Since my last post on this blog possibly over a year ago, I have begun studying another language: Urdu. On 30 June last year our family moved to Bury, Lancashire, where I now serve as minister of Radcliffe Road Baptist Church . Bury is a Lancashire mill town which is now part of Greater Manchester (Mancehster is about 25 minutes by car or tram). A large proportion of the population of Bury are Urdu/Punjabi speakers. I am keen to reach out to them, and have been learning their language with the help of my neighbour and also at least one another acquaintance I have made. Urdu, as well as its sister language, Hindi, is part of the large Indo-European language family, and is therefore related to English and other more familiar languages such as German and French. For example the numbers (in Urdu: eek, do, teen) are recognisably similar, and there are many common words such as "naam" (name). Having said that, Urdu is quite challenging to learn, especially now that I am far older...