I have found it wise to make a mellow day about halfway through our two-week vacations. It helps to recharge me for the second week. What better day to do that than a Sunday, a traditional day of rest? So that is what we did – had a (fairly) mellow Sunday.

We slept in, and then went to church. We both like going to churches in Europe when we can find an English-speaking service, so that was not an issue in Scotland. I poked around on the internet a few days ago, and found the Free Scotland Church, an evangelical branch of Presbyterianism. It seemed as if we should visit a Presbyterian church while in Scotland.

The service was very good. The church was a very pretty stone church with lots of dark woodwork inside. The service itself had three main parts – a cappella psalms (which were very tricky for those of us who did not know the tunes), a children’s story, and a sermon. The sermon was on Revelation 19, and had four main points: celebration (wonder for Jesus), preparation (working while waiting for Jesus), invitation (wedding with Jesus), and ultimatum (Jesus as warrior). It was well laid out. The people were very friendly, which has been my experience with the Scots in general.

After church, we went walking along the River Ness, to the Ness Islands. The people of Inverness have paved paths and built bridges out to the mid-river islands, and it is a pretty and pleasant walk. From what I have seen, the Scots rival the Austrians for their love of accessible outdoors, even to the point of having paved bike paths in the middle of the Highlands, miles from the nearest town. We crossed the islands and found a very large and cool family park with multiple playgrounds, and Mer and I tried a small zip line, which was fun, but seemed defective in that the supporting line sagged quite a bit for us. Someone should look into that.

We walked back along the other side of the Ness back into town, where we grabbed lunch at a chocolate shop that also served sandwiches. Then it was back to the room for a nap, which Meredith managed, but I did not. Our room is above a bar, which is fine – the floor does not transmit much sound. But it was a nice afternoon and the terrace was open, and our window does let sound through, so I could not sleep.

Keeping with the mellow Sunday theme, we went to an evening service at Inverness Baptist Church. It was great. The evening service was meant to be informal and intimate, so the chairs were set up in a circle around the communion table. There were about thirty of us there, and we sang some well-known hymns and songs, as well as hearing a brief message from Psalm 27 about waiting for the Lord and keeping our hope in him despite circumstances. We also had communion and spent a lot of time in prayer. It was very relaxing. The people were extremely friendly, and we chatted with the pastor for several minutes. We found out he was from a western island and grew up speaking Gaelic in the home, so we asked him if he would read some scripture for us in Gaelic, which he was happy to do. It was very pretty.

We finished our evening walking up the hill to the town castle, which is imposing and functions as a town hall and court. The inside of the castle is mostly just offices, but it has great views of the river. We wandered around for a few minutes, then found a pub at the bottom of the hill for supper, and called it a night. On to week two of the vacation!