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Our May Saturday Service had "Celebration" as it's theme - the joy of Christ's resurrection, new life of Spring, Royal celebrations and the fantastic weather! Diane read the story of the journey to Emmaus by Cleopas and his friend, where they were joined by Jesus along the way. Coincidentally, the Hebrew word for Emmaus means "warm spring", rather apt for us at the moment! The disciples walked along the road to Emmaus, first in sadness and bewilderment at their percieved loss of their Lord and all they had hoped for. They did not realise this stranger who walked with them was Jesus, and they poured their hearts out to him, telling him of all that had happened. Jesus didn't try to cheer them up, give a pep talk, tell them to snap out of it, like so many of us do when confronted by the sadness and depression of others. He just listened and recapped over the storied of the prophets, telling them what they already knew in their hearts, but were too clouded in their minds to see. When they stopped for the night Jesus broke bread with them and the clouds were lifted - they could plainly see Jesus was with them!

Isn't this so like our lives - from a young age we have all heard the Bible stories, many we know off by heart, but so many times we cloud our minds with doubt and worldly cares that we stop listening, and lose confidence in what we already know to be the truth.

For our activity, we considered the universal symbol of celebration - hands! Whatever language we speak we express joy and celebration by clapping, waving our hands in the air, holding our arms aloft - even in sign language, instead of clapping one waves one's hands. At Glastonbury thousands of people raise their hands in the air as if to connect with some unseen physical force of the emotion of the music. So we drew round our hands on material and cut out the shapes. The colours progress from brown (the earth), through greens (new life of growing plants), to multi-colours (flowers) and into the blue of the sky. They are on a yellow background to represent the warmth of the sun and the warmth of God's love, and are arranged in a cross shape with fingers pointing outwards to represent the Risen Christ. We hope you like it!





















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Happy Easter to you all!  What wonderful Easter services have been held in the benefice, and I'm sure the fantastic weather really helps us to feel the joy of new life that the season brings.  The church flowers look beautiful and we are all extremely grateful to the hard work and creativity of the ladies involved.  

We began our Easter weekend with the Service of the Last Hour on the Cross on Good Friday at St Margaret's Church, and silence was kept at the end of the service, which is most fitting to mark such a solemn and significant event.  At the same time, children were invited to come along to the Village Hall for the Good Friday Workshop, where the Easter story is told in a way accessible to children, and there are a variety of Easter crafts to make.  We had a bumper attendance last year, but I am afraid this year we were competing with fantastic weather, which we couldn't complain about really.  Every one who came along enjoyed a very sociable and productive afternoon, making cards, decorating eggs, making Easter nests, producing a great Easter frieze and making the Easter garden which was to be displayed in the church. 











Making Easter nests and cards.






 




         Decorating eggs!








                         








Making the Easter Garden to display in church










Our Easter scene is displayed in the Children's Corner in St Margaret's Church - the sheep have a tendancy to roam, if you find one on the floor, please stick it back on!
















A very many thanks to all those who helped out, you are always very generous with your time and input.

Easter Sunday brought a packed St Margaret's church, and at St Augustine's at East Langdon, their refurbished organ was put to good use! 


Ready for Easter at East Langdon
     










It was lovely to see flowers back in the church - it is amazing how they make such a difference, we really miss them when they are not present.  The family communion service was really uplifting, the children are always such a welcome presence (and always bring the comedy element to the morning!), and we raised the roof with "Thine be the Glory", that wonderful traditional Easter anthem.  Let us hope that our celebration of resurrection and new life will give us all pause to see where we can bring a new impetus to our own lives and those close to us.
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Thanks to everyone who made The Friends' Coffee Morning on the 9th April such as success.  It was a busy morning, with around 60 people attending, and raised a magnificent £170 !  With the Bring & Buy stall, a generous raffle and tea and coffee made to perfection, it was a very enjoyabvle way to spend a Saturday morning after getting the papers!

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A big thank you to everyone who helped out at our Mothering Sunday Children's Craft Morning in St Margaret's church this Saturday 2nd April.  Even though it was called the "childrens'"  craft morning, the adults got stuck in and had a jolly good time too!  Whilst the ladies were making up the lovely posies for the Mothering Sunday Service (and didn't they smell wonderful!), with help from little hands, the craft tables were busy with people having a go at all sorts of things - some beautiful cards were being made, Rosie and Verity were giving expert instructions on how to make waterlilies out of serviettes, George was keeping order at the Hearts & Flowers table, some lovely felt flower badges were sewn together and Rebecca did a tremendous job marshalling the production of the magnificent frieze now on display in the childrens' corner.

With a break for a story from Diane, tea and delicious cake (as always) courtesy of Wendy Rogers, it was a thoroughly successful and sociable morning.  Thanks must also go to St Margaret's Fire Station for the loan of their tables, without which it would be very difficult to hold these craft mornings - and of course to everyone who attended, we hope you enjoyed yourselves!


Preparing the posies



















                                                                    Crowd control at the frieze table!
      




Alexander and the girls with his waterlily.











Our frieze had the theme of "One World, One Family" and depicts the world surrounded by people of all shapes and sizes, made from all sorts of papers and fabrics - pretty much how we find ourselves, really.










