Welsh Language – The Gathering

An Eventful Return to Caernarfon!

December 2, 2022 philwyman2 Comments

After a month and a half away in the US, first in Salem for the monthlong Halloween and then home to California, I am now back in the place that has become my new home: Caernarfon, Gwynedd, Wales. It’s back to immersion in the Welsh language, organizing community events in Caernarfon, and preparing for “Dim Saesneg” my yearlong Welsh language trip through the country.

The Christmas lights on the street where I live.

Since my return to Wales, people have been stopping me to say that they’ve seen me in the news and are thanking me for making a point to learn their language and promote it. Learning a language of the people who speak minority languages across the world is a major point of identification with culture and it represents one more way that we can incarnate the love of God to others. Language acquisition is just one important missional representation of “God with skin on”.

Wales has been football crazy since I returned, because the country made it into the World Cup for the first time since the year I was born. Unfortunately, they did not make it into the round of 16, but evidence of excitement was everywhere with large gatherings watching the matches, and people singing Yma O Hyd.

Caernarfon Castle with an extra large version of the now famous Welsh Bucket Hat.

My first two weeks back have been eventful. I’ve done an interview with the Welsh language magazine Golwg^[1] about why I moved to Wales, why I am learning Welsh, and why I will be traveling through the country for a year and a day speaking nothing but Welsh.

Last weekend, I spoke at The Community Church – Wrexham during a Sunday Evening Christians Together in Wrexham^[2] event. As is typical of my work and my outreach, I spoke about reaching out to subcultures, the disenfranchised, and going to the places Christians are typically afraid to go. Stories from Salem, Burning Man, Glastonbury, the Appleby Horse Fair, and my immersion in the Welsh language punctuated my point that part of loving God is learning to love what God loves, and God loves the people of the world. He appears to have a special place in his heart for the disenfranchised and the oppressed. As a nation that has struggled to maintain its ancient language despite centuries of effort to eradicate it, this is a message that rings deeply in the people of Wales and motivates many of them toward compassion for the oppressed of all nations.

After the evening with Christians Together in Wrexham, (and seeing friends like Faith and Keefe Owen) I joined John Ramm, one of the musicians from the church, and my wonderful hosts Mike and Hazel Norbury at the Magic Dragon Tap for an open mic. The place was hopping. I received a wonderful reception from the people and after making even more friends in Wrexham (now famous for the football team owned by Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds), I am expecting that Wrexham will be a place of necessary return.

The following day, I met with The Community Church pastors Nick and Sue Pengelly at Mike and Hazel’s home, and we visited Grace Lockhart at the Rhos Community Café.^[3] Grace pastors a small church with a huge outreach to festivals, and a café in the village just outside Wrexham. Grace has been doing outreach like the prophetic festival outreach that happened so effectively in Salem for a couple decades.

With Hazel and Mike Norbury at Christians Together in Wrexham

Last night I revisited an open mic in a town in the top of Anglesey (the northern tip of Wales, about 20 miles from Caernarfon), and it was like returning home. I’ve made several new friends in Amlwch, and like Wrecsam, this is likely to become a place of necessary return on a monthly basis.

Sunday morning, I will be preaching in Bangor at Penrallt Chapel^[4] during the second week of Advent on the subject of love.

^[1] The monthly magazine should be coming out in a couple weeks. See Golwg at https://golwg.360.cymru
^[2] https://www.facebook.com/christianstogetherinwrexham/
^[3] https://www.facebook.com/rhos.communitycafe.7
^[4] https://www.penrallt.org/home/index.php

After the Festivals – Back Home in Caernarfon

July 13, 2022July 14, 2022 philwymanLeave a comment

I arrived in Wales, caught COVID on the first night. After a short quarantine, I got better. It was a bit like being turned into a newt. Then I spent the next six weeks traveling to five different festivals, which my previous emails outlined. Well, now I am back in Caernarfon, and it’s time for a little rest––okay that last bit is a bit of a lie. So, here’s the update of what has happened, and not happened, since arriving back in Caernarfon.

