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No sooner is Easter out of the way than our thoughts turn to the preparations for the annual Rose & Sweet Pea Show and Garden Fete, to be held this year on 26th June. Many might want to ask what ever this event has to do with the Christian Gospel the Church is here to proclaim, and I would answer in two ways.
First, God is the creator and in such an event as this we celebrate the beauty of creation and our own role as stewards of the garden in which he has placed us to work with him. Whether in the production of food and drink, in the husbandry of flowers or in arts and crafts we play a role in God's creative enterprise.
Second, the Rose & Sweet Pea Show draws together many sections of our community and we celebrate our fellowship with our neighbours and the rich variety of human life.
It is, of course, also a fund-raising exercise, but I would suggest that were it not for the community and creativity aspects of the Show, it would not be worth the effort for the funding alone. Do come along: join in the work if you can, but come along as a visitor anyway and enjoy all that the event has to offer!
oremus bible browser to prepare your readingThe Christian Aid Lunch was attended by 33 church members, and after expenses the sum of £145-00 was raised for Christian Aid, this included donations from those unable to attend the lunch.
Our heartfelt thanks for all your loving support, through prayer and offers
of help, during Dave's recent stay in hospital.
Love, Bet
Many thanks for all the good wishes, cards, presents and birthday cake.
Also the lovely flowers presented to Sybil on the occasion of my 80th
birthday.
Bernard Babb
Climbers and Scramblers have been re-united with their old friends Teddy Horsley and Betsy Bear. Their stories are designed to build bridges between the young child's day to day experiences of the world and major Biblical themes and stories. The children's faith has been nourished and developed as they, like Teddy Horsley, have realised how important it is to talk to God through prayer, not just asking for things but telling him what we have done and thanking him for what he does for us. They are now more aware of God watching over us and keeping us safe, and also helping others through us.
Explorers concentrated more on getting to know God, both through Prayer and through reading his word, the Bible. Our Explorers are now very proficient 'Bible Detectives' as they spent time studying how the Bible is put together and are able to look up any reference. They also pondered the existence of God - with a fierce-looking dragon as their visual aid!!
Explorers (7 - 10, Climbers (5 - 7) and Scramblers (under 5) meet every Sunday morning at 9.50am in the Church Hall. They join older worshippers in Church for their blessing, final hymn and refreshments. New members are always welcome. Please contact Andrea (Climbers and Scramblers) on 344926 or Alison (Explorers) on 345890 for more details.
As many of you will be aware Georgina Gamman and Hendriene Jones held a cake stall in Church on Sunday May 2nd. We would like to let everyone know that the stall was a great success and raised £53. A big 'Thank you'to all who supported us.
The money raised will be spent on items for our cookery activities and toys for the older Climber children. In future we hope to hold a similar stall, perhaps once a term, to raise money for other projects. This will be organised and run by all the children in the Sunday School. Many thanks for your support.
Having served her year as Deacon, Sonia is to be ordained Priest at Lincoln Cathedral on Sunday 4th July, and there will be some changes to our pattern of worship on that day to enable us to celebrate this important occasion in her life and the life of our church and parish.
The 8am Holy Communion will take place as usual, but without a sermon, so that the Vicar can get away to Lincoln at a reasonable time. Meanwhile there will be a coach organized to take to Lincoln all who wish to attend the Ordination service. There will be no service at 10am at Deeping St James.
The Sung Eucharist will be at 6pm at which Sonia will preside for the first time. After that service there will be a bring-and-share supper in the Church Hall, arranged by the Social Committee.
Full details of the day will be published in due course, with coach fare, departure times, arrangements for the supper, etc., but meanwhile you may like to make a note in your diary of the service times and to keep the day free!
A new venture for the Deepings churches this year is a stand at The Deepings Show, Saturday & Sunday 5th & 6th June. It was felt that the churches' place in the community needed to be recognized at the Show, and there is space in the churches' area for each of the five member churches as well as some common publicity material for the Churches Together. The latter will include the newly relaunched Ready Call scheme now operating under the auspices of Deepings Churches Together, and the Alpha Course which is running at two of the churches including our own. Manned by volunteers from all five churches, the stand will try to show that the Christian faith is alive and well in the Deepings and that all are welcome to approach any of the churches.
