the time. So it was kind of just, and, you know, looking back, you think, well, God does strange things. So this little family arrived, we went through the darkness of the night, on the old roads as they were in those times, and the landlord took us to our house, which I hope James, Pastor James, won't mind me saying he took objection to immediately. He didn't like the house at all. So we told him, well, it was a lovely house, and the landlord had built it himself, and he said, well, he made it out of cardboard boxes. I hope you don't mind that, James. But, you know, so we know we all start off coming to Cyprus and thinking, oh, hell, where are we, you know? And we did, too. It's the only bad bit. It's all right. Obviously, I'm not going to give you everything here. Somebody's getting his own bag. I'm not going to give you everything here. But we were here to live as Christians, number one, to learn Turkish and learn the culture, and to share the gospel. So we obviously, in those early days, met lots of people. And we met, in those days, quite a lot of fairly important people. You know, we had our solicitor and her husband, and he became a high court judge. The minister of education was very, very kind and helpful to us, and he came with his wife for a meal and other people. And you know, you shared little bits of it, but nobody really was particularly interested, and we were obviously feeling our way very, very much. And then what was really interesting, God's ways are just so different from ours. The very first person to really show an interest and want us to go back. And we went back to their house week after week after week. It was Alia, who many of you know, is the lady who comes on Sundays with her two boys. And so she was the first one of our little group. There were other people who did arrive on the island, and there were other things going on in a small way over in Formagusta. But she was the first one that God saved. Now, if you and I had been looking to build a church, You know, a girl who left school at age 11, who was very much under the domination of her older brothers, et cetera, et cetera, would not be the person that we would have said should be the foundation of the church. But she's the first one God saved, and she's still with us. So God's ways really are different. Okay, I'm just trying to work out what I'm meant to be doing here. So that was our first house. We moved to another one. And then eventually we moved to the house we're in here in Gugnelli. That was six years after we first arrived, so 28 years ago. And we'd all, obviously, as a family, always been worshipping together every Sunday, even when it was just the six of us. And sometimes other people joined us. And sometimes people came from Famagusta, just worshipping God in their own home. And then when we came to our new house, we had four people arrive on our doorstep. They'd been contacted by other people on the island, and they said, we are sheep, and we're hungry. That's pretty good. And so that really was, I suppose, how the Turkish work started. There was Aliye, there were other people who came and went, and these four who we called the hungry sheep, who all, at various times, have gone back to Turkey. And so, let me see if I can do this. This is part of the to the very early church. Something's wrong? Why is it funny? Okay, please share the joke with me. Okay, well perhaps it is. You're going to hear more about them. Okay. But what was interesting with me looking back at these photographs was how right from the beginning, it was international. So the guy over here on your left was an Iranian. who was converted in Cyprus. You can see our two Nigerian friends, more of them later. You've got an American lady, two or three English people, and some Turks sitting at the front. And obviously other Turks were involved who weren't there that day. So, you know, just looking back, I was thinking, wow, right from the beginning, God did something in an international way here. And here's a much bigger group a bit later on. But there we've got a Bulgarian footballer, a Pakistani student. We've obviously got the Turks. We've got one or two more English people. It's just interesting that God has had this going on. Obviously, our worship was in Turkish and English at the same time. That was another thing my husband could never understand, why God didn't allow him to learn Turkish, which he really, really, really worked hard to do. But it meant that we were using both languages. And I do want to go on and tell you a bit more about this couple. They're a bit older on this picture because they came back to visit us. Stella and Isaac, they were here long before any of the students were here. Isaac was a teacher at Guinea American. It was long before they had their campus even. They were just a delightful couple. They had to trek from their house to get the minibus in Guinea. They got the minibus to the Gugnelli roundabout. And they trekked to our house every Sunday morning, and they were there. I don't know whether we started at 10 o'clock then. Whatever time we started, they were there. I've got two stories about Stella and Isaac. One, I think you'll understand more than I did at the time. And the other one, something very, very moving. Isaac had a real gift of prayer. When Isaac prayed, in our meetings, you knew we were being led into the presence of God. It was something very special. His wife told me later that he tithed his time to pray. That's a challenge. I don't know that anybody else could do it but him. And he was a full-time teacher. He was doing everything else. But anyway, he was a real man of prayer. But one day, we had a cat, which was obviously kept out of the house. our front room when we were having our worship services, but one day it must have slinked into the room. And when Isaac was praying, fervently sitting down, a cat leapt onto his knee. And as Nigerians, you'll realize just how awful