I’ve received notice that the place I am renting is being sold, and that I will need to move out by November 10^th. Now that’s rather hilarious because it’s also my birthday. I’m not really worried about it, but it is a strange coincidence. Prayers will be appreciated, because finding a place to live in Caernarfon is not an easy task at the moment.
There was a March for Welsh Independence in the recently designated “city” of Wrecsam. I went with Gwyn Williams to the event, and accompanied a few thousand people in the happy celebration
Capel Caersalem, the Baptist Church that has sponsored my visa, had a weekend camping festival. I spent the whole of the last week preparing for the event by leading a team of girls from America, who are here with the Greater Europe Mission, to help Iwan and Delyth organize their lovely piece of property, just outside Caernarfon, for the the little festival. There were about 50 of us from the Chapel, and I was the speaker on Saturday night. We met around the fire. I spoke partly in Welsh, and partly in that foreign tongue––English, because that’s about the best I could do with my limited Welsh. I sang a few songs I’ve written, and two of those were in Welsh as well. I think it went well––at least that’s what people told me. I told a short story about my personal connection to Wales, and more specifically to Caernarfon, which I will need to put onto podcast soon, and then I spoke about the subject of love. Love is such a common theme in Biblical sermonizing, and today it is popular to make love the primary basis of our Christian lives. I challenged that thinking a bit by suggesting that we become like what we love, and that it is possible to have love go astray and in all wrong directions.
Well now it’s time for a bit of a rest from a month and a half of solid festival work – I wish! Now the really hard work begins. During our little Capel Caersalem festival, and now in the town of Caernarfon, I’ve been spending time working on my Welsh language skills. I walk downtown and sit with the locals on a bench in the town square. We talk, I barely understand a word they say, and squeeze out the words I know between their thick accents and what sounds like mumbling. I stop at the local pubs and hang out with people I know. Those who are involved in Welsh TV, radio, and music are typically easier to understand than most of the other natives. Performers and actors and radio personalities work on their diction and are less likely to mumble or use strange local colloquialisms, of which there are many in Caernarfon. Most of the time, my brain feels like it is on overload. I suppose I am improving bit by bit, but every now and then, the little spinning color wheel of death that happens to your old Mac happens to my brain.
The basic things are taking forever! I have only been in Caernarfon a little more than two weeks out of the last 2 months due to my travels, and I am having a heck of a time getting my personal banking and the details of my health care in the UK set up. Every time I try to get something accomplished there is another little detail that someone hasn’t told me. Hopefully I will have a bank account and be fully connected to the Health Services in the next couple days.

So the next couple months are all about working toward fluency in Welsh, and establishing the connections in Caernarfon to be able to bring blessing to this town, which has been called the heart of Cymry Cymraeg (Welsh speaking Welsh).

Pastor Rhys Llwyd Talks about My Mission to Wales

February 3, 2022 philwymanLeave a comment

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UK Mission 2019 – three weeks in

June 4, 2019June 4, 2019 philwyman2 Comments

I have now been as many festivals in the UK this year as weeks I have been on the ground. These first three weeks have been in North East and Mid-East Wales. First in Wrecsam, which I outlined in the last post, and then two weeks at the book town of Hay-on-Wye.

One of the boards I created for the events at the Hay Festival.

I created a podcast from the philosophy festival at Hay, and this is my update after leaving HowTheLightGetsIn and moving across town to the Hay Literary Festival. I worked as a volunteer steward at the BBC stage. I have done this over the last three years, and this group has become a family away from home. I ended up writing signs for the events, and this year we were able to move the sign making up a notch. It became a bit of friendly competition between three of the many stages who were trying to art up their upcoming event signage. I posted boards I created, and the reason for wanting to help the festival become a better event on another of my blog pages. You can see the chalk boards I created on that page. I saw the work as a way of being a good witness in my desire to help the event be a better experience for all who attended.

I spent much of time with new and old friends talking about life, which typically includes my personal testimony about meeting God, my theological work in Wild Theology (the belief that God, the world and people are all wilder than we’ve been told), and discussions about the growing number of people who identify as “none” on religious polling and census data. I also spent a good deal of time speaking Welsh. Surprisingly, I found fluent Welsh speakers living at Hay-on-Wye. Although it is in Wales, it is on the border, and there are few Welsh speakers in the small town, and I think I have met most of them over the last five years.

This is the area I set my hammock tent at Hay-on-Wye.

I camped in the trees above the Wye river in my hammock. Each morning a young Dunnock full of peach fuzz, but able to fly flitted among the branches around my tent, and I would talk to it. On the last morning, I took down my tent and as I untied it from one of the trees, the young bird jumped on a branch as close as he could get, and stared twittering at me frantically. It was as though he was upset that I was leaving him. I wish I had taken a picture of the cute little guy for you, but Dunnocks are quite nervous and jumpy little characters that flit among the branches. So here is a Youtube video of an older Dunnock singing.

I am now in Pontypridd with Andrew and Dawn, and preparing to leave for the North of England for the Appleby Horse Fair, which is Europe’s largest gathering of Gypsies and Travelers. More news to come soon.

If you are interested being a part of these travels and outreach in festival and destination locations, please contact me. You can also support this ministry through donations at the link below.

