Because Jessie and I are complete nerds, we often end our evenings reading selections from Wesley's Veterans, a 7 vol account of the exploits of the earliest Methodist preachers. My favorite is John Nelson, a powerful stone mason who flat wore it out preaching.
Once while Wesley and Nelson were on a preaching tour in Cornwall, they had bad weather, getting soaked from one town to the next, losing their way in the night, etc. I want to share two times Nelson had with Wesley. We don't often think of Wesley as light-hearted. These stories make me wish I could have travelled with him. I have tried to update the language.
"When I had been out a week, I returned to St Ives and found Brother Downes in a fever, so that he was not able to preach at all. All that time Mr. Wesley and I lay on the floor: he had my overcoat for his pillow, and I had Burkitt's notes on the New Testament for mine. After being here near three weeks, one morning, about three o'clock, Mr. Wesley rolled over and finding me awake, slapped me on the back and said, 'Brother Nelson, cheer up! I'm only sore on one side of my body, there is a whole other side left.'"
On another occasion, he writes, "One day we had been at St. Hilary Downs, and Mr. Wesley had preached from Ezekiel's vision of dry bones, and there was a shaking among the people as he preached. As we returned, Mr. Wesley stopped his horse to pick blackberries, saying, 'Brother Nelson, we ought to be thankful that there are plenty of blackberries; it's easy to get hungry here, but hard to get food. Do the people think we can live by preaching?"
It reminds me of a time when young John Mynhier and I were out doing evangelism. We were out in the woods so far, you'd have to head towards town to hunt, and we got to some blackberries that the birds had not found. There we were with purple mouths and hands and I said we needed some ice cream, but John said they were good as is.
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