Category: General

As the Olympics kick off and many of us spend hours watching athletes in action, I’m fairly confident that apparently insignificant Burundi is at least as exciting a place to be as London in the coming two weeks. Picture 615 young people gathering tomorrow, Saturday, praying together, and then being commissioned to go up into the bush in 35 different teams, where they will preach the gospel, cast out demons, heal the sick, get their heads kicked in, and (if it’s anything like last year) in the process see about 30,000 people come to Christ in coherent one-on-one conversations. Our […]

This talk is well worth a listen at http://s3.stmarks-battersea.org.uk/Audio/Sermon/2012-07-22_06.00pm.mp3, but if you don’t have time, here’s a short section to stir you up: In the film, Chariots of Fire, there is a marked contrast between the two leading characters, Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddle. On one occasion, before a race, a friend says to Abrahams: “I hate losing. How about you?” Abrahams replies: “I don’t know, I’ve never lost.” You see his drive for recognition and his deep sense of insecurity. Then there is the contrast, having already lost the 200m, as he is now faced with the 100m, and he […]

Following on from the success of Bike for Burundi, we’ll now be going for a Bike in Burundi! I’m planning to launch the nation’s first ever ‘Tour du Burundi’ (hopefully will get our keen cyclist President to join us for a day!) some time in the early months of 2013, which will surely soon displace the Tour de France as the world’s premier cycling event (hmm… faith or delusion?!). If you’re interested in taking part in this, do get in touch with me ASAP for more info, and please pass this on to any cycling buddies of yours. The blog-to-book […]

This man was born in a gypsy tent, of humble origins, and yet ended up being invited to the White House by two presidents. Rodney ‘Gypsy’ Smith came into the world in 1860 in Epping Forest, just outside London. Forty five times he crossed the Atlantic to preach the gospel to millions of people on both sides. His passion was almost unparalleled, and there was great fruit in what he did. What was his secret? Private prayer. His praying was even more powerful than his preaching. A delegation once came to him to enquire how they might experience personal and […]

The Bike for Burundi blog is turning into a book, which could be out within weeks, as I’m nearly finalized. I just need a strong title. Some of you will be horrified by what I proposed: ‘Bonking on a Bike for Burundi’ (‘bonking’ is the technical term for losing all energy in cycling). Anyways, it’s been rejected by people I trust, and my folks threatened to disown me, which was a strong disincentive! So, please help me: what should the title be? At the moment, it’s plain ‘Bike for Burundi’ with subtitle ‘3,000miles of Blood, Sweat and Tears Across America’. […]

Freddy’s just sent this to me, and I think it’s a beautiful example of reckless costly generosity and gratitude: Going back a few weeks, on Easter Sunday while  my family and I we were at Gitega, we went to church where our kids from Homes of Hope go for Sunday school. During the service the pastor asked people who had testimonies to share. A lady called Mariane shared her testimony of how God protected her the day she was almost killed in a car crash. People thought she was dead but she was taken to hospital by someone she never […]

Happy Easter! Well, it was such a pleasure to wake up back in my own bed, with even a lie-in until 634am when Josiah (2) woke up. Things have changed in my absence. He no longer wears nappies/diapers at night, and he said totally unprompted: “Can I share one of my eggs with the orphans?” which I hope is a sign of a future man of compassion and generosity. One less positive development is that he now says ‘wadder’ instead of ‘water’, which is slightly disconcerting, and we’ll have to thrash that accent out of him before it gets too […]

I fell asleep on the sofa last night and woke up cold at 3am, so it was another bad night’s sleep. But hey, thanks to my terrible lack of sleep throughout the whole trip, this blog happened, so my loss has hopefully been your gain! At 6am, Brent and John showed up from Charleston to join us on our last leg, and there’s also Matt who came last night. They brought superhero costumes with them so today I was Superman, Craig was Spiderman, Jeff was Captain America, John was Batman, and David was his sidekick Robin. Our host Bill nipped […]

We allowed ourselves a lie-in this morning, until 730am, as we only had a short ride – we are too far ahead of our planned mileage, and in fact could have made it all the way back to Charleston today at a stretch (c.130miles) but we have cool hosts planned for this evening with me due to give a talk, so that wasn’t an option anyway. We clicked on the weather forecast at breakfast and it talked of thunderstorms, flood risks, and all sorts, so we braced ourselves for an unpleasant few miles. Joanie sent us off with much better […]