that was. I don't think we quite realized at the time. So poor Isaac was kind of, had rather a shock. But there's a much more serious story from this couple. They had been married about five or six years when they came here. really, really wanted to have children, and had had a miscarriage in their early married life. And then, joy of joys, they'd been here a year or two, and instead it became pregnant. And so there was great rejoicing, and the months were going on, about four and a half months. And we had a phone call from Isaac. Something was going wrong. We went to the hospital, and Stella was lying there with the tears trickling down her face. And she said, the Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And then, about a month later, she told me this afterwards. She was thinking to herself, well, you know, it's a month now since I lost the baby. Today's like almost an anniversary. I've got a right to be sad today. It'll be my day to kind of wallow in my own sadness. And she could hear the children outside playing and think the thought, well, I shall never have children playing like that of mine. But she said, deeper than the sadness was the joy of the Lord. And she spent the day singing praises to God in her house. So we thank God that Stella and Isaac were part of the beginning of what is now LPC. They were a blessing. He finally went to England where he was a professor in Wales for a while. He's now leading a church, leading a denomination, I think, in London and around. So we thank God for Stella and Isaac. This next picture introduces us to another section of things. And we are really international here because we have, so they're a bit big on there, aren't they? We have Yemi, who was Nigerian. Next to him, we have a Turkish Cypriot. In the middle, a mainland Turk, followed by a Jordanian, followed by a Sierra Leonean. All part of the congregation. Now the guy in the middle, the Turk, is significant in in LPC by very much. He was a student from Turkey in Near East and Phil would have loved him. He was an evangelist. He would say, just give me tracts, put them in my backpack and I'll go and, you know, he got into trouble with the authorities at the university for being, you know, going around giving out New Testaments and what have you in his dorm. He was really, really keen. And so one day he came to our house very excited and said, I've got to have English Bibles. There are Africans in my dorm. I've got to go and evangelize them, not knowing that, of course, they were already Christians. And so the very first Sunday that Yemi was in Cyprus, Jan brought him to church. And that was the very beginning. So along with Yemi came others. And I remember the first time Yemi and a young lady came round. And we had a prayer meeting in the evening. And this is the first time my husband and I have been able to have an English prayer meeting with anybody else for a long time. And it was just such a joy. You know, we were tired. We were perhaps a little bit jaded. I don't know. And God sent these two young, thank you, people, enthusiastic people to help us on our way. And they were a real joy. And so others came along. Now by my next slide, I think the other person, the next story to tell you is the one, you can't see him terribly well there, let me come on to the next picture, is the story of Prince. Prince was from Sierra Leone. It's interesting that way, way back, the government here sponsored about six or eight Sierra Leoneans to study in EMU. Prince was among them. He was one of the very first Africans here. He went to the church in Palma Gusta. We didn't know him at the time, but then the church in Palma Gusta contacted us and said, we've got one of our students who's in hospital in Lefkosha. It's a very serious thing. Could you show an interest? Prince had cancer. He had lymphoma. So we got involved with Prince. He went through his first lot of therapy and recovered. He was then sent to Turkey for extra treatment for bone marrow transplant. We didn't know this at the time and he wasn't the kind of person to tell us. There was no money because his insurance here in Cyprus didn't cover him in Turkey. So the bone marrow transplant was never done. Prince came back and the disease came back. We could see that Prince was going to need more care than we, as a small church, could give him, because obviously here in Cyprus, if you've got somebody in hospital, as a family, you do all the caring. We had an idea of somebody, and we wrote in our prayer letter, we'd really like somebody to come and spend however much time it takes to look after this person in hospital. God's plans were so much better than ours because instead of sending the old lady that we thought might be able to come, he sent this, the white one there, Steve. Steve was God's man for that job. So the two of them supported different football teams, so that was a good start. You know, he and Prince could spend all their time in the hospital there. Steve didn't know how to play Scrabble when he came, but he certainly did by the end because Prince was brilliant at Scrabble. Steve had also done two years nursing training, so not only did he look after Prince, he was indispensable on the cancer ward. I can say that through the story of Prince, the sweet savour of Christ went through the whole cancer ward there in Cyprus, in the hospital here, because the two of them just lived out their lives there. Prince's doctor said to me not very long in, she said, Prince is a very believing person. And she made it her business, if at all possible, to allow him to come out to church on Sunday. So we could go and pick him up. He'd come and have worship with us in our home. We was still meeting in the home. And then he would go back to the hospital. And of course, we as a church were praying, praying, praying that God would heal him. And it wasn't God's will to heal Prince. God took Prince to heal himself, which, you know, from the