Anyone who has seen my models at the Rose and Sweet Pea Show may have spotted a recent shift in subject matter from the Wild West to World War II. I also cannot help thinking that such an interest may not be quite in keeping with Christian teaching and perhaps I should be building model ploughshares.
However, mindful of the needs of our troops in the front line I sent some parcels out to Iraq last year and was delighted when one of three British officers who wrote back stated that it was like Christmas Day when my box of goodies arrived, and judging by my well thought out parcel I had obviously been in a similar situation myself! (Must have been making a model of Jeep).
I next answered the call to send something to a contingent of Gurkhas who
were missing out due to the poverty of their families in Nepal. By the time
they had divided the shoe box of toiletries, munchies etc. among a group,
each man can't have got much. Despite this, I had never come across a
people so grateful. One wrote:
"It is still dangerous outside the camp. Muslim people are very dangerous.
People are very poor like my country. If we drive along the road children
run for food and water. They looks very pity."
I noted that he equated the dangerous nature of the 'enemy' with their
religion and not with their nationality. Not wishing to inadvertently send
anything offensive I asked my new friend what was his own religion. He
replied:
"In our country we have Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian. Most of the
people are Hindu and Buddhist. I'm Hindu. Nowadays people are changing
their religion. Day by day they are interested in Christian."
Once again I thought that God had taken a interest in mine and put it to use. At the time I was unemployed and on a tight budget but found relatively easy to fill a shoe box. I deliberately chose the buy one, get one free offers and sent the freebie. A soldier in the desert doesn't care if the tin of fruit is dinted or if the box from a packet of soups is torn. Soaps and toothpaste relatively cheap at the discount warehouse. Also there are the free samples of shampoos, creams etc. that your neighbours have also got lying around and at the time the MOD paid for the postage.
- o - O - o - STOP PRESS
Reports have reached us that during a wedding last month a disgruntled ex-boyfriend of the bride flung a bottle of Domestos. This narrowly missed the happy couple but struck the Vicar. Police were called and a man was later charged with a bleach of the priest.
In 2003 the Commissioners achieved their best investment results for the last four years. Our fund saw a total return of 17% and the assets were worth £3.9 billion at the end of the year. For more detail about activity in 2003 do look at our annual report, available from the Policy Unit and on the website. But here are some key points:
In the last five- and ten-year periods our returns have been ahead of the average for comparable funds by more than three percentage points each year. This is better than for, any of the 818 funds in the benchmark that we are compared with. Our property holdings have been a big contributor to this outstanding result.
We fund all clergy pensions earned before 1998 and provide other support for the Church, especially in areas of need. In total we spent £164 million in 2003:
We have cut administrative costs by a third in real terms in the last 10 years and, like the Archbishops' Council, are holding costs at 2001 budget levels in 2002-04. Cost savings are just one result of looking for better ways of doing things. Other examples in 2003 include:
Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Cut the sausages into bite size chunks and fry in the oil until just cooked, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, cook the potatoes in a large pan of boiling salted water for 8 – 10 minutes. Drain well.
Tip the potatoes into the frying pan, season and fry until they take on a bit of colour. Stir in the Sweetcorn and heat through. Season. Sprinkle with coriander or parsley then drizzle over some salsa.
Over the last few year Margaret Flegg has contributed a lot of recipes to this magazine, all of them very attractive. Whether you have carefully filed them or not, it is possible to find Margaret's recipes using the archived Internet edition of Priory News and searching for a recipe name or an ingredient. If you look at the left-hand side of this page you will see the Priory News Archive with a simple search engine: type in what you're looking for and click "Go". You will be presented with a list of the issues that mention that word, with the context in which it is mentioned.
We congratulate:
We commend to God's keeping:
This is only an extract from some of our magazine. Residents of Deeping St James can subscribe to the printed version.
Copyright © 2004 Deeping St James PCC