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Delicious fresh-made pancakes were eagerly enjoyed at the March Saturday Service (Saturday 5th March).  With the theme of Lent, we thought about Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness, what it must have felt like to be without home comforts, and had a little quiz to show how many times that number "40" occurs in the Bible.  We talked about the basic nature of the ingredients in pancakes and what, when we strip back all the excessive trappings of our lives, are the basic qualities that we all need to share.  


Everyone wrote down their thoughts, cut them out and stuck them on to our display.  There were some really thoughtful comments - to their credit, our Saturday Service crowd have a wonderful knack of taking our craft time far beyond what was originally conceived!


















Our next service is actually the Mothering Sunday Craft Morning on Saturday 2nd April - come along and make some lovely things for that someone special!
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Candlemas was the theme of our February Saturday Service (Saturday 5th February).  The children were asked to imagine what it would have been like for Mary and Joseph travelling to Jerusalem on a donkey with a tiny baby, and how scary and confusing they would have found all the recent happenings - being visited by shepherds and Kings, going to the temple and having two elderly people tell you that your little baby was going to save the world!  We talked about blessing candles for the coming year, Jesus being the Light, and seasonal topics - did you know that an alternative name for snowdrops is Candlemas Bells?  

We then had a go at creating a poster to show that we can all be candles to light the way, just as Jesus had done, and you can see this in the children's corner of the church - and below!






Our next Saturday Service will be on Saturday, March 5th, and the theme will be Lent.         









              
        
                                                                 

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The numbers are swelling for our Saturday Service!  We had a really lovely time this morning (8th January) talking to the children about Epiphany, what it means and how it is celebrated.  The children (and grown-up's!) enjoyed being Kings, everyone helped to make our "We Three Kings" display, which you can see displayed in the children's corner, and Camilla Harley taught us all a lovely Epiphany song to the tune of "Here we go round the Mulberry bush".  I am sure she will teach you it if you want to know the words!  A quiet prayer was followed by well earned refreshments, to finish off a really rewarding session. 


 








Come along to the next one on Saturday February 5th!
(Date shown in February's Parish News is incorrect)
         

                      
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The Cribside Service on Christmas Eve was a wonderful event, bringing together a congregation of more than 300 to raise the roof with carols and joyful anticipation of Christmas Day.  With the church packed to the rafters, the candle-lit singing of Away in a Manger was absolutley lovely.  It really made one imagine the countless Christmas Eve services of past times, which would have all been candle-lit, and wonder what hopes, dreams and anticipations of past congregations might have been absorbed into the stonework of our church.  

































                                                 
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The children had a wonderful time on Tuesday 21st December decorating the Christmas tree in St Margaret's church.  What may have been lacking in artistic appreciation was more than made up for in sheer enthusiasm, but I hope you will agree, the end result was really lovely to behold!
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A wonderful candlelit scene really captured the magic of Christingle today (12th December) at St Margaret's church.  The worship songs were sung with great gusto and the Christmas spirit of Light out of Darkness really came alive.  It has always been a particular favourite service of mine from childhood, and when it is as enjoyable as this one was, I am sure it will remain with all the youngsters throughout their lives as well.  The hot tea and coffee after the service were particularly welcomed on this chilly morning, and helped the mince pies go down a treat!
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So sorry to all of you looking forward to Coffee & Carols on the 4th December - the weather forecast was for bad icey conditions and the pavements were already treacherous with compacted snow, so it was felt best to cancel it this time round.  As it was, the rain proved so torrential it all but washed away the ice that formed - we couldn't have predicted it and hope not too many of you had a wasted journey.  Better luck next year!
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The 31^st Annual Cheese and Wine Lunch and Get-together for The Friends of  St. Peters was held at Walletts Court, Westcliffe on Sunday 21^st November 2010.  Some 70 Friends and guests attended the event which was very successful both socially and financially, and resulted in a profit of £530.00 for the Appeal.

The Friends of St. Peter’s Appeal was formed in 1979 by the then Vicar, The Rev. Stephen Easter, because we had just received the Quinquennial Survey and Report on the fabric of the Church, and this detailed some urgent repairs and maintenance that were required, and we did not have the funds to have the work carried out.

Did you get to the Bowls Club Christrmas Craft Fair last Saturday (20th November)?  If not, you missed a treat, a real village event, and most of the residents seemed to be there!  There were a great variety of quality stalls, selling everything from jewellery to bird boxes, cakes to Christmas cards.  People made a real day of it, staying for lunch as well.  Hazel and Cyril would like to extend a big "thank you" to the Bowls Club for letting them have a table to sell the Church tea towels and bags - trade was certainly brisk!  It really was a very successful event, particularly for the charities it was supporting, so let's hope the Bowls Club can organise one again for 2011.
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Informality and friendship were the key ingredients to our first Saturday Service, held this morning, 6th November 10.30am at St Margaret's church.  It is always great to see the young people of the benefice feeling so at home in our ancient place of worship.  It must surely have borne witness to a huge variety of services and celebrations over the years.  The theme was remembrance, and children and grown-ups alike were invited to stick poppy petals onto one large poppy shape, each one representing a person, place or memory that was special to them.  The finished poppy will remain in the church for the remembrance season.  We were also reminded of Jesus's love for us all and the value of being peacemakers, especially when war is so often in the headlines.  After short prayers, we finishing off with drinks and some excellent biscuits - it was a rewarding addition to a Saturday morning!

Our next Saturday event will be on the 4th December in the Village Hall at Coffee & Carols, with the Advent Craft Workshop in the Channel Room.
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