Dear Members of Our Saint Andrew’s Community:

I am writing this final letter from the Rubens Hotel in London where we are staying for the night. Tomorrow we take the train from Paddington Station to Heathrow Airport to catch our flight which leaves at 11am London time. We will arrive at RDU Airport at 2:35pm Raleigh/Durham time. Short flight, huh!

This morning Arthur and I had breakfast with the Bishop of California, Marc Andrus and his wife Sheila. They are wonderful people and have become good friends. This morning Marc was planning to attend the final session of the Lambeth Conference, and he was fearful that sanctions might be voted on by the bishops to discipline the American and Canadian branches of the Anglican Communion – the American Episcopal Church for approving the consecration of a gay bishop and the Canadian Church for allowing the blessing of same sex unions. We will know what happened in the next day or so.

At 3pm this afternoon, Arthur and I attended Evensong at Westminster Abbey. It was a beautiful service – the choir was from Wellington Cathedral of St. Paul, New Zealand, and it was very good! Of course, Westminster Abbey is one of the great churches in the world, and I was reminded that scores of famous people are buried there. It was founded as a large Benedictine monastery, and today it continues that tradition through the discipline of prayer and study. The Abbey has also served as the coronation church of kings and queens for over a thousand years. No one knows exactly when the first church was built on this site, but it was well over a thousand years ago.

I am very grateful to our Bishop, Michael Curry, for making this trip possible. As a result of being “Alongside Lambeth,” Arthur and I both have grown spiritually, and we have made dozens of new friends from all over the Anglican Communion! I look forward to sharing with you more about the trip in the coming weeks and months.

God bless you all!

In Jesus’ love,

Sam and Arthur from London on the eve of returning home