WE ARE THE CHURCH...

...and we are one in Christ no matter where we were born or now live and attend church.  That was our theme today - and it was an All Age Service, which I know some people aren’t keen on, but it went very well.

We learned to sing the chorus of one of our songs, “How Great is our God” in Chinese and also in Portuguese - how good is that?  We had two ladies to help us, Lesia, who is in the middle of my collage today, and is from Taiwan and Mary-Ann from Brazil - but sadly I didn’t get a shot of her.  I was amazed whilst we were singing to hear the congregation entering into the spirit of this and singing in both languages.  

Before the service started, we had a Worship Group practice, and you can see some of the children getting ready, waving ribbons, playing the guitar and drums and generally enjoying the time of worship prior to the service.

The children were encouraged to put names of different people on bricks, and then they were built into a “church”, and they did it very well too - not too sure about them then being asked to take one out and see the other bricks fall, but despite misgivings - and I was sitting in the front row at this time - it all went well and Clive got his message across.  I was just happy to see no broken toes!  

Others were asked to write on tee shirts how Jesus changes us and what He gives us, and these are being modelled at the top of my collage.  

We had a different type of Prayer Time, when we were asked to write on Post-it Notes items for prayer and put them posters of different continents around the Church.  You can see there are also various flags from different countries - which made it all very colourful.   

All in all a great service and it was very much a joint effort - so perhaps those who aren’t keen on All Age Services won’t be as apprehensive about coming in the future.  We finished, as usual with coffee and biscuits in the hall, and it was good to chat to different people.

We then went out for a drive - our car has been recalled - something to do with petrol gauge, so is going in on Wednesday, but we needed to make sure that it had under half a tank of petrol, so we went towards Cirencester and then took the Burford road.  We stopped at an organic farm shop at Abbey Home Farm where we had a delicious roast beef lunch with all the trimmings - so I don’t have to cook this evening!  That’s a good thing because I want to sort out the various labels - showing the different ingredients and allergens - for the food we are given, mostly KFC - and there are lots of labels needed.  This has to be done this evening because they want the labels at the Community Fridge tomorrow, so I need to get myself into gear to do that.  

I hope, therefore, that by the end of the day, that job will be completed and then we can sit down to watch “Our Man in Vietnam” - a two-part series on Channel 4 exploring Vietnam's past, present, and future - on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War;  it features Guy Martin travelling around by motorcycle.  Our son lives in Vietnam and has a motorcycle, so it will be good to see this programme and see the sort of trips he makes up and down the country from time to time.

Hope you all have a great week.  Be blessed.  M xx

P.S.  You may wonder about the "blue" flag over the lectern and by the drummer - those were celebration flags from the football game between Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, when Spurs won - and Brian kindly brought them back for some of our lads, who support Spurs, along with their Dad - and Mr. HCB - but sadly, he didn't get one!! :-(