I attended the Swahili service here this morning with  Alice Wamboi Maina, whose mother helped raise my mom and aunt in Kenya. It was such an incredible, exuberant expression of love, joy and faith! At one point the pastor prayed that a tsunami of the Lord's love would flood the hearts of terrorists. I thanked him after the service, and he said love is the strategy that will triumph over all that is wrong in the world.

Another pastor recognized me from my performance of Lazarus there in 2007. He gave me a couple of minutes to speak, and I  was so deeply moved by the worship I told them that people go after all sorts of things so their souls will be touched, but many of those things damage their souls, but worshipping the Lord can touch our souls at the deepest levels and there are no bad side effects, only eternal blessings.

Then I asked them to pray for The Dragon and the Raven as we record it this coming week.

Now taking sign-ups for Rio Ready.

In the run-up to the Olympics we read that Chariots of Fire would be running in cinemas all over the UK. We never saw posters for the movie while we were there with performances of my one-man play on the rest of the story, Beyond the Chariots, but we LOVED the West End production of the newly staged theatrical adaptation. The staging and "choreography" was just brilliant! And the opening and closing sequences had the cast running about in Team Great Britain 2012 athletic uniforms. Great fun.

It follows the four-time Academy Award-winning film from 1981 quite closely, but they give themselves an extra hour to work in subplots for which the film didn't allow.

At the Eric Liddell Awards breakfast, I told Eric's daughters that I only had two quibbles. Patricia, his eldest said she had two also. I told her to go first. She didn't like how her Aunt Jenny was portrayed. When I performed Beyond the Chariots in Milwaukee I was given a note from Jenny by someone who had been in correspondence with her before her death. In the note Jenny wrote about how much she encouraged Eric in his running. Patricia said Jenny was much more fun-loving than she's portrayed in the film, and now in the West End. Her second quibble was that her father was also portrayed as being more dour than she remembers him to have been. He used to sing silly songs with their mother to keep the Sunday school kids interested in God's Word. Then I shared my quibbles: Their mother is portrayed as a blonde, when she had very dark hair (Patricia also said her accent was far too American, and not enough Canadian). My biggest complaint is that they close the play with--and work into the ancillary literature--the phrase "Harold was faster, but Eric was better." They point out that Harold got faster and faster when training with Mussabini, but the fact of the matter is that Eric's 100yd British record of 9.7 held for 35 years. I did the math, and Harold's Olympic record of 10.6 in the 100m, which he equalled in two qualifying heats, is a virtual tie with Liddell. But to say he was faster than Eric is just not true.

Having said all of this, it's a marvelous play, and I highly recommend it to anyone in or heading to London. I'm praying it will be done on Broadway some day. Maybe I'll be young enough to audition for Eric's older brother.

Mostly I was pleased because they stayed true to the bold stance that Eric took not to run on a Sunday. They didn't pull back anything from his conviction.

This is my report to Westchester Chapel of our performances and workshops in Puerto Rico, Transylvania and London during the 2012 Olympics...

Last night was the debut of the Tamil translation, which was well received. They translated it for seven people who had come from Sri Lanka and India to attend the International College of Officers for the Salvation Army.

This morning a woman told us how integral Eric Liddell's story was in her coming to faith, and there she sat in the William Booth Officers Training School, where she'll start attending in the fall, watching a play about the man who had inspired her to go into ministry! The things that our Father orchestrates are so far beyond what we could ever plan!

Before we came here we performed the play in Romania with Hungarian translation slides. It was in Transylvania, a region that used to belong to Hungary, and the people we visited were Hungarian speakers. One of the men there asked us to tell him more about Jesus. We stayed up until 1am. In the end he prayed that Jesus would cover his sins, so that he could be in a relationship with the Father. The next morning he walked into our room radiating joy, but he still wants to see miraculous signs to confirm this. The next day, when we flew to London there were seven specific Appointments that we knew were all about confirming our friend's new relationship with the Lord. The highlight was when we discoverd that our waitress was from Tirgu-Mures, Romania, the city from which we'd flown only a few hours before. We'll also tell our friend about the woman who will start training school and her story. We're praying that these Love letters will encourage him to grow in his new relationship with the Lord.

On Friday we'll have breakfast with 120 Olympic athletes (some of which will be sitting at our table) as the Eric Liddell Award is given to two gold medalists who exhibit not only outstanding athleticism but also a strong committment to the Father.

filled with Hope,

Rich

We had an indescribably great time in Transylvania. My shirt says, "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God that brings Salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile." (Romans 1:16 NIV) Though we're in Romania, it's written in Hungarian, the language of the wonderful people with whom we partnered in ministry.

They are an ecumenical group, though the hosts are Charismatic Catholics, and none of the leaders were ashamed of the Gospel! We sensed the presence of the Lord so powerfully in their prayers and worship songs, though we only understood the ones that were translated from Hillsong, Vineyard and other English sources.

It's always overwhelming to me when I worship with fellow believers in other parts of the world. A connection to the Lord is so powerful it doesn't need words to experience.

We did an awful lot of laughing. It seemed to us a supernatural joy. It occurred to me that it was the Lord's gift to the land scarred by communism. We were in the same county where Richard Wurmbrand was tortured and beaten daily year after year because he wouldn't renounce Christianity. He explained in his book Tortured for Christ that he was actually allowed to serve as a pastor so long as he cooperated with the Communists. They were to teach that Moses brought the first revelation, Jesus brought the second and Joseph Stalin brought the third. But when Wurmbrand's underground activities came to light they imprisoned him and his wife.

With the fall of Ceausescu and the Iron Curtain there is joy in the land. We sensed it and praise the Lord that we could add to it.

My performance of Beyond the Chariots was translated to Hungarian just in time for the performance. They clearly appreciated it, and I was thrilled to receive a special applause in which they unified their clapping into an ever-faster beat.

I wrote a two-minute piece that was translated by a former student of mine in the States who set up our visit. When I got to speak to her on the phone when she called the camp I wept for joy and deep gratitude. She had recorded her translation for me, but the Hungarian language is quite different from any other. I recorded myself speaking it, and all who heard it thought I was better off using translation slides, which I did. I memorized a few Hungarian phrases, and those were received well. Phew! I posted that performance here.

I got to teach two acting workshops and closed by introducing enacted prayer to Romania. Some of the enactments were quite powerful.

One of the camp organizers said they always pray for just under half of the students to be pre-believers, since, at their age, they are influenced toward the majority of their peers. We rejoiced to see 17 of them go forward to indicate a desire to know the Lord more. Last night the call was to come forward if they want to give their lives to the Lord. We missed it because we had to get to London, but we know of at least one of them that is quite close to making that commitment, and we were privileged to pray with one to that end.

During the weeks of the Olympics we've been blessed with bookings in Puerto Rico, Transylvania and London. We're working on a documentary we've decided to title  Grace to the Nations. One of the leaders told us, "The Love of God is an ocean, and Grace is an invitation to swim."

The student pictured above asked me to film her telling her father how beautiful the worship and fellowship is at the camp and how much she longs for her father to experience this kind of joy through a relationship with Jézus. Pray he dives into the Love of God.