We were up at 6am for a great breakfast prepared by Chris. My neck’s sore from fighting Ron in the pool yesterday, so maybe I didn’t get the better of him as I’d thought. As we ate, Brian talked about Northerners coming down and taking some of his business with obscenely low contract bids. He’s an airport runways contractor. Ron said: “Well, they must be cleverer than us to be able to do things so cheaply.” Brian replied: “We know those damn Yankies are cleverer than us because they keep telling us they are!” There’s undeniably a huge amount of […]

Last night we were hosted by David and Valerie, and their two daughters, Sydney (20) and Connie (18). The girls were immediately swooning over our accents, and sat down to listen to us, not for the content but just the sound! It’s funny, the number of times I’ve given talks around the States and afterwards someone has said: “Thanks for your talk, I love your accent!” – damned with faint praise if that’s all that stuck! Actually, an American friend of mine said that my accent was worth an extra twenty IQ points in terms of how intelligent people would […]

I forgot an important detail last night, and that was Ron’s transparent white boxer shorts. When we went for a quick cool refreshing dip in ‘the blue hole’ at the RV campsite, Ron jumped in along with the rest of us, but when he got out to jump again, the poor teenage girls voted with their feet by fast deserting the area. Ron was beautifully unaware and liberated, beaming with enjoyment and satisfaction at a long hard day’s cycling completed. Let’s leave him in the dark on this one, I don’t think it’ll happen again. So our three new team […]

We scoffed lots of food at 6am at our Hampton Inn before heading out on this last week of our epic adventure. The sun blazed down on us all day, which was mostly spent on Highway 10 from Pensacola to Marianna, where I am now writing to you from a grotty room at the inappropriately named ‘Executive Inn Motel’. The others are in an RV park a couple of miles away, but we have three more guys joining our crew late tonight, driving up from Orlando, so we needed to meet them somewhere, and this seemed like a suitably smelly […]

  Oof! We’re nearing the home straight. Last week saw us complete 126miles on Monday, then 108, 103, 110, 108, and 110, bringing the total up to 2,501 miles so far in twenty four cycling days. Six to go, and I can’t wait to be back to Lizzie and the children. I honestly can’t believe I’m still in it, so am absolutely delighted that the knees have held firm and that nothing too serious has gone wrong to jeopardize the whole trip (apart from, of course, Geoff’s gutting exit. Keep lifting him up, he’s had more tests and still feels […]

We had an early start, 530am, to get to the ferry which is part of the ACA Southern Tier Route. It had been lashing down with rain throughout the night, and so we had our first grim drizzly cycling session, but only for 8miles until we came to the ferry terminal. As it was raining, we sheltered underneath a house on stilts. A woman called Janet was doing likewise, so we got talking, and she ended up crying with me over her wayward son. We prayed together, I gave her a hug, she said she’d get on our website and […]

It only takes one second for an accident. Life is full of small margins. I will not forget today in a hurry… Before we get to the day’s big event, there’s another family event going on across in Europe that I want to mention. Today is my parents’ 44th wedding anniversary, and I’m so grateful to them for all they’ve been and done for me throughout my life. Great long-lasting marriages might be becoming few and far between, but I’m thrilled and thankful to be a product of one. In terms of morale, I think yesterday was my biggest battle […]

Last night was spent in Baton Rouge with the delightful Dentons. As soon as we got there, we were grateful for having made the long drive to get to them because they were so generous, had prepared great food, and having a hot shower, comfortable bed and a massage chair is always a bonus. But the downside was this morning when we had to get up at 5am to make the long drive back to Easleyville to our departure point. Some days are just a real struggle to get going on. It was hard to keep positive. We dozed in […]

Last night, we’d stopped off at a nasty motel and booked just the one room so we could all have showers, and then crashed out, some in the RV and some in the dank, manky, musty room. At about 1130pm, what sounded like a loud drunk started jabbering away on his telephone just outside our door. It went on for a while, so eventually I got up and went out to politely tell the guy to zip it. I found an Indian man, sat comfortably in a chair, talking in Hindi with total disregard for those of us trying to […]

(Synced Cycling)  I might be emotionally unaware or insensitive, but had you asked me yesterday about team dynamics and how things were going, I would have given an unequivocal shining report about all things having been sweetness and light amongst each one of us over the last three weeks. The fact is, with all of us extremely tired, living in close quarters, and not getting as much sleep as we would have liked, you would have expected a few decent humdinger rows by now. Well, last night John asked me for a quiet word. He raised some issues that had […]