UK Mission 2019 – first week in Wales

May 23, 2019 philwyman5 Comments

Arrival in Wrecsam, Wales

Castle Dinas Bran overlooking Llangollen

At 8:30am, the Virgin Atlantic flight left Logan airport in Boston for London Heathrow. I had purchased a round trip flight for just over $350 some months previously. It was one of the best prices available this year, and I had booked it through Delta Airlines, but immediately jumped on the tickets when I saw that it was a Virgin flight. I had the row of five seats to myself.* During the flight, I met Kaliko, a man who was born on the Isle of Wight. As a young man he was adopted by a lady in Hawaii. Today he is a fluent speaker and teacher of the Hawaiian language, and an activist for minority polynesian languages. Kaliko and I will be following one another in social media from here on out, and I hope that someday our paths pass again.

After arriving in Heathrow, I caught the London Underground to Victoria Station, and from there caught a £9 five-hour Megabus ride from London to Liverpool. During the bus ride, I met Alex. Alex is Russian/Lithuanian but has been living in the UK for years. He is currently homeless, and quite happy to be so at the moment. He plans to spend a few months in Liverpool working, and making some money. He has been befriending other homeless, and sharing God’s love with them for about three years. He showed me around Liverpool, and I am hoping to be able to get back there to see him again before I leave the UK in August.

40 hours after leaving the US, I finally arrived in Wrecsam in North East Wales for the Focus Wales event. I stopped at a pub in Wrecsam to get my bearings and try to connect with people I had contacted on the Couchsurfing network. I walked past a place called Saith Seren (Seven Stars), and saw a “Cofiwch Dryweryn” (“Remember Tryweryn”) sign, which was evidence that this could be a Welsh Language Pub. I stopped in, plugged in my computer, spoke to the bartender, who was fluent in Welsh for a bit, and got to work on the computer. After getting a bit of work done, a man came into the pub who appeared to be in charge. He talk with the bartender in Welsh, walked around the room straightening a few things up, and stopped to speak with me in English. I responded to him in Welsh, and his eyes got real big. He asked where I was from, and after a about 10 minutes of conversation in Welsh, he asked if he could take my picture. He took my picture, and unknown to me posted it on Twitter and Facebook with a comment about meeting me, speaking in English, and how I responded in fluent Welsh with a heavy American accent, and said, “Phil is from Massachusetts.” In a short time the post exploded with hundreds of likes and responses from Welsh speakers. For the next two days, people in Wrecsam would recognize me from the picture on Facebook or Twitter, and friends of mine from across Wales would respond to the posts.

That night, I was not able to connect with the my potential Couchsurfing locations on the first night, but that is not something to stop someone like me with a hammock tent. Late that first night, I met Cary. He is a homeless drug addict in Wrecsam, and has lived there his whole life. He showed me around to the hidden “wild camping” locations around Wrecsam, and the spot he has been living in his tent. We talked about what it is like to be homeless in Wrecsam, and the troubles he has with the other homeless who are heroin addicts, and alcoholics. He describes himself as an amphetamine addict, and struggles with the theft, and violence that comes from other addicts.

Focus Wales and Couchsurfing

By the second day I was able to connect with Katherine who had a place for me to Couchsurf in her home right next to Wrecsam’s center. I was one of three couchsurfers at her place. For the next three days, I volunteered at one of the music venues, which was St. Giles Parish Church. In the afternoons and evenings I worked with the small team at Saint Giles, and connected with people from around Wales in the music industry at other times.

I met Faith Owen on the second day. She works in Coleg Cambria in Wrecsam teaching Welsh. Turned out that her husband is a pastor of the Nazarene Church in the nearby village of Penycae. I traveled around with their family on Saturday to see some beautiful locations above the town of Llangollen like the Castell Dinas Bran (Castle Dinas Bran – see photo at the top), the ruins of a 13th century castle that looks down on Llangollen. The next day, I attended their services and experienced a beautiful and friendly group of Welsh believers.

I also spent some time with Dot Gosling, the purple-haired vicar in North Wales. Dot and I had been circling in similar orbits for awhile and finally met face to face.

During this same time, I completed a 5,000 word article for the Church Mission Society magazine, Anvil. The topic was “Spiritual but not Religious”. While I was completing the article, discussions popped up in Katherine’s home. Katherine, her partner Brian, another couchsurfer named Lauren, and I talked at various times about the nature of spirituality and religion. I’m hoping to see them all again in the future, because I had such a wonderful time getting to know them all.

All in all, this time in Wrecsam (“Wrexham” in English) has been fruitful, and relationships were developed with the festival and the greater community of Wrecsam.

* If you ever need help finding cheap flights contact me. I can give you the tips on flying cheaper than you might expect.