I hope you and your family are well. Well, here we are at the spring equinox. We can look forward to more hours of daylight and lighter mornings. Lets’ hope we get more sun compared to the last few days! This Sunday is Passion Sunday which means that there only two weeks to Easter, I thought I’d start with a few reminders. Our Lent appeal is still open. To make a donation to USPG’s work with the Church in South India’s education project on ecological justice, please go to https://cafdonate.cafonline.org/15983 . For more information go to #forsuchatime or www.uspg.org.uk/forsuchatime. This is the time when we ask you to return the Children’s Society boxes. Last year, we managed to send our collection to the Children's Society just before lockdown began, but this year is a bit different. However, they still do need our support. If you'd like to open your box yourself and count up the contents, you can go online and make your donation directly to them. The website is www.childrenssociety.org.uk, where you can get more information, or search for 'Children's Society house boxes'. If you'd rather not make a digital donation but would like your box emptied, please call Myra Fye on 01925 268288, to arrange collection from your house. The Chapel is now open for every Sunday for private prayer between 2.00 and 4.00pm. At the moment we aren't putting any candles out as the church mice are taking them! Please remember to keep a 2m distance from those who are not in your family bubble and don’t forget to gel your hands as you enter and leave. Please also fill in the track and trace forms which you’ll find on the table as you go in. We continue to make our Sunday morning services available on the telephone. The new number is 01925 980054. Please let me know if you have any problems in using it. Some of you have said that at times the service cuts out before the blessing. We think we have sorted this out, but please let us know if not. We have had a good look at the seating layout in Church. As a result, we have been able to release 10 more seats for next week’s Palm Sunday service. We have been able to keep to using every 3<sup>rd</sup> pew, which is very generous! Every pew is 3 feet away from the one in front and behind. To use every 2<sup>nd</sup> pew means that we are only a few centimetres short of 2 metres! If only our predecessors used metric measurements! We would like your views if you would still feel safe with every other pew. The other seats have been found by using some more chairs and by allocating seats to family bubbles. All that we ask is that when you come to Church, you wait to be shown to your seats, where we ask you to stay. We appreciate that the sightlines may not be perfect but we hope that you’ll understand. I had hoped to be able to open the Eventbrite booking forms for the Easter Day 10.30am service in the car park. There are a couple of matters I need to sort out, so please be patient. Our Holy Week special services follow the usual pattern using Zoom and Facebook. They are:- Maundy Thursday 7.30pm using the Iona Community’s worship style - Good Friday 10.30 am with dramatised reading of the Passion and 2.00pm The Last Hour. Gavin is leading tomorrow morning’s 10.30am service. See attached. The afternoon service of Evensong at 4.00pm is being led by James. I hope you have a good week. With God’s blessing, David
I hope you and your family are well. Here we are already at the halfway point of Lent – Mothering Sunday. The days are getting longer and the trees and hedges starting to produce buds. Spring is on its way. The daffodils are out in the car park and churchyard. Have a look at the attached photo of the cross and daffodils taken on Saturday. This is the time when we ask you to return the Children’s Society boxes. Last year, we managed to send our collection to the Children's Society just before lockdown began, but this year is a bit different. However, they still do need our support. If you'd like to open your box yourself and count up the contents, you can go online and make your donation directly to them. The website is www.childrenssociety.org.uk, where you can get more information, or search for 'Children's Society house boxes'. If you'd rather not make a digital donation but would like your box emptied, please call Myra Fye on 01925 268288, to arrange collection from your house. Thank you. From this Sunday, the Chapel will be open for private prayer between 2.00 and 4.00pm. At the moment we aren't putting any candles out as the church mice are taking them! Please remember to keep a 2m distance from those who are not in your family bubble and don’t forget to gel your hands as you enter and leave. At the moment all the seats have been taken for our 10.30am Palm Sunday service, but we often get cancellations. But don’t despair as there is a waiting list. Please add you name to the list and if seats become available you’ll receive an email. We are looking at the seating layout and it may be that we’ll be able to release more seats by some judicious rearranging of seats. All you need to do is to go to this Eventbrite site https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/parish-communion-for-palm-sunday-tickets-144869094361. When you try reserve a seat you’ll be taken to another page inviting you to join the waiting list. As to Easter Day, we are going to have an Easter Communion service in the car park, similar to Carols in the Car Park. It will start at 10.30 and will include music from the choir and hymns which you can sing from the safety of your car. By allowing for 40plus cars, we can allow more of us to worship and celebrate together this most important of Christian feasts. Communion will be distributed to you in your car. Tickets will be available during the coming week. Please watch out for the email announcing when they are released. Simon is leading tomorrow morning’s 10.30am service. See attached. The afternoon service of Evensong at 4.00pm is being led by Gill. I hope you have a good week. With God’s blessing, David
I hope you and your family are all well. There is definitely a feeling of spring in the air. I took a few photographs of the Churchyard at the beginning of the week which you can find on our Facebook site. This Sunday, Bishop Keith (Bishop of Birkenhead) will be saying farewell to the Diocese after 14 years with us. He has visited us on a number of occasions over the years for Confirmations. Ian (McIntyre) has contributed a photographs of one of those visits for Bp Keith’s memory book. Bp Keith has contributed to the March edition of the Diocesan Newsletter - https://d3hgrlq6yacptf.cloudfront.net/5f20800211eb6/content/pages/documents/cdn-5.pdf. Bp Keith's final service is Sunday afternoon at 3.00pm. You can watch it here:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frfGWfo2ykE You may recall that just before the first lockdown, Myra (Fye) encouraged us to make donations to the TEARFUND toilet twinning campaign. Thanks to your contributions we have been able to twin our toilets in Church with one in Cote d’Ivoire and one in Zambia, along with a tap in Guatemala. If you want to find out more about these twinning schemes, please go to:-https://www.toilettwinning.org/ Tomorrow sees schools reopening for all children after many months of closure and disruption to their education. Please pray for the schools in our parish - Daresbury and Moore Primary Schools, and Sandymoor Ormiston Academy – their staff, children and Governors. It will be a very difficult few weeks as they settle down to a new routine and way of school life. As the lockdown is beginning to be relaxed and with Easter only a few weeks off, we have been giving some thought to re-opening the Church on Sundays for worship and private prayer. Having discussed things with the PCC this week, I am pleased to let you know that the Chapel will be open for private prayer on Sunday afternoons from 2.00pm to 4.00pm, starting on 14<sup>th</sup> March, Mothering Sunday. The arrangements we had in place for hand sanitising and distance will apply as before. Our first Parish Communion service will be on Palm Sunday 28<sup>th</sup> March at 10.30am. As before, we will have to limit the numbers to 30, all socially distanced. Tickets will be available through Eventbrite from this week. The service, as with all future Sunday services, will be streamed on Facebook Live. As I have said before, streaming through Facebook will be a permanent feature of our worshipping life. Easter Day will include a Parish Communion service at 10.30am. We are still working out the details, but we hope to be able to hold it in the car park in a similar way to Carols in the Car Park at Christmas. That way we can have more attending. I hope to be able to give more details next week. As for Holy Week, we will be holding a Maundy Thursday service on 1<sup>st</sup> April at 7.30pm. On Good Friday 10.30am there will be a service of Morning Prayer with a dramatized reading of the final hours of Jesus’s life. These will be streamed from the worship leaders’ homes on Facebook. Again, more to follow. In the meantime, this Sunday’s 10.30am service sheet is attached. It will be led by James. I shall be leading Evensong from the Book of Common Prayer in the afternoon at 4.00pm. I hope you have a good week. With God’s blessing, David
