The long day

Wednesday was another day not according to what I thought might be my usual pattern - that'll teach me to think one was possible! It turned out to be the longest working day yet, starting at 7am with a 3 hour duty in the Oasis of Silence in the hotel I'm staying in. I shared this with a female chaplain from Germany and, although our first visitor spoke English and so her Bible reflection was okay in English, our second visitor was a Team Official from a French speaking country, a language which neither of us speak well enough to lead devotions in. We managed to chat and also promised to try to find him a New Testament in French as he doesn't have one and would like one. I then went to the other hotel to see who was around there, and hopefully set up a meeting with someone from the Japanese team. I spoke with a few people who're now used to seeing us around.
I then set off to the stadium an hour early so that I could grab some 'free time' before my duty in the Stadium chapel. One of my colleagues discovered a while ago that volunteers at the Championships are allowed to use the swimming pool which was built as part of the stadium complex for the 1936 Olympics. It is open-air and on a hot day like today swimmers are watched with slight envy by those gathering to watch the evening's athletics - so it is probably the only time I'll ever swim in a 50m Olympic pool with an audience! Then it was off to the Stadium chapel for 1745 for what turned out to be an almost 5 hour duty. This was partly because the athletics was due to go on a bit later this evening, but mostly because the decathlon went on much later than envisaged as so many of them kept going in the high jump. I finally left the chapel at 2235 and headed off to catch the last Championship shuttle bus back to the hotel. Various things happened during this stint in chapel but more of that in my next post........