point of view of his family and his fiancee, was very sad. But there was still this underlying feeling that this was God's doing, this was God's purposes. There was an awareness of God's presence through the whole thing. One story associated with that, Prince's, Sierra Leonean friends who were still in Famagusta contacted the Sierra Leonean ambassador who was living in Tehran. And so he came to visit to see what they could do, I suppose. And so I was summoned to the hospital to go and talk to him and meet him. And we visited with Prince. And then we sat in another little room and chatted. And then going back along the corridor, he muttered, almost to himself. But I heard, because I was walking with him, this is the beauty of Christianity. Anyway, he went on. And then before he left, he gave me his card. And that was when I saw his name. He was Mr. Bayo Hadja something, something. And I realized this was a Muslim. And yet he'd seen and been impressed. by Christianity at work in the lives of Steve and Prince and whoever else was involved in it. So this picture actually is some of the Sierra Leoneans then gave Prince a plaque to thank him for all that he had done. It was a strange chapter, and for some of the Nigerians who were with us at the time, it was a great test of their faith, because we prayed for him to be healed, and he wasn't. And what was God doing? They grew through that, I'm sure, and we bowed to the fact that God knew best. So where am I coming to? Oh, this is a special one. Our first baptism of Africans. So we've got Pastor Andrew, a Scotsman, a Hieratin, a Turk, baptizing a Nigerian. So that was very special. And you can see that the Turkish church and the African church were obviously, because we were all meeting together then in our home, it was much more closely intertwined than it is now, just by reason of numbers. But that was special. And then these are three of the very first ones that we had. So there's Yemi, who you saw before in the middle. And on this side, there's Asuko, who was beamed from ear to ear. And the other one was Namdi. They were three very special young men. And really, the foundation of what is now LPC. So we were meeting in our home. Numbers began to increase. It got to the point where it was kind of too many, because how many can you fit in our front room with Turks and Africans all meeting together and more students coming? We got up to 40, I think, once or twice, which was very, very many. But at the same time, there was something else going on, which was a local newspaper decided that we were really not required in Cyprus. They wrote all kinds of stuff about us. They came to our house and did paparazzi stuff outside after the service. You can see that picture there. There's Pastor Andre at the door. This was taken from behind the hedge. We had police coming past during the services. It was a time of pressure. That was a challenge. A particular challenge, At that time, the university had put on, they only did it for a very short time, the English university put on a bus just to bring the students to church on Sunday morning for a brief time. But on this particular Sunday, they had just left our house, not a huge lot of them, a dozen or so maybe going that way, others were in Gugnelli. The bus was stopped, police got on, were quite aggressive, wanted all their identification and then they were escorted back to their lodgings on the school bus with two police cars. You can just imagine the Turkish windows twitching to look out and see what was going on. Some of them got dropped off at their lodgings, the others were taken back to the dorm and told by the police on the bus, don't go to that place anymore, that's an illegal meeting. So there's a challenge for you. What would you have done? By God's grace, most of them said, we keep coming. Some of them dropped off. I think people who were just coming to church because their mum and dad expected them to, or whatever, they dropped off. But I know Yemi particularly, we sang the hymn, Anywhere With Jesus I Can Safely Go, and he just said, anywhere with Jesus I can safely go. Eventually, the whole thing dropped off. We had a lawyer write letters to various people, and the thing dropped off. But it made us realize, and especially the Turkish people, that probably it was time to move out of our house to look for somewhere else. So Pastor Andrew and I went, knees knocking somewhat, and we spoke to, first of all, the mayor and various other people. And they told us they would give us a building. So it was a building in Lefkosha, in the old city. a Protestant church, not one of the big orthodox ones. It would have been an evangelical church, and we thought that property would be ideal. So they kept us waiting and waiting and waiting for something like two years. And then the Turkish members just said, they're never going to give it to you. You know, this is just, they're palming you off with this. This is just the way they're dealing with foreigners. Let us go. So two of them went and said, OK, we realise you're never going to give us this building. Can we rent? And they said, yeah, that's fine. So that has had us looking around for a building to rent. So we had to have something that was big enough, something that was cheap enough, and a landlord who would be willing to rent to somewhere for Christian worship, which was difficult. In the end, in God's amazing grace, the place was found. It was an old bungalow not far from Dereboyu, along there. We thought it would be miles too expensive. But here we are. Here's Shenur, who's still with us, signing the contract. Now, you see, we as a church are very indebted to our Turkish brothers and sisters. We had to have two people who were Turkish Cypriot citizens sign the contract. And we had two. Just two. If they hadn't signed the contract, and the contract for this building here now is still in the name of those two ladies who were prepared to put their