Just in case you hadn’t noticed ~ my favourite church is of course Advent Church on the campus of St. John’s University, Taiwan, and my favourite stained glass is the one in Advent Church – it’s BEAUTIFUL!

So beautiful in fact, that I use it for all my cover photos for this blog and everything else, it is truly stunning!  The glass was designed and made in 2008 by our good friend, Lyn Hovey ~ who is based in Boston, USA with his lovely wife, Naticksqw, Chief Caring Hands of the Natick Praying Indians.  They’ve both been to Taiwan many times, and then last May I had the chance to visit them in Boston, and we went to the ancestral lands to eat delicious ice-cream, plus visit a church that Lyn was busy restoring…..

The story of Naticksqw’s people, the Natick Praying Indians, and how they came to follow the Christian faith starts with the arrival in the USA in 1631 of John Eliot, Puritan missionary to the Massachusetts Indians. He learned the language, preached, taught, and translated the Bible, helped by a local team. In fact the first Bible actually printed in America was their translation, in the Massachusetts-Natick language.

John Eliot was from England, born in Widford, Herts, and grew up nearby in Nazeing, Essex.  He was baptized on August 5, 1604 in Widford Church. Widford is a tiny little village not far from Ware, Herts, and today I had the chance to visit ~ yippee!  Except that it was raining all day ha ha!

Anyway, John Eliot appears on the Widford Village Sign, and in the church the big east window is dedicated to his memory, erected in 1894 by his American descendants.  The font is the one he was baptized in too.  The church is part of the United Benefice of Hunsdon with Widford and Wareside….

My next stop was the Nazeing Village Church, in the village where John Eliot grew up. But by then it was raining very hard, and the church was closed ~ so only 3 photos of the outside!

An amazing day ~ an amazing man ~ following an amazing God!