Week 2 begins

Saturday was a day off for me and I'd returned home for that - one of the advantages of an international sporting event being hosted in our own country is that we all live relatively close. However, that said, as I live in Wiltshire I'm the chaplain with the longest journey. This is partly because our chaplaincy team comprises a number of local ministers in addition to a few specialist sports chaplains. I was also absent from Guildford on Sunday, as I was taking part in services at St Michael's Church, West Andover, the parish where I'm an assistant priest.
On Monday, I returned to Guildford, and to chaplaincy duties in and around the Women's Rugby World Cup. This was the 'usual' mixture of spending time in & around the Oasis of Silence and out & about around the whole venue, plus some admin and preparation tasks that needed to be done. Having been away over the weekend, there was also some catching up to do.
Sadly, one aspect of that was learning that a player from one of my pool teams had sustained a more serious injury than was at first thought - a broken bone means that she won't be able to play again in this tournament and so will be heading home sometime soon. Although the bone concerned means that this isn't actually a major injury as such, it is obviously major for her and also for her team mates with whom she's trained intensively for the last few months. So, it was good to be able to offer support to members of that team and their TLO, both explicitly and implicitly. As a chaplaincy team, we're also able to pray for her, and for others with needs, as well as for the whole event. Even if no-one comes for the 8:30am and 8:30pm devotional times, the chaplains on duty still meet to pray at those times each day.