neck out on the line and say, we will sign this contract for a church building. So there we are. There's Sheno signing the contract. And we'll go through these a bit quicker. A lot of work had to be done. Three small rooms had to be knocked into one big one. And then there was a lot of work to be done. So this is Akin. I'm not quite sure what he's doing there, but he's obviously very busy. Everybody had a job. I'm sure James is going to be amused at this one. Is he or is he not wearing his tie to do the electrics? Anyway, Pastor Andrew wears his tie all the while. He had a job doing the electrics. Everything was done. There was lots of painting, lots of cleaning, lots of everything else. One of the last things to happen, was that the pulpit, this pulpit, which incidentally was a gift from another Nigerian who was here before who was an athletics coach. So this pulpit was a gift from a Nigerian, had to come, and it came in the fish van. So the fish van was driven by Alia's husband and Shenua's husband, and that arrived. And then here we are on the first Sunday morning meeting in the building. And this is another one on that same occasion. There's Yemi. Possibly leading in prayer, I'm not sure. So there we are. Nnamdi said that when we moved in, you'll see in a couple of years this building would be too small. Well, there were about 40 of us, and the building could seat 60, 80 easily. And I smiled sweetly to myself and thought, Nigerians are always optimistic. In two years' time, the building was too small because a lot more students were arriving, people coming to CIU, which hadn't been to begin with, and so the building got too small. But I think I'm jumping ahead of myself. Let me go on to this one. At the same time, we had other things happening. Now you can see what being passed to LPC has done to, it was quite a lot of years ago, to the family. You haven't changed at all, not a bit. Some of the Turkish people, again, it was the Turkish people, two of the Turkish ladies, had said over a period of time, we think James and Rachel should come out and help in the work here. And I must confess, I said, if that's the way you think, you better start praying. James and Rachel were in England, busy in their church. There wasn't really any thought, well, in our minds, of them coming. We could see God would probably lead them into full-time service, but didn't realize it would be here. Anyway, whether it was these ladies' prayers, I'm sure it was, and other things, eventually God moved here in the church here for us to call them, in the hearts of James and Rachel to feel that God was calling them, in the hearts of their church back in England, Forest Fold, you know, the church there, and the three-way thing happened, and so they were called to come, and it happened very quickly. I think much more quickly than we had expected, which was great. So they came, I don't know how many years ago it was now. Ten years ago. Nine and a half. Okay, nearly ten years ago, in time for the children to start school in September. So that was the next thing that was coming into place. And so here we are, here's the church, more or less, at the time. There are some people on this photograph that you will, well, maybe you won't recognize. The little one sitting on Pastor Andrew's knee is Ernestine, that's right. And the little one sitting on the chair by herself is Pearl, with her daddy in the white shirt just behind her. And I think it must be marvelous in blue beside her husband. I think Yes, Emeka? Okay, there we are. Some of you recognize them more than I do. Yvonne's there, yes. Okay, so that was the African church as it was then. Okay, you all seen that one? Is Victoria there? I don't think she is. No, I don't think so. And at the same time, something else was happening. Pastor Phil and his family, who had been working in Turkey, moved to Cyprus, and they eventually became part of the fellowship as well. God brought them in. And so God had brought together, you know, we who'd been here for ages, Pastor James and Rachel, Pastor Philip and Diane, and the leaders of the church were brought together by God. So there you can see various of the Turkish side of the church, and Aliyah is there with Egemen, is the baby in arms there. Most of the others, oh, Shenur is there. Oh, no, actually, the baby in her arms there is the other one, isn't it? It's Yigit. And in Shenur's arms over on the other side, is Eggerman with all his curls. Kyra won't mind me mentioning it's her right at the very front there. So the years have passed. But you can see what was happening. The church was gradually being brought together. So we were getting too many for the building. And at the same time, the landlord decided that he and mother and son wanted to sell it. So we had to look for a new home. which wasn't easy, because there were a lot more of us to fit in now. I mean, we were getting up to about 100 on a Sunday, which people were actually coming and then leaving, because there was nowhere to sit. I think I sat on an upturned pebble bin or something at one point, because there was nowhere else to sit. It was getting to that point. Eventually, we found a wedding salon. I forget what it's called now. which we could just have, but it was just for Sunday morning. We just rented it on Sunday morning, which meant that during the week we had to do other stuff in our homes and so on. Also, there was a swimming pool right outside, and the people from the swimming pool could come through if they wanted to go to the toilets and things like that. It wasn't ideal, but it was the provision for six months, which was good. We were still looking around. And again, God used one of the Turkish ladies, Shenur. She saw the place down below us was for rent. So she came and spoke to the landlady. And the landlady said, yes, yes, I've got this for rent. And Shenur said, no, no, I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about upstairs. So