Back Free Church

Today (Saturday) we did some of the tourist things, visiting the standing stones at Callanish, and the Broch - an ancient fortified farmhouse that had splendid views out over the islands. I was struck by the number of fish-farms on the lochs, and also by the huge number of timber framed houses that you could see. You get to be able to spot them. We also saw some newly built timber-framed churches belonging to the Free Church (Continuing).

In the evening we spoke at Back Free Church (www.backfreechurch.co.uk) where a good number met and we met up with an old friend - the man from the ferry and from the meeting at Carinish. Back Church has another "old friend", Revd Dr Iain D Campbell as its minister. We had heard him speak at the Banner of Truth conference at Leicester, when he spoke about John MacDonald (known as the apostle of the North).

At North Uist and on Lewis you often hear people speaking together in Gaelic. Like Welsh, Gaelic is a celtic language, and there are some words that you can see they share. mor/mawr = big, beg/bach = small, traigh/traeth = beach, etc.. but it was impossible for me to make out any words at all from the Gaelic I heard. On North Uist the road sings are bilingual, but on Lewis they are Gaelic only (e.g. Barvas is signposted as Barabhas)

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