Halloween

Wanted!

A fond farewell

 

The Lovely Cake and Awesome Cake groups said farewell to Rev'd Caroline Chichester when they met on Sunday afternoon. As it was Bible Sunday, Caroline led the meeting on - wait for it - The Bible! The young (and not so young) people were fully involved in producing newspapers that reported on the stories of the miracles that happened wherever Jesus went.

Straw dollies at work!

Nine ladies met in the south aisle of St James today, to spend the day learning how to make straw craft work with Mick Gates who is a member of the Guild of Straw Craftsmen. You may have seen him at the Milton Abbas Street fair where he had a stall on the field, with a fine display of corn dollies and other straw craft work. It was a day requiring quite intense concentration, a lot of manual dexterity and a lot of persistence! We all had plenty of laughs along the way and managed to go home with three examples of our own work. The south aisle proved an excellent venue and we had a few visitors who called in to have a look at what we were doing. Mick proved very resilient and coped well with our directional difficulties. He has even offered to come back and run a workshop for Easter crafts - so we can't have been that bad!

A Great Celebration

What a great day at The Dunbury School yesterday. In the morning, St Mary's Church at Winterborne Whitechurch was filled with children and parents to celebrate their harvest festival. In the afternoon the school was open for parents and friends to come and help celebrate the school's 20th birthday.

Vic the Vicar!: Growing Church: A checklist

Vic the Vicar!: Growing Church: A checklist Click on this link for an interesting discussion which applies to rural churches as much as urban parishes. Have a read and feel free to add your comments.

You can have too much of a good thing!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Service of Light

November 2^nd St. Mary’s Church, Winterborne Stickland 7.00pm 

'Service of Light'

For all who would like to remember a loved one who has died, with prayers, readings and lighting of a candle.

Any special names to be read out, please give to Marion, Alan or Jenny before 

 2nd November.

A Hearty Harvest Supper

 

How lovely to be able to continue the harvest festival by moving into the south aisle in St James Church, Milton Abbas. It was a bit of a squeeze but we were all seated and fed by a merry band of volunteers - a big thank you to you all for making it such a success. The final amount raised for the Food Bank has yet to be announced but all that effort was so worthwhile.
   

The Sunday afternoon group

The film 'Bruce Almighty' was the subject of much discussion in The Rectory Sitting Room on Sunday afternoon as the group explored Faith and Confirmation. They are using a blend of the courses 'Moving Images, Changing Lives : Exploring the Christian Life and Confirmation with young people through film ' and 'Faith confirmed'.

Harvest preparations - St James, Milton Abbas

 There were some very busy people in St James today, getting the church ready for the Harvest Service and supper tomorrow evening. The Harvest Festival is at 6 pm tomorrow evening.

 

 

 

Harvest preparations - St Mary's Whitechurch

St Mary's Church, Whitechurch have their harvest service tomorrow morning at 10.30. The church will be busy as there will also be the baptism of Hector.  The flowers are looking wonderful.

       

Still hard at work

rest and recreation

To ensure Alan has a day off, we have to go to extreme measures!

More communication

If you have managed to find this blog, do try and share it with as many people as you can so that we can get it up and running more efficiently (do use the facebook link). 

Please be patient, as it is still in the building mode but any comments or contributions from the Winterborne Valley and Milton Abbas Benefice would be very welcome - don't be shy!

Makaton Amen

If your children attend  one of our schools, they may have come home yesterday with their thumbs in the air - you can blame the Rector. Alan taught the children in both schools, to sign 'Amen' instead of saying it aloud. He has found that the children in previous schools he has visited, liked to do this - thumbs up and bring them in together. The idea is to try to sign it without saying 'Amen' out loud - this was something the children in the lower school found quite difficult - but Alan will  work on this!
 Makaton is a language programme using signs and symbols. Makaton uses signs, symbols and speech to help people communicate.  Signs are used, with speech, in spoken word order. You can read more about it by clicking here.

Back to school

Alan, our Rector, is off to school this morning. He will be fitting two school assemblies into his busy day. The theme is 'helping others', so he is going to talk about Charles Tindley who was an American Methodist minister. If you didn't learn about him in school, now's your chance to read up on him (click here). He lead a church whose congregation grew to 10,000 people!
I hope the young people look after  Alan  - he is still a little apprehensive about going back to school!

'Administer true justice: show mercy and compassion to one another'

Zechariah 7:9

St Mary's Church, Winterborne Stickland - Harvest 2013

 Didn't St Mary's look beautiful? If you have photos of the other churches in our Benefice and would like to share them on this blogspot, email them to mawvoffice@btinternet.com.

 

 

 And what a lovely lunch to follow......

with excellent entertainment!