IN-FORMATIO BLOG

Back in April, Rose and I took a short vacation to London. I had been there overnight a couple of times in my life, but never really got to see and explore the city. I wanted to get a feel for my Methodist roots, so London was a great place to start, and we took a side trip to Oxford while we were there. John Wesley began his life in Epworth in Lincolnshire about 170 miles north of London (our next trip to England will include that excursion). He was basically homeschooled by his mother Susannah for the first part of his education, and at age 10, he was enrolled at Charterhouse in central London.  We walked by that area on our trip but did not take time explore Charterhouse and surroundings because we spent that Sunday at Wesley's Chapel and his old home place (about a mile away). We followed that Sunday with a trip on Monday to Oxford, about an hour train ride from London. It was here that I began to feel the roots of the Methodist movement. Wesley spent about five yea...

My new church is a historic place. It dates back to 1789, and is considered the first Methodist Church west of the Catawba River in North Carolina. Out my office window is a cemetery filled with history.  The first settlers in the wilds of North Carolina with names like Sherrill and Beatty lie in rest (thus Sherrills Ford and Beatties Ford are common landmarks in these parts). Out in one corner of the cemetery near the large oak tree is the grave of Daniel Asbury, the circuit rider who started Methodism on the frontier in western North Carolina. Asbury (no family relation to Francis) had quite a story.  Born in 1762, he was raised in Fairfax County, Virginia, and at age 16 he went to Kentucky taking provisions to a frontier fort.  He was captured by Shawnee Indians, and was taken out west, then to Canada and later was turned over to the British at a fort in Detroit during the Revolutionary War. He was released and found his way back to Virginia, where he was c...