the landlady said, well, yeah, I suppose I could. And then over a period of time, this property became hours by rent and we moved in and this time the local newspaper were much kinder to us and you can see the African choir performing at the ceremony. No comments about anybody on there. Okay, you've seen. But at least this time the newspaper were writing positive things. about the Lefkosa Church finding a new home, and you can see the Turkish version. We were even blessed by having the Speaker of the House of Parliament here write an encouraging letter and congratulating us, if that was the right word, on wishing us well. The local muhtar, who's the local official, they both came, and you can see them at the bottom there, cutting our ribbon to make it an official opening, because Turks like official openings and things like that. So it was kind of officially recognized. And so that brings us more or less up to date to what you know, the church worshiping here with the pastors involved there. Just one or two other things I want to show you. This is just to encourage you. It is... It is possible to do relationships in a godly way as students in Cyprus. Any of you ladies who want to read the story of Bimbo, right there, it's really worth reading. I've got it. She had all the struggles that you have when she came to the island. She describes in this thing that she wrote, going into, or she was scared to go into a stationers, because she knew she wanted pens and she couldn't afford them. She had the offer of a guy to pay her school fees for her at a cost. And she knew before God that she couldn't do it. She learned that she found work, lots of work. She found work for other people as well. And eventually, God brought Julius, who was then the leader of the fellowship at Near East. bim-bim, bimbo, together. And we had the wedding here in Cyprus. Sorry? GAU. Sorry, what did I say? Sorry, I said the wrong. I thought Julius was at Near East. I beg your pardon? GAU. GAU. I beg your pardon. I knew bimbo was from down there, but I thought, OK. So they had their wedding in the Anglican church in Guernsey. And again, it was just such a special occasion, all the believers rallying around to do all the things that were needed. And Pastor Andrew gave her away. That's why he's laughing. You know, you need somebody to lead you down the aisle or to dragged you down the aisle. No, we teased him and said he had to dance down the aisle, but Julius wanted it done in a very serious way, so he didn't have to dance down the aisle. But it's just to encourage you that other people have gone through the struggles that you go through and have come through in a godly way. And so they went back. Presumably, I'm sure they did get permission from their parents to do it this way and not to, you know, not to wait until they got back. That's right. There we are. So there we are. God does things in a wonderful way. It was just very special, and just to encourage you with that. I think I've got five minutes to give you another history. And it's the history of the cleaning team. Cleaning team is always a bit near to my heart. You saw the three guys there, Namdi, Iemi, and Asuko. And so when we moved, obviously, the cleaning team, when it was in my house, was me, because it was my house. But once we moved out, the students took over. The building was smaller, so there wasn't quite as much floor to clean as there is here. But there was a garden, a yard, that had to be swept. Yes. There was a garden that needed watering. Because all the church money had been spent on getting this building how we needed it to be, we didn't even buy a hose. These guys bucketed water from the back of the building round to the front of the building to water the garden. Also, it was tiles in the garden, which were smaller than these, and what grows between tiles, and the weeds that grew were the kind that grow here, which are prickly ones with long roots. These guys kept the garden clean. I think eventually we got them weed killer, did we? It took a long time, I think. Anyway, so that was the honorable beginning of the cleaning team. And then we moved here. And I have happy memories of coming in here, various times when the cleaning's been going on. I think it was Simi, but I can't remember. It might have been somebody else, with her broom. The music was on loud, loud. And everybody was happy. And Simi was kind of dancing with her broom. Would it have been you, or was it somebody else? I remember it as being you, but maybe not. But it was a kind of really happy social occasion, and they were all busy sweeping. I remember as well another time being very moved at coming in at the end of cleaning. And that's when Lewis was around. And all the cleaning team lined up over there and prayed. So they obviously saw their cleaning as an act of worship. And they were praying for the building that they'd just been cleaned to be full of God's presence the next day. That really moved me. So, oh, and there's somebody else who needs a mention with regard to the cleaning team. And that's Emeka Silas, who some of you remember. No, maybe not. He was, again, one of the leaders of the fellowship. And when we first came into the building, I just cleaned the toilets on a Sunday morning. That was, you know, I'm an old lady, and that was no problem. He saw me doing it and said, that's my job from now on. So I just want to encourage you. I know that the clean team needs help, but it's an honorable thing. It's an act of worship. It can be an act of fellowship and fun, having the music on while you do it. So I'm sure you'll get lots of help. I hope so anyway. OK, so that more or less brings us up to date to the one you all know. So there we are. I've done it in 40 minutes, James. What we'll do is we'll take a break and we'll start back at 8. We'll start at 8, so you've got 20 minutes. Stretch your legs. Right, so that's there. You've got my stick somewhere, have you?